W. E. B. DuBois once argued that the proper education for oppressed groups such as African Americans had a special, critical purpose. He knew, as have all serious educators since Socrates accepted his cup, that education was always and everywhere political. For the oppressed, the political role of schooling had to be aimed precisely at finding the means to end the oppression. In 1930, speaking before the graduating students at Howard University, he put the issue this way: "Let there be no mis understanding about this, no easy going optimism. We are not going to share modern civilization just by deserving recognition. We are going to force ourselves in by organized far-seeing effort-by outthinking and outflanking the owners of the world today who are too drunk with their own arrogance and power successfully to oppose us, if we think and learn and do."' It is clear from his own life's work that to "think and learn and do"-the "outthinking and outflanking"-required schooling. If history is to have value beyond a literary form of collecting an tiques, it must provide a guide to action. For those struggling against oppression and for justice, history must appraise the past to suggest political, social, and economic strategies for the present and future. Like schooling, history, too, is inescapably political. Our purpose here is to

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present considerations for developing a writing community for doctoral students. Design/methodology/approach The paper reflects on data from a self-study of a writing seminar in which the authors were involved. The authors examined students’ writing samples and peer-review comments, email correspondence, online discussion board postings, meeting minutes and participants’ reflections on their participation in the seminar. Findings While doctoral students described benefits from their participation in the writing seminar, the paper provides a cautionary tale concerning the challenges that can arise in the development and delivery of interventions that focus on developing writing communities involving doctoral students. Research limitations/implications This article draws on findings from an examination of a writing intervention to consider potential challenges that faculty and students face in developing writing communities. Findings may not apply to other kinds of settings, and they are limited by the small number of participants involved. Practical implications The paper discusses strategies that might be used to inform faculty in the development of writing communities for doctoral students. Social implications The authors’ experiences in developing and delivering a writing seminar highlight the importance of the process of trust-building for students to perceive the value of feedback from others so that they can respond to the technical demands of doctoral writing. Originality/value There is a growing body of work on the value of writing interventions for doctoral students such as retreats and writing groups. These are frequently facilitated by faculty whose area of expertise is in teaching writing. This paper contributes understanding to what is needed for faculty who are not writing instructors to facilitate groups of this sort. Participants must demonstrate a sufficient level of competence as writers to review others’ work; develop trusting, collegial relationships with one another; and be willing to contribute to others’ development and make a commitment to accomplishing the required tasks.

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The three essays before us constitute an indictment of the field of the history of education for its neglect of theory. Read linearly, from the Introduction through Coloma, the indictment becomes increasingly strident, moving from a gentle call for greater consideration of the potential contributions of theory for historical writing to a condemnation of the field for its parochial “indifference, imperviousness, and perhaps even resistance” to theory. As one practitioner within the field who shares with these authors a keen relish for theory and philosophy of history, I regret that the challenge to the field to attend more carefully to the possibilities of theory has been presented in exactly this form. My regret flows from the indictment's incoherent form, from its misleading evidentiary base, from its curious move from a broad embrace of multiple theoretical stances to a narrow, crabbed insistence on only one deeply problematic theory as acceptable evidence of the field's theoretical sophistication, and from the stunning effort in the last essay to appropriate and deploy language as power in order to marginalize and exclude from historical inquiry all but the narrowest range of discourse traditions. I will take up each of those issues in turn.