Over two hundred years ago Rousseau commented, “The facts described in history never give an exact picture of what actually happened. They change form in the historian's head. They get molded by his interests and take on the hue of his prejudices.” This insight—that history is a human creation molded by the interests and prejudices of the historian—is one that is easy to forget, particularly in times enamored by the claims of empirical science. But in the past three decades, historians, like other scholars across the humanities and social sciences, have faced a number of theoretical challenges to the empiricism that had been in ascendency since the late nineteenth century. Both established academic disciplines such as anthropology, literary studies, and philosophy and emerging disciplines such as cultural studies and film studies have been profoundly affected by these critiques. The “cultural turn,” with its emphasis on the inherently artificial nature of scholarly narratives, has challenged traditional historians' unquestioning reliance on documentary evidence, scientific methodology, and empirical claims to truth. Numerous historians have debated these theoretical challenges to the discipline, but historians of education have been largely silent. The absence of this debate in the history of education is striking, given the engagement of other scholars with these concerns and the fact that these ideas appeared over three decades ago: both Hayden White's Metahistory and Clifford Geertz's The Interpretation of Cultures were published in 1973, while Foucault's Discipline and Punish appeared in English translation in 1977.

Despite widespread support for the postwar expansion of higher education, U.S. colleges and universities in the early 1950s were not isolated from broader social currents, and the deep social anxieties and political tensions of the Cold War found their way onto college campuses. In 1952, the University of California was still reeling from the loyalty oath controversy. In the late 1940s the University of California, like other universities nationwide, had been viewed with increasing suspicion by anti-Communist groups. The search for subversives in California institutions, spearheaded by the Tenney Committee of the California State Legislature, led the University of California's Board of Regents to add a disclaimer of membership in any organization advocating the overthrow of the United States to the oath of allegiance already required of faculty. In an atmosphere of rising hysteria about possible subversives and Communists in academia, on February 24, 1950, the Regents voted to fire anyone employed by the University of California who failed to sign the oath. This decision led to strong opposition from students and faculty. Despite these protests, and particularly after the outbreak of the Korean War in June, 1950, the Regents held firm. On August 25, 1950, thirty-one members of the University of California faculty were dismissed because they refused to sign the loyalty oath. None of them was accused of being a Communist or subversive. After an appellate court ruled against the Regents, in October 1951 the Regents voted to rescind the oath, but maintained their stance that the university would not employ Communists. Although the California Supreme Court upheld the ruling of the appellate court and the non-signers were reinstated to the university, the mood at the university, as in the nation as a whole, continued to be one of anxiety and unease.

Rural school reform in California in the period 1900–1940 was motivated by many of the same concerns that underlay the national movement to reform rural education. As was true throughout the country, reforms in this period in California led to the expansion of state regulations and control over the work of teachers. But while these reforms emphasized the need for greater scientific and bureaucratic control, they were also framed in terms of gender, since the majority of rural teachers were women working in relatively autonomous one- and two-room schools. Some educational reformers, influenced by ideas of scientific management and control, argued for the need for supervision of rural women teachers because of women's presumed weaknesses; they argued for expert, usually male, control and supervision. However, this view was not uncontested; other reformers, much more frequently women who had experience working in rural schools, celebrated the capabilities and potential of rural women teachers. This more positive view was particularly strong among California educators, who were influenced by both progressive politics and conceptions of Deweyan progressive education. Increased state control over rural teaching did in fact occur in California, but the creation of institutional structures did not inevitably mean the imposition of male control or of a single view of teachers or rural schools.