This article focuses on the history of the Fort Wayne Folk School in Fort Wayne, Indiana and its founder Terry Doran. From its outset, the Fort Wayne Folk School incited both excitement and harsh criticism from local authorities and the public. Terry's process of remembering and reclaiming a new narrative for the Fort Wayne Folk School provided a…

In 1973 the national conference of the National Union of Students (NUS) voted to campaign for gay rights, making NUS the first national organisation in the UK to make such a public commitment. Using archive material, this article outlines how NUS came to this decision, and the initial challenges it faced in taking up this work. It explains that…

Although the number of women who served on Scotland's school boards (1873-1918) was not large, they made the case for female representation on public bodies both through their electoral campaigns and their record of office. Many were simultaneously active on parish and town councils and in feminist causes, with a few in the labour movement from…

This paper proposes that "being Froebelian" is also about advocacy for social and political change. Reconsidering the nature of this advocacy in the light of current international policy interest and investment in early education is presented as a conclusion. From an Antipodean perspective this paper outlines the changing contexts of advocacy in…

Traces the growing concern and sporadic efforts to address problems of exploitation, education, and neglect among child performers in turn-of-the-century England. Victorian social reformers and the press made the working conditions of English theater children a public issue. True reform, however, only occurred later. (MJP)