I'm finishing up my last paper at Berkeley, a report on the origins and evolution of elementary education in California from 1850-1900, with an emphasis on state-standardized textbooks and their effect on minority populations.

It's just amazing to me that Berkeley has so much original source material for this kind of thing and that, for the most part, most papers and books on the subject were all written right around 1930.

Even more amazing is that I can walk out of the library with peoples 70 year old theses. It's amazing touching the actual typewritten pages people poured their educational blood, sweat, and tears into.

I have a few old books, some from the 19th century, but there's something different about reading the actualpages they wrote on, had their roommates proof, and that witnessed them sitting timidly before a board of experts as they defended it.

An excerpt from the foreward of Ruth Flemming's 1932 paper on Public Education Materials from 1850 to 1930:

To my family, for discouraging me.To my enemies, for challenging me.To my friends, for upholding me.To all these - my gratitude.        (signed) Ruth Flemming

I don't know, it all just seems so close...