Symposium: Educational Reconstruction “By the Dawn’s Early Light”:

Using a historical approach, Sobe examines the myths and ideals that have underlain U.S. educational initiatives in postconflict nations abroad. Building on its tradition of modern schooling designed to advance civic and social order, America has sought to extend its political and cultural values overseas through educational reforms in postconflict countries. Sobe tracks the development of these reform efforts, highlighting their significance as symbols of American forms of government and civic life and a belief in social transformation through education. Sobe draws upon this history to caution that educational reforms alone rarely accomplish social transformation, and that future U.S. initiatives must honor local and shared cultural values above American ideals.

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Noah W. Sobe is an assistant professor of cultural and educational studies at Loyola University Chicago, where he specializes in the history of education and comparative and international education. His work focuses on the international circulation of educational policies, practices, and theories and has appeared in journals such as Paedagogica Historica, Educational Theory, and European Education. He is the author of the book Provincializing the Worldly Citizen: Yugoslav Student and Teacher Travel and Slavic Cosmopolitanism in the Interwar Era (2008) and the editor of a forthcoming edited collection titled American Post-Conflict Educational Reform: From the Spanish-American War to Iraq.