The early years of the University of Chicago's Department of Pedagogy are generally identified with the work of John Dewey and his laboratory school. Dewey, however, had very little to do with the actual teaching of pedagogy within that department in its first years. That task fell to Julia Bulkley, who was associate professor of pedagogy from the opening of the University of Chicago in 1892 until March 1900 and who taught the majority of the pedagogy courses offered during that period. Yet, despite being offered a position two years before John Dewey and despite her extensive experience in teaching, teacher education and supervision, she was not involved in any significant way in the University Elementary School which opened in January 1896, nor has she remained historically visible as Dewey's colleague in the Department of Pedagogy. She was thoroughly trained in and taught Herbartian pedagogy, which dominated the national pedagogical discussion during precisely the years of her tenure at the University of Chicago, yet she appears to have taken no part in that discussion, although John Dewey was a founding member of the National Herbart Society at its formation in 1895 and remained on its executive committee until at least 1899. Highly qualified in teacher education, she bolstered her credentials with a European school study tour and a Swiss doctorate in philosophy and pedagogy before actually beginning her Chicago teaching career, which should have ensured her leadership in the Department of Pedagogy.

During the Reagan presidency a storm arose over the refusal of a small Presbyterian college to be regulated by the United States Department of Education. Arguably, not since the Dartmouth College case of 1818, when the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall prevented a public takeover of Dartmouth's charter, had national policymaking centered so intensively and symbolically on a private collegiate institution. By preserving private autonomy, Dartmouth College v. Woodward fostered a pluralistic and competitive system of higher education that in the post-World War I I era made American universities the envy of the world. The batde over Grove City College, still in recent memory, is significant less for its immediate outcome than for the light it sheds on the deepening entanglement of American higher education in the web of the expanding regulatory state.

It has been written of Anne Isabella, Lady Noel-Byron (1792–1860) that she “managed to quarrel with practically everyone for whom she undertook any philanthropy and certainly does not emerge from any examination of her good works without the conclusion being drawn that her unrecognized motive was to dominate.”1 That may be so. What is certain is that Lady Byron was a member of that small group that includes Jeremy Bentham and Richard Lovell Edgeworth, whose work for education was considerable and from whom public recognition has largely been withheld. In this regard Lady Byron was both disciple and innovator. She readily cooperated with and took advice from contemporary social critics who had an interest in education (Maria Edgeworth, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Samuel Frend, Emmanuel de Fellenberg are names that come naturally to mind) but the ways in which she applied her knowledge were innovative and, indeed, frequently idiosyncratic.