The collection's focus is on girls' secondary education, and hence the gendered cultural expectations of the middle classes and upper classes, will provide the dominant narrative, given the relatively recent democratization of European educational systems.
"This excellent anthology on girls' secondary education across Europe brings together a transatlantic cast of contributors. The authors, all pioneering scholars in their fields, address historical developments over 300 years in areas that include most of Europe. Their essays are carefully synchronized, both with respect to earlier historiography and with an eye to the contextual settings religion, nationalism, and colonial expansion in which educators could establish schooling opportunities for girls beyond the primary level." - Karen Offen, Historian and Senior Scholar, The Michelle Clayman Institute for Gender Research, Stanford University, USA
"Written by leading scholars in their fields, this impressive study of girls' secondary education in Europe has filled a significant gap in the history of education and in women's and gender history." - Ruth Watts, Emeritus Professor of History of Education, University of Birmingham, UK
"This important and stimulating volume brings together specialists in the history of girls' secondary education in more than 15 European settings . . . Much of the scholarship presented has not been available previously in English, and the editors - who are American and English - have admirably assembled contributions from colleagues in continental Europe and encouraged contributors to address certain common themes, presented in the 'Historical Introduction.''' - Aspasia
"Though valuable for its summaries of foreign-language historiographies, this volume's greatest merit lies in placing side by side the causes, consequences, and factual milestones of the growth of girls' secondary schooling in European countries ranging from Scandinavia and Belgium to Bulgaria and Russia. Historians will find this volume an invaluable reference in their teaching as well as a starting point for thinking comparatively in their research." - H-Education
"The editors' attention to Enlightenment debates and early nineteenth century models is a much needed corrective to earlier studies of secondary instruction which only begin with state reforms at the end of the nineteenth century. Many of the authors comment on how pedagogues imagined girls - fragile, needing protection from 'overstrain,' requiring intellectual refinement over rigor - though the point that schooling was a key institution in constructing this gender ideology deserves more attention." - The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth
"This impressive collection of essays on girls' secondary education in Europe . . . is exemplary for including many frequently ignored areas of educational history, such as the eighteenth century albeit that the later terminology of 'secondary' hardly applies to most female education of the time and a swathe of eastern and southern European countries. The book is ground-breaking for many countries simply in its regarding the history of girls' secondary education as noteworthy." - Paedagogica Historica
