“All that has happened to you,” an English friend wrote Benjamin Franklin, “is also connected with the detail of the manners and situation of a rising people; and in this respect I do not think that the writings of Caesar and Tacitus can be more interesting to a true judge of human nature and society.” Indeed, the story of Franklin's life has mythic sweep and significance. The son of a soap boiler who stood before kings, a runaway apprentice printer who became minister plenipotentiary, Franklin had a career of constant change and discontinuity. His mobility—intellectual, geographical, social—would have staggered a less resilient man.

The early history of Indian education in the United States reveals an arresting segment of the continuing, current controversy between church and state over the use of tax funds for the support of religious schools. In the history reviewed below, church and state not only stood toe to toe but also “eyeball to eyeball.” The degree to which either stepped back or blinked is subject to an interpretation of the consequences which are not all in yet. This brief history of federal support of religious Indian schools is not only important in itself, but perhaps something is to be learned from the scars of battle by those involved in the struggle today.

Human motivation is at best difficult to fathom, especially since “complex” and “ambivalent” man is frequently conditioned by multiple factors and motivated by many and often disparate considerations. The task is further complicated when one attempts to assess the motivational factors that induce a person to act one way instead of another in a particular situation.

It was a cool, blustery, but beautiful, clear November 4, 1863, when the Union Steamer Arago lifted anchor and headed south out of New York Harbor. The deck was crowded with Yankee soldiers and some civilians, departing for the South Carolina Sea Islands, where the Union, two years earlier, had established the Department of the South. Listed among the passengers were William Francis Allen and his wife Mary, both teachers, hired to educate the abandoned sea island slaves. After graduating from Harvard in 1851, Allen served as a tutor in New York for three years, then journeyed to Europe where he studied language and the classics at Gottingen, Berlin, Rome, Naples, and Greece. In 1856 William returned to Boston where he accepted the position of associate principal at the English and Classical School at West Newton, Massachusetts. While working in this capacity, Allen met, courted, and married Mary Lambert and remained on at West Newton during the war's early years. Hoping to do something for the war effort, William and his wife hired on as instructors and were part of a new teachers group heading for the islands to do their part.

In W. G. Walker's article in the December, 1964, issue of this publication a number of statements relating to the so-called Northwest Ordinances of 1785 and 1787 were made. The Ordinances and the relevant subjects surrounding the Ordinances cause a great deal of confusion. This confusion is present in Walker's article as well as in a sizable segment of the literature dealing with the history of Education. Its diffuseness and variety is sufficient cause for the following commentary. It is the hope of this writer that the following remarks will eliminate some of the muddle surrounding the relationship that exists between the Northwest Ordinances; the contract of the Ohio Company of Associates with the Board of Treasury; and Manasseh Cutler's connection with the Ordinances, the contract, and the Ohio Company of Associates.

John Dewey's first academic appointment was to the department of philosophy at the University of Michigan where he taught from 1884-1894. Toward the end of that period he became engaged in an arduous re-examination of his whole philosophical outlook. One aspect of this process was a transition from a position of religious idealism to the social ethic of democracy. We wish to call attention to two papers in this early phase of Dewey's career which indicate this shift: “Christianity and Democracy” (1893) and “The Ethics of Democracy” (1888).

Venus and Adonis (ca. 1682), said to be the first complete English opera, includes an episode likely to be of more than aesthetic interest to historians of education. For, in addition to the musical and poetic charm of the opera as a whole, a scene in it called the “Cupids' Lesson” reflects some significant features of seventeenth century educational theory and practice. These are clothed in mythical guise, but the opera's first audience would have had no difficulty in recognizing correspondences between the fanciful Cupids' Lesson and what were common teaching-learning patterns. To identify and interpret these correspondences is the purpose of this essay.

The Department of Superintendence and the National Education Association met in Boston the week of Independence Day, 1893. At the Superintendence meeting, Colonel Francis Weyland Parker introduced the motion which established the Committee of Fifteen on Elementary Education. Parker hoped that the Committee of Fifteen would revise the elementary curriculum as the Committee of Ten was revising the high school curriculum.