The "1919 Report" of the British Ministry of Reconstruction's Adult Education Committee, produced as the First World War was ending, reflects the optimism of its committee about the possibilities for a more socially just and democratic society and its concern to find an alternative to economic deprivation and disenfranchisement. Its…

In the 3 years prior to Harry Truman's establishment of the President's Commission on Higher Education in 1946, the Association of American Colleges (AAC), the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), and Harvard University all released reports on the relationship of general or liberal education to the political order. This historiographical…

A 1998 report from the Boyer Commission called "Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America's Research Universities" issued a series of directives, suggestions, and critiques concerning the then-current state of undergraduate education at research universities. The document caused a minor media firestorm in the higher…

In this critical historical analysis, "Higher Education for American Democracy" is considered a historical artifact, and its veneration as a landmark quest for equal opportunity in higher education is challenged. I argue that this report and the institutional expansion that resulted positioned the federal government to have a direct role…

This essay recontextualizes the Yale Report of 1828, arguing that the report's advocacy for classical liberal education should be understood alongside the racial concerns of its authors, some of whom were well-known colonizationists who viewed African American education as a threat to New Haven's social and economic stability. The Yale Report's…

For half a century the UN's principal agency on education, UNESCO, has sought to shape the world's educational landscape through a once-every-generation global report (e.g. the Faure report of 1972 and the Delors report of 1996). The latest of these reports -- the Sahle-Work Commission's "Reimagining our futures together: A new social…

The introduction of elementary schools in Sweden (and elsewhere) in the mid-nineteenth century required the quick hiring of many new teachers, which in turn posed challenges about their financing. This paper analyses school inspectors' reports and teachers' journals to illuminate local strategies to provide affordable teaching in the Uppsala…

Despite recognition of the value of music in education, the policies of governments have not always been reflected in the provision for music teaching in schools. This article represents a retrospective analysis and review of government policy in relation to the provision of music teachers and teacher training in Australia, with a focus on the…

Syed Ross Masood (1889-1937), grandson of the Muslim modernist Syed Ahmad Khan and former principal of Osmania University, traveled in 1922 from India to Japan as Director of Public Instruction for Hyderabad to assess Japan's educational system. In Japan and Its Educational System, a report published in 1923, Masood concluded that education had…

This article combines archival research and critical discourse analysis to examine 33 evaluation and report documents that evaluate the effectiveness of the Fulbright Program from 1958-2023. Specifically, the study employs argumentation analysis to understand the underlying ideological strategies used to discursively construct the Fulbright…

There is a growing consensus that the study of literature in English secondary schools is suffering a crisis: a fixation with knowledge and facts, a loss of creativity, and a denigration of students' own experience, to name a few. This article argues that this is, in part, a result of the conception of culture embedded in the current National…

Higher education professional associations (HEPAs) are well-established agents of knowledge production and have been influential in shaping higher education policies and practices. In the context of US international higher education, HEPAs have contributed to the rise of 'internationalization' as a discursive practice. Proposing an analytical…

How can the Truman Commission report be read 75 years after its release? Why should anybody care about it? What is this thing, anyway? The most compelling way to read "Higher Education for American Democracy" is as a visionary and progressive statement of the public purposes of American higher education. In so many ways, the report reads…

According to the authors of "Higher Education for American Democracy," the role of education in a democratic society "is not merely to meet the demands of the present" but to "serve as an instrument of social transition" (p. 6). A democratic university should be a living model of democracy that could embody the civic…

While speaking, reading and writing are identified in the Newbolt Report as components of English and are still acknowledged as such one hundred years later, Reading Aloud, which the Report ranks alongside them, is no longer accorded any prominence. The Newbolt Report connects Reading Aloud with literature and announces it as a method of…