[Transcriber's note]
This is derived from a copy on the Internet Archive:
http://www.archive.org/details/educationhowold00walsgoog
Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page breaks occurred in the original book.
Obvious spelling errors have been corrected but "inventive" and inconsistent spelling is left unchanged. Unusual use of quotation marks is also unchanged.
Extended quotations and citations are indented.
Footnotes have been renumbered to avoid ambiguity, and relocated to the end of the enclosing paragraph.
[End Transcriber's note]
Dean and Professor of the History of Medicine and of Nervous Diseasesat Fordham University School of Medicine; Professor of PhysiologicalPsychology at the Cathedral College, New York.
SECOND IMPRESSION
NEW YORK
FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS
1911
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY
JAMES J. WALSH
Published October 20th, 1910
Second Impression March 20th, 1911
THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS
RAMWAY, N.J.
TO THE
Most of the thoughts contained in this volume were originally
expressed at our breakfasts. It seems only fitting, then, that on
presentation to a larger audience they should be dedicated to you.
J. J. W.
Our Lady's Day. August 15, 1910
{v}
The reason for publishing this volume of lectures and addresses is thepersuasion that present-day educators are viewing the history ofeducation with short-sighted vision. An impression prevails that onlythe last few generations have done work of serious significance ineducation. The history of old-time education is neglected, or istreated as of at most antiquarian interest and there is a failure tounderstand its true value. The connecting link between the lecturesand addresses is the effort to express in terms of the present whateducators were doing in the past. Once upon a time, when I proclaimedthe happiness of the English workmen of the Middle Ages, the verypositive objection was raised, "How could they be happy since theirwages were only a few cents a day?" For response it was only necessaryto point out that for his eight cents, the minimum wage by act ofParliament, the workman could buy a pair of handmade shoes, that beingthe maximum price established by law, and other necessaries at similarprices. If old-time education is studied with this same care totranslate its meaning into modern values, then the very oldesteducation of which we have any record takes on significance even forour time.
{vi}
While it is generally supposed that there are many new features inmodern education, it requires but slight familiarity with educationalhistory to know that there is very little that is novel. Suchsupposedly new phases as nature-study and technical training andscience, physical as well as ethical, are all old stories, though theyhave had negative phases during which it would be hard to to tracethem. The more we know about the history of education the greater isour respect for educators at all times. Nearly always they had aperfectly clear idea of what they were trying to do, they faced theproblems of education in quite the same spirit that we do and oftensolved them very well