The Science Education of American Girls provides a comparative analysis of the science education of adolescent boys and girls, and analyzes the evolution of girls' scientific interests from the antebellum era through the twentieth century. Kim Tolley expands the understanding of the structural and cultural obstacles that emerged to transform what, in the early nineteenth century, was regarded as a "girl's subject." As the form and content of pre-college science education developed, Tolley argues, direct competition between the sexes increased. Subsequently, the cultural construction of science as a male subject limited access and opportunity for girls.

Academies were a prevalent form of higher schooling during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the United States. The authors in this volume look at the academy as the dominant institution of higher schooling in the United States, highlighting the academy's role in the formation of middle class social networks and culture in the mid-nineteenth century. They also reveal the significance of the academy for ethnic, religious, and racial minorities who organized independent academies in the face of exclusion and discrimination by other private and public institutions.

This major work brings together some of the most significant and influential writing on the history of education during the past thirty years. It illustrates key themes and their relevance for our understanding of the development of schooling.

The history of women's education in the United States presents a continuous effort to move from the periphery to the mainstream, and this book examines both formal and informal opportunities for girls and women. Through an introductory essay and nearly 250 alphabetically arranged entries, this reference book examines institutions, persons, ideas, events, and movements in the history of women's education in the United States. The volume spans the colonial era to the present, exploring settings from formal institutions such as schools and colleges to informal associations such as suffrage groups and reform organizations where women gained skills and used knowledge. A full picture of women's educational history presents their work in mainstream institutions, sex-segregated schools, and informal organizations that served as alternative educational settings. Educational history varies greatly for women of different races, classes, and ethnicities. The experience of some groups has been well documented. Thus entries on the Seven Sisters women's colleges and the reform organizations of the Progressive Era convey wide historical detail. Other women have been studied only recently. Thus entries on African American school founders or women teachers present considerable new information that scholars interpret against a wider context. Finally, some women's history has yet to be adequately explored. Hispanic American women and Catholic teaching sisters are discussed in entries that highlight historical questions still remaining. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and concludes with a brief bibliography. The volume closes with a timeline of women's educational history and a list of important general works for further reading.

In the early twentieth century, a curriculum known as nature study flourished in major city school systems, streetcar suburbs, small towns, and even rural one-room schools. This object-based approach to learning about the natural world marked the first systematic attempt to introduce science into elementary education, and it came at a time when institutions such as zoos, botanical gardens, natural history museums, and national parks were promoting the idea that direct knowledge of nature would benefit an increasingly urban and industrial nation. The definitive history of this once pervasive nature study movement, TeachingChildren Science emphasizes the scientific, pedagogical, and social incentives that encouraged primarily women teachers to explore nature in and beyond their classrooms. Sally Gregory Kohlstedt brings to vivid life the instructors and reformers who advanced nature study through on-campus schools, summer programs, textbooks, and public speaking. Within a generation, this highly successful hands-on approach migrated beyond public schools into summer camps, afterschool activities, and the scouting movement. Although the rich diversity of nature study classes eventually lost ground to increasingly standardized curricula, Kohlstedt locates its legacy in the living plants and animals in classrooms and environmental field trips that remain central parts of science education today.

Winner of the New Scholars Book Award from the American Educational Research Association Debates continue to rage over whether American university students should be required to master a common core of knowledge. In The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780–1910, Caroline Winterer traces the emergence of the classical model that became standard in the American curriculum in the nineteenth century and now lies at the core of contemporary controversies. By closely examining university curricula and the writings of classical scholars, Winterer demonstrates how classics was transformed from a narrow, language-based subject to a broader study of civilization, persuasively arguing that we cannot understand both the rise of the American university and modern notions of selfhood and knowledge without an appreciation for the role of classicism in their creation.