ABSTRACT
This overview of the history of education in the United States, like so many others, identifies gaps in the literature. Some are substantive, others methodological, and still others are both, but few can be corrected mechanically. We may fill in the blanks, as it were, yet leave undisturbed basic errors of theory selection and application, design, sampling, and generalization that have led to omissions in the first place. A scholarly endeavor, research in the history of education begins, as all science must, by habitually resisting the siren bias of the uncurious. The path leads toward relevant theories, methods, and interpretations, pausing in progress to acknowledge familiar narratives and previous analyses while rejecting seductive centripetal influences. The aim cannot be to tell the story when accumulating evidence suggests grounds for multiple accounts and shifting methods. The latter seems a sensible way to proceed, but the field itself reveals periodic, often wide, deviations from the standard.
