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Teachers and Educational Reform During the Progressive Era: A Case Study of the Pittsburgh Teachers Association
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
Extract
General histories of the Progressive Era have by and large ignored educational reform even though it was an integral part of the Progressive Movement. Lawrence Cremin, who has done much to remedy this oversight, has described Progressivism in education as “a many-sided effort to use the schools to improve the lives of individuals.” To the Progressives, according to Cremin, this meant “broadening the program and the function of the school to include direct concern for health, vocation, and the quality of family and community life … applying in the classroom the pedagogical principles derived from new scientific research in psychology and the social sciences … [and] tailoring instruction more and more to the different kinds and classes of children who were being brought within the purview of the school.”
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- State and Local History of Education III
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- Copyright © 1967 by New York University
References
Notes
1. Cremin, Lawrence A. The Transformation of the School, Progressivism in American Education, 1876-1957 (New York: Vintage Books, A Division of Random House, 1961), p. viii. For a study of educational reform in New York City, see Sol Cohen, Progressives and Urban School Reform, The Public Education Association of New York City (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1964).Google Scholar
2. Cremin, op. cit., p. 169.Google Scholar
3. Smith, Timothy L. “Progressivism in American Education, 1880-1900,” Harvard Educational Review, XXXI (Spring 1961), 168–93.Google Scholar
4. Pittsburgh Teachers Association, A Review of Teachers’ Salary Conditions in Pittsburgh, 1869-1906 (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh Teachers Association, 1906), p. 2. This work (hereafter cited as Review) was invaluable, for it contained the documents of the salary campaign. See also Clarissa A. Moffitt, “Sketch of the Pittsburgh Teachers Association,” Pittsburgh School Bulletin, IV (March 1911), 11-14. Pittsburgh School Bulletin will hereafter be cited as PSB. Google Scholar
5. Review, p. 2; also City of Pittsburgh, Reports Concerning the Public Schools (1905-1906), pp. 10-16. (Hereafter cited as Reports.)Google Scholar
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8. Ibid., pp. 10-16.Google Scholar
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10. The campaign for a retirement fund was described in PSB, I (June 1907), 4-6.Google Scholar
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14. Ibid., pp. 1-2.Google Scholar
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31. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, General Assembly, Legislative Record, 1907, p. 2475.Google Scholar
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