A student's history of education

BOOKS ON THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION By Dean Frank P. Graves A History of Education in Three Volumes Vol. I. Before the Middle Ages Vol. II. During the Middle Ages and the Transition to Modern Times Vol. III. In Modern Times —— Great Educators of Three Centuries Peter Ramus and the Educational Reformation of the Sixteenth Century A Student’s History of Education
Copyright, 1915, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. —— Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1915. Norwood Press: Berwick & Smith Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
TO WILLIAM OXLEY THOMPSON, LL.D. PRESIDENT OF THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY WITH APPRECIATIVE MEMORIES OF SIX PLEASANT YEARS OF ASSOCIATION
There is a growing conviction among those engaged in training teachers that the History of Education must justify itself. It is believed that, if this subject is to contribute to the professional equipment of the teacher, its material must be selected with reference to his specific needs. Antiquarian interests and encyclopædic completeness are alluring and may in their place prove praiseworthy and valuable, but they do not in themselves supply any definite demand in the training of teachers. The greatest services that the History of Education can perform for the teacher are to impel him to analyze his problems more completely and to throw light upon the school practices with which he is himself concerned. By presenting a series of clear-cut views of past conditions, often in marked contrast to his own, it should make him conscious that the present educational situation has to a large degree been traditionally received, and it should at the same time especially help him to understand the origin and significance of current practices.
In this way a study of the History of Education will disrupt the teacher’s complacent acceptance of the present, and will enable him to reconstruct his ideas in the light of the peculiar conditions out of which the education of his times has sprung. Whenever historical records do not assist in such an analysis and synthesis of present day problems, they may be frankly dismissed from discussion. This conception of the subject, I have myself, with much reluctance, come to accept. My own regard for the classics, philosophy, and general history as college disciplines has caused me to view with apprehension any disposition to curtail their scope. It now seems clear, however, that the modern tendency to emphasize the functional aspects of the History of Education is both necessary and wise. The present work, therefore, is not a mere condensation of my History of Education in Three Volumes , but has been very largely re-written from the new angle.