In many institutions, the rules that matter most are never officially stated. Nobody tells a male primary school teacher to think twice before physically comforting an upset child. Nobody writes into a curriculum that certain topics are off-limits. And yet everyone seems to know. Dr Suzanne O’Keeffe at Maynooth University argues that this kind of unspoken order is a force that shapes knowledge, constrains behaviour, and deserves to be properly interrogated.

The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision is often remembered as a cornerstone of American progress, a ruling that outlawed racial segregation in public schools and redefined the nation’s educational landscape. But how did this historic shift feel to the students who lived through it? Charlotte Parham and Louis Nadelson at the University of Central Arkansas set out to answer that question through in-depth interviews with African Americans who attended segregated schools and later integrated ones. Their findings offer a nuanced look at the transition – one that highlights both the aspirations of desegregation and the challenges that followed.