I have three broad purposes in this brief sketch: First, to describe the conception of education as a subject matter that in 1890 was generally held by teachers of education in American colleges and universities; second, to describe how this conception broke down in the next three decades under the forces of professionalization and specialization in both university research and in educational practice; and finally, to show how the resulting structure of the study of education reinforced a narrow view of human learning within educational psychology.