Fifty Years of American Education
- Author:
Ernest Carroll Moore. Boston: Ginn
and Co., 1917. Pp. 96.
“In the year 1867,” say the publishers in their preface, “Edward Ginn took desk room in a modest Boston office and so began the business which has for many years been conducted under the firm name of Ginn and Company. When an individual or an organization reaches the half-century mark it seems fitting to signalize in some appropriate way that achievement. Casting about for a suitable anniversary memento of our own fifty years, we were struck by the remarkable growth and development of the school system of the United States during this period. It finally seemed to us that we could do no better than invite Dr Ernest C. Moore to sum up the educational progress of the United States since 1867. We are sure that Dr Moore’s admirable sketch of the history of education in this country for the period beginning in 1867 and ending in 1917 will be a welcome and useful contribution to our educational literature.” Dr Moore divides his book into three chapters: I. “We live in a period of change;” II. “Education at the end of the Civil War;” and III. “Some changes since the Civil War.” For the student of educational history, Dr Moore adds a brief bibliography.
His study “shows that though in 1867 a beginning had been made in most of the activities of education, nothing more than a beginning had been made. The development, therefore, of all the great present-day agencies of education? free graded elementary schools, intermediate schools, high schools, normal schools, the great universities, schools for the negro and the Indian, vocational schools, the great foundations, departments in universities for the study of education, statistical information concerning schools, new courses of study, a vast literature about teaching, well-nigh the whole present-day science of education (including school administration, child-study, educational psychology, the history and theory of education, school hygiene, and educational standards and measurements), and very nearly the entire machinery of school supervision (city superintendents, supervising principals, supervisors of subjects, and state inspectors and agents)?is a growth of the last fifty years. This statement refers to changes so colossal that the mere effort to think of them one after the other is stupefying, but we have not begun to enumerate them all. Our list makes no mention of school buildings, play and playgrounds, compulsory education, truant schools, juvenile courts, public libraries, and a score or more of agencies which have been developed to assist the school in its work. This whole accumulation of progress has come about so gradually that it is only when we set ourselves consciously to unravel its history that we become aware how truly marvelous it is.” A. T.
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