In this presidential address, the author discusses how to find inspiration when writing about the history of education. He says that while the Muse can sometimes be elusive, we do not have to search far and wide to find her. The author finds his inspiration through reading, writing and talking to his colleagues and students and also by asking the…

In her 2019 address, Ann Marie Ryan, president of the Organization of Educational Historians, examines historical consciousness and educational spaces. Historical consciousness requires historiographical knowledge--coming to an understanding of history after considering multiple historical accounts and interpretations. Historical theorist Jörn…

This essay addresses the question of the relevance of the work of educational historians and the ways in which they, historically, have positioned their work as meaningful. In asking what the relevance of the history of education was or could be, the author arrived at the following questions: (1) How do we, as educational historians, understand…

The mental hygiene movement, a dramatic extension of Progressive Era delinquency prevention into America's public schools, began to take form in the United States in 1908, catalyzed by the publication of Clifford Whittingham Beers' "A Mind That Found Itself." That same year, Beers helped found the Connecticut Society for Mental Hygiene,…

Reverend Horace Holley, a New England-born, Yale-educated, Unitarian minister from Boston, was offered the presidency of Transylvania University in the town of Lexington, Kentucky, in 1817. He investigated the opportunity by way of a "tour of inquiry," a circuitous route west through notable "literary establishments" of the…

In this paper, the author compares the conservative normative depictions of sweethearts in campus publications to representations of the figure in sorority newsletters by examining differences in the projection of domesticity, beauty, and passivity between the two types of publications. The author contends that the substantial variances between…

On a June, summer day at Albion College, Byron Stokes and Dudleigh Vernor, two undergraduate members of the local chapter of Sigma Chi fraternity, sat down at the college organ in Dickie Hall and coined the most famous song in fraternity history, "The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi" ("The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi," n.d.a). The tune…

A group of private liberal arts colleges in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana, formed a voluntary association called the Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA) in 1962 based on their self-perceived shared interests and missions. These institutions included Albion College, Antioch College, Denison University, DePauw University, Earlham College, Hope…

This article argues that the larger context of American life--the cultural, social, and intellectual currents--is what shapes the professional writing of history in the United States. The essay examines the contexts that brought forth the progressive scholarship early in the century, the consensus and psychoanalytic histories of mid-century, the…

The purpose of this paper is to critique the manner in which history about American Indians has been written and propose a rationale for the rethinking of what we know about this subject. In particular, histories of education as regards the participation of American Indians is a subject that has been given scant attention over the years and when…

"The accomplishments of Indians and their actual place in the story of the United States have never been remotely touched by ... [most] historians. The major reason for this omission is that a substantial number of practicing historians simply do not know the source documents with sufficient precision to make sense of them; ... They spend a…

The rapid expansion of public schooling during the 1950s and 1960s increased the need for teachers and teacher training. Colleges accomplished this by having professors of education train other educators in foundations of education. This broke the connections between academic history, philosophy, and sociology and educational history, philosophy,…

Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (A.D. 35-95) was a teacher of rhetoric in Rome during the first century of imperial Rome. His seminal work, "De Institutio Oratoria"--The Education of the Orator, was written during his retirement. Quintilian's experience as a teacher had an impact on his ideologies and "De Institutio Oratoria" combined his practitioner…

Current educational policies regarding equal educational opportunity are confused and often contradictory. There is no clear consensus as to what constitutes an equal opportunity. Most modern educators agree that the modern equal educational movement began in the 1950's with the Supreme Court decision in "Brown vs. the Board of…