In the introduction to this volume, Eileen Tamura, Caroline Eick, and Roland Sintos Coloma state that their essays “are followed by responses by educational historians, some of whom have delved into theory in their historical works, while others have not.” I would describe myself as someone who has questioned the role of theory since I first began studying educational history several decades ago, who has attempted to use theory, and who, thus, warmly welcomes this discussion.

Historians need social theories to conduct their research whether they are acknowledged or not. Positivist social theories underpinned the professionalization of the writing of history as well as the establishment of the social sciences as “disciplines,” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. August Comte's “science of society” and theories of evolution were attractive to U.S. historians and other researchers dealing with rapid social and economic changes taking place under the banner of American and Western “progress.” Progressive and “pragmatic” approaches were taken in dealing with the social wreckage created by the expanding industrialization, increasing urbanization, and huge influx of southern and eastern European immigrants. In addition, social theories and philosophical trends also served as the ideological underpinning for historians writing about the “white man's burden” that was said to have brought European and American “civilization” to the indigenous peoples in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and the islands of the Pacific who came to be dominated by military might with collaboration from local elites.