For the group “firmly shaping the historical study of American education,” at the turn of this century, “the seminal book, marking ‘an epoch in the conception of educational history in English,’ was A History of Education written by … Thomas Davidson.”

It is common knowledge that the history of education is regarded by many who direct the destiny of the curriculum in teacher-education institutions as a very impractical, antiquarian, and uninteresting subject which has managed to hang on by sufferance and which is now either being fused with the more functional foundation fields, forced out entirely, or taught by scholars in general history. No attempt will be made to assess all these allegations; rather, it will be shown that the charge of impracticality has been grossly overstated. The following case study will illustrate how the historical method of research was recently applied to a problem in the very practical area of finance.

Historians and educators have frequently overlooked the significant contributions made to modern education by the French Revolution. It is accepted that the upheavals of 1789 and the years following caused profound changes in the political and social development of Western man—even in his economic, cultural, and religious development. Yet even such a distinguished and respected historian of education as Adolphe Meyer feels that in the field of education the French revolutionaries effected few significant changes. “What they actually accomplished beyond the robust exercise of their arms and larnyx was very little,” concludes Meyer.

Sociologists are becoming reacquainted with history. Some seek in broad patterns of national development an understanding of social growth and decay. Others detail processes of social change from the minute data of local history. Although these scholars draw their materials from the past, they do not work as social historians. Their primary aim is not to illuminate the periods or places that they study but to move beyond particular data, using them to test or generate propositions of more general applicability.

Much of this work centers on the development and stabilization of the national state, and American sociologists, especially, are keenly interested in the conditions for the emergence of durable political democracy. In research of this kind, one's attention falls naturally upon arrangements for schooling, for it is often argued that political stability, especially in democracies, rests on the extension of common education.

The first annual meeting of the Midwest History of Education Society was held May 6 and 7, 1966, at Loyola University of Chicago. Officers elected by the Society are: Kenneth Beasely, Northern Illinois University, President; Frank Klassen, Program Chairman; Gerald Gutek, Loyola University, Secretary- Treasurer.

When Clarence D. Kingsley collapsed and died on the stairs of Cincinnati's old Central Union Station, the last day of the year 1926, little note was paid him as an educator. He had been chairman of the N.E.A. Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education (henceforth the C.R.S.E.) and in that position the driving force behind the most significant educational document of the age, “The Cardinal Principles Report.” But this seemed all but forgotten. His hometown newspaper, The Syracuse Herald, identified him as a “school engineer” and the local Cincinnati paper called him a “consulting engineer” in the obituary columns.

Dr. Park has produced an annotated bibliography that no student or teacher of the history of education in the United States can afford to be without. The work has been planned with care and logic. Its arrangement is handy for reference and easy to follow, and it covers the subject quite well.