For the first 200 years of American higher education, the baccalaureate program was shaped by the authority of tradition, seldom challenged, and easily accommodating new learning and changing social conditions. After the Civil War, the authority of tradition was undermined by emerging professional academicians, trained in particular bodies of…

A survey of textbooks used in French elementary schools during the Third Republic illustrates that period's attitudes toward female roles, social class, and religious differences. A sample of 126 public school books and 43 Catholic textbooks reveals that young students were presented the ideal of a woman content to remain inside an orderly…