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History, Myth, and the Politics of Educational Reform
Author(s) -
Reddick Robert Nelson
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
educational theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.21
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1741-5446
pISSN - 0013-2004
DOI - 10.1111/j.0013-2004.2004.00004.x
Subject(s) - politics , mythology , perspective (graphical) , sociology , history of education , social science , gender studies , political science , law , history , classics , ancient history , artificial intelligence , computer science
This paper analyzes the politics of education in the United States by considering the ideas and lives of Emma Willard and Catharine Beecher, nineteenth century educational reformers. It argues that understanding these women as American Antigones, as working through the contradictions between their public writing and their private lives, provides a perspective on the history of educational reform that combines myth and history. This perspective refuses idealized accounts of “lost” moments or possibilities in the past, grounding educational reform in the project of reimagining gender relations within families and schools in the present.