From Caroline Pratt and Helen Parkhurst to Lillian Weber And
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Women Progressive Leaders in the Twentieth Century: From Caroline Pratt and Helen Parkhurst to Lillian Weber and Deborah Meier Susan F. Semel City College of New York and CUNY Graduate Center Keynote Address at ISCHE 26, July 15, 2004, Geneva, Switzerland Abstract: This paper examines the historical progression of progressive women leaders from the early 20th century to the present, using a number of women to demonstrate the historical legacy of progressive education through the century and how the influences of Dewey and the women who implemented his ideas in schools continued to be an important part of educational reform, albeit differently. It concentrates on New York City, which along with Chicago was a primary home for early progressivism and examinethe lives and works of Caroline Pratt, founder of the City and Country School, founded in New York City also in 1914 and Helen Parkhurst, founder of the Dalton School, founded in New York City in 1919. It then moves across the Atlantic and briefly looks at the life and work of Susan Isaacs, Director of the Maltby House School in Cambridge, England from 1924-1927 and Head of the Department of Child Development at the Institute of Education, University of London from 1933-1943. Isaacs had a profound influence on the development of British progressive education and through Lillian Weber at City College of New York and Deborah Meier at Central Park East in New York City on U.S. progressive education from the 1960s to the present. The last part of the paper will examine the historical connection between Weber and Meier and the progressive women of earlier parts of the century. The founding mothers of the early twentieth century, exemplified by Caroline Pratt and Helen Parkhurst were heavily influenced by John Dewey. Although committed in theory to the child-centered, community and egalitarian aspects of Dewey's writings, their schools, City and Country and Dalton, became far more emblematic of the individual, child-centered and community features of progressive education, with the egalitarian, social reconstructionist thread visibly absent. Although both City and Country and Dalton were committed to the vision of a democratic community, these own communities were primarily upper and upper middle class. Most importantly, as private schools they illustrate one of the significant problems of American progressive education, where the more child-centered and community based types were found in private schools and with progressive education in public schools more often than versions of administrative progressivism, with its emphasis on vocationalism, life- adjustment and testing. Although both Weber and Meier were influenced by the individualistic, psychological and child- centered work of Susan Isaacs, their versions of progressive education were also far more concerned with issues of social justice and the egalitarian aspects of social reconstructionism. Both Weber and Meier worked exclusively in public education with low-income students and students of color. Both were committed to applying the child-centered features of progressive education to create more equal educational opportunities for disadvantaged children. And in doing so, they reconnected American progressive education with its early Deweyan democratic principles. Interest in progressive education and feminist pedagogy has gained a significant following in current educational reform circles. Given this interest, the purpose of this paper is to examine the historical development of women educational leaders from the Progressive Era to the present. These include both female founders of progressive schools in the twentieth century and the schools that they founded, as well as a number of women leaders of educational organizations, movements, and teacher education centers. In the early part of the twentieth century, progressive reformers tended to concentrate their efforts in public education, applying scientific management techniques to the administration of schools, reforming curriculum and creating secondary, vocational schools.' But as historian Lawrence A. Cremin indicated, a second trend developed during this period, as many progressive educators began to focus on a select group of pedagogical innovative independent schools catering principally to middle class children. 2 A number of independent, progressive schools, developed during this period.3 A majority of them were founded by women during a time that a great divide in the history of progressive education4 was occurring-one in which the thrust toward Asocial reformism was virtually eclipsed by the rhetoric of child-centered pedagogy. Educators commonly referred to these schools as child-centered. They were often founded by female practitioners Spurred by the revolt against the harsh pedagogy of the existing schools and by the ferment of change and new thought of the first two decades of the twentieth century. While historians tend to group these child-centered schools together, each has a distinct philosophy and practice according to the particular vision of its founder. For example, City and Country founded by Caroline Pratt emphasized the idea of self-expression and growth through 3 4y play-in particular, through play with wooden blocks.7 Another school, The Walden School, founded by Margaret Naumburg who was heavily influenced by Freudian psychology, emphasized the notion of individual transformation. Under the leadership of Naumburg's sister, Florence Cane, the school encouraged children to paint exactly what they felt impelled to paint.8 Other examples include The Bank Street School, founded by Lucy Sprague Mitchell,9 and The Lincoln School, founded by Abraham Flexner, which became a laboratory school for Teachers College, Columbia University.10 Outside of New York City, where the aforementioned four schools were located, other examples of progressive education sprang up. Among these were The Organic School in Fairhope, Alabama, founded by Marietta Johnson; Francis W. Parker School in Chicago, founded by one of the early pioneers of progressive pedagogy, Colonel Francis W. Parker;" the Putney School, a boarding school in Putney, Vermont, founded by Carmelita Hinton;12 and The Shady Hill School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, founded by Edward . Yeomans.13 ° Whereas these child-centered progressive schools were almost all independent, private schools, public education was dominated by the social engineering strand of progressivism. From the transformation of the high school from an exclusively academic institution at the turn of the 'cthhe century to a host for life adjustment functions by the 193 0s, to the social class- and race-based tracking systems that separated academic and vocational education, public progressive education from the 1930s to the 1960s stressed life adjustment rather than intellectual functions and often helped to reproduce rather than ameliorate social class, race, and gender inequalities. Progressive 14 experiments in public schools did exist, for example, in Gary, Indiana, and Winnetka, Illinois. Although public education during this period came to be dominated by administrative progressivism and male administrators, some women educators did have an influence in the public sector as principals, superintendents, and union leaders. In the 1930Os and early 1940s, a third strain of progressivism, social reconstructionism, had a limited effect on the school practice. Based upon the work of Harold Rugg, George Counts, and Kenneth Benne and the journal the Social Frontier, a number of schools adopted a philosophy that espoused a radical reconstruction of the social order, especially with regard to inequalities. 15 Examples of these schools include Malumet, Hessian Hills, Arthurdale and Downtown Commu- nity School.16 Although they represented an important attempt to use schools to change society, they neither had a wide following, nor a lasting influence. Progressive education transcended a narrow focus on schools alone and extended its reach into communities and other educative institutions, such as universities and teacher centers. This paper, therefore, expands the traditional view of progressivism by broadening its focus to include education and educative institutions in the widest sense. In "Schools of Tomorrow ", Schools of Today: What Happened to ProgressiveEducation, we argued that there are significant lessons to be learned from the history of early progressive schools for contemporary educational reform. This is no less the case for the lessons to be learned from women progressive educational leaders in the 20 h century. Over the past two decades a significant body of research on the importance of school leadership for educational reform has highlighted the critical role of school leadership. 17 In FoundingMothers and Others: Women EducationalLeaders During the Progressive Era (2002) we chronicled the life and careers of many female founders of progressive schools and other educational leaders during the Progressive Era. In this paper, I will examine the historical progression of progressive women leaders from the early 20th century to the present, using a number of women to demonstrate the historical legacy of progressive education through the century and how the influences of Dewey and the women who implemented his ideas in schools continued to be an important part of educational reform, albeit differently. I will concentrate on New York City, which along with Chicago was a primary home for early progressivism and examine the