Alan Brinkley, Melvin Urofsky, Harvard Sitkoff, and other leading scholars explore the liberal tradition in American politics, culture, and social relations.

Motherhood, as a celebrated yet underappreciated role, is often thought of as a natural process, something instinctive that we refine by watching our own mothers and others in our community. We rarely think of motherhood as something that is time and culturally specific, yet, like culture itself, it is socially constructed, and both motherhood and childhood evolve over time. With the rise in educational attainment of mothers in the American population, the expectations associated with childhood increasingly include not just education but cognitive development and extracurricular activities as the partnership between parents and education intensifies in the joint project of human development of children. Motherhood, Childhood, and Parenting in an Age of Education offers a new way to conceptualize the high demands of contemporary parenthood. It traces the emerging narrative about the "good mother," changes in the underlying assumptions of what constitutes the "good mother," and the implications for the "good childhood" as education grows in institutional strength. This book demonstrates that education is driving the formation of the parent and child roles in the dominant contemporary culture of the US although alternate models exist. Education itself has expanded over time to become our largest social intervention, defining behaviors and beliefs such as parental involvement in schooling, the unengaged parent, and the deficient student.

Historians and teacher educators nationwide are now engaged in discussions about the importance of history teacher preparation. Interest within the history profession about the teaching of K-12 history has increased significantly during the past two decades, particularly since the controversy over the National Standards for History’s publication. This attention is evident not only in the historical professions’ various publications, but also in the federal government’s multi-million dollar Teaching American History Program and the No Child Left Behind Act. Professional historians are increasingly committed to improving the teaching of history at the K-12 level through many forms of collaboration. History Education 101’s thirteen essays are organized into three sections: context, practice, and new directions. The essays’ contributors, tenured faculty who teach history teaching methods courses in colleges and universities throughout the United States, focus on how history education has, is, and will be taught to new K-12 teachers throughout the United States. Perhaps more than ever, it is critical for Americans to understand the role of higher education in the preparation of future middle and high school history teachers. This book provides important insights for academics in history and education departments as well as other individuals who are concerned with the status and improvement of history teaching in the schools, particularly current and future elementary and secondary teachers and administrators.