Daniel Coit Gilman is best known for his contributions to American university and medical education. Much less well known are his activities in contributing to the foundation for American professional social work education and his personal social welfare activities. This paper reviews his history in these areas and argues that greater attention should be given to his social welfare educational and practice accomplishments.
Continue Reading »John Dewey was the most significant educational thinker of his era and, many would argue, of the 20th century. As a philosopher, social reformer and educator, he changed fundamental approaches to teaching and learning. His ideas about education sprang from a philosophy of pragmatism and were central to the Progressive Movement in schooling.
Continue Reading »For the next twelve years he learned reading, writing and math skills while performing various farming duties. He was able to save enough (probably with some assistance from the farmer for whom he labored) to enroll in Randolph’s Orange County Grammar School in 1815 at the age of 20. During the next six years (1815-1821) he completed not only the secondary school courses but also the first two years of a college level curriculum. Following his graduation from Randolph he was accepted at Middlebury College, entering as a junior in August of 1821. Two years later he received his bachelor’s degree. Middlebury College claims him to be the first African-American to earn a baccalaureate degree from an American college or university.
Continue Reading »Dr. Karls’ greatest contribution to the public appreciation of social work is his development of the “person in the environment” (PIE) assessment system that distinguishes social work from the other mental health professions. Working with Dr. Karin Wandrei, Dr. Karls used the concept underlying social work practice of person-in-environment to develop a system for social workers to record the results of their assessment that addresses the whole person. It helps the practitioner determine recommended courses of action, and to clearly follow the progress of the work. PIE has been translated into many languages, and it has been computerized. It is used as a teaching tool not only in the US but in other countries. PIE provides an alternative to the medical model that has traditionally dominated mental health practice, and encourages social work leadership in social rehabilitation, community resources, and advocacy models.
Continue Reading »In the 1890s, in remote locations such as railroad construction sites, lumber camps, turpentine camps, or coal mines, jobs often existed far from established towns. As a pragmatic solution, the employer sometimes developed a company town, where an individual company owned all the buildings and businesses.
Continue Reading »In 1881, Kate married (Samuel) Bradley Wiggin, a San Francisco lawyer. According to the customs of the time, she was required to resign her teaching job. Still devoted to her school, she began to raise money for it through writing, first The Story of Patsy (1883), then The Birds’ Christmas Carol (1887). Both privately printed books were issued commercially by Houghton Mifflin in 1889, with enormous success. Ironically, considering her intense love of children, Kate Wiggin had none. She moved to New York City in 1888.
Continue Reading »This entry was a presentation by Kate Douglas Wiggin at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting of The National Conference of Charities and Correction, 1888. Wiggin was an American educator and author of children’s stories. She devoted her adult life to the welfare of children in an era when children were commonly thought of as cheap labor. Wiggin discusses kindergarten as a type of social reform.
Continue Reading »This entry was a presentation written by Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper at the Sixteenth Annual Session of the The National Conference of Charities And Correction, 1889. Mrs. Cooper was internationally known as a pioneer in kindergarten education. Her ideas were endorsed by American educators, and she…led the founding of a teacher training institute, and in 1892 she founded and was elected first president of the International Kindergarten Union.
The Kindergarten takes hold of the child at the most important epoch of life,- the formative period. Impressions precede expressions, and we should be most careful that the child receive none but the best impressions, especially when we consider that these will be lasting and affect his whole after life.
This entry was a presentation by Mrs. Cooper at the Ninth Annual National Conference of Charities and Corrections, 1882. Mrs. Cooper was internationally known as a pioneer in kindergarten education. Her ideas were endorsed by American educators, and she… led the founding of a teacher training institute, and in 1892 she founded and was elected first president of the International Kindergarten Union.
Continue Reading »This entry is a presentation by Constance Mackenzie at the Thirteenth Annual Session of The National Conference Of Charities And Correction, 1886. “‘The kindergarten itself does not, of course, bear directly upon crime,’ writes one of our correspondents; ‘but, if the entire after education of the child were carried out according to the principles of the kindergarten, there can be no doubt that its effects would be strongly felt in every direction.'”
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