Abstract
IN this year's issue of the well-known biennial official survey of education in the United States is included a sketch of the salient features of the history of education in other parts of the world in the decennium 1926–36 (Washington, D.C.: Govt. Printing Office, 1938. Pp. 98. 15 cents). It was an era of drastic—in some countries of revolutionary— changes. In Europe, sudden changes in the direction of educational policies were effected in connexion with general revolutionary movements in Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Portugal, Spain and the Soviet Union. Pronounced but gradual changes, long-planned and deliberately considered, were introduced in Czechoslovakia, England, France, Norway, Poland and Sweden. The most conspicuous movements in Europe were in the direction of nationalization. One aspect of this tendency was the ousting of private by public schools, notably exemplified in Norway and Albania; another, manifested throughout JEurope, was the increasing subjection of private schools to public regulation ; another, the placing of more of the support and administration of schools in the hands of national instead of local officials; yet another, the progress attempted, with varying success, towards the goal of equal educational opportunity for equal intelligence. The doctrine that education is a public function has, in fact, achieved general acceptance, and States “have been rapidly taking wider and closer control of their cultural institutions, but not always in the way that advocates of public education have desired”.
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World-Wide Survey of Education. Nature 142, 1153 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/1421153a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1421153a0