A Partial Agenda for Modern European Educational History

Abstract

Attempting to establish an agenda for one's own research is often challenging; trying to do so for a broad swath of one's field is even more so. I accepted the invitation to propose one in the hope that graduate students and younger colleagues—especially those willing to put in the work to obtain at least reading fluency in foreign languages—might benefit from the suggestions of potentially fruitful research topics from someone who has been reading widely in modern European educational history for almost forty years. Such an agenda is partial in both meanings of the word: it does not come close to exhausting all possible topics, and it necessarily reflects my own areas of expertise and interest. That means a focus primarily on the nineteenth century, with more attention both to secondary than to either elementary or university education, and to girls’ schooling than to boys’. As a caveat, I may not be cognizant of all that has been published or is in the works even for the themes suggested.