This fascinating historical study traces the rise and fall of the theory of recapitulation and its enduring influence on American education. The theory of recapitulation was pervasive in the social sciences at the turn of the twentieth century when early progressive educators uncritically adopted its basic tenets. Inherently ethnocentric and racist, the theory pointed to the West as the developmental endpoint of history and depicted people of color as ontologically less developed than their white counterparts. Building on cutting-edge scholarship, this is the first major study to trace the racial worldviews of key progressive thinkers, such as Colonel Francis W. Parker, John Dewey, Charles Judd, William Bagley, and many others.