Historians of the French Revolution continue to argue about the extent to which it represents a watershed in French history and to debate the novelty of social, political, economic, and cultural formations that emerged from the shambles of the Old Regime. Historians of women have sought to trace the emergence of women's political consciousness and activity, while noting that the first French Republic denied women citizenship. Ultimately, the Revolution relegated women to the private sphere. In these attempts to grapple with the Revolution's legacy for women and gender relations, the Napoleonic period has attracted little attention, in part because the period appears to have been one of general regression for women. Napoleon's Civil Code is seen to symbolize the squelching of all feminist hopes since it firmly established women's subordination within the family and determined married women's loss of civil identity. In the field of education, the balance sheet is similarly negative. Napoleon is recognized for his creation of the Imperial University and of the secondary system of lycées for boys while, in general, primary education and girls' education remain largely unexamined.

The ideal of universal education is central to American democracy; indeed, the founders of the United States considered it key to the success of the Republican experiment. Because Americans governed themselves, they needed to be educated and virtuous to stem the forces of corruption endemic to a democratic system. Universal education was to ensure the literacy of all young Americans and furnish them with a profound sense of morality and appreciation of their duties as Republican citizens. Moreover, by providing free access to schooling for everyone, universal education would level artificial barriers against social advancement, and thereby contribute significantly to the fulfillment of a major promise of the new democratic state—equality of opportunity.

Inscriptions on excavated oracle bones and tortoise shells confirm that formal education existed in China as early as the Shang dynasty (roughly 1480–1066 B.C.). Historical data show that Emperor P'ing-ti of the Han dynasty established a countrywide government school system in 3 A.D., consisting of a central school in the capital and local schools in prefectures and counties. Over the next nineteen centuries, the school system developed gradually, sometimes damaged by war but soon restored, until the introduction of the modern Western system in the early twentieth century.