Elsie Ripley Clapp, an activist on behalf of children and the poor, taught at schools established to teach the children of jobless workers during the Depression. A student of John Dewey, she also made significant contributions to progressive education.
Born in Brooklyn Heights, New York, she was educated at Barnard, Vassar, and Columbia. Elsie held a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s in philosophy, studying under John Dewey and F. J. E. Woodbridge. Always an activist for children, Clapp worked with the International Workers of the World in 1913, where she taught the children of striking workers. She supported the work of Margaret Sanger and championed the rights of poor children.
Although she taught in numerous private schools, her best-known documented work was in rural Kentucky and West Virginia. Upon the advice of her friend and mentor John Dewey, Elsie took progressive education to two rural public schools, the Ballard Memorial School near Louisville and the Arthurdale School in West Virginia. She documented her work in two books, Community Schools in Action (1939) and The Use of Resources in Education (1952). Clapp was chosen to head the Arthurdale School by Eleanor Roosevelt, who believed this New Deal community needed a progressive school. The school was populated by children of coal miners displaced by the Depression with an overarching aim to build community.
Active in progressive education circles, Elsie also edited the journal Progressive Education from 1937– 1939 and in that short span brought an aesthetic dimension to the journal with focus on art, the child, and the community school.
Bibliography:
- Stack, S., Jr. (2004). Elsie Ripley Clapp (1879–1965): Her life and the community school. New York: Peter Lang.
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