ABSTRACT
Such an approach is today at a discount. Quick, who would hardly have claimed to be a historian, presented the ideas of his 'great thinkers, out of context, as worthy of study in themselves — for their intrinsic value. This approach, which forms one strand in the history of education, was paralleled in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by quite a different genus, having different interests and objectives and using an entirely different set of data, best described as institutional history. The main proponent of this approach, A.F. Leach, an assistant charity commissioner, was professionally concerned with seeking out and determining
the origin, status and ownership of endowed institutions in particular. If modern scholarship no longer accepts Leach's main conclusion, as to the supposed disastrous effect of the Reformation on English schooling, nevertheless the branch of historical scholarship Leach pioneered is still with us and has made its contribution to our understanding. But the entire separation of institutional from what might be called ideological
change, nor of the relation of either or both these to social change generally. Nor was the situation necessarily improved with what may be called the third genus of historical studies in the field of education: the narrative study of educational systems, or parts of systems, with the focus on parliamentary acts, and the great men, or politicians, held responsible — as in the Forster Act, the Balfour Act, the Fisher Act, the Butler Act and the like.
