The History Of Education | Page 2

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

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: THE SOURCES OF OUR CIVILIZATION


PART I THE ANCIENT WORLD
FOUNDATION ELEMENTS OF OUR WESTERN