Recapitulation Theory and the New Education: Race, Culture, Imperialism, and Pedagogy, 1894–1916

2012/08/06 by Thomas Fallace, Thomas D. Fallace · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Critical Race Theory in Education #Historical Education Studies Worldwide #Political theory and Gramsci

paper · doi:10.1111/j.1467-873x.2012.00603.x

openalex publication_date 2012/08/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

In this historical study the author argues that the most influential pre–World War I educational theorists subscribed to different forms of the recapitulation theory that conceptualized non‐White cultures as childlike, prior steps toward the more advanced, industrialized West. The author demonstrates how the pedagogies of William Torrey Harris, Frank Lester Ward, Charles McMurray, John Dewey, Charles Hubbard Judd, and G. Stanley Hall all reflected some form of the recapitulation approach. Therefore, racism was built right into the underlying structure of almost all of the proposed reforms of the new education and appeared in some of the most widely used educational materials of the period (1894–1916).

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