Argues that a rich and controversial chapter in the history of the history of education has been forgotten in the zeal to get on with the "new" history. Contends that historians need to come to terms with the struggles, primarily in the 1930s and 1940s, between those who would make the field purely functional and those who would make it an…

In what follows I explore the question of fictionality in history writing. First, I venture into the unfamiliar genre of "ego-histoire" and make my own professional training in the tenets of positivist or realist historiography an object of theoretical reflection and critical analysis. Then as a way of dealing with the literary dimension of…

Uses the film, "Dead Poets Society," to illustrate and discuss postmodernist issues in education. Although ostensibly a straightforward narrative of individuality versus conformity there are problematic areas in this film that lend themselves to multiple readings. The film reproduces a number of powerful myths without benefit of a…