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History

Colonel Francis Wayland Parker founded the school in Lincoln Park in 1901 with the support of benefactor Anita McCormick Blaine. Colonel Parker was a Civil War veteran and bold educator for his time. He told his students, “The Great Word is Responsibility,” and championed the developmental needs of children and the professional standards of teachers in a democratic society. Called “the father of progressive education” by the great philosopher and his colleague John Dewey, Parker believed educators should organize schools to meet the needs of society by engaging students along paths of inquiry, generated in part by their own interests and curiosities.

At the time of Parker′s founding, progressive education was an innovative approach to teaching and learning. Today, many schools have embraced or imitated concepts of “learning by doing” or “maker” principles. Parker has been a paragon and leader of the progressive education movement since 1901.

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Guide to the Francis Wayland Parker Papers 1857-1904

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University of Chicago Library

Descriptive Summary

Title:	Parker, Francis Wayland. Papers
Dates:	1857-1904
Size:	1 box and 13 volumes
Repository:	Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center University of Chicago Library 1100 East 57th Street Chicago, Illinois 60637 U.S.A.
Abstract:	Francis Wayland Parker (1837-1902), Educator. The collection consists primarily of scrapbooks containing clippings of newspaper and magazine articles by and about Parker, and notices containing information on institutions, organizations, educational movements, and teaching methods with which he was associated. Also contains some manuscripts and correspondence.

Information on Use

Access

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Citation

When quoting material from this collection, the preferred citation is: Parker, Francis Wayland. Papers, [Box #, Folder #], Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library

Biographical Note

Francis W.

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Parker, Col. Francis Wayland (1837-1902)

Father of american educational reform

Source

From the War to the Schools.Francis Wayland Parker, who had risen to the rank of colonel in the Union army during the Civil War, began his influential career in education as a strict conformist to the schooling practices of the postwar era. He knew how to drill and discipline, and as principal of North Grammar School in Manchester, New Hampshire, he “had everything in good shape.” As he relates in his autobiography, “I had battalion drill and marching, and everything went like clockwork. I ranked my scholars, changing their places from week to week.” However, when he organized a normal school (a secondary school that provided for teacher training) in Dayton, Ohio, he ran into a wall of opposition from the teachers already in service. When an aunt died and left him $5,000, he left to study in Germany, determined to educate himself better in modem teaching methods. There he studied Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel and Johann Friedrich Herbart, two pedagogical ref