Ten Years of the Comparative Education Society

Abstract

Readers of the Comparative Education Review and other journals in the field are aware of the growing number of writings on the history of comparative education as an area of curiosity, inquiry, study, and rigorous research. For the present purpose, it is sufficient to call attention mainly to the developments since World War II, with but passing reference to an earlier period. Interest in the different aspects of comparative education increased throughout the nineteenth century in Europe, with the result that systematic research and publication became relatively common. One thinks not only of the Office of Special Inquiries and Reports in London (1895), the Mus6e P6dagogique in Paris (1879), and the Zentralinstitut fiir Erziehung und Unterricht in Berlin (1915), but also of the U. S. Office of Education (1867). As Sir Robert Morant stated in 1897, the publications by the then U. S. Bureau of Education ... have probably done more than any other single agency to encourage the comparative study of education and the various systems of educational administration now in force in the different countries of the The decision, based on the advice by Sir Michael Sadler and Professor J. J. Findlay of the University of Manchester, by the young I. L. Kandel and Peter Sandiford to sail in 1908 to study at Teachers College, Columbia University, proved to be a momentous one for the development of comparative education in North America. It also contributed, in time, to the promotion of the field in Europe and in other parts of the world. During the interbellum period, the interests of comparative education were served, to a greater or lesser degree, by the older organizations, as well as by new agencies: e.g., the Institute of International Education in New York (1919); the International Institute of Teachers College, Columbia University (1923); the Bureau of International Education in Geneva (1925); and the Institut International de Coop6ration Intellectuelle in Paris (1925). The program of the Teachers College institute, particularly its research publications and the Educational Yearbook, edited by Prof. Kandel between 1925 and 1944, had a world-wide impact in the areas of comparative and international education. Also of significance were the Year Book of Education (1932-1940) published by the University of London Institute of Education and the Annuaire International de l'Education et de l'Enseignement (later International Yearbook of Education) issued by the International Bureau of Education from 1933 to 1939. And of particular importance was the appearance of Kandel's Comparative Education, a seminal, thoroughgoing, definitive, scholarly treatise which encouraged research and instruction and which was translated into several languages (1933). In the United States between the two wars, courses in Comparative Education proliferated greatly after 1920.2 On the initiative of the U. S. Office of Education, an Advisory Committee on Comparative Education was formed at a meeting in Washington on May 4, 1935. One year later, this committee met again with 16 members, representing instruction and research in comparative education, history of education, and philosophy of education. Dr. James F. Abel of the U. S. Office of Education reported the results of a questionnaire