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OF EDUCATION

BY

FRANK PIERREPONT GRAVES

(PH.D., COLUMBIA)

DEAN OF THE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION AND PROFESSOR

OF THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1917

All rights reserved

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677 1917

ΤΟ

WILLIAM OXLEY THOMPSON, LL.D.

PRESIDENT OF THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

WITH APPRECIATIVE MEMORIES OF SIX PLEASANT YEARS OF ASSOCIATION

416051

PREFACE

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,

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