This History of Education Society Presidential Address primarily utilizes evocative autoethnography and narrative inquiry to convey its main points. It is written in the storytelling tradition of the African American past and analyzes the lives of three generations of Black Mississippians as they navigated life in Jim Crow Mississippi. It highlights the impact and legacy the cotton economy had on the life opportunities of these Black Mississippians, and how the cumulative stories they shared within the family directly shaped the educational pursuits and outcomes of a present-day descendant.

Starting in the late nineteenth century, the teaching profession became increasingly feminized. This article examines the results of this process, exploring the working and living conditions of rural female primary school teachers with a focus on the experiences of loneliness, harassment, and violence that they suffered in early twentieth-century Sweden. By investigating the public debate on these issues 1900–1940, we found that two main threats to the well-being of female teachers were identified: isolation and the threat of male violence. Male politicians as well as female authors and teachers acknowledged that female teachers faced loneliness, anxiety, and possible threats from violent men. The consequences of these threats were both emotional and practical, but the debate focused to a large extent on practical solutions such as providing the teachers with telephones, guard dogs, or weapons.

Situating the endeavors of Asa Shinn Mercer and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento within the broader settler colonial histories of the US and Argentina, this study provides two cases in which men representing prominent settler groups in the Americas attempted to regulate via internal educational colonialism populations they considered divergent from the nations’ ideals. Both projects recruited women to serve as civilizing agents who would help align disparate groups with the desired standards of citizenship. The female participants, however, did not blindly conform to their leaders’ expectations of behavior, instead asserting their own will at key points during the projects’ execution. Examining the groups’ dynamics in tandem provides new examples of the gendered processes at play within the settler colonialist structures of two nineteenth-century American countries.

By the end of the nineteenth century, social hygiene was a topic of great importance for states experiencing fears of national degeneration. The health of children was of particular concern, as it was thought to reflect the future health of the nation. Although this prompted nation-states like France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States to develop intricate theories about the prevention and treatment of childhood illnesses, it was imperial Russia that became an unacknowledged trailblazer in the institutionalization and implementation of school hygiene measures. As this article will show, autocratic Russia's institutions and ideology allowed the tsarist state to surpass its Western neighbors in the drawing up and application of school hygiene measures.

The United States occupations of Cuba and Puerto Rico following the War of 1898 instituted immediate reforms to the educational systems of the islands. The imposition of public school systems modeled on those of the United States and a concurrent wave of Protestant schools established by American missionaries are well-known features of the imperialist project. Yet American reforms were shaped by what was known in the nineteenth century as “the school question,” or the controversy over the appropriate relationship between schooling, religion, and the government that had pitted the Protestant majority against Catholics and resulted in a consensus that religious-affiliated education should be permitted but relegated to the private sphere. The implementation of this consensus as the basis of occupation policy in Cuba and Puerto Rico, majority Catholic societies, contributed to the significant growth of a system of private Catholic schools and sparked debate about the relationship between religion, education, and nationalism. In an imperial context, “the school question” led to political polarization in the face of persistent US hegemony.

As the world reckons with the existential threat posed by climate change, the US remains deeply divided about the need for action. The solution to this problem, many have argued, begins with teaching environmentalism in primary and secondary schools and fostering receptivity to environmental issues and environmental science among the next generation. This strategy, of course, comes with its own set of challenges. Where does climate change fit in the school curriculum? What can teachers do in their classrooms to mitigate the influence of partisan politics? How can an abstract global phenomenon be made real at the local level? If K-12 education has a role to play in the broader project of environmental conservation, such questions need to be answered.

For this Policy Dialogue, the HEQ editors asked Zeke Baker and Hunter Gehlbach to explore the challenges and opportunities inherent in educating the next generation about climate change, drawing on analogues from the past and scholarship from the present to help us better understand the future. Gehlbach is a professor and vice dean at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education. Thanks to a mid-career fellowship from the Spencer Foundation, much of his research focus has shifted toward investigating how social psychological approaches might improve environmental education. Baker is an assistant professor of sociology at Sonoma State University. His research explores the development and use of climate science, especially insofar as climate knowledge is embedded in social relationships of power.

HEQ Policy Dialogues are, by design, intended to promote an informal, free exchange of ideas between scholars. At the end of the exchange, we offer references for readers who wish to follow up on sources relevant to the discussion.