Practical Visionaries

Book excerpt: An examination of women educationists in nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain. Working with new paradigms opened up by feminist scholarship, it reveals how women leaders were determined to transform education in the quest for a better society. Previous scholarship has either neglected the contributions of these women or has misplaced them. Consequently intellectual histories of education have come to seem almost exclusively masculine. This collection shows the important role which figures such as Mary Carpenter, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, Elizabeth Edwards and Maria Montessori played in the struggle to provide greater educational opportunities for women. The contributors are: Anne Bloomfield, Kevin J. Brehony, Norma Clarke, Peter Cunningham, Mary Jane Drummond, Elizabeth Edwards, Mary Hilton, Pam Hirsch, Jane Miller, Hilary Minns, Wendy Robinson, Gillian Sutherland and Ruth Watts.