Rury, John. “The Curious Status of the History of Education: A Parallel Perspective,” History of Education Quarterly, Winter 2006

Summary
John Rury's article examines other fields within historical scholarship (History of Science, Economic History and Legal History) and their development in order to shed light on historians of education and their distinct scholarship (and specialization). Other fields, including History of Science and History of the Economy had to negotiate between professional interests. Scholarly questions and have gone through similar developments as History of Education, especially after the 1960s. Bailyn’s provocation in the early 1960s and his critique of the “whiggish” history of the field was not unique to education historians, but was an idea common to virtually all of the disciplinary history groups. The revisionism of history of education was also part of a larger wave of revisionist history that questioned institutions and brought in the voices of people of color as well as class as an analytical lens. Rury argues that education historians can serve a similar role as scientist historians who see themselves as the “conscience” of non-historical colleagues in the sciences. History of education scholarship needs to engage more closely with current concerns and transcend the issues of strictly the discipline.