This article discusses censorship and propaganda in US history curricula, noting four interdependent and overlapping elements often analyzed separately in academic literature. First, the authors observe purposeful omissions that truncate narratives and pit groups against each other. Second, they consider de jure and de facto school segregation as central to curricular censorship projects. Third, they call out efforts to propagandize US history curricula running parallel with restrictions on Indigenous, natal languages and cultural practices. They position collective resistance as a fourth element, observing that teaching revisionist US histories has incited and emerged from censorship campaigns. The authors surface these elements to remind us that book bans and other attempts to control what is considered part of US history and how it is taught in schools are not "unprecedented", but are repeating scripts, deployed across time and place to justify colonization and domination. They also highlight a multi-year political effort to eliminate Mexican American Studies from the Tucson Unified School District. School officials called the program "seditious" and Arizona state legislators banned the courses, claiming they "encourage dissent". The authors revisit this struggle as part of carrying forward the legacy of teaching critical revisionist histories, especially in times of crisis.
This study presents the first systematic bibliography of English language teaching materials for Turkish learners (1848-1928), spanning from the earliest known text produced for readers of the Ottoman Turkish script to the final publications preceding the 1928 script reform. This previously undocumented corpus of textbooks sheds light on the full scope and development of English instruction during the critical transition from the Ottoman to early Republican educational systems. Positioned at the intersection of educational history and cultural heritage, these materials are curricular artefacts reflecting broader shifts in language policy, pedagogy, and cultural transmission. Additionally, through archival and bibliographic research, this study categorises the textbooks according to their pedagogical focus, ranging from self-learning to spoken instruction. Treating textbooks as historical sources, the article contributes to understanding the material culture of education and to preserving the historical significance of these rare works, ensuring they are not lost to future scholarship.
This study re-examines the 1907 "Expel Fujianese Incident" at the Anhui Higher School, situating it not as an isolated local struggle but as a pivotal expression of the cultural identity conflict embedded in China's late Qing educational reforms. Drawing on Stuart Hall's theory of cultural identity, it explores how regionalism, linguistic authorities, and cultural hierarchies shaped the contested pursuit of modernisation. Through historical and discourse analysis of different primary sources, the article contends that the expulsion of Fujianese elites - including the prominent reformer Yan Fu - did not signify resistance to Western learning but a deeper struggle over who possessed the right to define and transmit "modern knowledge". The study outcomes underscore the decisive role of cultural politics in educational transformation and challenge macrostructural narratives by emphasising local agency. By adopting a microhistorical perspective, this study enriches debates on identity, representation, and the contested meanings of modernity in early twentieth-century China.
This study explores the "higher commercial" (HC) school concept first developed in nineteenth-century Europe. With their focus on modern language, fieldwork, geography, history, and business content, these were no mere commercial schools; they were language schools, research institutes, and graduate schools all rolled into one. Moreover, these schools were not simply the brainchild of educators and administrators operating in individual nation states in specific historical periods; the HC concept appears to have been repeatedly revived in strikingly different contexts. To make our case, we offer Antwerp's Higher Institute of Commerce (est. 1852), the Japanese-run T & omacr;a D & omacr;bun Shoin (est. 1901) in Shanghai, and the American Institute of Foreign Trade (est. 1945) in Glendale, Arizona. Our study ponders several questions. What central features did these three HC institutions share? How were these institutions able to powerfully challenge the existing university system? If the concept of "higher commercial education" was so effective, experiencing repeated revivals over the decades, why did the model not prove to be more durable?
This analysis offers a critical reappraisal of Francoist purging practices (1939-1975) targeting state schoolteachers in Madrid, situating them within the broader context of pedagogical reform, in which the capital emerged as a particularly active centre in early twentieth-century Spain. It argues that headteachers of graded schools constituted the core of the professional culture associated with Progressive Education and examines how their pedagogical leadership became a decisive aggravating factor in the subsequent repressive proceedings. Methodologically, the study draws on the systematic analysis of 2,772 purge files and 249 review files from the province of Madrid, including 106 headteachers. The findings point to a structurally stratified pattern of violence: 55.66% of headteachers were sanctioned, compared with 25.06% of the schoolteachers, with a disproportionately higher incidence of the most severe penalties. The article further suggests that the Superior Review Court functioned not as a corrective body, but as an institutional mechanism for the consolidation and legitimisation of Francoism. Finally, it renders visible how the regime sought to eradicate all vestiges of the prior movement and replace them with a traditional teaching model aligned with prevailing political, religious and gender norms in Madrid's public schools.
This study explores the role of education, emotion, and social memory in shaping student experiences during the transition from the late Ottoman Empire to the early Republican period in Turkey through the lens of farewell texts. Drawing on 12 + 105 farewell notes preserved in the archives of Hoca & Idot;lyas School in Bursa, dating from 1919-1921 (Late Ottoman Era) and 1928-1929 (Early Republican Era), the study employs qualitative document analysis and thematic interpretation to examine how students remembered their teachers, peers, and schooling. The analysis identifies five dominant themes in the Ottoman writings: gratitude to teachers, moral and religious formation, education as liberation from ignorance, patriotic loyalty, and nostalgic attachment, while the Republican-era texts reconfigured these sentiments around civic appreciation for teachers, schooling as preparation for future success, patriotic service, peer solidarity, and collective memory. These shifts reflect broader transformations in the aims of education: from cultivating morally upright and religiously grounded imperial subjects to producing secular, national, and modern citizens of the Republic. By treating farewell texts as "emotional archives", the study highlights the interplay of pedagogy, affect, and ideology, demonstrating how schools not only transmitted knowledge but also inscribed state ideals into students' emotional and cultural memories.
Educational history, as a codified and mass-produced educational knowledge, has played a central role in shaping understandings of education across national boundaries. This study draws on a full-text corpus of 131 educational history textbooks from Germany and China (1900-1945), totalling over 11.7 million words, and applies semantic network analysis to reconstruct and compare the discursive system of educational-historical knowledge. Despite distinct linguistic and cultural settings, both corpora exhibit a robust triadic semantic structure - Idea, Institution, and Instruction - linked through three semantic axes. Local divergences are significant: theological terms in the German network connect closely to Idea-Instruction, reflecting their normative role, while in the Chinese network such terms appear mainly within Idea-Institution and serve as historical descriptors. Functionally equivalent ethical terms assume normative functions in the Chinese context. The findings suggest that the observed structural isomorphism reflects not a priori categories, but a shared social function in which pedagogy operates as a form of "secularised dogmatics".
