The popularization of science in nineteenth-century America is inseparable from the democratization of Western society in the early modern era. The contempt for labor that characterized the medieval attitude was gradually replaced by a new spirit whose roots go back to at least the twelfth century and which accompanied the rise in economic importance of the skilled craftsman and mechanic in a modernizing economy. The new importance of the artisan-mechanic to the economy forced a reconsideration of the proper relationship between the artisan and the scientist. The association of knowledge with its applications — its utility—was interwoven with a growing self-conception that the productions of the craftsman and the mechanic made possible a grasp of regularities and order in nature hitherto not even so conceptualized. Advances in techniques and in the material conditions of life were accompanied by corresponding changes in the perception and conceptualization of nature and society. The artisan achieved a new and elevated status of dignity and place. He worked in close collaboration with scientists, and frequently the distinctions between them were blurred and undefined.

Philanthropy in America has sparked numerous innovations in the fields of education, social work, and public health, but rarely has it been instrumental in generating and sustaining a popular social movement. In the Post-World War One decade, however, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial (LSRM) did just that, subtly but aggressively nurturing and coordinating the long-since-forgotten parent education movement. For hundreds of thousands of middle-class Americans, principally young mothers, parent education provided not only a topic of everyday conversation and a structure for continuing education, but a genuine social cause. Philanthropy alone did not create this crusade, of course. Many other factors were involved, some antedating the war, others originating in the twenties and reflecting its distinctive political and cultural spirit. Nonetheless, LSRM's role was central and formative, and merits considerably more attention from historians of education and of philanthropy than it has heretofore received.

In Russia during the era of Catherine II (1762–1796), women's education was advocated as a means to reform family, social and civic life. Fénelon's Traité de l'éducation des Filles (1686) and his didactic novel, Les Aventures de Télémaque, carried this argument to Russia where it was reinforced by the ideas of the Enlightenment. In a society with substantial prejudice against mere literacy for women, this position represents a progressive call for expanded educational opportunities for girls. The message was interpreted in this fashion by its European and Russian proponents who presumed that they were acting in accordance with reason and nature. But the restraints inherent in this domestic orientation make it as much a campaign against excessive emancipation as a plea to remove women from complete ignorance. In this essay, I explore this limited advocacy from the Russian perspective. This ambivalence is demonstrable throughout the reign of Catherine II and at different social levels, though most attention was focused on the nobility for whom the Society for the Education of Noble Girls (the Smol'nyi Institute) was founded.

In the orthodox, “Whig” interpretations of the history of education of nineteenth-century France the focus of attention has traditionally been on the triumph of free, obligatory and secular education. In recent years historians have attempted to provide a more balanced picture by also chronicling the activities of the “losers” in this confrontation — the defenders of religious education. But one group has been left out of both accounts—the propagandists for a working-class education free of the interference of both the Catholic Church and the capitalist state. Of this latter group of thinkers the most interesting was Paul Robin, not simply because his views were the most radical, but because for over a decade this educational anarchist controlled an institution in which he could test his theories in practice. The purpose of the following account of Robin's work is first to illustrate the links that bound together the sexual, political and educational concerns of the libertarian left and secondly to show how deeply rooted in the past century are the current debates regarding the education of women and workers.