GENERAL BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY ここ ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA, U.S. A. AUTHOR'S PREFACE EDUCATION is the effort of society to impress its ideals upon the thought and activity of the young. It is, therefore, both a result and a cause: a result, because every type of civilization produces its own peculiar type of education; a cause, in that it tends to maintain and promote the form of social life in which it originated. It conserves the mental achievements of the past, and progresses with the expanding life of nations and the race. The general progress of civilization is from small and simple organizations of men among whom there is but little differentiation of thought and occupation, but little freedom of the individual, to large national unities which protect and foster the individual in the enjoyment of almost unlimited scope for the development of his personal endowments. A clan is at one end of the line, a great republic at the other. The student will do well to keep this fact in mind, however irregular the progress of humanity has been, and carefully note the changing character of progressive peoples and the changing relationship between social bodies and the individual. The intelligent study of the educational systems of nations and other social units must necessarily be based upon a fair knowledge of the other phases of their development. The student should familiarize himself with the principal physical and human factors that have contributed to the evolution of their peculiar genius and with the facts that reveal it, and should especially endeavor to discover their causal relationships. Until he begins to recognize these, he is still but in the primary stages of historical study. This volume is intended to be neither an outline of the philosophy of educational development nor a congeries of educational facts however interesting, but such a presentation of the most important events in the history of education as shall keep constantly before the student's mind the true character of its evolution, and, particularly, enable him to understand the genesis and nature of existing institutions, principles, and methods. There is given no account of education among primitive tribes, for that is not education in the accepted sense of the term. Among such tribes there is little more than traditional training in the manufacture and use of a few crude household utensils, a few simple implements for war and the chase, and informal instruction in superstitious beliefs and practices that fill the lives of learners with fear and wonder. The Chinese and Persians have contributed nothing, and the Hindus but little, to the development of Western education, yet their educational systems are described as comprehensively as possible in so brief a work. The reason for this is that the systems are very interesting, and that their development was so simple that the understanding of them is easy and serves as a helpful introduction to the study of the advanced and complicated systems of the more progressive peoples. To the teacher the study of the history of education brings three valuable results. It widens his professional horizon and makes him feel the dignity of his calling. It gives him true pedagogic perspective and enables him to estimate accurately the value of courses of study and methods of teaching. It inspires him, for the great teachers with whom it makes him acquainted were sacrificial high priests who mediated to the world its higher life, and they themselves were the sacrifices. |