The 1920s Education: Headline Makers

Mary McLeod Bethune
Nicholas Murray Butler
Alvin Saunders Johnson
William Heard Kilpatrick
Abbott Lawrence Lowell

Mary McLeod Bethune (1875–1955) In 1904, African American educator Mary McLeod Bethune founded the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls in Daytona Beach, Florida. In 1923, that institution merged with the Cookman Institute for Men to become Bethune-Cookman College. Bethune was active in the women's rights movement and organized the National Council of Negro Women in the early 1930s. Her involvement with national conferences on education, child welfare, and home ownership brought her to the attention of the nation's first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962), during the New Deal reform era of the 1930s. Their relationship led Bethune to serve as director of Negro affairs in the National Youth Administration (1936–44). She also advised President Franklin Roosevelt (1882–1945) on matters involving minorities.

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) As a philosophy professor (1885–1901) at Columbia College in New York City, Nicholas Murray Butler designed plans to expand and modernize the college. He founded the Teachers' College at Columbia in 1889 and became its first president. Butler helped structure a plan by which Columbia College was turned into Columbia University. It was Butler who brought influential, progressive educators John Dewey, William Heard Kilpatrick, and George S. Counts to the Teachers' College. Butler's involvements ranged from teacher training to world politics. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931 for his work on the Pact of Paris, and he founded the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, serving as its president from 1925 to 1945.

Alvin Saunders Johnson (1874–1971) Alvin Saunders Johnson cofounded the New School for Social Research in 1919, and held the position of director from 1923 to 1945. Under his guidance, the New York City-based school became a preeminent institution of adult learning. In 1933, Johnson set up the "University in Exile" as a refuge for European scholars who had escaped from the Nazis. With the help of the Rockefeller Foundation, he arranged for more than two hundred expatriate scholars to study in the United States. Johnson also was an editor of the New Republic and the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences.

William Heard Kilpatrick (1871–1965) A disciple of leading progressive education theorist John Dewey (1859–1952), William Heard Kilpatrick brought the theories and philosophies of progressive education to a more radical level than his mentor. As a principal in several Georgia public school systems in the 1890s, Kilpatrick abolished report cards and student punishments. His style of teaching downplayed the instructor as the center of attention and focused classroom activity on student discussion. An eloquent speaker, Kilpatrick became known as "The Million-Dollar Professor" after his classes' enrollment fees of a single summer topped that amount. Photo reproduced courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Abbott Lawrence Lowell (1855–1943) During his tenure as president of Harvard University (1909–33), Abbott Lawrence Lowell revamped the style of learning by emphasizing the significance of an academic community on campus, and redesigning the student housing system into freshmen dormitories and residential colleges. His defense of academic freedom attracted some of the world's top professors to Harvard. It had been his intention to use his Harvard Law School degree to pursue a partnership in a Boston law firm with other family members, and then become a judge. Instead, he dedicated his career to education and the study of government.