Editorial – educational networks , educational identities : connecting national and global perspectives *

The brothers Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt, active in the last years of the eighteenth century and first part of the nineteenth, are excellent examples of the cosmopolitan scholar and Universalgelehrter (polymath). Wilhelm, a Prussian diplomat and government administrator, is chiefly remembered as a linguist who made important contributions to the philosophy of the world’s languages, as well as to the theory and practice of education. He is seen as the architect of the Humboldtian education ideal which spread from Germany all across the world and as far as the United States and Japan. Above all, this ideal recommends the integration of formal instruction in arts and sciences with active research to achieve both a broad general education and the acquisition of cultural knowledge. Wilhelm’s younger brother, Alexander, a geographer, naturalist, and explorer, travelled widely across Central and South America developing the ideas for his multi-volume treatise, Kosmos, in which he attempted to identify connections between the various scientific disciplines and human culture. When he returned to Europe in 1804 he was one of the most celebrated scientists of his day, exercising a profound influence on the next generation of scientists, including Charles Darwin. Both Humboldt brothers were part of an international network of scholars with global reach. They served as foreign members in multiple learned societies, including the American Academy of Science and Art, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Science. Likewise, they corresponded extensively with an international network of