Excerpt from The Encyclopaedia and Dictionary of Education, Vol. 1 of 4 It is true that an encyclopaedia is, in appearance, and to some extent, actually, a comprehensive repository of facts, a happy hunting-ground for references, and a delightful hope of security in supplying the gaps Of indi vidual knowledge. Mr. Ainger's historical suggestion of editorial direction to the contributors to the Dictionary of National Biography, No flowers by request, applies to all encyclopaedias. Yet the experienced teacher and reader on education knows that it is impossible to let himself loose in the garden of education, without finding himself animated in the great educational, humanist, and scientific traditions, by the unconscious rousing of a stimulus which by no means ends in the reading of concise tablets Of bare description, as attached by the gardeners, but not necessarily obscuring the fact of the beauty of the flowers, though so succinctly describing the details. Once secure of identification, and the flower in our hands or within sight, its attraction may be left to speak for itself. An Encyclopaedia of Education, however, should be more than a mere collection of topics and details. It Is a vast domain of modern civilization, into which a teacher wanders, as if coming into his own. It is a guide-book on a large scale, it is true, but it also contains the outline of the great inherit ance, the tradition from the past and tradition in the making in the present, the guarantees of the hope for the future of the nation. It is the first time, in our country, that so distinguished, so representative and so numerous a company of educational writers has been associated in the production of so comprehensive an Encyclopaedia of Education. It is, we trust, no vain hope that in such an associated effort of so many acknowledged leaders and thinkers, so widely different in special interests, yet so intent in the common cause of what each takes to be sound, that the present encyclopaedia will stand for and, in its measure, strengthen that sense Of unity which has been so unmistakably typified in the English Annual Conferences of Educational Associations (at the beginning of each year), which bring together, for separate and for conjoint discussion, nearly forty associations representing almost every aspect of educational work. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.