This book introduces six pedagogues from the German context to an English-speaking audience, and demonstrates their significant contribution to the field of alternative education. First and foremost, the authors emphasise the importance of understanding the history of education, to realise that in fact what we understand as normal today is by no means the only course history could have taken. The quest for alternative ways of schooling goes back to the late eighteenth century, where educational thinkers advocated various approaches in the face of rapid societal change. The chosen six thinkers are not well known in the English-speaking scientific community, and some are even infrequently cited in the German context. In offering an historic and systematic introduction to concepts that can frame Alternative Education in different ways, this book allows the reader to critically reevaluate present forms of education by using the past as a mirror.  

Ralf Koerrenz is Professor in Historical Pedagogy and Global Education at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany. His research interests include the philosophy of education, religious education and the theory and practice of New Education. 
Sebastian Engelmannis a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Education Sciences at the University of Tübingen, Germany. 

Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. Joachim Heinrich Campe and the Pedagogical Anthropology.- Chapter 3. Bernhard Heinrich Blasches and the Romantic Concept of Nature Education.- Chapter 4. Helene Lange, Emancipation and Education for All.- Chapter 5. Heinrich Scharrelmann and the Art of Storytelling.- Chapter 6. Bernhard Hell and the Protestant School Community.- Chapter 7. Gertrud Bäumer, Deconstructing Gender and Discussing Social Work.