In Hessian Hills

What is Progressive Education? Bred of the 20th Century, it is old enough to have been called by Harvard's late great President Charles William Eliot "the most significant movement in American education today." To carry it forward was founded, in 1919, the Progressive Education Association, which now has some 7,000 members. The philosophy of Humanist John Dewey and the work of pioneering Colonel Francis Wayland Parker (1831-1902) of Quincy, Mass. and Cook County, Ill. are implicit in much Progressive teaching. That education at any age should grow out of free individual experience rather than from books is a Progressive fundamental. Because parents who send their youngsters to Progressive schools are of necessity liberal-minded people, and because the system demands their active cooperation, it does not yet represent more than a strong minority in U. S. education. With some methods sharply defined, others vague. Progressive schools in general turn out children who are keenly observant, able to amuse themselves, often undisciplined in manners, adept at using their hands, sometimes foggy as to specific facts. Nearly all Progressive schools are in cities. Four of the best-known ones are in New York: Walden, founded 19 years ago by Margaret Naumburg, has a set daily program but endeavors to make the children self-reliant (from babyhood through high school age), permits them to call their teachers by first name. Lincoln School, experimental offspring of Teachers College at Columbia University, has received nearly $6,000,000 from the General Education Board (Rockefeller), has counted among its pupils Nelson and Lawrence, sons of John D. Rockefeller Jr. The flourishing Dalton School, just off Park Avenue, is famed for its course in live babies (TIME, Jan. 4) and the ''Dalton System" of its Founder Helen Parkhurst, a method of learning-by-doing which the U. S. S. R. adopted, but dropped this autumn because young Russians loafed at it. The downtown City & Country School (once the Play School) centers all its activities in work, teaches arithmetic, geography et al. in the school store and school post office, as well as by field trips throughout Manhattan. Fortnight ago came news of another Progressive school, young and bold, in many respects unique in the U. S. Croton-on-Hudson. N. Y. is a quiet village near Harmon, where New York Central trains exchange steam for electricity. The sprawling, bridge-playing, gin-drinking suburbs of New York have not yet entangled it. In Croton, seven years ago, settled Economist Stuart Chase, his wife Margaret Hatfield, Elizabeth Moos, a former teacher at Walden and other modern schools, and her husband Robert Imandt, violinist, onetime French Army man, camp director. Between them Miss Hatfield and Miss Moos had three children. They wanted to teach them. They went to it in a garage. Soon other families sent their children over. When the number grew to 16, Teachers Hatfield and Moos realized they had a School At the beginning of their third year there were 29 pupils, five teachers, installed in an old farmhouse they had managed to buy. From the surrounding country, where George Washington skirmished with King George Ill's mercenaries, they took the school's name: Hessian Hills. More & more people heard of it. Since its founding, 30 families have moved to Croton to put their children in Hessian Hills. Some of the parents: Heywood Broun, Lincoln Steffens, Floyd Dell, Director William A. Hodson of the New York Welfare Council, Lawyer Jerome Frank, Vice President Sheldon R. Coons of Lord & Thomas (advertising), one-time Mayor Henry Thomas Hunt of Cincinnati, Morris Greenberg of Paramount Publix Corp., Parole Director Winthrop D. Lane of the State of New Jersey. John M. Kaplan, proprietor of Hearn's department store in Manhattan, many a New York college professor. Hessian Hills' aim is a socialized group in which the pupils feel a sense of communal enterprise and responsibility. Much of its success has resulted from the intelligence and enthusiasm of the parents. Any feeling of competition is avoided; the child is to compete not against his fellows but against his own previous efforts. Flexible, searching, the Hessian Hills theory (though disclaimed as a theory) was well under way by 1931. With Robert Imandt as shop director, the pupils worked at weaving, metal, wood and leather work, drawing and painting. Elizabeth Moos taught Rhythmics and directed academic work: social sciences, then arithmetic and writing, after these reading and so on. The parents met regularly, joined in school activities. The village of Croton watched a bit suspiciously the hatless, overalled, unrepressed children, dashing down to look at local industries, asking grown-up questions. The Croton truant officer was perplexed, too. Once he offered to help round up Hessian Hills truants, along with those from the public schools. He was told that was unnecessary; but if he liked he might help Hessian Hills at its difficult daily job of getting the children to go home when school is over.

One day in January 1931 Hessian Hills School burned to the ground. The parents immediately got together to plan for a new school. With a larger enrolment (at present 63, ranging from 20 mo. to high school age) they would need a larger school, ultimately to cost $65,000. A new plan they got for nothing, from Howe & Lescaze of New York and Philadelphia, who wished to design a modern, functional school-building. Within a few months the Hessian Hills parents, organized as a non-profit-making corporation, had enough money to begin the first unit of the school, a long, low, glass & concrete building with a flat roof upon which some day another section can be built. The parents got to work painting it, digging ditches, doing all the odd jobs that remained. Last fortnight was dedicated the second unit of Hessian Hills' new plant, a wing containing an auditorium, music room, shower baths and locker rooms. Half of the $12,000 that this cost was given by Manhattan Philanthropist George Dupont Pratt in memory of his wife whose name it bears, the rest by friends of the school. In these rooms as throughout the school, all the bric-a-brac, small furniture and decoration is the work of Hessian Hills pupils.

Hessian Hills parents meet fortnightly for discussion, monthly for work about the school. At their last meeting they questioned Dr. George Sylvester Count's of Teachers College about his proposal that school teachers "indoctrinate" their pupils with liberalism. Of the same intellectual bent if not in the same wage group, the Hessian Hills parents contribute more to their children's teaching than most parents do.

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