At the heart of the nineteenth-century educational soundscape lies a paradox. Whilst "modern" classrooms generally strived for orderly silence, the goal of its educational practices was the production of competent "citizens". Middle-class boys in particular were expected to acquire a voice fit for business, the professions, or…

The outbreak of the First World War had a powerful impact on German schools. Undoubtedly, schools were institutions of socialisation that did offer support to the war. Indeed, research has shown that a specific "war pedagogy" made an aggressive propaganda possible in the classroom. This research usually emphasises the enthusiasm for war…

In the past few years, worries about decreasing jobs or even the possible disappearance of the history of education as a field of study have frequently surfaced. Hence, the question arises as to whether the history of education, as a field of study, has a future--or is it, as many authors have remarked, in danger? This article starts from the idea…

There is a longstanding difficulty in distinguishing philosophy (and philosophy of education) from other kinds of writing. Even the notions of clarity and rigour, sometimes claimed as central and defining characteristics of philosophy at its best, turn out to have ineliminably figurative elements, and accounts of philosophical method often display…