Alexander James Inglis's (1879-1924) transformation from an academic traditionalist devoted to
Latin pedagogy to an influential progressive-experimentalist and advocate of the comprehensive
high school has received insufficient attention from educational and curriculum historians.
Inglis's career manifests important characteristics of the progressive era in American history.
As an attempt to generate organizing principles upon which to construct a new responsive
social institution his book Principles of Secondary Education stands as a quintessential
manifestation of progressive values. This fine-grained profile of Inglis's work reveals nuances
in the historic record that are otherwise obscured by high-level historical interpretations. An
assessment of the utility of these interpretations for explaining Inglis's career leads to a
discussion of the implications of the record of Inglis's work for understanding the progressive
period and its prevailing interpretations as well as to a consideration of the role of
biography in historical research.
