In Search of Personal Origins: American Educational Biographies

Most historians are willing to admit that biography is one of their more difficult assignments. Methodological problems are legend, not the least of which is assessing the utility of a subject's private papers. In addition there is the difficulty of identifying and weighing the webs of intellectual, social, and psychological influences without being distracted from the primary focus: the reconstruction of a particular life. The problems are compounded in that they are easily missed by unwary or untrained eyes. Given the complexities, it is not surprising that few biographies achieve analytical balance. The gaps in historical knowledge that follow are evident throughout the field, but they are especially notable in education history. To be candid, the problem with education biography is not that a vacuum exists but rather that what we have is largely vacuous. Two of the studies included in this review tend to fall within that sad tradition. Neither of them adds significantly to our knowledge of the critical personalities who shaped nineteenth-century American education although, to be fair, Gutek's study, the best of the three, focuses intentionally on one of the early and minor characters in that development. Frederick Augustus Porter Barnard, of course, was not a minor character. A New Englander by birth, whose life spanned almost a full century (1809-89), he is best known for his 25-year tenure as president of Columbia College from 1864 to 1889. Barnard College carries his name, an institution founded as a "women's annex" after the