Inexcusable Omissions explores the work of Clarence Karier and his impact on critical scholarship in the history of U.S. education. Twenty authors contribute essays that examine Karier's influence on the study of a wide range of issues central to the field, articulate the theoretical approaches that have guided Karier's inquiry, and engage the reader in biographical reflection. The essays converge on the complexities of new liberal social and educational theory and the impact that these ideas have had on the development of the American public school system. This is the landscape of the humanity and legacy of Clarence Karier as a historian of democracy's conscience and one of its most committed educators.

And They Were Wonderful Teachers: Florida's Purge of Gay and Lesbian Teachers is a history of state oppression of gay and lesbian citizens during the Cold War and the dynamic set of responses it ignited. Focusing on Florida's purge of gay and lesbian teachers from 1956 to 1965, this study explores how the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee, commonly known as the Johns Committee, investigated and discharged dozens of teachers on the basis of sexuality. Karen L. Graves details how teachers were targeted, interrogated, and stripped of their professional credentials, and she examines the extent to which these teachers resisted the invasion of their personal lives. She contrasts the experience of three groups--civil rights activists, gay and lesbian teachers, and University of South Florida personnel--called before the committee and looks at the range of response and resistance to the investigations. Based on archival research conducted on a recently opened series of Investigation Committee records in the State Archives of Florida, this work highlights the importance of sexuality in American and education history and argues that Florida's attempt to govern sexuality in schools implies that educators are distinctly positioned to transform dominant ideology in American society.