university, it seemed desirable that I should again take over the
instruction in the general history of education. Since then I have pushed
through, as rapidly as conditions would permit, the organization of the
parallel book of sources and documents, and the present volume of text.

In doing so I have not tried to prepare another history of educational
theories. Of such we already have a sufficient number. Instead, I have
tried to prepare a history of the progress and practice and organization
of education itself, and to give to such a history its proper setting as a
phase of the history of the development and spread of our Western
civilization. I have especially tried to present such a picture of the
rise, struggle for existence, growth, and recent great expansion of the
idea of the improvability of the race and the elevation and emancipation
of the individual through education as would be most illuminating and
useful to students of the subject. To this end I have traced the great
forward steps in the emancipation of the intellect of man, and the efforts
to perpetuate the progress made through the organization of educational
institutions to pass on to others what had been attained. I have also
tried to give a proper setting to the great historic forces which have
shaped and moulded human progress, and have made the evolution of modern
state school systems and the world-wide spread of Western civilization
both possible and inevitable.

To this end I have tried to hold to the main lines of the story, and have
in consequence omitted reference to many theorists and reformers and
events and schools which doubtless were important in their land and time,
but the influence of which on the main current of educational progress
was, after all, but small. For such omission I have no apology to make. In
their place I have introduced a record of world events and forces, not
included in the usual history of education, which to me seem important as