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History of Education Society, Annual Meeting, Part II. History of Education Society (HES).

Reviewed by Heather Lewis
Published on H-Education (March, 2004)

PART II: Complicating the History of Brown: Before and After

<h5> [Editor's Note: This message comprises Part II of a five-part review of the HES 2003 Annual Meeting published by H-Education the week of 8-12 March 2004.]</h5> As noted in the panel, "Teaching <cite>Brown</cite>," at the History of Education Society (HES) 2003 Annual Meeting, the impending 40th anniversary of <cite>Brown v Board</cite> has generated a host of dedicated journal publications, conferences, and special events. Indeed, the Spring 2004 issue of the <cite>History of Education Quarterly</cite> will feature articles on the history and legacy of the <cite>Brown</cite> decision. While the HES conference did not reflect such a tightly targeted focus, many of the sessions took their point of departure from <cite>Brown</cite>. The important contribution of these sessions was that they complicated more traditional historical interpretations of both the <cite>Brown</cite> decision and the Civil Rights movement. For example, one panel expanded the typical Black/White binary of <cite>Brown</cite>, incorporating other disenfranchised groups such as Mexican Americans and children with disabilities into a broader interpretive framework. Other sessions challenged participants to reconsider how educational institutions such as urban teacher education programs and Black libraries, colleges and universities supported educational quality in segregated settings. The one session that focused directly on the <cite>Brown</cite> decision examined the limitations of the legal strategy and its failure to address the redistribution of resources. Another session presented a new lens on the Civil Rights movement, arguing that many Black students in the South became activists in the Civil Rights movement through their colleges and universities-instead of the other way around-and used them as important organizing sites. The panel, "Teaching <cite>Brown</cite>," underscored the need to integrate such complex analyses of <cite>Brown</cite> into classroom teaching at the college level, suggesting that our teaching was as important as our scholarship. PANEL: Integrating the "the Other" into American Education Phoebe C. Godfrey (Texas A& M International) "The 'Other White': Mexican Americans and the Politics of Whiteness in the Desegregation of Texas Public Schools" Judith Kafka(University of California Berkeley) "Condition of Control: School Discipline and Delinquency in Los Angeles, 1954-1960" Robert L. Osgood (IUPUI) "Integration and Segregation in Special Education Before <cite>Brown v. Board</cite>: An Exploration of Thought and Practice" Chair: Yoon Pak (University of Illinois) Discussant: Victoria-Maria McDonald (Florida State University) Ironically, these three presentations were not as much about the historical integration of "the Other," as promised in the panel's title, as about the cultural, social, and political practices that segregated "the Other" before and immediately after the <cite>Brown</cite> decision. The panelists contextualized the terms used to describe "the Other" during the time-period framing <cite>Brown</cite>. Whether the labels used were for Mexican Americans, special needs students, or students with discipline problems, the papers showed how the terms changed over time and were influenced by reigning racial, political, and scientific conventions, demographic change, and cultural and political resistance. Two papers offered important additions to the interpretation of the pre- and post-<cite>Brown</cite> era in schooling, by examining discipline policy in the Los Angeles school system and analyzing national implementation of special education. Both papers highlighted how discipline and special education policies and practices--while dynamically linked to the essence of the <cite>Brown</cite> decision--appear to have occurred below the radar screen of the controversy over the implementation of <cite>Brown</cite>. Robert Osgood's paper describes how, in the case of special education, <cite>Brown</cite> was a seminal case because, until the Supreme Court decision, the integration of children with disabilities had focused on practical issues. Although underlying ethical and legal concerns were present during this period, the <cite>Brown</cite> decision provoked an explicit public debate on the ethics of segregating children with disabilities. Osgood notes that practical issues didn't go away during the post-<cite>Brown</cite> era, but <cite>Brown</cite> stimulated a more complex discourse about an already controversial topic. After <cite>Brown</cite>, Osgood argues, the historical tendency on the part of educators to overlap ethnic and racial background with disability could no longer be sublimated. In the case of the Los Angeles discipline policy, Judith Kafka contextualizes the emerging use of medical terms to label students' social problems. Major racial and social demographic changes in the student population in Los Angeles formed the backdrop against which the new discipline policy was shaped by the joint efforts of the school district and teachers' union. Kafka notes that the policy--which served as a model for school districts across the country--was significant not only for its content, but more importantly because of the process by which it was developed. The teachers' union pushed for it to become a district-wide policy, rather than one that sought the participation of teachers, parents and community at the school level. Kafka notes that the union's move was part of the trend towards technical solutions to social problems in the 1950s. It was also indicative of the shifts in teacher unionism which began to define teacher professionalism in bureaucratic terms by the late 1950s. Both papers provide careful and insightful historical context for the development of district discipline policies and the evolution of mainstreaming in special education. The authors note the contemporary significance for such historical studies, citing the current policy debates about zero tolerance in discipline and inclusion in special education. I would argue that the papers also contribute to the recent discourse about structural racism in education, and why it is important to look more deeply at the history of the policies that sustained it over time. Phoebe Godfrey's paper about Mexican Americans and the politics of Whiteness offers a sociological analysis of the difference between the legal and social implications for Mexicans Americans who were officially labeled "White." While not a historical study of the desegregation of Texas schools, the paper analyzes how the interconnection between legal racial categorization and class differences among Mexican Americans created fluid racial identities. Godfrey raises important theoretical insights about the ways that intra-ethnic class distinctions prevented working class Mexican Americans from being able to benefit from the legal classification of "White." However, while the paper is a useful theoretical contribution to an understudied racial dynamic, it does not offer a historical analysis of how these dilemmas about racial categorization changed over time. The discussant, Maria-Victoria McDonald, suggested that while racial categories may be fluid, they exert a concrete influence over people's daily lives. For example, McDonald claimed that because Whiteness directly affected citizenship, some Mexican American advocacy organizations straddled the fence and only allowed citizens to participate in their efforts. McDonald also noted that there was a need to interrogate Whiteness historically, to understand the social and political context. For example, the language of equality was linked to bureaucratic control in the 1950s. PANEL: Preparing Teachers: Programmatic Perspectives Bethany L. Rogers (New York University and Teachers College, Columbia University) "'Wet-Behind the Ears 'Do-Gooders' Need Not Apply: Professional Prerogatives in the National Teacher Corps" Karin Sconzert (Loyala University, Chicago) and Demetria Iazzetto (Urban Education Program-Associated Colleges of the Midwest) "Leading Urban Teacher Education: The Origins of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest Urban Education Program" Christina Collins (University of Pennsylvania) "Teaching 'The Children of All the People': Schools of Education and Urban Schooling in Philadelphia, 1955-75" Chair: Wayne Urban (Georgia State University) Discussant: Barbara Beatty (Wellesley College) This panel covered a particular historical trajectory of teacher education programs, from idealistic alternatives generated by the War on Poverty in the 1960s to the decline of a programmatic commitment to urban education in the post-60s era. The panelists examined teacher education programs, as well as their alternatives, at the local, regional and federal level. Focusing on the 1960s era with its diversity of liberal attempts to contribute to the reform of urban education, the panelists exposed the historical tensions that shaped the jagged contours of teacher professionalism during this period. At the national level, Bethany Rogers argued that the alternative teacher education program developed as part of the Great Society initiative--the National Teacher Corp (NTC)--was not necessarily about contested versions of professionalism, but about liberalism's betrayal of professionalism. Rogers described how the Corps recruited bright, liberal arts graduates from elite colleges and universities to become teaching interns in public schools serving poor children. Teaching experience was not part of the criteria for admission to the corps. Instead, liberal, reformist aspirations were what counted most in a program that paid little attention to participants' teaching capacities and skills. Through oral histories and archival research, Rogers' paper examines educational stakeholders' responses to the NTC, from the large teacher associations to individual teachers to legislators. She argues that by the late 1960s, teachers were represented by large organizations that were no longer professional groups marginal to decision-making and policy, but instead were major players in urban school systems and state education policy. However, Rogers suggests that despite this elevation of status, professionalism--as defined by the NEA and UFT--did not receive the public support that was anticipated. Programs like the NTC turned their definition of professionalism on its head and suggested that all that was needed to teach was to find the right "man" for the job. In their paper, Karin Sconzert and Demetria Iazzetto describe how the off-campus, urban teaching program developed by the Associated Colleges of the Midwest originated in the 1960s. This liberal arts urban education program originally relied on the same idealistic fervor of the 1960s as the national Teacher Corps, But, unlike the Teacher Corps, the program, is still thriving today. Again unlike the Teacher Corps, which had a troubled relationship with some of the urban districts in which it operated, the Associated Colleges of the Midwest has had strong support from the Chicago Public Schools, the district in which the program's student teachers were placed. The panel therefore provided an interesting comparison between an urban teacher education program sponsored by small, liberal arts colleges and an alternative route into teaching sponsored by the federal government. At the local level, Christina Collins's comparison between two types of teacher education programs in Philadelphia-one private and relatively small, the other operated by the largest school of education in the state-shows how, despite their significant differences, both programs pulled away from urban education in the 1970s. According to her paper, Temple University's program reduced its urban involvement due to the decline in government funding, and the University of Pennsylvania reduced its program because of community pressure. And not surprisingly, the enthusiasm for projects in both universities peaked during the years that projects were funded by the federal government and foundations. This paper raises questions about both projects' commitment to urban education in the first place, especially when compared with the program sponsored by the Associated Colleges of the Midwest which, despite variations in the level of funding over time, continued its involvement with and commitments to the Chicago school system. The discussant, Barbara Beatty, noted the irony in the fact that those who took historical leadership positions in urban teacher education were the small, liberal arts colleges. Beatty suggested that there is an "elephant in the room" that no one wants to talk about openly; 1) the difficulty of finding good cooperating teachers in urban schools and 2) the pervasive dilemma of teachers in urban programs who don't want to teach in urban schools. Beatty argued that the discourse about urban education programs circumvents such silenced issues as "where are middle class White girls willing to teach?" Beatty suggested that the panel underscored the need to address who gets to define teacher professionalism and how has it changed over the years, as well as who has been willing to talk about it and when was it perceived as a problem. She claimed that teacher educators didn't start talking about teacher professionalism soon enough, therefore outsiders defined professionalism for teachers. The panel presentations, Beatty argued, pointed to the need for historical studies of teacher education programs that are contextualized within mainstream political and labor history. DISCUSSION: Needs and Opportunities in American Public School Library History Presenter: Wayne A. Wiegand (Florida State University) Respondents: Victoria Maria-McDonald(Florida State University) and Michael Fultz (University of Wisconsin-Madison) The format of this session was unique in that it provided an opportunity for the presenter, respondents, and participants to explore the future contours and content of public school library history. The presentation outlined elements of existing and potential library history scholarship foci such as censorship, reading, and the nature of libraries in the public sphere. Wayne A. Wiegand's paper called for a reinterpretation of public school library history by returning to primary sources. Victoria-Maria McDonald responded to the paper by raising pertinent questions for future research: 1) What was the librarian's ability to subvert professional discourse? 2) What do school libraries teach? What is the history prior to 1965? 3) Are there good school libraries in poorly funded schools or only in wealthy ones? 4) Does the literature on the feminization of teaching parallel the social history of librarians? 5) How did librarians turn their spaces into autonomous "women's spheres"? 6) How did regionalism influence library history? Michael Fultz said that Wiegand's paper had provoked him to conduct his own research on Black libraries in the South during the time of de jure segregation. Fultz found that his own preliminary explorations suggest a valuable research agenda for the history of public school libraries. He discovered an ongoing connection between libraries and Black schools in the South, and a set of enduring patterns that were established early on. In the urban South, for example, school libraries and branch libraries were intricately related to public secondary education and Black high school principals were integral to establishing library services. Fultz believes this raises interesting questions for future research. What relationship did these principals envision between schools and urban libraries? Why were Black principals of financially-strapped schools so invested in fundraising to support public libraries? Fultz thinks it is possible that Black principals assumed the role they did because their middle-class relationship to White power structures, and their expertise at inter- and intra-racial negotiations, positioned them as negotiators on behalf of libraries as well as schools. Another explanation is that libraries served as community centers, just as the schools did. In terms of rural schools, Fultz contends that the school library was the "public library" and that a future research agenda for the relationship between schools and libraries in rural areas might explore school-community linkages through school libraries and the role Jeanes supervisors played in this relationship. ANNOUNCEMENT: Doctoral students are invited to participate in an online pro-seminar in American Public School Library History. Application available at: http://admissions.fsu.edu/nondegree.html LUNCH with the Presidents: Ron Cohen, Mary Ann Dzuback, Linda Eisenmann, Lynne Gordon, David Tyack, Wayne Urban. This new forum was introduced by the incoming HES President, Linda Eisenmann, as a way for graduate students and junior faculty to learn about the organization and its leadership. The luncheon provided the opportunity for participants to talk in small groups with previous presidents of the organization, as well as to hear each president briefly describe their career trajectory in the history of education field. What follows is a summary of their comments. David Tyack offered a capsule version of the history of the field from the 1950s to the present. He touched on key transitions in the history of education during his fifty-two year tenure, beginning with his entry into the field during the Bernard Bailyn era of the fifties. One of his most transformative experiences occurred in the 1960s, the period of the Michael Katz "bombshell". Ron Cohen described a similar kind of entry experience as Tyack when, as a colonial historian in a history department, he discovered the field when he read Larry Cremin's "bombshell" and, as a result, became immersed in education history. While Tyack remains invested in the field, Cohen's remarks suggested that his work is now somewhat distant from it; his account of his experience indicated a different trajectory to Tyack's and one that has taken multiple paths. Wayne Urban and Mary Ann Dzuback described the non-traditional, circuitous, and more personal routes that brought them to the field of education history in the post-revisionist era. As a commuter undergraduate student, Wayne Urban became involved in higher education through his experience working in a residence hall. As he said, "I didn't start out with an end in view." Urban considers HES to be his prime commitment, both intellectually and professionally. Dzubak described how her own interdisciplinary experiences, particularly her move from philosophy to history, motivated her to understand the nature of the disciplines in higher education. HES became a place for her to work with people she respected. Dzubak said that HES countered her skepticism about academia-it was a "friendly organization where you could get your feet wet." She suggested she would probably remain in the organization for the rest of her career. Lynne Gordon contrasted the intimate, supportive atmosphere at HES with the more anonymous environment she encountered in the American Historical Association. She described a generational cohort of women in HES who provided her with constructive feedback and support, so that participating in the HES annual conference is "like coming home every year." Gordon commented that HES members need to be the voice for the ongoing value of liberal education for teacher educators. Listening to the stories of past HES presidents, I realized that it is vitally important to attend to the intergenerational dynamics of a professional organization and the induction of new members, not only on a personal level, but organizationally. The degree to which the organization is receptive to new theoretical insights and intellectual trends introduced by graduate students and new faculty members-even or especially when those insights and trends are controversial-determines the quality of the intergenerational exchange and potential for organizational growth. And, conversely, graduate students' and new members' historical understanding of the scholarly trajectory of the professional organization influences their capacity to participate in organizational debates and shape future directions. PANEL: Case Studies of Education in Michigan Timothy R. Cain (University of Michigan) "Little Red Schoolhouses: Anti-communism, Institutional Politics and Academic Freedom in the 1930s" Jenny De Monte (University of Michigan) "Michigan's 1970 "Parochaid" Referendum, and the 2000 Vote on School Vouchers: A Comparison of Two Votes on Public Funds for Nonpublic Schools" Anne-Lise Halvorsen(University of Michigan) "The Shaping of Elementary Social Studies Curriculum in Detroit, 1916-1940" Deborah L. Michaels (University of Michigan) "Perry Preschool Goes to Market: Chronicling Historic Variations in the High/Scope Curriculum and the Implications of Curriculum Variation on Expectations of Program Outcomes" Chair/Discussant: David F. Labaree (Stanford University) Three of the papers on this panel, the papers by De Monte, Halvorsen, and Michaels, were inter-related. They focused on how state-wide and city-wide reforms influenced school reform and public debate in Michigan, as well as the significance of these reforms for current educational policy directions. Each paper highlighted major changes that occurred over time as school reformers and politicians attempted to scale-up curricular, pedagogical, and school funding reforms. Focusing on local reform at the city level, Anne-Lise Halvorsen described how the evolution of the Michigan elementary social studies curriculum gradually shifted from a focus on historical and geographic content to a curriculum that included a mix of other studies and aims. However, her paper shows that at certain key points in its evolution, the social studies curriculum balanced a child-centered approach with a content-driven pedagogy, until the child-centered approach eventually won out as the social studies curriculum was scaled up. This important analysis of an early era in large-scale curriculum design is very relevant to today's curriculum wars, and suggests that it is possible to find a balance between the two extremes of child-centered versus content-driven instruction. Deborah Michaels pointed to the striking disparities between the incubation of the Perry Preschool reform at the local level, and the eventual form it took when it was scaled-up nationally. Her paper shows how the Perry Preschool (1962-67) significantly raised the IQ scores of at-risk children, but when it was scaled up into the national Follow Through Program in Kindergarten and 1st grade, its strengths were diluted. The paper raises important considerations about the effects of scaling-up a locally-developed pedagogical reform to a national level. This is not only an important historical dilemma, but is also quite relevant to the current controversy over federally-approved reading programs that have been incubated at the local level and disseminated nationally. Jenny De Monte's paper about two failed state-level voucher campaigns thirty years apart demonstrates how a voucher campaign launched in the 1970s, as a collective solution to funding shortages in public schooling, evolved into a campaign for vouchers as an individual solution to the failures of public schooling in 2000. In making such a comparison, De Monte shows how neither initiative passed in a state that was deeply divided by urban, rural, and suburban interests. While such divisions across diverse state constituencies were not quite the same in two very different historical contexts, De Monte demonstrates that they still prevented the passage of state-wide legislation that would have contributed to the dissolution of public schooling. Her paper is relevant to today's voucher debates because it underscores the importance of examining the social and historical context that shapes proposals for private solutions to public problems. In his paper, something of a thematic odd-one-out in this panel, Timothy Cain questioned the skewed picture of academic freedom in the 1930s that has examined the external effects of Cold War McCarthyism on institutions of higher education. Instead, Cain's case study of three universities in Michigan in the 1930s argues that the most dire threat to academic freedom was not from anticommunism but from internal, departmental politics. Indeed, Cain shows that in some instances university administrators protected leftist faculty members. David Labaree commented that the strength of the first three papers described above was that they analyzed educational reforms and ballot initiatives in a geographical context. He also suggested that Cain's paper could be strengthened if it highlighted the politics of place. For example, Labaree argued that the literature on academic freedom during the Red Scare may be overwrought, particularly when analyzed nationally. He suggested that the New York City focus of this literature might distort the actual threat posed to academic freedom beyond New York. Labaree noted that in Cain's study, the threat to academic freedom in Michigan turned out to be a traditional one; the administration. Labaree remarked that the mix of qualitative and quantitative research in the voucher study was not common in history and was a welcome addition. Michaels's paper on the Perry Pre-school program is interesting, Labaree noted, because it raises the important question about how success is defined. It also raises the question of scale, which Labaree thinks is one of the most important problems in education. He suggested that it may be possible that programs developed at the local level simply cannot work on a national scale. Participants raised questions about De Monte's claim that race did not appear to have been an issue in either of the Michigan voucher campaigns. Some participants noted that when cultural and racial issues seem to be outside the debate, they may instead be an undercurrent masked by racially-coded language and terms. If this was the case in either of the Michigan voucher campaigns, it would be important for De Monte to deconstruct such coded terms to uncover the hidden, racial aspects of the campaigns. PANEL: Historical Challenges to Historically Black Colleges and Universities Carol F. Karpinski (Rutgers University) "H. Councill Trenholm: 'Being In the Field of Education and Also Being a Negro, It Seems to Me To Be Tragic'" Joy Ann Williamson (Stanford University) "Students as Activists, Activists as Students: Black Colleges and the Civil Rights Movement" Marybeth Gasman (University of Pennsylvania) "Controlling 'Disaster Areas': The Response of the United Negro College Fund and Its Member Colleges to Christopher Jencks' and David Riesman's 1967 Article "The American Negro College" Chair: Katrina Sanders (University of Iowa) Discussant: Peter Wallenstein (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University) Two papers on this panel, those by Williamson and Gasman, focused on the internal and external challenges to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Joy Williamson's paper about the civil rights struggle on two HBCUs in Mississippi-Tougaloo and Jackson State College-shows how students as activists fought for their campuses to become civil rights movement centers, either openly or clandestinely. Williamson demonstrates how this internal challenge to the HBCUs was, in the end, a healthy one because it integrated higher education into the broader social context of civil rights organizing. Marybeth Gasman's paper describes an external challenge to the HBCU's from an unsolicited but very public evaluation by White Northern sociologists in the 1960s. Gasman shows that while this external challenge was not productive when it first emerged, it had the unintended effect of stimulating a constructive counter-response by Black scholars and college presidents. Williamson argues that there is a gap in the Civil Rights historical literature about the role that HBCUs played in the movement; particularly the role that activists played as students and how their student activities differed in the contrasting contexts of public and private universities. Williamson suggests that HBCUs served as "movement centers," helping the NAACP gain a foothold in the state. As movement centers, they were responsive to the alternating dynamics of movement strategies, from organizing to mobilization. Activist students organized separately on their individual campuses, providing recruits for successful collective struggle, and turning indigenous resources into powerful tools for the movement. Williamson describes how organizing differed depending on the institution; at the private college student activists could organize more openly without risk, while at the state-funded school they had to form front organizations such as debating societies and friendship groups. Despite these differences, Williamson shows how activist students were able to join forces across institutions through mobilizing efforts in support of public demonstrations. Williamson's contribution to Civil Rights history is the contextualization of activist students' movement activities within their colleges and universities, and her description of the elaborate navigation and negotiation that organizing and mobilization required to transform these campuses into movement centers. Marybeth Gasman's paper about Christopher Jencks's and Davied Riesman's damaging 1967 <cite>Harvard Education Review</cite> critique of the HBCUs describes the understudied, behind-the-scene, as well as public, response of the United Negro College Fund and the Black intellectual community. Gasman situates this response in the aftermath of the study's controversial public debate between those who supported the study, and those who were critical of its methodology, racial superiority and arrogance, and racial stereotyping of Black college presidents. By featuring the Black intellectual and institutional response to the report, Gasman offers a new perspective on a controversy that has had long-term reverberations in higher education. Gasman is careful to describe the social environment in the late 1960s, when the controversy occurred, as well as the role the media played in exacerbating differences by exaggerating the most strident aspects of the study. She contrasts this period with the mid-1970s when Charles V. Willie, a professor of education and urban studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, organized the "Black College Conference" and settled the score by eliciting a retraction from Riesman in the press, and launching a significant research effort on Black education by Black scholars. Gasman's paper raises interesting questions for future research. What was the relationship between K-12 educational discourse about Black schooling and the discourse about higher education during this period? Was there an equivalent attempt by White scholars and the media to critique and implicitly discredit Black-led schools and districts at the pre-collegiate level? Was there any cross-fertilization among Black scholars of higher education and K-12 education in response to Jenck's and Riesman's study? Carol Karpinski's paper discusses how Black educators realized their goals for social justice and professional equity through their relationships with national professional associations during the middle decades of the twentieth century. She highlights the career of H. Councill Trenholm, president of Alabama State College for 35 years, head of the American Teachers Association (ATA), and member of the Joint Committee of the National Education Association (NEA). Karpinski suggests that Trenholm's role in the NEA helped shape a professionalism that was shared by Black and White educators, even though he was working within NEA's segregrationist framework of the 1940s. However, Karpinski's assumption that if Black and White teachers shared the same organization, they would reflexively share the same definition of professionalism, raises questions about professionalism that need further examination. Did Black teachers and leaders such as Trenholm define their professional roles differently from White teachers? As Black professionals became more integral to the NEA, did they influence its professional direction in different ways than White professionals did? What is the difference between professional equity and educational equity? FRIENDLY CRITIC SESSION Presenter: Brett V. Gadsden (Northwestern University) "'Judge and Company': The Subordination of Popular Interests in <cite>Brown v. Board of Education</cite>" Friendly Critic: Jack Dougherty (Trinity College) In "Judge and Company", Brett Gadsden analyzes the <cite>Brown v Board</cite> decision through the lens of two Delaware cases-<cite>Belton v Gebhart</cite> and <cite>Bulah v Gebhart</cite>-which eventually became consolidated as part of the legal briefs for Brown. Gadsden contrasts the clients' original demands--in one instance a mother who simply wanted transportation for her child--with the legal claims that were eventually fashioned out of these demands. Having no other institution to turn to, Gadsden argues, a mother in Delaware turned to the NAACP to demand transportation for her child. Through the legal process, this mother's claim that segregation was "unfair" because it was unequal was turned into a claim that segregation was harmful because it damaged the psyches of Black children. Gadsden argues that because the fundamental legal argument focused on Black people and their alleged deficiencies, this psychological appeal avoided political problems, particularly the problems that would have emerged if there had been a challenge to the unequal distribution of resources. Jack Dougherty suggested that Gadsden might consider whether something about the nature of legal strategies limits arguments of this type. He also suggested that Gadsden explore how the broader political context-the Cold War and the NAACP's efforts to distance themselves from communism-might have influenced their legalistic approach. PANEL: Teaching <cite>Brown</cite>: Pedagogical Challenges and Opportunities Joy Ann Williamson (Stanford University) "<cite>Brown</cite>, Black, and Yellow: Desegregation in a Multi-Ethnic Context" Jack Dougherty (Trinity College) "Making Sense of Multiple Interpretations" Daniel Perlstein (University of California Berkeley) "Politics and Historical Imagination" Cally L. Waite (Teachers College, Columbia University) "The Challenge of Teaching <cite>Brown</cite>" Chair: Joy Ann Williamson (Stanford University) This panel was slightly unusual for HES because it challenged the audience to consider how the scholarship of "teaching" the educational history of <cite>Brown v Board</cite> of Education is as important as the scholarly research on <cite>Brown</cite>. Jack Dougherty explained that when the editor of <cite>HEQ</cite> was first asked to consider the papers for publication, he was struck by their unconventional content. However, despite such reservations, the papers will be published in the <cite>History of Education Quarterly</cite> 44 (Spring 2004) edition and are also available on a "Teaching <cite>Brown</cite>" website at http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/educ/brown. What follows is an excerpt from Dougherty's website and the forthcoming <cite>HEQ</cite> article. Jack Dougherty, of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, writes: "Subfields like educational history have typically struggled to earn the respect of the mainstream discipline, a game that has traditionally been won through the quality and prestige of scholarly publications. But advocates of the "scholarship of teaching," such as Lee Shulman at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, have recently urged academics to reconsider how we value and disseminate our pedagogy. Through scholarly journals, we can transform the private act of teaching into a more public form of academic work, subject to critical review by our peers, so that innovations may be thoughtfully considered, and perhaps modified and used by others in both scholarly and general communities. We welcome the opportunity granted by the <cite>HEQ</cite> editors to take a step in this direction, particularly on Brown, a topic where dramatic changes in the scholarly literature and contemporary policy debates have pressed us to rethink and improve how we teach. And we invite readers to join us for a brief walk on this long journey."

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Citation: Heather Lewis. Review of , History of Education Society, Annual Meeting, Part II. H-Education, H-Net Reviews. March, 2004.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=15360

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