John E. Talbott

The History of Education
Author(s): John E. Talbott

Source: Daedalus, Vol. 100, No. 1, Historical Studies Today (Winter, 1971), pp. 133-150
Published by: MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences
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JOHN E. TALBOTT
have new claims in the

Historians begun to stake history of educa
tion. Over the past decade a number of pioneering books and arti
cles have appeared on subjects whose long neglect
now seems
quite
remarkable?from the Spanish universities under the Habsburgs to
childrearing in colonial America. Despite the great diver

practices
sity of themes and problems with which these studies are concerned,
they share a similarity of approach. Nearly all seek, to use Bernard
"to see education in its elaborate, intricate involve
Bailyn's phrase,
ments with the rest of This has new per
society."1 approach opened
spectives in a field historians had long ignored.
Not that the history of education has been neglected. The bibli
in the field is enormous. But it is con
ography lopsided, mainly
cerned with "house history" and the ideas of reformers.
pedagogical
Countless histories of individual schools and universities have been
published, describing aims, organization, faculty, curricula, finances,
student life, and so forth; histories of pedagogical ideas have sur
veyed the views of theorists from Plato To
leading through Dewey.
be sure, great monuments of historical stand forth in the
scholarship
field; such studies as Hastings Rashdall's The Universities of Europe
in the Middle
Ages and Werner W. Jaeger s Paideia are not likely
soon to be
surpassed.
But to the contemporary historian much of the older literature
seems in bulk but insubstantial, seldom
inadequate?impressive
addressed to the sorts of questions with which historical
scholarship
is now concerned. A good share of the institutional
history has been
the work of antiquaries and devoted alumni, who uncovered much
valuable information but rarely sought to interpret it.With the pro
fessionalization of and the establishment of teachers'
schoolteaching
colleges educational became a
history nearly separate discipline,
isolated from the mainstream of historical study. The educationists
133
DAEDALUS
who founded and sustained these institutions sought to give pro

schoolteachers a historical sense of mission, a
spective certainly
not
unworthy aim. But in the hands of some of them educational
became a weapon a
history against adversaries living and dead,
vindication of their own ideas and efforts in the struggle for public
in the hands of others it became a chronicle, a
schooling; whiggish
tour of the in search of the antecedents of con
quick guided past
temporary educational institutions.
If historians were frequently heard to lament the inadequacies
of traditional approaches to the were slow
history of education, they
to do about them. Only after the Second World War, when
anything
educational issues began to loom larger in the public consciousness,
did they turn in any numbers to the subject. The
deepening crisis in
education, charted in issues of this journal, from the neutral-sound
ing "The Contemporary University: U.S.A." of 1964, to "The Em
battled University" of 1970, is likely to accelerate this trend.
in the the
Trends professional study of history also encouraged
new interest. Chief among these, perhaps, was what might be called
an concern for the interrelatedness of past experience,
increasing
on the social
brought by pervasive influence of history, the emphasis
on to the past, and the collapse of the
interdisciplinary approaches
internal boundaries that once delineated "areas" of historical study.
Historians began to recognize that education touches upon nearly
all aspects of a particular society. The historical study of education
came to be seen not as an end in itself but as a and
only promising
hitherto neglected avenue of to an extremely broad range
approach
of problems.
New approaches to the history of education differ from the old
in now to
primarily the attention being given the interplay between
education and society. But this is a very great difference indeed.
What was once a narrow specialty is now seen to have such broad
ramifications that it has become hopelessly ill-defined. For if the role
of education in the historical process is to be understood, attention
must be paid to the external influences that shape the educational
a to the ways in which these
arrangements society has made;
external influences each other at the same time
impinge upon they
are and to the ways in which education itself
acting upon education;
influences the society. The social composition of an elite educational
institution, for example, is the consequence of the interaction of
economic factors, of patterns of social stratification, of the conscious
political decisions of the established authorities, and so forth.
134
It is one thing, however, to recognize all the influences that need

to be taken into account in the study of a in the
particular problem
of education. It is another to determine the rela
history quite thing
tive weight that is to be assigned each of them, especially over long
periods of
time. Research is at an early stage, and has not moved far
an enumeration of influences. In some important areas, such
beyond
as the
study of literacy in pre- and early industrial societies, the
of raw data has scarcely statis
collection begun; only recently have
tics long available in manuscript form been and useful
published
sources rescued from In advanced industrial
manuscript neglect.2
societies, where statistics on literacy abound, nearly the entire adult
population is formally literate. But these figures conceal the func
tional illiteracy that is one of the consequences of technological
and about which very little is now known. The questions
change,
that need to be asked in the new educational are
history only begin
to be clarified. models for dealing with these ques
ning Conceptual
tions have yet to be devised; the methodological controversies that
have enlivened more areas of to take
developed study have yet
place.
Thus the history of education is an area of study whose
potential
ities are only beginning to be
exploited and the inchoate state in
which it now exists is what makes it attractive. So varied
precisely
are the now to the of education, so
purposes brought history patchy
is the present state of that the field does not lend itself
knowledge,
to systematic treatment. Nevertheless, an idea of present concerns
can be
and problems conveyed by tugging at a few strands in the
network of relationships that bind education to society.
Conventional histories of education are filled with generalizations

about relationships between education and social structure. It has
been a common practice, for example, to attach a class label to an
educational is then held to "needs"
institution, which respond to the
or "demands" of a social class. Who determines these
particular
needs, or whether, if such needs exist, the institution in fact re
sponds to them, is left unclear. Moreover, such Static descriptive
statements, based on implicit assumptions about how the class sys
tem works,
explain very little about the dynamics of the interaction
between education and the structure of society. Nor do
they allow
for the possibility that cultural values and styles of education once
135
DAEDALUS
presumably moored to a
particular social class may drift loose from
that class and become the common property of an entire society?in
which case are not
particularly amenable to class analysis ex
they
cept in its crudest forms. It is hard to see how an Ameri
describing
can education as "middle class" much about
university explains very
either the American or American To be sure,
university society.
education and social class have been, and continue to be, intimately
connected. But the of the historical connections between
complexity
them has only begun to receive the carefully nuanced analysis it
One would to find a number of aristocrats'
requires.3 expect large
sons in an institution labeled "aristocratic." But one would also find
some were not the sons of aristocrats. Who were
people who they?
Furthermore, one also find aristocrats' sons in
might fairly large
numbers in institutions not associated with the aristoc
traditionally
racy. What were there? Detailed research has only
they doing
on who received the education a
recently begun actually particular
society has offered, how this has and what the causes and
changed,
consequences of change have been.4
With more attention being paid to who actually got educated,
historians are now to see that between
beginning relationships
education and social structure have often been different from what
the providers of education intended. It is roughly true that, until
very recently, the structure of education in most European countries
had the effect of reinforcing class distinctions and reducing the flow
of social mobility?and was often intentionally designed to do so.
Different social classes received different kinds of education in dif
ferent schools; the upper levels of education were the preserve of
the upper classes, a means of maintaining their children in estab
lished social positions and of bolstering their own political and
social authority. But attempts to make patterns of education con
form to the pattern of society have often been frustrated, both by
forces the established authorities have been unable to control and
in other sectors
of society which they have promoted
by changes
themselves. One of the latter is an expansion of job oppor
example
tunities. Lawrence Stone has shown that in early modern England,
economic and the proliferation of the bureaucracy of the
growth
state an educational "So was the boom
triggered expansion: great
. . . that all classes above a certain level took their con
part,"5?a
to the ruling class of a
sequence not entirely welcome highly strati
fied society. Other forces, of which demographic is one, need
change
to be identified and assessed.6
136
Patterns of social stratification affect the structure of education.

But educational also turn back upon the structure
arrangements
of society and exert their own influences upon it: the relationship
between education and social stratification is a two-way street. This
process can be seen at work in the history of European secondary
education. Elitist patterns that took shape during the sixteenth and
sent their
seventeenth centuries, when the hereditary ruling classes
sons to schools in increasing numbers, persisted well into
secondary
modern times. Recent studies of the English public school have ad
dressed themselves to some of the consequences of this persistence.
Among the most important and far-reaching of these consequences

was the of the values and attitudes?and therefore the
preservation
social ascendancy?of the aristocracy, in a fully industrialized and
formally democratic society.7
Research into who actually got educated will lend a good deal
more to statements about the historical role of education in
precision
the promotion of social mobility and in the maintenance of estab
lished social positions. Until recently, these have possessed all the
rigor of the notorious generalizations about the rising middle classes.

Such research should shed light on changes and continuities in the
recruitment of elites, matters of particular concern to social and
historians. What has been the role of education in this
political
in the movement away from a in which status
process, long society
was based on birth to a society in which status is increasingly based
on achievement? What have been the social and conse
political
quences of the of the career open to talent,
paradoxical principle
which holds that everyone should have an equal chance to become
were traditional elites able to adjust them
unequal? To what extent
selves to the pressures for meritocratic standards of recruitment
which emerged from the economic and political revolutions of the
eighteenth century? To what extent did the implementation of such
standards truly open the way for new men? For the upper levels of
education, which prepared their clientele for elite positions, abun
dant evidence is available on the social of students over
origins long
periods of time. University are
matriculation registers, for example,
to be
waiting tapped.
But it is not enough simply to describe with greater precision the
role of education in the of social (or in the main
promotion mobility
tenance of established social positions). It also needs to be asked
what the consequences of this form of mobility have been, what it
has meant to the individuals who it and the societies in
experienced
137
DAEDALUS
which they lived. Such qualitative questions may be exceedingly

difficult to answer.
The education of the lower classes presents the historian with
difficult What influences have ex
equally problems. primary schools
erted on the values and attitudes of their clientele? Recent studies
of elite institutions offer persuasive evidence of the ways in which
education acts upon social structure through the medium of values
and attitudes. But for lower levels of education, the kinds of literary
evidence that permit one to generalize about the gentlemanly life
of the or the ethos of the
style public school, bourgeois lyc?e, rarely
exist. So far, historical studies of the impact of popular education
on values and attitudes have been mainly concerned with such
public issues as the promotion of nationalism and nation building?

as in the case of the Third French whose founders quite
Republic,
undertook a reform and extension of a state
consciously sweeping
of education in order to a new
supported system primary provide
with little ms known about the
regime republicans. Comparatively
role of the school in shaping attitudes toward more ostensibly private
matters, such as sex, or toward such divisive questions as social class.
Analysis of the content of textbooks would at least suggest what

attitudes the authorities sought to inculcate, the to
though degree
which they succeeded is quite another question.8
Attention to the social that educational
consequences arrange
ments have
produced, apart from what
designers their
intended,
should help put to rest the largely speculative leaps of the kind
which assume an exact
correspondence between the structure of a
society and the structure of its education. Indeed, given the extraor
dinarily high incidence of anachronistic features that educational
arrangements exhibit ( such as the of classical studies in
persistence
the West), it is hard to see how such a direct could
correspondence
ever have been drawn. Instead, historical between edu
relationships
cation and social structure, as one sociologist has perceptively re
marked, "are various, involve structural discontinuities and are sin
in symmetry."9
gularly lacking
Nevertheless, the sons of the rich are usually better educated (or
more time in school) than the sons of the poor. As soon as
spend
or
education began to confer social, economic, political benefits, the
of who should be educated became a source of bitter con
question
troversy. Some of the involvements of education in politics have
received considerable attention: the intervention of the state in the
provision of popular education has been one traditional area of con
138
cern. State intervention followed on centuries of debate about the

wisdom of providing widespread education; seldom has a
question
been agonized over so long and settled so swiftly. The arguments for
and against popular education, the activities of certain reform
groups, the legislative aspects of reform, the church-state struggle,
have all been treated in a number of studies. These questions fall
within the traditional preoccupations of political history. But a vast
amount of territory remains to be explored, and older interpretations
need to be reexamined.
Older studies, for example, regarded the extension of popular
education as an aspect of the of democratization, a neces
process
sary consequence of the implications of liberal political philosophy.
More recent work has held that the decisive motive in the drive for
was social control of the lower classes in an indus
public schooling
trializing and urbanizing society.10
But both interpretations are concerned with the attitudes
mainly
of the upper-class of stress
proponents widespread schooling; they
the intentions of the reformers, not the consequences of the reforms.
Very little is known about the attitudes toward education of the
whom the upper classes quarreled over. education
people Popular
needs to be studied "from below," and several works have opened
the way. E. P. Thompson, for example, has shown how an eagerness
for an enthusiasm for the printed word were important
learning and
elements in the radical culture of the class.11 In
English working
is now the confines of the
quiry moving beyond politically-con
scious elements of that class. What were the attitudes toward edu
cation of the unskilled and illiterate laborers who poured into the
factories with their wives and children in the early stages of indus
trialization? Literary evidence is likely to yield very few answers;
such evidence as does exist is to be testimony from men who
likely
were not themselves workers. An of this kind must rely
investigation
on indirect evidence: census records, school attendance records, the
reports of inspectors, and so forth; new methods must be
factory
added to those already devised for with the inarticulate.
dealing
Traditional governing elites, from their point of view, at least,
had reason to fear the possible consequences of widespread literacy.
To be sure, there existed conservative arguments in support of
instruction. In Protestant
popular countries, Christian duty seemed
to require that the people be enabled to read the Bible; the idea
that popular was one more means of the
literacy teaching lowly
respect for their betters and resignation to their lot bolstered the
139
DAEDALUS
moral and in its favor. But once people had

religious arguments
been to read, it was nearly impossible to control what they
taught
read, without resort to the measures which only
extraordinary
have been willing, or able, to under
twentieth-century dictatorships
take. Events of our own times provide abundant evidence that edu
cation can influence political behavior and the structure of politics
in ways that the established authorities no means intend. This
by
aspect of the between politics and education offers
relationship
many promising lines of historical inquiry.
In recent studies of revolution, for example, attention has been
to the conditions which produce that ubiquitous revolutionary
given
intellectual. An oversupply of overeducated and
figure, the alienated
men seems to be a common of countries in
underemployed plight
the early stages of development.12 These conditions existed in both
and eighteenth-century France. In
seventeenth-century England
both countries an of enrollments at the upper levels of
expansion
education produced too many educated men seeking too few places,
frustrated in their ambitions and ready to turn against a society that
had no use for their talents. All that was needed to create an ex
situation for the established authorities was an
tremely dangerous
which enabled to be elevated into op
ideology personal grievances
to the regime: Puritanism in the case of England; a radical
position
version of the Enlightenment in the case of France.
If historians have begun to hammer out answers to important
the between education and politics,
questions concerning relationship
in the equally significant area of education's links with the economy
are their work. Economists since Adam Smith
they just beginning
have been interested in the relationship of education to the economy,
and particularly to economic in the last decade the
development;
economics of education has become a vigorous But
subdiscipline.
historians have their own contribution to make, especially since the
of the ways in which education has influenced eco
vexing question
nomic growth demands historical treatment. As David McClelland
has put it, "Did increases in educational investment precede rapid
rates of economic or were increases in wealth fol
growth, rapid
lowed by increased on education? Or did both occur
spending
These are the critical questions of social dynamics that
together?
cry out for an answer."14 Historians are to attempt to
just starting
break the vicious circle in which such questions have been en
closed.
itself
Take, for example, the problem of literacy?a topic which
140
is only beginning to be systematically. R. S. Schofield

investigated
has remarked, is considered to be a necessary pre
"Today literacy
condition for economic but the historian might well
development;
ask himself whether this was so in England at the end of the eigh
teenth century."15 It would be to argue that the relatively
plausible
rate of that had in had much
high literacy long prevailed England
to do with that the first industrial power. But on
country's becoming
closer examination it is far from clear how
literacy and schooling
have contributed to rapid growth, in the early stages. In
especially
the first decades of industrialization, the factory system put no
premium on even low-level intellectual skills. Whatever relation
ships existed between widespread and industrial
literacy early
must have been In one of the best
development quite roundabout.
treatments of this
problem, Ronald Dore has shown that what was
actually learned in school mattered less than the discipline involved
in at all:
learning anything
But what does widespread
literacy do for a developing country? At the
very least it constitutes a training in being trained. The man who has in
childhood submitted to some process of
disciplined and conscious learning
is more
likely to respond to further training, be it in a conscript army, in
a
factory, or at lectures arranged by his village agricultural association.
And such training can be more precise and efficient, and more
nationally
standardized, if the written word can be used to supplement the spoken.16
his attention to a level of

Directing higher training, David
Landes has recently argued that the links between technical and
scientific education on the one hand and economic on
development
the other are much more direct than the links between and
literacy
development.17 Certainly, the prima facie evidence in the classic
comparison between the sluggishness of the British and the explo
siveness of the German economies in the late nineteenth century,
when industrial processes came to depend upon scien
increasingly
tific innovation, would appear to support Landes's case: German
scientific education was to British, and Ger
undoubtedly superior
man were more to hire and to heed the
entrepreneurs willing
advice of graduates of scientific and technical institutes than were
their British counterparts. But too little is now known about scien
tific education in the industrial age; historians of science have so far
more attention to the
given early modern period. When work in
progress on scientific education in later times it well
appears, may
even if it does not the picture
complicate, substantially modify,
Landes
presents.18
141
DAEDALUS
Such studies, which define education as a process that takes

place
in
specialized institutions, are
likely to remain at the center of at
tention in historical writing. Nevertheless, any definition of educa
tion must be broad enough to include
learning experiences which
take place outside the framework of formal institutions, particularly
within the family, whose role in the educational process remains of
But research on the now at
primary importance. historical family is
a little is known, for example, about the
rudimentary stage. Very
ways in which for education after the earliest years
responsibility
of childhood shifted over a period of centuries, from the family to
specialized institutions, such as the apprenticeship system and

schools. Nor have we discovered much about the interaction be
tween in the structure of the and in the
changes family changes
structure of education, or about how these have differed
changes
from class to class and among various levels of education. Did
in family structure make formal
educational institutions
changes
agencies of socialization, or did pressures
increasingly important
outside the family, from government or from social and
religious
institutions, provide the impetus for this shift in educational respon
sibilities? What have been the social and psychological consequences
of these changes? How has submission to the discipline of the school
altered the experience of childhood and affected patterns of adult
behavior? Only in the last decade have such questions to
begun
receive the attention they deserve.19
II
If the exploration of "the involvements of education with the rest

of society" is the new credo, it is a credo not without its own ambi
and difficulties. The can be
interpreted in a variety
guities phrase
of ways. It has been employed in a specific critical sense, to suggest
the inadequacies of the history of education, old style, without
to down a program for the new. It has been used
meaning lay
to dress up of educational
superficially, straightforward descriptions
institutions hardly different from older institutional histories.
More significantly, the phrase also lends itself to a quasi-function
alist interpretation which may distort the role of education in the
historical process. This interpretation assumes that which
everything
or fulfills the needs of
may be identified with education responds to
an educational system is merely a re
society; that the structure of
flection of the class structure; that the pace of change in education
142
is the pace of other changes in

roughly equal to, indeed responds to,
the larger society. First of all, it is never easy to decide what consti
tutes "society," the abstract entity to which education responds.
Moreover, the functionalist view runs afoul of empirical evidence
which that the pace of in education has often been
suggests change
at variance with the pace of social change. And this view is
widely
to allow for the anomalies and anachronisms so fre
hard-pressed
found in educational systems. The relationship between
quently
in an educational system and changes in the society of which
change
it is a part is certainly one of the most important and least under
stood problems the historian of education. An explana
confronting
tory model which could be applied to this relationship would be an
extremely useful tool, but for all its compelling simplicity?indeed,
because of it?the functionalist approach is inadequate.20
The new credo may also be interpreted too broadly. An undis
concern with between education and
criminating relationships
can lead to an on certain
society emphasis aspects of the role of
education in the historical process at the expense of others. If the
historical study of education is too with relationships
preoccupied
and interconnections, it may certain internal to the
slight problems
process of education itself, problems which may not be very
in terms of external
satisfactorily explained influences. Along with
our to understand how the influences educa
attempts larger society
tion, perhaps we need to understand the ways it does not.
For this very reason the study of educational institutions re
mains what is needed is institutional in a
important?but history
new The new studies should indeed take into account the
key.
context in which are located,
larger social educational institutions
but their viewpoints should be from the inside looking out. Only
in this way are we as the conse
likely to understand such matters
quences of educational reform as
opposed to the intentions of re
formers, or such significant in intellectual as the
topics history
influence which institutional settings exercise on patterns of thought
and intellectual creativity.
Sheldon Rothblatt has attacked some of the
foregoing problems
in his recent book on nineteenth-century an
Cambridge, important
of the new institutional He argues that two
example history.21
traditions can be traced in the of
historiographical writing English
university history. The Whig interpretation assumed that university
as an extension
history could be written of political history: the
ancient universities were seen as tools of the
pliant Georgian
143
D DALUS
Establishment. Unable and unwilling to respond to the challenge of

industrialism, Oxbridge was forced into the modern world only by
pressure administered from the outside, in the form of investigations
by royal commissions. Of course the version applauded these

Whig
nineteenth-century changes.
A second historiographical tradition, the
class-conflict interpretation, holds that "the function of the uni
is to serve whichever social class is in view
versity power." This
reverses the Whig it does not the nineteenth
judgment: regard
as but as merely
century reforms progressive the transfer of control
of the universities from one class to another. Whatever their respec
tive merits, Rothblatt argues, both the and the class-conflict
Whig
versions have assumed much too close a fit between society's wishes
and the response of educational institutions to them. Especially in a
pluralistic society, "it is entirely possible that the and

university
society will be in subtle and complex states of disagreement as well
as with one another, that the direction of university
agreement
not be obvious, that surprises will occur."22
change may completely
Rothblatt elaborates this thesis by how the reform of
showing
Cambridge, though quickened by external pressures, sprang largely
from within the university, from the reformulation of donnish tradi
tions which had very little to do with either the needs of
presumed
an industrial or the "demands" of a middle class, and
society rising
which in fact set itself them.
against
The new institutional history is valuable not only
as an illustra
tion of the dangers in interpreting the new credo too broadly. There
are other reasons for institutional history amid the
good maintaining
central concerns of the history of education. Despite the wealth of
old-style studies of institutions, little is known about most of the
problems with which historians are now
contemporary engaged.
Modeled on the constitutional that dominated nineteenth
history
century scholarship, the older studies were with formal
preoccupied
structures; contemporary historical on the other hand,
writing,
as
might be characterized mainly concerned with processes, with
relationships of power and influence and social interaction that may
have been widely at variance with the dictates of formal institutional
structures. There are many histories of individual American univer
sities,for example, but there is not even a handful of trans-institu
tional, comparative studies of the caliber of Laurence R. Veysey's
The Emergence of the American University.2Z The standard history
of the French universities, published at the end of the nineteenth
century, is surely not the last word that can be written on the sub
144
insti
ject.24 And the histories of many other important educational
tutions remain to be written.
Moreover, the study of universities is an ideal theater for histo
rians interested in universities are
problems of the longue dur?e. For
one of the oldest forms of corporate in the West. Few
organization
institutions have been at once so fragile and so durable; few have
been altered so radically, both
internally and in their relationship to
the larger society, adding new purposes, others to
allowing lapse,
and managing to maintain some of those for which were
they orig
inally founded. And perhaps because their existence and purpose
an acute sense of the are rich reposi
presuppose past, universities
tories of information about themselves.
No scholar
working alone can expect to take full advantage of
these vast sources, nor can he exploit on his own that unique op
portunity for the investigation of long-term problems offered by
the university as a of The new institutional
subject study. history
demands collaborative efforts which will press into service the
methods of several disciplines as well as the
computer.
One such project, under the direction of Allan Bullock and T. H.
Aston, is concerned with the social history of Oxford University
from earliest times to the present. Another collaborative study,
a sta
tistical survey of universities in the West, is under way at the
Shelby
Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies of Princeton University.
A major
goal of
the project is to explore the cyclical patterns of
and contracting enrollments in Western universities, a
expanding
whose causes are not understood. Universities in
phenomenon
England, Spain, and Germany exhibited similar patterns of rising
enrollments in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, of
rapid decline in the mid-seventeenth century, and of
beginning
stagnation throughout the eighteenth. English and German enroll
ments again rose sharply in the nineteenth there a
century. Was
general decline in matriculation the West
university throughout
between about 1650 and 1800? If so, what were its causes, and what
were its social, cultural, economic, and political consequences?
Why
did expansion resume in the nineteenth
century? How did these
cycles affect the pace and character of modernization in the West?
The Davis Center project is also concerned with two other
one, patterns in the of education
problems: relationship university
to social mobility and to recruitment for professional, and
political,
administrative elites; two, the role of universities as transmitters of
culture. The latter problem will consider education both as an
145
D DALUS
intellectual and a socializing process and will ask how the structure,
composition, and intellectual activities of the faculty changed over
time?how and why the university was eventually able to become
the critic of society as well as its servant.
Such collaborative can make
enterprises significant contributions
to our of the internal of universities. But each
knowledge history
study will eventually have to face the general problem with which
much of this essay has been concerned: the establishment of cause
and-effect relationships between changes in education and changes
in other sectors of This task, though the most difficult, may
society.
also prove the most rewarding.
Ill
has the history of education undergone such extreme

Why
change
in recent years? The resurgence of interest is in part a conse
quence of the troubled state of contemporary education. New ques
tions shaped by the dilemmas of our own times require new ap
to the past. The older was found inadequate
proaches historiography
both because it was too narrow and and because it
inward-looking,
was of some essential facts education itself.
ignorant concerning
Long untouched by the great changes that have overtaken histori
cal research in this century, the history of education became one of
the last refuges of the Whig So as its
interpretation. long practi
tioners were mainly concerned with the past for the
searching
antecedents of their own contemporary institutions, they could
believe that education in the West had followed an linear
upward
We now find this view hard to We know, for
progression. accept.
that in which was
example, periods formal instruction fairly wide
spread have been followed in which it was restricted to
by periods
small groups. The older could neither accommodate
historiography
such findings nor answer the questions
they raise. Their exploration
new modes of To pursue our example, it is clear
requires analysis.
that any satisfactory explanation of these expansions and contrac
tions will have to take into account in
changes demographic patterns
and in the family, in the economy, the social structure, and the
polit
ical system, in beliefs about the nature and
purpose of human life.
And it will also have to be that education has turned
recognized
back upon these influences in subtle and complex ways,
working
on its own.
changes
Such a task is clearly beyond the old-style historian of education
146
and the old-style historiography. But the demands of the task will
not be satisfied a new of education as such. It may
by historiography
be doubted whether education, a process so in the
deeply entangled
life of an entire society, deserves to be called an "area of at
study"
all. Surely there can be little justification for making education a
particular genre of historical scholarship. The history of education

touches upon all the varieties of history. It is a task for the gen
eralise who must to the study of education a
bring thorough knowl
of the of which it is a
edge society part.
References
1. Bernard Education in the Forming of American Needs and

Bailyn, Society:
Opportunities for Research (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
am to my
Press, 1960), p. 14. I grateful
friends
and colleagues in the
Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical of Princeton

Studies University,
whose comments in a seminar on The in sug
University Society provided
for this are: Robert Church, Richard Tom
gestions essay. They Kagan,
Laqueur, Sheldon Rothblatt, Smith II, and Lawrence Stone.
Henry
2. See, for Michel and Pierre "Les de

example, Fleury Valmary, progr?s
l'instruction ?l?mentaire de Louis XIV ? Napol?on III, d'apr?s de
l'enqu?te
Louis Maggiolo, 1877-1879," Population, 12 (1957), 71-92.
3. For a brilliant of the now on see Pierre Bourdieu

example analyses going
and Jean-Claude Passeron, Les h?ritiers: les ?tudiants et la culture (Paris:
Editions de Minuit, 1964).
4. For a effort see
pioneer J. H. Hexter, "The Education of the Aristocracy
in the Renaissance," in (New York: and Row,
Reappraisals History Harper
1961), pp. 45-70, an earlier version of which in the Journal
appeared of
Modern (March 1950); also Hester and D.
History Jenkins Caradog
Jones, "Social Class of Alumni of the 18th and 19th
Cambridge University
Centuries," British Journal of Sociology, 1 ( 1950), 93-116.
5. Lawrence Stone, "The Educational Revolution in

England, 1560-1640,"
Past and Present, no, 28 1964), 68.
(July
6. See, for example, Fran?ois de Dainville, "Effectifs des coll?ges et scolarit?

aux XVIIe et XVIIIe si?cles dans le nord-est de la France," 10
Population,
(1955), 455-488; "Coll?ges et scolaire au XVIIe si?cle,"
fr?quentation
Population, 12 ( 1957), 467-494; Frank and
Musgrove, "Population Changes
the Status of the Young in England Since the 18th
Century," Sociological
Review, 11 (1963), 69-93.
7. See, for David Ward, "The Public Schools and in
example, Industry
Britain after 1870," Journal of Contemporary History, 2, no. 3 ( 1967 ), 37
52; two studies Power: British Leader
by Rupert Wilkinson, Gentlemanly
147
DAEDALUS
ship and the Public School Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press,
1964), and with T. J. H. Bishop, Winchester and the Public School Elite
(London: Faber, 1967). On the French see E. Talbott, The
lyc?e John
Politics of Educational Reform in France, 1918-1940 (Princeton: Princeton
Press, 1969 ) ; Paul Gerbod, La condition universitaire en France
University
au XIXe si?cle (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1965).
8. For an of the role of primary education in

early and still useful discussion
the promotion of nationalism see Carleton H. France, A Nation of
J. Hayes,
Patriots (New York: Columbia Press, 1930); also Charles E.
University
Merriam, The Making of Citizens: A Comparative Study of Methods of
Civic Training University of Chicago Press, 1931); for recent
(Chicago:
work see, for instance, Pierre Nora, "Ernest Lavisse, son r?le dans la forma
tion du sentiment national," Revue 228 1962),
historique, (July-September
73-106; Jacques and Mona Ozouf, "Le th?me du patriotisme dans les
manuels Le Mouvement Social, no. 49 (October-November
primaires,"
1964), 5-32.
9. Donald G. MacCrae, "The Culture of a Generation: Students and Others,"

Journal of Contemporary History, 2, no. 3 ( 1967), 3.
10. For an that the American common school may not have
early suggestion
been the spearhead of democracy, see the essay in intellectual of
history
Merle Curti, The Social Ideas of American Educators (New York: C.
Scribner's Sons, 1935); more Michael Katz has a sim
recently, expressed
ilar view from the perspective of social in The of Early School
history Irony
Reform: Educational Innovation in Mid-Nineteenth Massachusetts
Century
(Cambridge, Mass. :Harvard Press, 1968 ).
University
11. E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York:
Vintage, 1963), especially pp. 711-745; also Georges Duveau, La pens?e
ouvri?re sur V?ducation la Seconde et le Second Empire
pendant R?publique
(Paris: Domat-Montchrestien, 1948); R. K. Webb, The British Working
Class Reader, 1790-1848 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1955); R. D. Altick,
The Common Reader of Chicago Press,
English (Chicago: University
1957); J. F. C. Harrison, Learning and Living, 1790-1960: A in the
Study
History of the English Adult Education Movement (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1961).
12. Edward Shils, "Intellectuals in the Political of the New

Development
States,"World Politics, 12 (April 1960), 329-368.
13. See Lawrence Stone, "The Educational Revolution in 1540-1640,"
England,
Past and Present, no. 28 41-80, In a more recent Stone
(July 1964), essay
has concluded: "More and more it looks as if this educational expansion
was a not sufficient?reason the peculiar
for and ultimately
necessary?but
radical course the revolution took." "The Causes of the English Revolution,"
in Robert Forster and P. Greene, eds., Preconditions of Revolution in
Jack
Early Modern Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970);
Mark H. Curtis, "The Alienated Intellectuals of Stuart England,"
Early
Past and no. 23 "Revolu
Present, (November 1962), 25-43; J. H. Elliot,
148
tion and in Early Modern Past and Present, no. 42

Continuity Europe,"
(February 1969), 35-56; Robert Darnton, "Social Tensions in the Intelli
gentsia of France," paper read at the annual meeting of

Pre-Revolutionary
the American Historical Association, December 1969. On the importance
of a similar in see Carr,
phenomenon nineteenth-century Spain Raymond
1806-1939 (Oxford: Oxford Press, 1966), on nine
Spain, University p. 167;
see Lenore "The Democratic Left in
teenth-century Germany O'Boyle,
Germany, 1848," Journal of Modern History, 33 (1961), 374-383; John R.
Gillis, and Bureaucracy in Prussia," Past
"Aristocracy Nineteenth-Century
and Present, no. 41 (December 1968), 105-129.
14. David C. McClelland, "Does Education Accelerate Economic Growth?"

Economic Development and Cultural Change, 14, no. 3 (April 1966), 259.
15. R. S. Schofield, "The Measurement of Literacy in Pre-Industrial

England,"
in ed., in Traditional Societies
Jack Goody, Literacy (Cambridge, Eng.:
Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 312 and n: "The necessity of literacy
as a for economic is a persistent theme
pre-condition growth running
UNESCO . . . These measures [established
through many publications by
are very no on the
UNESCO] general and throw light at all question of
why literacy should be considered essential to economic See also

growth."
Lawrence Stone, and Education in England, 1640-1900," Past
"Literacy
and Present, no. 42 1969), 69-139; Carlo M.
(February Cipolla, Literacy
and Development in the West (Baltimore: 1969).
Penguin,
16. Ronald P. Dore, Education in of

Tokugawa Japan (Berkeley: University
California Press, 1965), p. 292.
17. David Landes, The Unbound Prometheus: and

Technological Change
Industrial Development in Western 1750 to the Present
Europe from
(Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1969), pp. 343-348.
18. One of the few studies of scientific education is D. S. L.

nineteenth-century
Cardwell, The Organisation of Science in (Melbourne: Heinemann,
England
1957). On literature on scientific education see Thomas G. "The
Kuhn,
of Science," International
History Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences,
XIV, 78. John H. Weiss is a Harvard doctoral disserta
writing University
tion on scientific education in Steven Turner is
nineteenth-century France;
a Princeton dissertation on scientific education in
preparing University
Germany.
19. For a brief of some of these

discussion see Stone, and
problems, "Literacy
Education in 1640-1900," Education in the Form
England, pp. 93-95; Bailyn,
ing of American Society, pp. 75-78. One of the boldest and most widely
heralded inquiries into these questions to have in recent
appeared years
is Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood: A Social
History of Family Life
(New York: Knopf, 1962). The idea of childhood as a distinct phase of
life, Aries is an invention of the late Middle in
argues, Ages, when changes
the and a new concern for education led to the removal of the child
family
from the adult in which he had been free to roam. This
society formerly
practice, at first limited to the upper the rest
classes, gradually permeated
149
DAEDALUS
of society. Though Aries has done more than anyone to stimulate

perhaps
interest in the historical of the family, the argument of his book,
study
because of?his use of evidence, is
despite?or ingenious iconographical
not
entirely convincing. For a
study that owes much to Aries but has a
more to say about see La p?dagogie
great deal education Georges Snyders,
en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe si?cles (Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1965). historical work on the is now
Important family beginning
to appear in the United States, lines of established
pursuing inquiry by
Edmund S. Morgan and Bernard Bailyn. See, for example, John Demos,
A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1970); Philip J. Greven, Jr., Four Generations:
Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca:

Cornell University Press, 1970). Demos has more to say about education.
For see, among the articles of Frank Musgrove, "The Decline of
England
the Educative Universities 14 (September 1960), 377
Family," Quarterly,
406.
20. For an discussion of functionalism see Olive Banks, The

interesting
of Education (London: Schocken, 1968). See also Gillian Suth
Sociology
erland, "The of the History of Education," History, 54 (February
Study
1969), 53-54.
21. Sheldon Rothblatt, The Revolution of the Dons: Cambridge and Society in
Victorian (New York: Basic Books, 1968).
England
22. Ibid., pp. 17-26.
23. Laurence R. Veysey, The Emergence of the American University (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1965). Veysey follows ground broken by
Richard Hofstadter and Walter P. Metzger in The Development of Aca
demic Freedom in the United States (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1955 ), which is about much else besides academic freedom. Veysey's
of the movement to redefine the purpose and structure of American
study
education in the post-Civil War era also shows how much can be
higher
missed too close a fit between a needs and the
by assuming society's
response of educational institutions to these needs. the years
"During early
of the American university movement, until about 1890," he contends, "aca
demic efforts in of the not as the result of
burgeoned largely spite public,
acclaim . . . Academic and seemed to
popular popular aspirations rarely
meet" 16).
(p.
24. Louis Liard, en France, 1789-1889, 2 vols.

Venseignement sup?rieur
(Paris, 1888-1894).
150

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The History of Education

Author(s): John E. Talbott

The History of Education

have new claims in the

childrearing in colonial America. Despite the great diver

who founded and sustained these institutions sought to give pro

It is one thing, however, to recognize all the influences that need

Conventional histories of education are filled with generalizations

Patterns of social stratification affect the structure of education.

Among the most important and far-reaching of these consequences

rigor of the notorious generalizations about the rising middle classes.

which they lived. Such qualitative questions may be exceedingly

public issues as the promotion of nationalism and nation building?

Analysis of the content of textbooks would at least suggest what

cern. State intervention followed on centuries of debate about the

moral and in its favor. But once people had

is only beginning to be systematically. R. S. Schofield

his attention to a level of

Such studies, which define education as a process that takes

specialized institutions, such as the apprenticeship system and

If the exploration of "the involvements of education with the rest

is the pace of other changes in

Establishment. Unable and unwilling to respond to the challenge of

by royal commissions. Of course the version applauded these

pluralistic society, "it is entirely possible that the and

has the history of education undergone such extreme

particular genre of historical scholarship. The history of education

1. Bernard Education in the Forming of American Needs and

Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical of Princeton

2. See, for Michel and Pierre "Les de

3. For a brilliant of the now on see Pierre Bourdieu

5. Lawrence Stone, "The Educational Revolution in

6. See, for example, Fran?ois de Dainville, "Effectifs des coll?ges et scolarit?

8. For an of the role of primary education in

9. Donald G. MacCrae, "The Culture of a Generation: Students and Others,"

12. Edward Shils, "Intellectuals in the Political of the New

tion and in Early Modern Past and Present, no. 42

gentsia of France," paper read at the annual meeting of

14. David C. McClelland, "Does Education Accelerate Economic Growth?"

15. R. S. Schofield, "The Measurement of Literacy in Pre-Industrial

why literacy should be considered essential to economic See also

16. Ronald P. Dore, Education in of

17. David Landes, The Unbound Prometheus: and

18. One of the few studies of scientific education is D. S. L.

19. For a brief of some of these

of society. Though Aries has done more than anyone to stimulate

Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca:

20. For an discussion of functionalism see Olive Banks, The

22. Ibid., pp. 17-26.

23. Laurence R. Veysey, The Emergence of the American University (Chicago:

24. Louis Liard, en France, 1789-1889, 2 vols.

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