e pursuit of that subject renders. Any one subject
will naturally have all three values, but no two subjects will have
the same values mixed in the same proportion. The practical value of a
subject depends on the use in life to which it can be put, especially
its use in making a living. The cultural value of a subject depends
largely on the enjoyment it contributes to life. While culture does
not make a living, it makes it worth while that a living should be
made. The disciplinary value of a subject depends on the amount of
mental training that subject affords. Such mental training is
available in further pursuit of the same, or a similar, subject. It is
the fashion of educational thinking in our day to put greatest stress
on the practical values, less on the cultural, and least on the
disciplinary. There is no denying the reality of each type of value.

=Value of the history of education=

Now, what is the value of the history of education? There are no
experimental studies as yet, nor scientific measurements, upon which
to base an answer. The poor best we can do is to express an opinion.
This opinion is based on the views of others and on the writer's
experience in teaching the history of education ten years in a liberal
college (Dartmouth) and ten years in a professional graduate school
(New York University). On this basis I should say that the aim of the
history of education, at least as recorded in existing texts, is first
cultural, then practical, and last disciplinary. Texts yet to be
written for the use of teachers in training may shift the places of
the cultural and the practical. This new type of text will give the
history, not of educational epochs in chronological succession, but of
modern educational problems in their origin and development.[56]

=Its cultural value=

As cultural, the history of education is the record of the efforts of
society to project its own ideals into the future through shaping the
young and plastic generation. There comes into this purview the
successive social organizations, their ideals, and the methods
utilized in embodying these ideals in young lives. Interpretations of
the nature of social progress, the contribution of education to such
progress, and the goal of human progress, naturally arise for
discussion, and the history of education well taught as the effort of
man to improve himself is both informing and inspiring. This is the
cultural value of the history of educatio