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Persistent Myths in the History of Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Edward J. Power
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Extract

Throughout education's long history legends and myths that have been generated in misinformation and cultivated by indifference or incorrigible obstinacy have attached themselves to a core of historical knowledge to distort the dimensions of its accuracy. Some were transitory, were quickly dispelled, and had relatively little influence on the work or the thought of historians or schoolmasters; but others have defied the erosions of time and truth and have grown in stature to become part of the conventional educational tradition. Their validity goes unchallenged; it is simply and perhaps blindly accepted. Here we propose to plumb the authenticity of four myths of content that, despite their fictitious character, have achieved an almost unassailable status in the history of education and two myths of conception, by which we mean unreal expectations for or invalid interpretations of the role or the meaning of the history of education. The distinction between these two general types of myths will shortly become clearer, but here we can say that some myths deceive us on points of content, while others blur our conception of the nature and purpose of educational history.

Type
Research Article
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , September 1962 , pp. 140 - 151
Copyright
Copyright © 1962, University of Pittsburgh Press 

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References

Notes

1. This was Institutio Oratoria. Google Scholar

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