Rapid changes in American society in the early twentieth century fostered both a general sense of optimism for America's future and a perceived sense of moral dislocation affecting present and future generations of America's youth. Urbanization, modernization, and the increasing presence of immigrant populations were often viewed as challenges to…

The nation's greatest anti-racist education policy -- school desegregation -- has proven no match for the adaptations of institutionalized racism. Over the last 40 years, school segregation has evolved and reemerged in housing patterns, school zoning policy, and curricular tracking. This has led to calls for new solutions to the problem of racial…

Wielding degrees of influence within educational organizations, university leaders are critical in determining how institutions enact their espoused missions and support severely marginalized campus communities. How do universities address and improve educational outcomes for the most severely underrepresented communities? This article presents…

Students in the early republic commonly stitched, drew, and painted maps of their states, nation, and world as part of their educations. Map drawing and geography were regarded as particularly appropriate subjects for girls, both as a pathway to literacy and as a means of demonstrating accomplishment. Many young girls exposed to map work in their…

Sidney Hook set the terms of debate on Communism, higher education, and academic freedom in the postwar United States. His view that Communists lacked the independence necessary for teaching and research--a view forged in the heated debates of New York City's radical left in the 1930s--provided the rationale for firing Communist professors across…

Over fifty years ago, Merle Curti sought to open up the academic study of philanthropy - the phenomenon of voluntary giving for public purposes - or what historians and reformers have commonly called "neighborliness," "beneficence," or simply, as translated from the Greek word "philanthropia," "love of…

In the opening years of the 1920s, Indiana University-Bloomington (IU) faced a dilemma. Enrollment was growing and demand among students for co-curricular and leisure activities was growing with it. But the university had few adequate facilities to support such activities and state appropriations were barely enough to cover expenses related to…

While educating international students is celebrated as a means of promoting mutual understanding among nations, American higher education has always been entangled with geopolitics. This essay focuses on Tang Tsou, the Chinese scholar who came to the United States as a student in 1941, eventually becoming the nation's leading China expert and…

This study examined how U.S. entry into World War I and related pedagogical reforms of the early twentieth century impacted elementary social education at a local level. Analysis of state curriculum guides, records from the collection of a rural school educator, report cards, and daily attendance registers for four counties indicated that…

The death of the "liberal arts," however defined, is a motif of lament in American higher education. It became a popular leitmotif in the late nineteenth century. Over the past century, there have been heated debates about the future of the liberal arts curriculum, mostly based in a narrative of decline from a golden age just beyond the…

The disproportionate representation of students of color in special education is a serious concern that has lasted for forty years. Research suggests that students of color are too often not identified accurately for special education and that the programs they are placed in are frequently poor in quality. This trend contributes to a…

The disproportionate representation of students of color in special education is a serious concern that has lasted for forty years. Research suggests that students of color are too often not identified accurately for special education and that the programs they are placed in are frequently poor in quality. This trend contributes to a…

I pose a straightforward rhetorical question about disproportionality and endeavor to answer it with view to suggesting what can be done in terms of linking theory to practice. First, I frame disproportionality by asking where does it come from? Second, I describe multiple, interconnected historical phenomena to be considered when educators…

This article explores how a curricular intervention that merges antiessentialist historical content and historical inquiry plays a role in how students complicate the narrative of racial progress. The 3-day curricular intervention centers on "Mendez v. Westminster," a case about 1940s Mexican American school segregation. The content and…

In this article, I consider the limitations of school integration research that overlooks Black research perspectives, White policy interests, and the paradox of race in the New Jim Crow--America's system of racial caste in the post-Civil Rights Era. Applying critical race theory as critical policy analysis, I discuss the importance of theorizing…