WHAT IS the function of the educational historian? Although there is no unanimity on this question, there do seem to be fewer scholars than formerly who believe that the historian has done all he can do or should do once he has unearthed facts and reported them. There is an increasing realization that interpretation is an essential aspect of historiography. "Neutral" historians still exist, but they are becoming rarer. It is more often recognized than not that their biases are tacit rather than absent. One of the clearest statements in recognition of this development was by Carr (1962), who suggested that the main role of the historian is to give meaning to the events of the past. The historian without his facts is rootless and futile, but the facts without their historian are dead and meaningless. Carr pointed out that there is no neutral or objective history. All historical research involves selection and hence interpretation. Since selection and bias cannot be avoided, an attempt should be made to set the biases in a philosophical framework. At the same time, there have been some valuable warnings against the danger of merely exploiting history for ulterior purposes. Bailyn (1960) criticized what he called the "educational missionaries" of earlier days for seeing the past as simply the present writ small and for seeking to demonstrate the immemorial importance and the evolution of theories and procedures of the work in which they were engaged. He suggested, on the other hand, that the past is not incidentally but essentially different from the present. He saw the real task of the educational historian as describing the dawning of ideas and the creation of forms in response to the changing demands of circumstance. In a similar vein, Rudolph (1962) criticized educational historians of the variety associated with Columbia Teachers College because they used educational history as a source of inspiration and as a guide to action. Their contributions, he suggested, were too often marred by the necessity to recommend action and by the absence of any sure sense of historical inquiry. One can sympathize with the concern of these writers and yet remain aware of the antithetical danger, to which what Rudolph calls "history