On Volume IV. This issue completes Volume IV of the Quarterly. Thanks to the support of our subscribers, the Society, and the University of Pittsburgh, the Quarterly has taken solid roots as a scholarly publication. The bibliography for Dr. Paul Nash's summation of recent research in the history of education (Review of Educational Research, February, 1964) gives evidence that the Quarterly has become the leading outlet for publication in this field.

The history of education is that branch of history which deals with the development of thought, practice, matériel, personnel, administration, and organization and other aspects and problems of schools and other agencies of society, such as religious organizations, which instruct the young and the mature. A more narrow and more functional interpretation of this term is the development of all matter pertaining to instruction in the family and in the school. This does not mean that the accounts of the history of educational institutions or ideas can ignore the other phases of society. Since there is an interaction and interrelationship between the school and the rest of society, the educational historian must take this fact into consideration when he constructs and presents his narrative. It is not accurate or safe to write about education without reference to the wider social and cultural context of which it is a part.

In recalling the name of Malthus at this time, as we approach the bicentennial of his birth, it is well to remind ourselves that this eminent thinker has won a place of honor for himself in demography, economics, and sociology; perhaps also in biology, remembering the testimony of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, regarding the way in which a reading of the Essay on the Principle of Population, helped to bring about the statement of the theory of natural selection. But rarely, if ever, does one think of Malthus as a contributor of significant ideas on the theme of education. Even the specialist does not point to him for enlightening concepts on educational purpose, policy, or content.

How much, if any, religion ought to be taught in the State schools? Are State schools to be preferred over private schools—or vice versa? In education, is a State that is allied with the Church to be preferred over one that is separated from it? Aren't the aims and objectives of modern education based, as they ought to be, on reason, contradictions of Catholic education based, as it must be, on faith? These questions, which Italians continue to discuss with both emotion and intelligence, were as real during the Risorgimento as they are today.

In protest against the ruthless capitalism of the late nineteenth century, Edward Bellamy wrote Looking Backward, a novel of social reform. In his book, Bellamy transported a wealthy, young, nineteenth-century Bostonian, Julian West, on a fictional journey to the Year 2000. West, Bellamy's fictional citizen of 1887, witnessed the wonders of the new social order, an industrialized utopia. The citizens of this new world had abolished profit, greed, competition, and poverty under the leadership of a national industrial army. This familiar theme has been recounted in numerous social and literary histories. Despite the literary imperfections and unsophisticated style of this work, many readers have looked beyond it as a mere period piece and viewed it as an influential document of American utopianism.

Frederick Jackson Turner tends to stress, on the part of the frontiersman, “a return to primitive conditions,” a “plowing with a sharp stick.” While the regression to a form of semi-barbarism was certainly typical of frontiersmen in some areas, particularly in the eighteenth century, there is evidence to suggest that settlers in the Middle West during the early nineteenth century can by no means be described in toto as primitive. Indeed, it may be noted that from the viewpoint of the provision of educational facilities the frontiersman of the early nineteenth century was often a good deal more active than were his Eastern and Southern brothers. Early attempts to provide public education in the Midwestern states are remarkable for their foresight and enthusiasm. This argument may be examined by means of a description of the development of secondary education in the state of Illinois.

In January, 1787, readers of the American Museum found in the magazine an article entitled “Address to the People of the United States,” written by Dr. Benjamin Rush, the prominent Philadelphia physician, philanthropist, and patriot. The first statement which met their eyes was: “There is nothing more common than to confound the terms of American Revolution with those of the late American war. The American war is over, but this is far from being the case with the American Revolution.”