History for Justice: Michael Katz and the History of Education

I recently told one of my graduate students that I was contributing to the panel on which these papers are based, and he replied that reading Michael Katz'sThe Irony of Early School Reform: Educational Innovation in Mid-Nineteenth Century Massachusetts(2001a) led him to apply to graduate school. My story is the same. When I was deciding whether to pursue a graduate degree, Katz'sClass, Bureaucracy, and Schools(1975) convinced me to study the history of education. What Katz's scholarship, and later his mentorship, taught me was that one could be a historian with an eye toward justice, that one need not compartmentalize scholarly, political, and ethical commitments.