Category: Education
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Democracy by Lot — A College Experiment
In 1921, Knox College in Illinois attempted a new way to break students out of their social comfort zones: randomly selecting the seating arrangements at the dining hall. Here, in a dining hall seating 200 men, they come together three times a day, as a part of a deliberate plan for developing democratic spirit and avoiding…
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Does a University Career Offer “No Future”?
In 1919, as the smartest ditched academia for the private sector, had professors’ salaries gotten too low? The average professor then earned $41K in today’s money. Average professor salaries are much higher now, but the problem persists — or has grown. Edwin F. Gay, Dean of Harvard Business School penned an essay on the subject.…
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Why They Entered Annapolis
The new boys at the U.S. Naval Academy were surveyed in 1919 about why they had joined, and their answers varied considerably. Five favorites: “I came here mainly to beat out a friend at West Point.” “Life here must be one continual round of hops, entertainments, fights, escapades, and every other wildly romantic thing not…
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Magna Charta of Childhood
World War I changed how many governments viewed their responsibilities toward children. While previously they had largely kept their hands off, the war took a huge toll on children’s health, child labor, and education. Governments felt more of a need to step in. In the U.S., what did the government do around this time? Congress…
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Learning the Three R’s by Doing as You Please
Horace Mann School is considered one of the best private schools in the country, and the fourth-best in New York City. They offer 230 courses to their high school students. Warning, though, the school will set you back $51,000 per year. This 1919 profile article describes the unusual self-directed approach to education at the school:…
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Soldiers Learning to Read as Well as Fight
While about 20 percent of the population at the time were enrolled as library borrowers and took out an average of three books per year, World War I soldiers in the camps were enrolled at a rate of 40 percent and took out an average of 12 books per year. Half a million book volumes…
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Duties of Schools When Nation Is at War
How should schools change their curricula during wartime? During WWI, New York State Education Commissioner John H. Finley attempted to answer that question. “There is a twofold obligation on the teacher. First, it is essential that we defend the intellectual frontiers of our democracy. We must “dig ourselves into” their trenches and hold them. Second,…
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Business Men in Control of American Colleges
Evans Clark, a professor of history and politics and Princeton, lamented the increased influence of members of the business community on American universities in 1917. Clark perceived these board of trustees or regents as often lacking either familiarity or best interests of the school they represented: Princeton University, however, is legally not the Faculty and…
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Real Democracy’s Need Is Discipline of Youth
Why was everything going to hell in 1917? Ralph Philip Boas, Associate Professor of English at Whitman College, suggested a large measure of blame should be placed on young people: The danger of democracy is never that it will be too stern, too rigid, too intellectual, too conservative. No, the danger of democracy is that…
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Pan American University Planned for Panama
The concept of a university linking both North and South America was already off the ground by 1917. “Now comes Dr. Edwin Grant Dexter, President of the Instituto Nacional de Panama, with a tangible suggestion and plan for the doing of this very thing. He would establish a point of academic, cultural contact between the two…
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