The work of the 1946-1948 President's Commission on Higher Education was unquestionably influenced by the immediate aftermath of World War II. In this article, we examine the backgrounds and ideas of 10 commissioners to argue that their efforts were also deeply influenced by their experience of a different world war. The 1914-1918 "Great…

This article traces the functioning of the Commissioners of National Education, outlining salient aspects of their activities in the national school system during Ireland's Great Famine of the 1840s. The role of the commissioners as an agency of government is explored in the context of their annual reports and their general response to the…

One of the Editors' 2022 "Challenges to the Field" was: "What is the story this government wants us to tell our children?" "What is education for?" Continuing this conversation leads to a related question: What can be learnt from reviewing the history of schooling in Australia in this light? I argue here that the…

This paper adopts a biopower lens to examine emergency declarations that posit race or racism as problems to be addressed through mathematics education. We argue that attending to "slow emergencies" of racism must avoid sustaining mathematics education as a self-evident cause and cure for societal problems. We analyze how declarations of…

The author argues that, in the early 1920s, many urban White Americans saw in the Arctic an escape from a world of rapidly expanding technology and became captivated by images of Inuit communities. To pass down an antimodernist form of imperialism to children of the period, educators used lead ethnographic "Escimo" figurines, which…

The Occupation of Japan (1945-1952) sought to democratize the nation's education system; pupil guidance was expected to play a key part of this process. American reformers promoted new guidance practices (e.g., the comprehensive collection of students' personal data, guidance interventions based on the case-study method, an expanded homeroom…

This article explores the crossover between the history of education and the history of childhood. The emergence of state-sponsored national schooling, institutions for juvenile delinquents, home-schooling and expanding higher education were legal and social manifestations of cultural assumptions concerning the needs of children and projections of…

This article is based on a bibliographical data set of over 2,600 history textbooks from the post-1945 Soviet Union and eleven out of its fifteen successor states, including books on international, national, and regional or local history. Among these, it analyzes the illustrations used in 450 books that cover the period of the Second World War.…

Histories of creativity have often included discussions of its origins and examined pivotal moments in their societal contexts (Nelson 2010; Simonton 2001; Still & d'Inverno 2016; Wasserman 2012). Some have considered creativity's compromised status among academics and in schools that resulted from divergent notions of what it means to create…

For Ukraine, the beginning of Nazi occupation meant a change from one totalitarian regime to another. In Soviet times and during occupation alike, all spheres of public life, including the education system, were permeated with politics and ideology. There could be no talk about democratic principles in education. Schools were supposed to raise the…

This paper looks at the evolution of the girl's school story in "The British Girl's Annual" during the interwar period. The school story played a crucial role instructing young female readers about their gendered role within the school as a kind of microcosm for nation/empire. Most of these lessons focus on loyalty and leadership, topics…

Increasing diversity and equity in secondary and college music programs is a common thread in the scholarship across disciplines in the field. While crucial work is being done to decolonize curricula broadly, students often express difficulty relating to formal music study and teachers struggle to balance desires to diversify repertoire and…

The literature review below was done to investigate the history of censorship, specifically book burning and how it relates to the modern-day censorship that is seen in our country today. Using scholarly articles and books, news articles, professional organization websites, video documentaries, and data from prominent anti-censorship…

This article considers the wartime evacuation of English public schools as a result of enemy bombing as well as the commandeering of school buildings for government and military purposes. It looks at the way evacuation was privately organised by public school authorities often relying on the 'old school tie', while also taking financial…

In times of crisis it is good to look back. Not only is it comforting, but better understanding of events in our past can inform decision-making and help us find direction at uncertain times. COVID-19 may have presented new challenges, but this exploration of historical disruptions to school exams highlights themes and a recognisable human spirit.…