having contributed materially to the shaping and directing of intellectual
and educational progress. While in the treatment major emphasis has been
given to modern times, I have nevertheless tried to show how all modern
education has been after all a development, a culmination, a flowering-out
of forces and impulses which go far back in history for their origin. In a
civilization such as we of to-day enjoy, with roots so deeply embedded in
the past as is ours, any adequate understanding of world practices and of
present-day world problems in education calls for some tracing of
development to give proper background and perspective. The rise of modern
state school systems, the variations in types found to-day in different
lands, the new conceptions of the educational purpose, the rise of science
study, the new functions which the school has recently assumed, the world-
wide sweep of modern educational ideas, the rise of many entirely new
types of schools and training within the past century--these and many
other features of modern educational practice in progressive nations are
better understood if viewed in the light of their proper historical
setting. Standing as we are to-day on the threshold of a new era, and with
a strong tendency manifest to look only to the future and to ignore the
past, the need for sound educational perspective on the part of the
leaders in both school and state is given new emphasis.

To give greater concreteness to the presentation, maps, diagrams, and
pictures, as commonly found in standard historical works, have been used
to an extent not before employed in writings on the history of education.
To give still greater concreteness to the presentation I have built up a
parallel volume of _Readings_, containing a large collection of
illustrative source material designed to back up the historical record of
educational development and progress as presented in this volume. The
selections have been fully cross-referenced (R. 129; R. 176; etc.) in the
pages of the Text. Depending, as I have, so largely on the companion