In 1928 the Yugoslav journal "Radna Škola" put forward the perplexing claim that James Liberty Tadd (1853-1917) was one of the most significant and influential American educators. Why was this otherwise unknown art educator put into transnational circulation as responsible for the perceived success of education in the United States? Following the 1898 publication of his magnum opus, "New Methods in Education," Tadd enjoyed a modest international reputation, but he is little known today. Adopting an "entanglement" approach to global histories of education, this article focuses on the messy tangling together of different actors, devices, discourses, and practices involved in this transnational transit. The article argues that the most salient aspect of Tadd's introduction to a Yugoslav educational public in the late 1920s is an educational approach that purported to be transformational in how it unlocked human potential. This is to view "potential" as an object that circulates in the world and to suggest that histories of education should include study of the ways that the uppermost possibility spaces of human experience have been understood in relation to education in different times and spaces.