HENRY BARNARD'S JOURNAL OF AMERICAN EDUCATION

by RichardEmmons Thursfield '31. The Johns HopkinsPress; 1945; 35p p.; $3.75, Baltimore, Maryland.

for almost a quarter of a century bound volumes of Barnard's American Journal ofEducation have been my primary source of reference. The history of our schools and those of our parent peoples in Europe; the development of educational thinking, practices, and procedures; the lives and works of the great educators of America and Europe; the story of the whole broad basis of modern education are in large measure to be found in these volumes. They have served my study and teaching of education munificently as they have thousands of others like me in every school and college in this country. It was, then, with more than customary pleasure that we approached the perusal of this new volume of appraisal of the Journal which portrays clearly the vast contributions of this major source of educational literature.

The author has performed one of the most difficult tasks in literature and has come up with a carefully organized yet lively resum£ and interpretation of these thirty-one volumes of pedagogical lore published during one of the most formative periods of American history. This book is not just a review of the Journal's volumes but rather is a contribution to the history of American culture in its own right. Barnard and his contemporaries of the cultural and economic America of the last half of the nineteenth century live again on its pages. There is much enlightenment relative to the history of the publishing business, its methods of promotion and sales in particular, as well as the intense rivalry of American and British booksellers of this period. It is a work of interest not only to the profession of educators but to the intelligent layman who will appreciate the new light it throws on the general culture of America and Europe during the long course of the Journal's life. To review its contents in detail would be a long and rather fruitless task. It is sufficient that the goal of the author is to call our attention again to this veritable mine of social and educational data without which our understanding of the present status of our culture would be greatly circumscribed. The general theme is to point out the reflection of the monumental works of Henry Barnard on modern life and letters. This end is achieved admirably and results in a better understanding of our educational and cultural antecedents. Compared to current educational publications this work ranks very high in its value to educators due to its comprehensive and scholarly interpretation of one of the most important yet narrowly distributed sources of information about the true foundations of our American educational system.