It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… . Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

Don T . Martin introduced me to the History of Education Quarterly (HEQ) in my first history of education graduate course at the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) in 1972. HEQ seemed to be revered there. I soon found out why. This scholarly journal had originated at Pitt under the editorship of Ryland W. Crary. Ry (as we called him) became another of my mentors at Pitt. In his trademark urbane and sophisticated style, he taught me much about scholarly writing and social grace. A signed and treasured copy of the first issue of the Quarterly still resides on a bookshelf in my study.

May the work of the L.T.A. go on ever upward and onward-gaining ground year by year; so that in future it will have its voice in the community, not low & sweet-but clear and resonant showing power and strength; may it gain that strength by increased membership, held together by strong bonds of love.
Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing
Learn to labor and to wait.1

Miss Ophelia S. Newell believed that teachers occupied a public office of unappreciated responsibility. As the secretary of the Lady Teachers' Association (LTA) in Boston, she penned these hopeful remarks as a coda to her 1875 annual report, borrowing the last stanza of a popular Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem. For Newell and her fellow teachers, “learn to labor and to wait” underscored their steadfast commitment to the schools. They founded the association attempting to bring women teachers “nearer together in sympathy and friendship and also for a mutual benefit in debate and parliamentary rules.” Frustrated with being “accused of a lack of enthusiasm in our profession,” they hoped such criticism could “be remedied by an organization of this kind.” Honing their debating skills represented one of the women's objectives, but they aspired to do more than polish their chances for professional advancement.

Case method teaching was first introduced into American higher education in 1870 by Christopher C. Langdell (1826-1906) of Harvard Law School (HLS), where it became closely associated with—and emblematic of—a set of academic meritocratic reforms. Though regnant today, “the ultimate triumph of [Langdell's] system was not apparent” for many years. The vast majority of students, alumni, and law professors initially derided it as an “abomination,” and for two decades case method and the associated reforms were largely confined to Harvard. During the subsequent twenty-five years between 1890 and 1915, a national controversy ensued as to whether case method teaching—and the concomitant meritocratic reforms—would predominate in legal education and, ultimately, professional education in the United States.

Demography, distance, and die expansion of settlements created problems for the State Department of Education in Western Australia and other Australian states in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Educational administration in Canada and parts of the United States faced similar issues with regard to the provision of schools. A common response was the establishment of one-teacher rural schools, frequently run by young, and sometimes unclassified, female teachers. In the United States locally elected school boards were the primary source of regulation, but in late nineteenth-century Western Australia such local boards had been stripped of their powers and were answerable to the newly established, highly centralized Education Department. Formal regulated teachers. The masculinized system of the Department and its inspectorate. All the same, however, the local community still exerted informal controls over the lives of teachers working and living in small settlements.