Park Schools Essay

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The influence of the ideas of progressive educator John Dewey (1859–1952) resulted in the development not only of the Laboratory School at the University of Chicago, but also of a series of private or independent schools, many of which are still in operation today. Among the most interesting is the Park School of Buffalo, New York.

In 1911, having learned about Dewey’s educational ideas, Nina Bull, a socially prominent Buffalonian, went to New York City to try to convince Dewey to help establish a school based on his ideas in Buffalo, New York. Dewey suggested that Bull meet with Mary Hammett Lewis, a teacher at the Horace Mann School, which was affiliated with Teachers College, Columbia University. Lewis had come to New York from Cleveland to work at the school, where she had begun such innovations as having herself and her students sit on a large, “friendly” rug, in an effort to get away from the rigidity of chairs and desks. The rug became a “magic carpet” for adventures with her pupils.

Lewis also conducted classes on the roof, where she set up a large canvas tent, far away from the distractions of other teachers and grown-ups. Lewis’s experiments with open-air education were by no means unique: Open-air education had been introduced from Europe several years before in an attempt to help children with respiratory ailments, in particular tuberculosis. The outdoor classes were extremely successful. She continued to try to develop an approach to teaching that was highly personalized and emphasized the interests of the children.

Lewis met with the group from Buffalo, headed by Bull and Maulsby Kinball, in the spring. Lewis agreed to go to Buffalo and open a school in the fall of 1912, which had an enrollment of twenty-seven pupils. The school emphasized not only educational models based on Dewey’s work, but also the idea of open-air education. Advocates of open-air education were reacting to the stuffy and unhealthy conditions found in many schools. Lewis’s efforts, however, went considerably beyond the philosophy of the open-air movement. She embraced in her work a unique combination of Dewey’s emphasis upon the child learning things that were meaningful to his or her own life and her own idea of the child as a discoverer and a shaper of things and ideas.

Lewis set up her school in a small rented cottage on Bird Avenue. The following year, the school moved to a large colonial house on the Jewett estate at Jewett and Main streets, close to the city’s main park, Delaware Park. Special porches were added to the building, which made it possible to hold classes in the open air. Early photographs of the school show children bundled in snowsuits and mittens working at their lessons outdoors in the height of winter. Five additional bungalows were built for the school which included boys through the sixth grade and girls through the eighth.

By 1919 the school had 170 pupils. It had outgrown the facility so Lewis moved first the upper school for girls and then the entire student body to suburban Snyder, a farm on Harlem Road where new buildings were built specifically designed to take advantage of the orchards and fields of the farm. The primary village was designed by Mr. Duane Lyman. Existing buildings on the farm were continuously altered and a gymnasium was built in 1928. The school’s natural environment, combined with Dewey’s progressive educational curriculum, provided an ideal environment where children were excited about learning and sharing in a communal life.

Soon, other “Park” schools began to be established across the Northeast, including the Park School of Cleveland, the Park School of Baltimore, and the Shady Hill School in Boston. All but the Park School of Cleveland are still operating today, having evolved into what is popularly described as independent country day schools. Consistent with the philosophy of the first Park School, these schools consider the education of children to be the joint responsibility of parents, teachers, and students. Even though progressive education has waxed and waned, the emphasis on helping the individual child to develop into a contributing citizen has remained the goal of the “Park” schools.

Bibliography:

  1. Lewis, M. H. (1985). An adventure with children (E. F. Provenzo, Jr., & T. M. Provenzo, Eds.). Lanham, MD: University Press of America. (Original work published 1928)
  2. Provenzo, E. F., Jr. (1998). An adventure in learning: The Park School of Buffalo and American progressive education. In S. F. Semel & A. R. Sadovnik (Eds.), Schools of tomorrow today (pp. 103–119). New York: Peter Lang.

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