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Eve Ewing, and the cover of her book "Original Sins."

How Do We Combat the Racist History of Public Education?

On the schoolhouse’s role in enforcing racial hierarchy.
by Naomi Elias, Eve L. Ewing via The Nation on March 4, 2025
A young boy stares at the camera while members of the Black Panther Party distribute free clothing to the public.
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The Black Panther Party's Under-Appreciated Legacy of Love

The Black Panther Party illustrated how communal love can be a powerful agent for change and empowerment.
by Mickell Carter via Made By History on February 19, 2025
A group of adult students at Highlander Folk School holding class outside.

The Left Needs Its “Schools of Enlightenment and Revolution”

Throughout the entire history of left-wing organizing in the United States, the building of institutions of political education has been key.
by Nelson Lichtenstein, Steve Fraser via Jacobin on February 9, 2025
Freedom School students sitting in a circle on the ground.
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60 Years Later, Freedom Schools Are Still Radical—and Necessary

The Freedom Schools curriculums developed in 1964 remain urgently needed, especially in our era of book bans and backlash.
by Jon Hale via Made By History on July 8, 2024
Longshoremen on their lunch hour at the San Francisco docks.

Jack London, "Martin Eden" and The Liberal Education in US life

In Jack London’s novel, Martin Eden personifies debates still raging over the role and purpose of education in American life.
by Nick Romeo via Aeon on May 3, 2024

American Exchanges: Third Reich’s Elite Schools

How the Nazi government used exchange student programs to foster sympathy for Nazism in the United States.
by Helen Roche via OUPblog on March 26, 2024
Black children learning in a classroom

What’s Missing From the Discourse About Anti-Racist Teaching

Black educators have always known that their students are living in an anti-Black world and that their teaching must be set against the order of that world.
by Jarvis R. Givens via The Atlantic on May 21, 2021

The Long History of Parents Complaining About Their Kids’ Homework

“The child is made to study far, far beyond his physical strength.”
by Rebecca Onion via Slate on October 4, 2019

In Its First Decades, The United States Nurtured Schoolgirl Mapmakers

Education for women and emerging nationhood, illustrated with care and charm.
by Sarah Laskow via Atlas Obscura on November 28, 2018
Illustration of Laura Bridgman sitting at a desk engaged in writing the manual alphabet on her left hand

Nineteenth-Century Schools for the Deaf and Blind

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.
by Melissa Jacobs via Digital Public Library of America on February 28, 2018
A broken pencil lays on top of a standardized testing answer sheet
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What Today’s Education Reformers Can Learn From Henry David Thoreau

Snobbish elitism will hurt their cause.
by Jonathan Zimmerman via Made By History on July 12, 2017

Your Child Care Conundrum Is an Anti-Communist Plot

Red-baiters deserve at least part of the blame for the shortage of affordable, high-quality pre-K.
by Rebecca Onion via Slate on June 14, 2017

There's No Erasing the Chalkboard

Blackboards will endure as symbols of learning long after they’ve disappeared from schools.
by Kim Kankiewicz via The Atlantic on October 13, 2016
Photo of Laura Bridgman wearing opaque eyeglasses.

The Education of Laura Bridgman

She was Helen Keller before Helen Keller. Then her mentor abandoned their studies.
by Rosemary Mahoney via Slate on May 1, 2014
A crowd of Black children walking into school.

How Delayed Desegregation Deprived Black Children of Their Right to Education

On the ongoing battle to desegregate schools across America throughout the 1960s.
by Noliwe Rooks via Literary Hub on March 19, 2025
A standardized test and a pencil, with answers bubbled in.

The Rotting of the College Board

Testing is necessary. The SAT’s creator is not.
by Naomi Schaefer Riley via Commentary on November 13, 2024
Norma Gabler gives a press conference on July 20, 1977 holding up books in her hand.
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The Woman Who Gave Today's Book-Banning Moms a Blueprint

Norma Gabler's work in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s foreshadowed today's campaigns.
by Katie Gaddini via Made By History on November 13, 2024
A monkey listening to a radio with headphones.

The Scopes Trial and the Two Visions of US Democracy

A new history revisits “the Trial of the Century” and its legacy in contemporary politics.
by Michael Kazin via The Nation on September 30, 2024
The original cover sketch of "Cars and Trucks and Things That Go," by Richard Scarry, with cartoon animals in vehicles.

On Richard Scarry and the Art of Children's Literature

Scarry’s guides to life both reflected and bolstered kids’ lived experience, and in some cases even provided the template for it.
by Chris Ware via The Yale Review on September 9, 2024
Photograph of young students getting off a school bus.

Public Schools Really Can Save America

America's public schools were founded on the ideal of uniting rich and poor, but inequality persists due to racial, income, and systemic divides.
by Adam Laats via Current (religion and democracy) on September 5, 2024
Costumed man and tourists in Colonial Williamsburg.

Where MAGA Granddads and Resistance Moms Go to Learn America’s Most Painful History Lessons

Welcome to Colonial Williamsburg, the largest living museum that is taking a radical approach to our national divides.
by Laura Jedeed via Politico Magazine on August 31, 2024
Foggy hills in Appalachia.

Love in the Time of Hillbilly Elegy: On JD Vance’s Appalachian Grift

Justin B. Wymer knows a snake when he sees one.
by Justin B. Wymer via Literary Hub on August 27, 2024
Drawing showing teacher in front of the blackboard while students look bored in the back of the classroom.

Why Professors Can’t Teach

For as long as universities have existed, academics have struggled to impart their knowledge to students. The failing is fixable—if Washington demands it.
by Jonathan Zimmerman via Washington Monthly on August 25, 2024
A view of a hallway inside of an archive lined with bookshelves.

On the Dark History and Ongoing Ableist Legacy of the IQ Test

How research helps us understand the past to create a better future.
by Pepper Stetler via Literary Hub on August 23, 2024
Melinda French Gates and Bill Gates speak during the 'Gates Foundation' press conference at the Annual Meeting 2009 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 30, 2009" by Remy Steinegger.

Philanthropy’s Power Brokers

An in-depth reckoning with the Gates Foundation as a discrete actor is long overdue.
by John Miles Branch via Public Books on July 17, 2024
Wilbert E. Longfellow being saved from the water by a female lifeguard.
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Women Have the Daring to Be Real Life Savers

How a tragedy in New York City convinced Americans to learn how to swim.
by Vicki Valosik via HNN on July 16, 2024
Mississippi Freedom Summer activists and contact list.

What the Civil Rights Act Really Meant

An overlooked effect of the legislation, passed 60 years ago this week, was its powerful message of hope for Black Americans.
by William Sturkey via The Atlantic on July 5, 2024
Syntactic trees filled with words and numbers.

American Grammar: Diagraming Sentences in the 19th Century

A pre-history of the sentence diagrams that were once commonplace in the American classroom.
by Hunter Dukes via The Public Domain Review on June 19, 2024
A drawing of a tent underneath stylized constellations depicting a growth chart, a graduation cap, and a dollar sign.

Summer Camp and Parenting Panics

Camps once sold a story about social improvement. Now we just can’t conceive of an unscheduled moment.
by Jay Caspian Kang via The New Yorker on May 24, 2024
A magnifying glass sitting on top of "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas S. Kuhn.

What Was the “Paradigm Shift”?

When Thomas Kuhn coined the term, he wasn’t referring simply to “out of the box” thinking.
by Audra J. Wolfe via The New Republic on May 22, 2024
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