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Kandel, Isaac Leon (1881-1965). American comparative educationist. Born in Romania, of English parents, he was educated at Manchester Grammar School and Manchester University, gaining Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees and a teaching certificate. Between 1907 and 1908 he taught at the Royal Academical Institution in Belfast but in the latter year, on the advice of his Manchester tutor, Michael Sadler, he went to Teachers College, Columbia, completing a PhD in comparative education in 1910. His study of The Training of Elementary School Teaching in Germany was published in the same year. Kandel’s interest in Germany had been strengthened by a visit to Jena in the summer of 1907 when he studied with Wilhelm Rein. Between 1909 and 1913 Kandel worked as an assistant for the Cyclopaedia of Education edited by Paul Monroe, and in 1913 was appointed to the staff of Teachers College, becoming full professor in 1923 and being appointed emeritus professor in 1947. He became an American citizen in 1920. As a comparative educationist Kandel travelled the world, teaching, researching and writing. Some of this was at the behest of the American government, as in 1918 when he worked with Monroe on a study commissioned by Woodrow Wilson, or at the end of the Second World War when he was a member of the United States Education Commission to Japan. Between 1946 and 1962 he worked for the United Nations and Unesco, and in 1947 returned to his Manchester roots, first as Simon Fellow and subsequently as professor of American Studies, 1948-50. Kandel was a prolific writer. In addition to reports for official bodies, he edited the Education Yearbook, 1924-44, School and Society, 1946-53, and University Quarterly, 1947-9. His major books included Comparative Education (1933), his most famous work (revised in 1955 as The New Era in Education: A Comparative Study); The Making of Nazis (1935); Conflicting Theories of Education (1938); International Co-operation: National and International (1944); Raising the School-leaving Age (1951). Kandel believed that in order to understand the educational system of a country or area it was necessary to study its history and culture in depth. It was also necessary for comparative educationists to have a facility in languages; he himself was proficient in ten. He did believe in progress through educational reform, and Comparative Education, which was a study of educational change in France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, USA and USSR, became the bible of comparative educationists and was translated into many languages. See his own writings and Pollack, Erwin, ‘Isaac Leon Kandel’, Prospects, XXIII (3/4), 1993.