Whom You Know Congratulates Columbia University on the 125th anniversary of Teachers College

Whom You Know runs this in conjunction with our fantastic pals at the The New-York Historical Society, whom we love!!! Peachy Deegan has a B.A. in American History from Boston College which celebrates its sesquicentennial this year, which along with University College Cork, are the only colleges we endorse.  Congratulations to Columbia on the anniversary!

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To commemorate the 125th anniversary of Teachers College, Columbia University, The New-York Historical Society presents Teachers College: Pioneering Education Through Innovation, an exhibit of photographs, documents, and artifacts from the oldest and largest graduate school of education in the nation, March 5th through March 31st , in Manhattan at 170 Central Park West, between 76th and 77th Streets.

In One College’s History, The Story of American Education

Teachers College, Columbia University – celebrating the 125th anniversary of its founding – is the focus of an exhibit at the New-York Historical Society

A track record of “firsts,” ranging from nutrition education to spirituality in psychology, is featured from March 5th through March 31st

“Since its founding in 1887… Teachers College has been in the forefront of every major movement, issue and conflict in American education.”

Lawrence Cremin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning education historian who served as the College’s seventh president, wrote those words in 1952. Now the continuing story of Teachers College – covering not only its work in teacher education but also its many ground-breaking contributions in health, psychology, nutrition and other fields – will be the focus of a new exhibit at the New-York Historical Society. Titled Teachers College: Pioneering Education Through Innovation, the exhibit of photographs, documents, and artifacts will run from March 5th through March 31st at New-York Historical located in Manhattan at 170 Central Park West, between 76th and 77th Streets.

Why an exhibit about Teachers College – and why now? One answer: The College – the nation’s oldest and largest graduate school of education – is celebrating its 125th anniversary. But as the New-York Historical Society exhibit makes abundantly clear, TC was created at a time when the world faced challenges much like those of today. Industrialization and technology were creating vast wealth and deep economic uncertainty. An influx of people was pouring into U.S. cities from rural areas and from other nations around the world. Communities were grappling with complex new problems of health, race relations, education, and crime.

Reflecting the consciousness of the era’s leading scholars and social reformers, as well as of a remarkable group of philanthropic families who funded the creation of many other enduring New York City cultural and civic institutions, Teachers College was conceived to meet all of these challenges. The result was a dynamic institution that not only met but also anticipated the needs of subsequent eras, serving as a reliable source of solutions and expert analysis to which the nation has turned again and again.

Teachers College: Pioneering Education Through Innovation recaps the College’s humble beginnings as Grace Hoadley Dodge’s Kitchen Garden Association, through which “lady volunteer” instructors taught cooking, sewing, and other fundamental domestic skills to immigrant women and their children. It traces the Association’s change in focus to educating teachers, prompted by the recognition that instruction of people from other cultures and societies required a range of skills and sensitivities that were largely absent in American schools.

From there, the viewer meets a succession of the College’s legendary thinkers – visionaries such as John Dewey, who championed experiential, hands-on learning; E.L. Thorndike, who founded the field of education psychology; James Earl Russell, who incorporated health-related fields into the college’s curriculum and fathered the field of comparative and international education; and Mary Swartz Rose, who created the field of nutrition education.

The exhibit gives equal weight to more recent luminaries at the College, including A. Harry Passow, who is recognized as the father of both urban education and the study of gifted children; Morton Deutsch, a seminal figure in the development of conflict resolution as a field of study; and the recent focus on spirituality in psychology, pioneered by present-day faculty member Lisa Miller. 

The viewer meets a wide-ranging and often surprising cast of famous Teachers College alumni including Carl Rogers, considered the pre-eminent American psychologist of the 20th century; Tao Xingzhi, the great Chinese education reformer; Thomas Kean, the former New Jersey governor who chaired the 9/11 Commission; Professor Emerita Joan Gussow, a leader in the organic food movement who went on to teach for many years at the College; and Dr. Ruth Westheimer, sex therapist and media personality.

The College’s focus on educational equity is also a theme that runs throughout the exhibit, from TC’s historic role in preparing black teachers from the South who were denied admission to education schools during the Jim Crow era, to Lawrence Cremin’s vision of education as a process that extends beyond classrooms to include families, religious institutions, communities, museums, and the media.

The exhibit concludes with a look at the College’s current-day efforts to shape a new “Century of the Learner” that harnesses new findings from cognitive and neuroscience about how people learn and how teaching can be tailored to meet individual strengths and weaknesses. Much of that work has been conducted by the College’s own faculty members and is playing out at TC through work to strengthen neighborhoods – including through the new Teachers College Community School in West Harlem – and through policy recommendations advanced by the College’s new department of Education Policy & Social Analysis.

ABOUT TEACHERS COLLEGE

To learn more about “Teachers College: Pioneering Education Through Innovation,” visit www.nyhistory.org/exhibitions. Teachers College is the nation’s oldest and largest graduate school of education, and perennially ranked among its very best. Learn more about Teachers College at www.tc.edu

ABOUT THE NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY

The New-York Historical Society has one of the world’s greatest collections of historical artifacts, works of American art, and other materials documenting the history of the United States and New York. It is recognized for engaging the public with deeply researched and far-ranging exhibitions, such as Alexander Hamilton: The Man Who Made Modern America; Slavery in New York; Nature and the American Vision: The Hudson River School at the New-York Historical Society; Grant and Lee in War and Peace; and the 2009 exhibition Lincoln and New York.