Bias is a hard word to take, and I do not think that its use is justified in Professor Ralph W. Jones's review of my book, The History of Education (History of Education Quarterly, March, 1965, page 70). The instance he quotes is: “It is pertinent therefore to assert that Dewey rejects any such thing as a spiritual soul and a personal God. His notion of self-realization consequently must be assessed in this context.” This is a statement of fact, not a biased interpretation. The fact is of importance and deserves inclusion in the narration.

It was a cool, blustery, but beautiful, clear November 4, 1863, when the Union Steamer Arago lifted anchor and headed south out of New York Harbor. The deck was crowded with Yankee soldiers and some civilians, departing for the South Carolina Sea Islands, where the Union, two years earlier, had established the Department of the South. Listed among the passengers were William Francis Allen and his wife Mary, both teachers, hired to educate the abandoned sea island slaves. After graduating from Harvard in 1851, Allen served as a tutor in New York for three years, then journeyed to Europe where he studied language and the classics at Gottingen, Berlin, Rome, Naples, and Greece. In 1856 William returned to Boston where he accepted the position of associate principal at the English and Classical School at West Newton, Massachusetts. While working in this capacity, Allen met, courted, and married Mary Lambert and remained on at West Newton during the war's early years. Hoping to do something for the war effort, William and his wife hired on as instructors and were part of a new teachers group heading for the islands to do their part.

Venus and Adonis (ca. 1682), said to be the first complete English opera, includes an episode likely to be of more than aesthetic interest to historians of education. For, in addition to the musical and poetic charm of the opera as a whole, a scene in it called the “Cupids' Lesson” reflects some significant features of seventeenth century educational theory and practice. These are clothed in mythical guise, but the opera's first audience would have had no difficulty in recognizing correspondences between the fanciful Cupids' Lesson and what were common teaching-learning patterns. To identify and interpret these correspondences is the purpose of this essay.

In W. G. Walker's article in the December, 1964, issue of this publication a number of statements relating to the so-called Northwest Ordinances of 1785 and 1787 were made. The Ordinances and the relevant subjects surrounding the Ordinances cause a great deal of confusion. This confusion is present in Walker's article as well as in a sizable segment of the literature dealing with the history of Education. Its diffuseness and variety is sufficient cause for the following commentary. It is the hope of this writer that the following remarks will eliminate some of the muddle surrounding the relationship that exists between the Northwest Ordinances; the contract of the Ohio Company of Associates with the Board of Treasury; and Manasseh Cutler's connection with the Ordinances, the contract, and the Ohio Company of Associates.

When some as yet unborn historian of education takes it upon himself to examine and assess the story of American public education, he may be both comforted and astounded. He will find the number of landmark events staggering and the dramatis personae diverse. The unraveling of local-state-federal relationships will try his patience and the conflicting views on the definition and discharge of educational responsibilities may nag at his preference for clarity and order. Plagued though he may be by the nature and significance of what he surveys, this historian will no doubt realize, among other things, that public education in the twentieth century became a kind of common property.

The Department of Superintendence and the National Education Association met in Boston the week of Independence Day, 1893. At the Superintendence meeting, Colonel Francis Weyland Parker introduced the motion which established the Committee of Fifteen on Elementary Education. Parker hoped that the Committee of Fifteen would revise the elementary curriculum as the Committee of Ten was revising the high school curriculum.

John Dewey's first academic appointment was to the department of philosophy at the University of Michigan where he taught from 1884-1894. Toward the end of that period he became engaged in an arduous re-examination of his whole philosophical outlook. One aspect of this process was a transition from a position of religious idealism to the social ethic of democracy. We wish to call attention to two papers in this early phase of Dewey's career which indicate this shift: “Christianity and Democracy” (1893) and “The Ethics of Democracy” (1888).