Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-7nlkj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-29T08:11:12.497Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

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

William H. Issel*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania

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.”

Type
State and Local History of Education III
Copyright
Copyright © 1967 by New York University 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

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

6. Review, p. 10.Google Scholar

7. Ibid. Google Scholar

8. Ibid., pp. 10-16.Google Scholar

9. Ibid., pp. 17-22; also Clarissa Moffit, op. cit., p. 11.Google Scholar

10. The campaign for a retirement fund was described in PSB, I (June 1907), 4-6.Google Scholar

11. Ibid., p. 1.Google Scholar

12. PSB, II (April 1909), back cover.Google Scholar

13. PSB, I (June 1907), 1.Google Scholar

14. Ibid., pp. 1-2.Google Scholar

15. PSB, I (September 1907), 2.Google Scholar

16. Ibid., p. 3.Google Scholar

17. Ibid., p. 4.Google Scholar

18. PSB, I (January 1908), 4.Google Scholar

19. PSB, II (November 1908), 3-4.Google Scholar

20. PSB, I (February 1908), 1-2.Google Scholar

21. Ibid., pp. 5-10.Google Scholar

22. PSB, I (March 1908), 5.Google Scholar

23. PSB, I (May 1908), 4-9.Google Scholar

24. PSB, I (June 1908), 2-3.Google Scholar

25. PSB, III (December 1909), 3.Google Scholar

26. PSB, IV (December 1910), 7.Google Scholar

27. PSB, III (March 1910), 12-14.Google Scholar

28. PSB, III (May 1910), 24.Google Scholar

29. Ibid., p. 25.Google Scholar

30. PSB, IV (March 1911), 2.Google Scholar

31. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, General Assembly, Legislative Record, 1907, p. 2475.Google Scholar

32. PSB, I (May 1908), 17-18; also V (November 1911), 3.Google Scholar

33. PSB, V (November 1911), 3.Google Scholar

34. Ibid., pp. 3-5.Google Scholar

35. PSB, IV (June 1911), 2.Google Scholar

36. Ibid., p. 5.Google Scholar

37. Ibid. Google Scholar

38. Ibid., p. 4.Google Scholar

39. Ibid., p. 10.Google Scholar

40. Ibid., PP. 11, 12; Ibid., p. 23.Google Scholar

41. Pittsburgh Board of Public Education, First Annual Report, School District of Pittsburgh, for the year ending December 31, 1912, pp. 2-8.Google Scholar

42. Hays, Samuel P.The Politics of Reform in Municipal Government in the Progressive Era,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly, LV (October 1964), 157–69.Google Scholar