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Service-learning has become an integral component of American education, and scholars continue to debate its definition, purposes, and outcomes. Service-learning in the classroom is not without critics at present, however. This article provides an introductory examination of Irving Babbitt's critiques of the service-learning ethic at its inception in the beginning of the 20th century, particularly of the ideas espoused by John Dewey. This consideration offers an incisive perspective on the service-learning ethic (and its critiques) in our own time.

Liminal spaces operate as thresholds, as spaces "lodged between all … spaces defined and governed in any specific biocultural ecosystem." While these spaces offer interesting prospects for study, liminal spaces in schools have received very little scholarly attention. In labeling and considering the school cafeteria in U.S. schools as a liminal space, a new way of exploring a liminal "consciousness and imagination" is open to scholars and practitioners. This in-between space allows students opportunities for discursion and disclosure not generally accessible in classrooms. As anthropologists have maintained, liminal spaces afford individuals freer experiences and opportunities not encountered in more frequented, orderly spaces. Examining these possibilities increases our awareness of the liminality of the school cafeteria, and such an awareness can help students in shaping different conceptions of human flourishing.

While both human-animal studies (HAS) and explorations of the educative potential of animals in classrooms have exploded in recent decades, the different roles served by classroom pets in the history of the American curriculum have received scant critical attention. Pets were a central feature of family life since the founding of the American Republic, but primary sources in American education lack a systematic coverage of classroom pets. It was not until later in the twentieth century that more focused attention was given to classroom pets within the curriculum as a means of navigating difficult and contentious subject matter -- through sex education, death education, and in helping alleviate student alienation. Classroom pets ultimately served as authentic beasts of burden in helping teachers navigate heavy subject matter often outside of their comfort zones. This article aims to illustrate these particular roles within the American curriculum through current HAS perspectives and inquiries.

The origin story of school janitors in the United States has the potential to provide new perspectives and implications for educational historians to contemplate. Janitors initially entered US schools in the midst of the Progressive Era, primarily as protectors of both student health and new and expanding school buildings. Scholars and school administrators championed the entry of janitors into schools, but quickly presented concerns and critiques regarding school janitors' lack of training as antithetical to the cult of efficiency. Under the surface, these critiques appear to focus on school janitors' working-class backgrounds. This marriage of necessity brought about unintended consequences for administrative progressives. Closely examining the paradoxical entry of school janitors into US schools, particularly through government reviews, textbooks and annual reports from the St Louis (MO) school district, can provide a nuanced perspective on the limits, and the precariousness, of the power held by administrative progressives of the time.

As policymakers and other stakeholders continue to intensify their questions and critiques of art history's place in the higher education curriculum in the United States (U.S.), researchers have not pointedly addressed its place in the K-12 curriculum. How has art history been incorporated into K-12 art classrooms in the past, and how is it being incorporated today? Is this more humanistic component of the K-12 art curriculum under the same duress as is art history on college and university campuses? This article examines the place of art history in K-12 art classrooms over time and notes that it has been emphasized during periods of concern for the U.S.'s position in global affairs (1960s and 1980s). At present art history in the K-12 classroom is integrated through field trips, within assessment, and in helping students gain new sociocultural perspectives. As we argue, art history's agility in the K-12 art curriculum, in the past and present, can provide unique, and potentially insightful, perspectives to the conversations concerning art history's diminishing significance in higher education and potential ways to align itself for future survival.

The rise of automobile use in New York City in the 1920s placed pedestrians, particularly children and adolescents, in a new danger. Fatalities and injuries among youth involving automobile accidents created a public health crisis, especially as children navigated streets to and from school each day. The New York Automobile Club and the New York Police Department partnered with the school district to sponsor school safety patrols to educate children and protect them from this newfound danger. The motives of both sponsors, along with the increased expansion of police presence of school grounds, provide complexities, though, to this origin story. As scholars today intensify their explorations and investigations of police and carceral history in the United States, particularly involving black youth in urban centers, the origin story of school safety patrols in New York City has much to say about controlling and patrolling the nation's streets and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lockers in middle schools and high schools in the United States are currently disappearing. Due to safety concerns and digitalized textbooks and other school supplies, lockers are becoming obsolete. As larger societal and technological changes drive this trend, the loss of lockers as a shared social space demands careful attention and consideration. Many students use lockers as a means in which to project their identities and membership in different social groups. At the same time, visiting lockers during passing periods provides students opportunities to run into (often literally) students from other social groups, creating unique possibilities for relationship-building that are rare in other school spaces. As social and political polarization continues to intensity in the US and other countries around the world, the loss of lockers in American schools can serve as a caution of the consequences that accrue from disappearing shared social spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1930s schooling in the United States underwent fundamental transformations, ultimately responding to the profound social, economic, and technological changes taking place in the early decades of the twentieth century. Students’ social and emotional health needed support, especially for entry into a rapidly changing nation and world. One addition from this period, though, has not received much historical and scholarly attention: homeroom. School administrators and educational scholars in this period created homeroom as a means for teachers to foster stronger relationships with students to better guide pupils’ personal, social, academic, and vocational futures. Explaining how teaching homeroom was an “art” that also involved some “magic”, homeroom’s proponents appeared to leave teachers to their own inspiration and intuition in guiding their students. The actions of homeroom’s proponents contradicted their idealistic tones though, as they supplied teachers with detailed lesson plans, assignments, discussion questions, and student data-collection forms, prescribing clearly how teachers were to conduct the homeroom period. Telling the origin story of homeroom in the USA, then, offers a clearer understanding to educational historians of the complexities, challenges, and often contradictions of the professional transformation into what Kate Rousmaniere deems “the teacher as social worker”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Irving Babbitt's probing critiques of John Dewey's ideas at the beginning of the 20th century. Babbitt (1865-1933) was the co-founder of the New Humanists, a collection of scholars and academics who advocated for a return of the Greek and Roman classics in the American curriculum. Babbitt believed that both naturalism and positivism eradicated any sense of inner-discipline modelled by the classical curriculum. He pointed to Dewey as the embodiment of these strands of the "new" education [Babbitt used this term in his 1908 "Literature and the American College: Essay in Defense of the Humanities" (p. 93)]. Scholars have commented upon the philosophical quarrels between Babbitt and Dewey, but they have seemingly neglected the study of a fundamental belief held by both Babbitt and Dewey [These sources will be further examined in this paper: Beck (1962), Hoeveler (1977), Karier (1986), Kirk (1979), Kliebard (2004), Nevin (1984), Panichas (1999) and Ryn (1997)]. Babbitt shared (and praised) Dewey's cautions and warnings of the cult of specialization taking grip of both American society and its schools at the beginning of the 20th century. These two adversaries found common ground in cautioning what increasing specialization meant for American democracy. An examination of their shared caution, though ultimately unheeded, provides a glimpse into curricular concerns in the early decades of the century, particularly education's role in fostering American democracy. As neo-conservative forces at present seek to replace humanities education with more career-driven fields of study, Babbitt's own conservative voice echoes Dewey's cautions of what such specialization means for democracy from a century away.

Malcolm Gladwells latest bestseller examines the role of the underdog. In David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants , he implores readers to reconsider the hidden [...]

This article examines the emergence and persistence of curriculum differentiation in the comprehensive high school. We argue that curriculum differentiation has roots in Plato's Republic, where it is proposed that education (and later work, especially the work of ruling) should be distributed on the basis of ability. The concept of "ideology" is used here to help explain why the practice of curriculum differentiation has remained a defining--and largely unchallenged--characteristic of the comprehensive high school. The persistence of curriculum differentiation matters because it is a means by which different groups of students are given access to different kinds of knowledge. Not all knowledge is equally valued, and access to certain kinds of this educational good has implications for young persons' well-being that extend well beyond their formal schooling.

As has been noted in previous studies, the great social significance of the schoolhouse in a community, the fact that it served often both as the literal center of a community as well as its social center, afforded teachers greater opportunity to interact with students outside school doors. Compared to today, teachers were considerably more likely to be immersed in the lives of students, in roles other than schoolmasters, allowing them a variety of means for producing social capital. Especially with the commonplace practice of boarding with families in the community, where teachers often walked with pupils to and from school. Such occasions afforded ample opportunity for teachers and pupils to discuss a variety of topics, concerning matters both inside and outside the schoolhouse. Judging from accounts such as these, casual and everyday contact between teachers and students helped to forge relations that were potentially of mutual benefit. The mass movement of individuals from rural areas to urban areas occurred consistently throughout the century, and by 1920 a larger percentage of Americans lived in urban areas. The dwindling rural population forced many common schools to close or to consolidate to survive. As a result, many students no longer lived in the same neighborhoods. The poignant examples of social capital on display in the nineteenth century common schools highlight the dearth of mutually beneficial relationships in the experience of contemporary schools. The authors believe this absence is likely one reason teachers today feel a sense of isolation from their students' lives.The drive for professionalization has hindered the benefits of teacher student relationships too, as continual professional training and certification allow for less time and opportunity in the public realm. The authors argue that the social capital produced by the relationships between teachers and students has been diminished in modern schools, they hold out hope however by saying it is by no means completely lost. They express that this relationship in modern schools exists in narrower often school-sponsored forms such as activities, clubs, and sports. Today, the coach has the opportunity to interact with students both inside and outside the classroom regularly. Common ground, primarily with student athletes, is easily fostered and reciprocal trust and respect more easily created and maintained. While the authors applaud the fact that attending school for more days and the rise of teachers to professional status have provided untold benefits to students, they still believe images of early teachers walking from school with students, have much to teach modern educators about interacting with students.

Irving Babbitt and E.D. Hirsch defended the humanistic curriculum at both the beginning and end of the twentieth century, respectively. Both claimed that a set of specific knowledge needed to be passed from one generation to the next. Both found this knowledge primarily, though certainly not exclusively, through the classical Western tradition. The ideas put forth by Babbitt and Hirsch nearly a century apart also speaks to the power of progressive education and the defensive position of the humanistic curriculum throughout the twentieth century. In other words, if Babbitt (or any other advocate of the humanistic curriculum) had been more successful within the curricular battles of the early-twentieth century, then a call for a more conservative, traditional education in the 1980s would not have been needed. In examining Babbitt's era, Hirsch was quick to point to the incredible influence of Teachers College in the spread of progressive principles in American education. He placed blame on the century-long antipathy toward a subject-based curriculum on Kilpatrick, Dewey, and other advocates of progressive ideals from Teachers College. Hirsch pinpointed the same influence at work at the beginning of the twenty-first century: schools of education routinely follow in Teachers College's footsteps in passing anti-curriculum, progressive, child-centered beliefs onto future teachers. Has much changed, then? In looking through the lenses of both Babbitt and Hirsch we can clearly see the humanist curriculum continually on the defensive, as an outsider in American schools. Does this speak to the power of progressive, child-centered education entrenched in the curriculum? Does it speak to the inability for humanistic advocates to present and implement their ideas effectively? Is it, perhaps, a combination of both? At the very least, current advocates of the humanist curriculum can look at the century dividing Babbitt and Hirsch and conclude that a new approach may be in order.

As students gradually return to P-12 classrooms in the United States during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, they will have faced and been inundated with images of death at unprecedented levels. Teachers, administrators, and other school personnel will be challenged with assisting students in processing these encounters with death. While death education is no longer a formal component of the American curriculum, death education took on a prominent role in the curriculum during its "Period of Popularity" from 1968–1977. Lessons from this period can help guide educators in bringing back needed components of death education to P-12 classrooms today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide numerous and varied methods courses and practicum experiences, often driven by requirements mandated by our state's department of education along with national accrediting bodies. Particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been able to identify a list of categories that have garnered the increased attention of our colleagues and students as they continue to interact directly with P-12 schools through field and practicum experiences. Through our presentations at OEH, we have worked together on different ideas and ways in which educational history can help strengthen our courses and programs, balanced with an applied learning focus. [Extracted from the article]

The article offers information on a study which examines the behavior of class clown. Focus is given to the disruptions of working-class students in work place, teachers technique in handling the behavior of clown student, and the statement of educational theorist Michael Apple, regarding social class reproduction and education system. Also mentioned the Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer such as "The Miller's Tale," and "The Reeve's Tale," which offers concept on the class clown student.

The article discusses the impact of loss of leisure in the school cafeteria at lunch on education. Topics discussed include time allotted to school lunch, use of the cafeteria during lunch for educative purposes in the 20th century and impact of school meal on the health and education of children. It is stated that cafeteria is the most obvious place to start leisure in school.

The article discusses the argument of Irving Babbit on changing the theory and practice of education into the humanitarian from the humanist American curriculum of Harvard president Charles W. Elliot as pursued in colleges at the turn of the twentieth century. According to Babbit, a curriculum should provide a sense of balance as the students prepare for careers and criticizes the elective system. It also notes the need to check on expansive tendencies in the humanitarian education practice.