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Changing Perspectives in the History of Education

1976; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 2; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0305498760020301

1465-3915

Charles Webster,

Education Methods and Practices

Until recently the major function of the history of education has been to familiarize intending teachers with notable steps in the development of the modern system of public education. This largely uninspired and unedifying exercise, involving as it did the recital of a seemingly endless succession of generally inoperative commissions and many fewer major acts of parliament, has happily come to occupy an increasingly modest place in teacher training, until it is likely to persist merely as a nominal, optional, or ultimately dispensable element. The quality of historical judgment in traditional, linear histories of education, never particularly sound, tends to become progressively weaker the further these works stray back into the past in identifying the sources of the modern educational system. Only rarely have the 'founders' and legislative 'turning points' of any period been able to bear the strain of interpretation traditionally placed upon them. The weakness of this form of the history of education is not simply a matter of academic concern. Because of the neglect of basic issues relating to childhood in history, current discussion of educational problems is necessarily conducted in the absence of a clear historical perspective, although inevitably utilizing historical insights of varying degrees of unreliability. Paradoxically, the decline in importance of the history of education in vocational training, and its virtual elimination from educational research, has coincided with a revival of interest in the subject among scholars of widely different training and interests. Every year sees the opening up of some new area of investigation by some group or other. Professional historians have played some part in this process, but fortunately it is improbable that education will become the exclusive preserve of the academic historian. There would be little point in rescuing the history of education from a narrow vocational orientation, only to have it evolve into a branch of antiquarianism. This is unlikely to happen providing that the initiative for research remains with commentators whose study of the past is associated with serious interest in the problems of contemporary education. In this context it is significant that a crucial incentive for the ongoing massive re-investigation of the history of American education was provided by anxieties over the formulation of national policy during the I96os. It is also not coincidental that the recent outburst of interest in the history of English education has occurred at a time of re-organization and controversy. In many areas of education, it is only during the last decade that we have moved beyond the level of knowledge and understanding achieved by the varied but able group of pioneers which included A. E. Dobbs, A. F. Leach, Hastings Randall, John Venn, Foster Watson and W. H. Woodward, whose substantial researches were published at the beginning of this century. The most influential figures in this earlier phase were motivated less by antiquarian curiosity, than by an interest in contemporary issues. Current educational research is able to define many problems which might fruitfully be subjected to historically oriented investigation. The social sciences can furnish methods