Classroom Currents: Childhood Education Reforms in Nineteenth-Century Boston and Buenos Aires

This project traces the origins and evolution of nineteenth-century public educational theories and their significance to nation-building processes within the Americas. Focusing on the Atlantic seaboard cities of Boston in the United States and Buenos Aires in Argentina as case studies, it analyzes how educational ideas traveled and were reshaped by local conditions. The similarities in the nature and scope—and ultimately, the differences in the implementation—of educational policies in each city supports a larger analysis on the transformation of politics and the shaping of distinct national identities in the nineteenth-century Americas.