The Word from a Walrus: Five Decades of the History of Education Society

This essay is an attempt at an institutional history of the History of Education Society (HES), from its inception in 1960 to the present day. As an institutional history, a genre with which I am generally, and not altogether favorably associated, it is not an intellectual history. Thus, many of the intellectual currents and cross-currents, as well as the History of Education Quarterly (HEQ), the journal of the HES in which these intellectual movements were featured, are slighted in this presentation. I deal extensively with one intellectual movement within the field, the Bernard Bailyn-Lawrence Cremin critique of the field as too institutional and intellectually narrow, because it was so intimately involved with the creation of the HES, and the attendant de-emphasis, if not rejection, of the institutional history of education that was dominant in the pre-HES history of education organization. I hope that what follows will be interesting enough to my listeners and readers to explain to them the reasons for my choices.