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The present volume, as well as the companion volume of Readings, arose out of a practical situation. Twenty-two years ago, on entering Stanford University as a Professor of Education and being given the history of the subject to teach, I found it necessary, almost from the first, to begin the construction of a Syllabus of Lectures which would permit of my teaching the subject more as a phase of the history of the rise and progress of our Western civilization than would any existing text. Through such a study it is possible to give, better than by any other means, that vision of world progress which throws such a flood of light over all our educational efforts. The Syllabus grew, was made to include detailed citations to historical literature, and in 1902 was published in book form. In 1905 a second and an enlarged edition was issued, [1] and these volumes for a time formed the basis for classwork and reading in a number of institutions, and, though now out of print, may still be found in many libraries. At the same time I began the collection of a series of short, illustrative sources for my students to read.

It had been my intention, after the publication of the second edition of the Syllabus, to expand the outline into a Text Book which would embody my ideas as to what university students should be given as to the history of the work in which they were engaged. I felt then, and still feel, that the history of education, properly conceived and presented, should occupy an important place in the training of an educational leader. Two things now happened which for some time turned me aside from my original purpose. The first was the publication, late in 1905, of Paul Monroe's very comprehensive and scholarly Text Book in the History of Education, and the second was that, with the expansion of the work in education in the university with which I was connected, and the addition of new men to the department, the general history of education was for a time turned over to another to teach. I then began, instead, the development of that introductory course in education, dealing entirely with American educational history and problems, out of which grew my Public Education in the United States.

The second half of the academic year 1910–11 I acted as visiting Lecturer on the History of Education at both Harvard University and Radcliffe College, and while serving in this capacity I began work on what has finally evolved into the present volume, together with the accompanying book of illustrative Readings. Other duties, and a deep interest in problems of school administration, largely engaged my energies and writing time until some three years ago, when, in rearranging courses at the university, it seemed desirable that I should again take over the instruction in the general history of education. Since then I have pushed through, as rapidly as conditions would permit, the organization of the parallel book of sources and documents, and the present volume of text.

In doing so I have not tried to prepare another history of educational theories. Of such we already have a sufficient number. Instead, I have tried to prepare a history of the progress and practice and organization of education itself, and to give to such a history its proper setting as a phase of the history of the development and spread of our Western civilization. I have especially tried to present such a picture of the rise, struggle for existence, growth, and recent great expansion of the idea of the improvability of the race and the elevation and emancipation of the individual through education as would be most illuminating and useful to students of the subject. To this end I have traced the great forward steps in the emancipation of the intellect of man, and the efforts to perpetuate the progress made through the organization of educational institutions to pass on to others what had been attained. I have also tried to give a proper setting to the great historic forces which have shaped and moulded human progress, and have made the evolution of modern state school systems and the world-wide spread of Western civilization both possible and inevitable.

To this end I have tried to hold to the main lines of the story, and have in consequence omitted reference to many theorists and reformers and events and schools which doubtless were important in their land and time, but the influence of which on the main current of educational progress was, after all, but small. For such omission I have no apology to make. In their place I have introduced a record of world events and forces, not included in the usual history of education, which to me seem important as having contributed materially to the shaping and directing of intellectual and educational progress. While in the treatment major emphasis has been given to modern times, I have nevertheless tried to show how all modern education has been after all a development, a culmination, a flowering-out of forces and impulses which go far back in history for their origin. In a civilization such as we of to-day enjoy, with roots so deeply embedded in the past as is ours, any adequate understanding of world practices and of present-day world problems in education calls for some tracing of development to give proper background and perspective. The rise of modern state school systems, the variations in types found to-day in different lands, the new conceptions of the educational purpose, the rise of science study, the new functions which the school has recently assumed, the world- wide sweep of modern educational ideas, the rise of many entirely new types of schools and training within the past century—these and many other features of modern educational practice in progressive nations are better understood if viewed in the light of their proper historical setting. Standing as we are to-day on the threshold of a new era, and with a strong tendency manifest to look only to the future and to ignore the past, the need for sound educational perspective on the part of the leaders in both school and state is given new emphasis.

To give greater concreteness to the presentation, maps, diagrams, and pictures, as commonly found in standard historical works, have been used to an extent not before employed in writings on the history of education. To give still greater concreteness to the presentation I have built up a parallel volume of Readings, containing a large collection of illustrative source material designed to back up the historical record of educational development and progress as presented in this volume. The selections have been fully cross-referenced (R. 129; R. 176; etc.) in the pages of the Text. Depending, as I have, so largely on the companion volume for the necessary supplemental readings, I have reduced the chapter bibliographies to a very few of the most valuable and most commonly found references. To add to the teaching value of the book there has been appended to each chapter a series of questions for discussion, bearing on the Text, and another series of questions bearing on the Readings to be found in the companion volume. In this form it is hoped that the Text will be found good in teaching organization; that the treatment may prove to be of such practical value that it will contribute materially to relieve the history of education from much of the criticism which the devotion in the past to the history of educational theory has brought upon it; and that the two volumes which have been prepared may be of real service in restoring the subject to the position of importance it deserves to hold, for mature students of educational practice, as the interpreter of world progress as expressed in one of its highest creative forms.

ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY Stanford University, Cal. September 4, 1920