Adult literacy is an essential subject to examine given its impact on human development indicators. A significant gap exists as nation-states progress on these indices, especially in developing economies. National governments and international and bilateral development organizations seek to improve adult literacy metrics for the developing world…

This article presents a state of the art of the history of education in Western and Southern Europe by 'cutting together-apart' (Barad) 'knotting-s' (Ingold), in terms of both discipline formation and historiography across and beyond countries in these regions. It (dis)entangles national and regional particularities in terms of approaches, themes…

COVID-19 required educators and students to rapidly move to online learning. Simultaneously, while navigating the pandemic in lockdown, citizens were exposed to the brutal murder of George Floyd. The increased exposure to online activity and discrimination generated a hyperawareness of the potential link between the two. Our interest was to…

The purpose of this paper is to use historical textbooks to explore the number line, a mathematical object common to our time, contextualizing its use during its initial development period in the seventeenth century until its current use as in the nineteenth century. Relevant analytic geometry textbooks are explored, mainly from France and from…

Describes the secularization of French secondary schools ("colleges") between 1761-63 when the Parlement expelled Jesuits from their schools and disallowed the order's teaching function. Administrative authority was given to local municipalities who struggled to staff and fund the schools. French universities reluctantly assumed…

Pierre Bourdieu, the French sociologist whose work spanned over 40 years, died in January 2002. His work took in such diverse topics as international politics, colonialism, art and the media, marriage patterns of French farmers, and gender studies. As the Chair in Sociology at the College de France, Bourdieu published a number of major studies of…

Discusses the importance of the work of radical educator Paul Robin and the socio-political environment in nineteenth century France which prompted it. Robin advocated free, secular, public education for the working classes which stressed spontaneity, practicality, individualized instruction, and sexual equality. (AM)

The French Enlightenment spawned intellectual activities and concepts that had positive impact on the genesis and development of special education, including altering societal perceptions of handicapped persons, devising training methods still used today, and imbuing special education with a spirit of hope and optimism. (Author/CB)

Describes the historical education of individuals with deafness and explores how the conjunction of deafness, language development, and intellect and reason led philosophers in 17th-century England, and most importantly, 18th-century enlightenment France, to adopt persons with deafness as natural recruits into their studies on the essence of human…

Examines women's role models as described in six textbooks used in French public and Catholic elementary schools from 1880-1940. Women were consistently portrayed in domestic roles, low-status jobs, and rural settings. Research indicated that these descriptions were accurate portrayals of social values and women's limited opportunities in that…

Epistemological breaks in several of the humanities disciplines in the twentieth century (existentialism, phenomenology, and traditional film theory) are traced. The breaks are attributed to each discipline's attempt to become scientific. In this process is seen the emergence of the discipline of film semiology in France in the 1960s. (34…

Analyzes the educational philosophy in Rousseau's "Emile" and its influence on the secularization of French moral education during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This critical analysis of Rousseau's naturalistic ethics covers the importance of home-life, habit-training, discipline, reason, physical needs, and historical…

In the second half of the eighteenth century, intellectuals, stimulated by the sensualist theories of Etienne-Bonnot de Condillac (1714?80) and John Locke (1632?1704), tried to understand how a sensorially disabled person, such as one suffering from deafness or blindness was able to reason and develop ideas, for the senses were thought to be the…

Contends that education was an important instrument of social change during the French Revolution. Argues that education became a way to speed up social modernization and, at the same time, hide the contradictions of modernization. (CFR)

One outcome of the substantial increase in studies on the history of education over the past two decades has been the founding of the International Association for the History of Education. One of its main objectives is to sponsor the development of research. Even so, the study and application of this broad discipline is not the sole preserve of…