Contents
1. Introduction: Betty & Franklin Parker Looking Back Since 1946; 58 Years of a Good Idea.
2. Karen Armstrong (1944-) as Master Teacher: A Dialogue on the British Ex-Nun, Author, and Historian of Religion.
3. Lawrence Arthur Cremin (1925-1990), U.S. Educational Historian, Career, Publications, Reviews of Major Works, Criticism, Obituaries.
4 Arthurdale, West Virginia, 1933: Historic First FDR New Deal Homestead Community.
5. Ezekiel Cheever (1614-1708), New England Colonial Teacher.
6. Civil Rights: Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr. & Myles Horton in Tennessee.
7. How Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Changed the Way We See the Universe.
8. Cyrus West Field (1819-92): Laying the Atlantic Cable, 1866; A Dialogue.
9. Philip Vickers Fithian (1747-1776), a Princeton Tutor on a Virginia Plantation.
10. Abraham and Simon Flexner: Medical Education Reformers in the U.S.A.
11. Willard E. Goslin (1899-1969), Educator, School Principal, School Superintendent, and Education Professor at Peabody College, Nashville, TN.
12. Eric Hoffer (1902-83) Remembered: Guru of the 1950s-60s.
13. Myles Horton (1905-90), Educator and Social Activist of Highlander Adult Education Center, Tennessee; With Addendum.
14. How the U.S.A. Became the World's Policeman.
15. Iraq: Where Do We Go From Here?
16. William Heard Kilpatrick (Nov. 20, 1871-Feb. 13, 1965), Progressive Educator and Philosopher William Heard Kilpatrick (Nov. 20, 1871-Feb. 13, 1965),
17. Martin Luther King, Jr.: Prophet in the Making.
18. General Robert E. Lee (1807-70) and Philanthropist George Peabody (1795-1869) at White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, July 23- August 30, 1869.
19. Leo Loeb, M.D. (1869-1959), Pathologist, Experimental Biologist, Cancer Researcher.
20. Robert Michels (1876-1936), German-born Sociologist and Economist.
21. Arthur Miller 1915-2005: Making of a Playwright, A Dialogue.
22. Thomas Philip (Tip) O’Neill, Jr. (1912-94), Congressman; Speaker, U.S. House of Representatives (1977-86).
23. George Peabody, "Education: A Debt Due from Present to Future Generations" (June 16, 1852); A Review with Commentary of Paul K. Conkin, Peabody College: From a Frontier Academy to the Frontiers of Teaching and Learning (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002).
24. Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA: Brief History.
25. Peabody Education Fund In Tennessee, 1867-1914.
26. Educational Philanthropist George Peabody (1795-1869) and first U.S. Paleontology Prof. Othniel Charles Marsh (1831-99) at Yale University.
27. Max Rafferty (1917-82), Conservative Educator and California State School Superintendent During 1962-70.
28. May Cravath Wharton, M.D. (1873-1959), Founder of Uplands Retirement Village, Pleasant Hill, Tennessee, USA.
End.
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Why this “Franklin and Betty J. Parker Writings, 2008” collection? Our reason is to preserve and share commentaries on books we’ve reviewed for friends and papers we’ve read at academic meetings.
Here’s a backward look at how it all began.
Betty & Franklin Parker Looking Back Since 1946; 57 Years of a Good Idea.
By Franklin & Betty J. Parker, 63 Heritage Loop, Crossville, TN 38571, bfparker@frontiernet.net.
We were children of the Great Depression, shaped by World War II upheavals. While Betty did well in grade school and high school, Frank took electrician trade classes in his vocational high school. During the job-scarce Depression he also took radio technician courses at FDR’s National Youth Administration residential trade school at Quoddy Village near Eastport, Maine.
After Pearl Harbor, at Army basic training interviews (Feb. 1942), Frank's electrical-radio studies, recorded on IBM punched cards, probably led to his being sent to the Air Force Morse radio code school in Chicago's Coliseum. When voice radio replaced Morse coders, Frank was sent to the Army Airways Communications System (AACS) headquarters, which had moved in early 1943 from crowded Washington, DC, to Asheville, NC. AACS personnel managed WWII air traffic control towers and later radar guidance systems.
Frank's job in AACS publications was to update fast-changing classified Army, Air Force, and AACS regulations guiding headquarter planners in AACS worldwide operations, 1943 to early 1946. On discharge (Feb. 1946) Frank returned to Asheville, NC, took summer 1946 courses at what later became the Univ. of NC at Asheville, entered Berea College, Sept. 1946. His AACS experience led him to work, among other Berea College work/study jobs, in its Library Building.
We met in Sept. 1946 at Berea College, near Lexington, Ky. Having the same last name, taking some classes together, not wanting a nice friendship to end, we became engaged in May 1949. Frank earned a Berea College B.A. degree in English, Aug. '49. In Sept. '49 he entered the Univ. of Illinois' (Urbana) graduate M.S. in library science program while working part time in the Univ. of Ill.'s undergraduate library. Betty graduated from Berea in June '50, B.A., History. We were married June 12, '50, in Decatur, Ala., and went together to the Univ. of Ill., where Frank finished his M.S. degree, Aug. '50.
We taught first at Ferrum College, Va., (1950-'52) near Roanoke, which then had a Berea-like work/study program. Betty taught high school history and English. Frank was librarian and taught speech.
We took summer 1951 and summer '52 graduate courses at George Peabody College for Teachers (hereafter Peabody), Nashville, adjacent to Vanderbilt Univ. (they merged in 1979), remaining from Sept. 1952 through Aug. '56 graduation. Betty taught English in a Nashville business school, her pay a free apt. facing former Ward-Belmont School, just bought by TN Baptists, now Belmont Univ., where Frank later worked as part-time librarian and Betty was the president’s secretary and English instructor.
Four years of part-time work and graduate study at Peabody were an important turning point. Frank’s major study under respected History and Philosophy of Education Prof. Clifton L. Hall probably led Peabody Dean of Instruction Felix C. Robb to suggest that Frank undertake a dissertation on George Peabody’s (GP, 1795-1869) philanthropy. This Mass.-born merchant in the South, then London-based banker-broker (1838-69, J.P. Morgan's father was GP's partner) founded Peabody Museums at Harvard and Yale and in Salem, Mass.; Peabody Library and Conservatory of Music, Baltimore; and the multi-million dollar Peabody Education Fund (PEF, 1867-1914) to aid public schools in 11 Southern states plus W.Va. Peabody College of Vanderbilt Univ. is the PEF’s modern descendant.
Eager for the dissertation challenge, in May-Sept. 1954 we left our part-time Nashville jobs to read GP-related papers in these libraries: in D.C.: Lib. of Cong and National Archives. In Baltimore: Peabody Institute Library and Conservatory of Music, now part of Johns Hopkins Univ., and the Enoch Pratt Public Library. GP influenced both Johns Hopkins and Enoch Pratt. In NYC: Pierpont Morgan Library. In Salem, Mass.: Peabody Essex Museum (has most of GP's papers and business records); GP papers in Mass. towns of Peabody, Danvers, and Boston, Mass.; then at Peabody Museums at Harvard and Yale.
For travel to London, England, where GP worked 30 years as a securities broker-banker, a Berea friend and part-time travel agent booked an inexpensive third class round trip ship berth for us. We read GP material at the British Library Manuscript Room and Colindale Newspaper Collection, Public Record Office, Guildhall Record Office, and Westminster Abbey (where GP’s body lay in state).
We visited Peabody Homes in London where over 50,000 low income Londoners live in 20,000 affordable homes. Frank also read GP-Queen Victoria letters at Windsor Castle (she wanted to knight him but he declined, not willing to give up U.S. citizenship).
Back in Nashville, Jan. 1955, Frank worked part-time at Peabody, Betty taught English at Belmont Univ. Together we compiled our notes and microfilm into a “George Peabody, Founder of Modern Philanthropy” dissertation, a task hastened when Frank was invited to give the Feb. 18, 1955, Peabody Founders’ Day address (later published) to an overflow audience.
In Aug. 1956, with the dissertation completed and accepted, Betty received the M.A. degree in English; Frank the Ed. D. degree in Education Foundations.
In late August 1956, faced with two job choices and on Betty’s urging, we declined a job offer for Frank to head an Okla. state college’s new library. He accepted instead a teaching job at State Univ. of NY, New Paltz, with Betty teaching high school English at nearby Wallkill, NY, 1956-57.
While we were still at Peabody, Aug. 1956, the visiting Univ. of Texas dean of education interviewed Frank, who explained that we were committed to SUNY, New Paltz.
But the UT dean kept in touch, and with the dept. head’s approval hired Frank for the 1957-58 school year. Meanwhile, Frank won a competitive Kappa Delta Pi (Education Honor Society) Fellowship in International Education to study African education in the then multi-racial Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in British central Africa. Informing his U. Texas employers of this fellowship, they graciously gave us leave of absence.
Africa expert Alan Pifer, then Carnegie Foundation president, helped us to join newly opened Univ. College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (UCR&N), in what is now Harare, Zimbabwe.
We attended en route an Africanist conference at Hartford Seminary, CT; flew to London, attended a Cambridge Univ. British civil servants’ Africa conference, and reached what is now Zimbabwe via stops in Benghazi, Khartoum, Nairobi, Ndola, in what is now Zambia, and arrived in Salisbury (now Harare) and UCR&N, a multiracial university affiliated with the Univ. of London.
By renting in turn five houses from privileged Whites on long leave in England we saw first hand wide disparity between well-off White owners and poor African servants. Visiting many segregated White, African (mostly mission-run), and Asian schools, we soon saw that learning English as a second language was Africans’ key need in mastering other subjects.
With UCR&N backing and White-run African Education Department cooperation, we organized the first ever multiracial federation-wide conference on that subject, led by key mission and government teachers, principals, inspectors; experts on teaching methods, on writing and distributing textbooks, on training teachers, etc. We recorded, edited, and distributed widely the conference proceedings.
Using Harare government archives we later wrote African Development and Education in Southern Rhodesia, Ohio State Univ. Press, 1960, reprinted by Greenwood Press, 1971.
Back in the U.S., Aug. 1958, we moved to Austin, TX, where Frank taught large undergraduate classes, striving for good teaching and scholarly attainment. A U.S. Quaker family in Harare had told us of Austin's American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) office where Betty went to work in peace education.
Frank, active in key national societies in his teaching fields from our 7 UT-Austin years (1957-64) onward, was the History of Education Society's national president, 1963-64; the Comparative and International Education Society's (CIES) vice president, 1963-64, CIES Secretary, 1965-68; editor of the CIES Newsletter, 1968-86; and Southwest Philosophy of Education Society's (SWPES) president, 1960. At SWPES annual meetings, 1960-86, we presented original papers together in dialogue form, all later published.
During Sept. 1961-May 1962, Frank was given U.TX.-Austin leave of absence as a Senior Fulbright Research Scholar in what is now Zambia. After U.S. State Department orientation, Washington, DC, and U.S. Embassy in London orientation, we flew to the capital, Lusaka, were attached to nearby Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, from which we visited mission and government schools and did research in Lusaka's national archives.
In London May 1962 we did research at the British Library and returned to Austin. During 1962-63 Betty worked for several U-TX-Austin Bible professors and then taught in the U-TX-Austin Reading and Study Skills program.
We enjoyed the 7 busy, satisfying U-TX-Austin years (1957-64). But in April 1964 a SWPES colleague, Univ. of Okla. in Norman, Philosophy of Education Prof. Lloyd P. Williams told Frank that he was wanted for an Excellence Fund tenured professorship. Interviewed, accepted, with Betty's approval, we relocated to Norman (1964-68). Betty assisted Frank's research and writing and was active on the League of Women Voters and regional AFSC boards.
In 1967, Frank's U-Okla. dean, James G. Harlow, a prominent administrator, became president of West Va. Univ., Morgantown (WVU). He told Frank at a farewell gathering to keep in touch. In our fourth year at U-Okla-Norman, 1968, WVU's Education Dean offered Frank a professorial chair funded partly by the Benedum Foundation. Betty agreed that the opportunity was too good to decline.
Frank’s 18 years as WVU Benedum Professor of Education, 1968-1986, were the busiest in our lives. He taught graduate classes and seminars in history and philosophy of education plus a specialty in Comparative and International Education.
Betty, though active in League of Women Voters, United Methodist Women, and a book review group, was Frank’s full partner in research, writing, and editing articles and books.
During 18 summers, free from WVU teaching, Frank taught in Canadian universities (Alberta, Newfoundland); and we traveled abroad studying schools in England, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Finland, USSR, Israel, China, about which we wrote books and articles. As editor of the Comparative and International Education Society newsletter, Frank reviewed relevant education publications, teaching tools, and travel opportunities for teachers.
Vanderbilt University Press published Frank’s George Peabody, A Biography, 1971. During the WVU years Whitston Publishing Co. published our jointly edited 20 volume annotated bibliography series on education in various countries.
Frank wrote on U.S. education, on several African countries, and obituaries of prominent scholars for encyclopedia yearbooks: Americana Annual, Collier’s Encyclopedia Yearbook, Compton’s Yearbook, Reader’s Digest Almanac & Yearbook, Encyclopedia of Education, McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Biography, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Dictionary of American Biography, and other publications.
After WVU retirement in 1986 Frank taught part-time at Northern AZ Univ., Flagstaff (1986-89), and Western Carolina Univ., Cullowhee, NC (1989-94); we had eight happy years using good university libraries for research and writing. Frank published articles regularly in education honor society publications: Kappa Delta Pi and Phi Delta Kappa (life member of both); and in School & Society, which continued under several name changes.
Betty's parents chose to live near us from 1977 for the rest of their lives, a wonderful time of sharing; in Morgantown, W.Va.; then near Flagstaff, AZ; then near Cullowhee, NC, where her Dad died in 1993. Care needed by Betty’s mother led us to Uplands Retirement Village, Pleasant Hill, TN, where she died in 1998. Both are buried in their hometown, Decatur, Ala. Betty’s younger sister and her husband, Jo Ann and George Weber, moved in 1996 near Sparta, TN, 11 miles from us.
When we moved to Uplands, Pleasant Hill, TN, May 5, 1994, we were updating the 1971 George Peabody, A Biography, which Vanderbilt University Press reissued in 1995 as part of bicentennial celebrations of George Peabody's birth (1795).
Working again on Peabody's life story smoothed the transition to full retirement. An added impetus was preparing to give several speeches about him in his birthplace in Essex County, Mass., where we spent several days in March 1995.
At Uplands now over 14 years, we attend an exercise class 3 times a week, use a neighbor’s pool 6 times a week, walk as much as we can to various functions, have attended a few Elderhostels, and have every year for 14 years reviewed to an Uplands audience an important book in dialogue form. Frank has been able to get these reviews and our other writings published in blog form. Our current review of Walter Isaacson’s 2007 best seller on Albert Einstein was in March 2008.
We end with this incident which happened in early Nov. 2007: A local yokel, often seeing us walking arm in arm, picnic lunch bags in hand, shouted from his parked battered pickup: "Grandpa, are you holding her up, or is she holding you up?" "We lean on each other," Frank replied with a grin. Betty added: "If one falls, we both fall." We left laughing. Fifty-eight years of a good idea. Keep in touch. END.
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"Karen Armstrong (1944-) as Master Teacher: A Dialogue on the British Ex-Nun, Author, and Historian of Religion."
By Franklin Parker and Betty J. Parker, bfparker@frontiernet.net
Betty J. Parker: Frank, explain our interest in Karen Armstrong. Why have so many readers, wanting to understanding why Muslim extremists hate us, turned to
her books on religion? Why have so many study groups spent months analyzing her 1993 book, A History of God? What circumstances made her, for a time at least, as writer and lecturer, also a master teacher?
Franklin Parker: Her interviews on CNN, C-Span's Booknotes, and elsewhere have impressed many. She is a English-born former nun who is a notable historian of religion. Her books and speeches help us understand religious conflicts. Betty, what else explains Karen Armstrong's appeal?
BJP: Her historical perspective helps us understand, for example, , why they attack us. Yet, she cautions us to separate Islam's fundamentalist minority from its peaceful majority. Readers find her explanations provocative and plausible. Frank, describe her life.
FP: Her two autobiographical books, Through the Narrow Gate, 1981, and Beginning the World, 1983, tell of her birth on Nov. 14, 1944, near Birmingham, England. Her father, John O. S. Armstrong, from Ireland, married Eileen Hastings (nee McHale) Armstrong, a born English Catholic. Since Catholics are a minority in Anglican England, understandably, her middle class family lived in an enclave of fellow Catholics. The father was a scrap metal dealer. Karen grew up small, chubby, introverted, and serious, unlike her prettier extroverted younger sister, Lindsey, who later became an actress and radio performer and lived in California.
BJP: Karen attended the Convent of the Holy Child Jesus School in Birmingham. She early determined to enter that same teaching order of nuns. Her motivation? When she was 12 her sister Lindsey, then nine, almost died of diphtheria. Karen prayed that if Lindsey lived she would think of becoming a nun. Lindsey recovered. Karen pushed that promise to the back of her mind. Later, a lay Catholic teacher of physics in Karen's school, Miss Jackson, became a nun. Karen gazed at Miss Jackson's picture in nun's habit on the school bulletin board. She thought she saw in Miss Jackson's eyes the joy and serenity she hoped to achieve herself.
FP: Also, Karen's Granny, her mother's mother, as a girl wanted to become a nun but was stopped by her parents. Disappointed, Granny was unhappy all of her life. Karen always thought her Granny should have been given a chance to become a nun.
BJP: In her mid-teens, Karen thought her girl friends too worldly, too trendy, too "boy crazy." Self-conscious about her dumpy body and less than attractive appearance, she increasingly turned inward, away from the material world, toward books and literature. Growing up Catholic she was comforted by ritual, saints, holy days, and holy visions. Her father, proud of her school success, hoped she would be the first in the family to attend a woman's college at Oxford University.
FP: Karen spoke to the mother superior of her convent school about becoming a nun. The mother superior advised her to wait and see if she felt the same after finishing high school. When Karen was 15 her father asked: "What do you want to do?" She answered: "I want to be a nun."
BJP: Her parents tried to dissuade her. They listed the pleasures she would give up, the vows she would be compelled to follow. The mother superior told her parents that Karen was young, bright, was seemingly sincere in wanting to be a nun; that experienced superiors would observe, test, and monitor her training; that there were set times when she could leave if she proved not to have the calling. On Sept. 14, 1962, at 17, with her parents' wary approval, Karen entered the training convent in Tripton, near London. With mystic resolve to find and serve God, she faced a life of poverty, chastity, obedience.
FP: Her teaching order was founded in the 1840s under the strict rules of 16th century Spanish soldier Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556), founder of the Jesuits. Wearing a novice's confining habit; given a new name, Martha, symbol of a new life, she slept on a hard narrow bed in a dorm-like room with nine other entrants; rose at dawn; washed with carbolic soap; and had to eat everything on her plate. To leave a scrap invited censure, even macaroni and cheese which always made her sick. Her chores were ones she had either never done before or had done poorly before. Postulants prayed five hours daily and performed tasks under the rule of silence. In the one hour of talk allowed each evening, personal and trivial chatter was discouraged.
BJP: Close friendships were also discouraged, as were touching, embracing, or unduly befriending others inside or outside the community. The intent was to reduce human closeness to a minimum, the better to find and serve God. Publicly she controlled her inner despair and hurts. Her sobs at night were less over hard work than over loneliness, giving up family and friends, humbling herself, trying to eliminate ego, in order to be a perfect nun.
FP: She was awkward, inept, nervous. She found food repulsive, lost weight from anorexia, was ill. Yet she had to clean, sweep, sew, cook, and pray. Most frightening were her unaccountable fainting spells. These brought unwanted attention and shame. In the first one, 1963, during morning meditation, she saw bright flashing lights, smelt a horrible odor, broke out in a cold sweat, fell on the floor stiff and unconscious. She awoke shaking, kicking, crying, surrounded by concerned novices and nuns. These spells occurred sporadically.
BJP: Her superiors attributed her fainting spells to hysteria and nervousness They thought her spells were an unconscious bid for sympathy. She was assigned penance intended to strengthen her religious vows. Penance included prayers said standing for an hour or so with arms extended in the form of a cross. She performed self flagellation in a secluded room, striking her back over each shoulder with a corded rope. Another penance was to kiss the feet of her sisters, 70 of them, in the dining hall while they ate.
FP: Her superiors did send her to a physician who, unable to find a physical cause for her problems, accepted her superiors' belief that she was a nervous young nun. Despite difficulties she finished her training, took the veil, and prepared to become a teaching nun. Her superiors, seeing promise in her academic abilities, decided she should prepare to teach English literature in their parochial high schools. They sent her to St. Anne's College, Oxford University, where she was studious, timid, hesitant, but gradually spoke up in small discussion groups. She impressed her tutors with her good mind. She read widely in Oxford's Bodleian Library, wrote weekly papers, and absorbed great literature and history.
BJP: Inwardly, she questioned blind obedience to Catholic dogmas. Her anorexia continued. Her fainting spells recurred. Physically ill, distraught, not able to find God, she sensed that continuing as a nun would kill her or drive her mad. On January 6, 1969, the Feast of Epiphany, the day of miraculous insights, when nuns symbolically renew their vows, she explained her doubts to her superiors. She asked to leave the cloister to seek God in the world.
FP: A sympathetic mother superior who had known her since school days, contacted the Mother Provincial, who spoke to Karen and approved her leaving the order. Karen wrote the bishop, asked to be released from her vows, asked that his dispensation be forwarded to the Sacred Congregation for Religious in Rome. On January 27, 1969, the official papers arrived from Rome. Having entered at 17, now at 24, after seven years, no longer a nun, she was depressed and uncertain.
BJP: A small scholarship enabled her to continue her studies at Oxford. She strove to overcome depression, to adjust to the strange outside world, to get used to miniskirts, raucous music, gyrating dancing. In her second autobiographical book, Beginning the World, she wrote of being lost, of being "in the world, but not of it."
FP: While she grieved at leaving the convent, her college tutor nominated her for a competitive academic prize. She spent six hours in competition with others writing papers about the novel, tragedy, and verse. When the University Registry letter came, she stared at it, not believing that she had won the Violet Vaughan Morgan Prize for Literature. This prize gave her new assurance.
BJP: Another bright spot at Oxford was the Stanley family. Both Judith and Edwin Stanley taught at Oxford and needed a live–in student to help care for their 10 year old autistic son Simon, a highly strung epileptic. Needing the job, Karen successfully coped with Simon's erratic behavior, was warmed by this kind family. But her sense of failure and her occasional fainting spells continued.
FP: Karen remained at Oxford, 1969-73, four years, receiving the B.A. degree in literature. She then taught English Literature at the University of London's Bedford College, 1973-76, three years. She had a failed love affair with an equally troubled Oxford student, was treated by a psychiatrist, had a nervous breakdown, and was suicidal.
BJP: The climax came at age 38 while she taught English at a girls' high school in Dulwich, England, 1976-82, six years. At the end of a play she had directed, while thanking the student actors and guests, she experienced flashing lights, perspiration, light-headedness. She fainted. In the emergency room of the local hospital, examined by a neurologist, Dr. Wolfe, she described her previous attacks going back to 1963 when she was 18. He gave her an EEG test to measure her brain waves. He diagnosed her condition as sporadic brain wave irregularity leading to temporal lobe epilepsy, probably from a birth defect. He assured her that the epilepsy was controllable by drugs. He said she should have had an EEG test much, much earlier.
FP: The weight of anxiety about her sanity was lifted. She knew from young Simon Stanley's case that epilepsy is treatable. The right medication was soon found. She has not had an epileptic seizure since. But the head of the Dulwich girls school, worried that epilepsy would frighten parents, replaced her. Her job lost, barred from teaching because of prejudice against epilepsy, she was at another low point, another crossroads.
BJP: To make sense of her shattered life she wrote her first autobiographical book, Through the Narrow Gate? The title came from the New Testament, Matthew 7:12: "Enter by the narrow gate, since the gate that leads to perdition is wide, and the road spacious, and many take it; but it is a narrow gate and a hard road that leads to life, and only a few find it."
FP: Her editor asked that she revise her first bitter draft to include good things that had kept her a nun for seven years. Her final version speaks of the beauty of the liturgy, the belief that every moment of life has eternal significance, her optimism that she would find God, appreciation for the fellow nuns who broke the rules to befriend and comfort her. Her nun's training came at the wrong time. Second Vatican Council reforms (1962-64) were being debated but not yet implemented. Had she entered a few years later, her training would have been lighter and brighter. All would have been different.
BJP: Glowing reviews of her Through the Narrow Gate, a best seller, brought her to the attention of a specialized London college and led her to another teaching job, this time about religion. In 1982 she was asked to teach about Christianity at London's Leo Baeck College for the Study of Judaism and the Training of Rabbis and Teachers. The door of opportunity had opened to her next career as a historian of religion.
FP: The program manager at England's then new TV Channel 4 asked her to write scripts for a six part TV series about the life and work of St. Paul. She worked for some years with an Israeli film crew in Jerusalem. She interviewed Jews, Christians, and Muslims. A successful TV series resulted, along with a book on St. Paul titled The First Christian, 1984, and two other books of interviews she had with Israeli Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Thus, in her late thirties and early forties, she found herself and her life's work. Each succeeding book made her a better known researcher and writer on the histories and conflicts of the major religions.
BJP: Frank, what if Vatican reforms had been in effect when she entered? What if her training as a nun had been more humane and she had remained a nun? What if her superiors had not sent her to Oxford to study? Any other "ifs"?
FP: What if neurologist Dr. Wolfe had not diagnosed her epilepsy? What if medication had not controlled it? What if she had not come to the favorable attention of Leo Baeck College officials, and to England's Channel 4 TV officials—what would have happened?
BJP: We would not have Karen Armstrong, author of some international best sellers on religion and religious conflicts. Here are some of her major books and their themes: 1981, Through the Narrow Gate; and 1983, Beginning the World, her two autobiographical books already mentioned. 1984, The First Christian, about St. Paul; and Varieties of Religious Experiences; 1985, Tongues of Fire; the last two books based on her interviews in and around Jerusalem.
FP: 1986, The Gospel According to Woman: Christianity's Creation of the Sexual War in the West. Armstrong showed how the medieval witch craze, sex-denying Victorian England, and today's Christianity have all perpetuated mistrust of the human body and fear of women. She criticized theologians, scholars, and others who have made women, including herself, victims of Christian dogma about the inferiority of women.
BJP: 1988, Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today's World. Armstrong wrote that in waging wars against each other the three major religions have wasted lives and treasure; that false images, ridiculous perceptions, and absurd demons have haunted them. These three religions, she wrote, must learn to look at the world from one another's viewpoints.
FP: 1992, Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet. Armstrong's respectful, reverential life of Muhammad tried to correct the West's misconceptions about Islam and its founder. Many Westerners believe wrongly that Islam is a violent religion. It was not violent in origin. About 610 A.D., Muhammad, a merchant from Mecca in what is now Saudi Arabia, saw that his squabbling tribesmen needed a holy book, as the Jews and Christians had the Bible. He gave them the Koran, as revealed to him, stressing that Arabs were descended, like Jews and Christians, from Abraham; that Allah, which means God, is the same one God of the Jews and Christians. The Koran, Armstrong stressed, urged prayer, good works, justice, and charity.
BJP: 1993, The End of Silence: Women and Priesthood, is Armstrong's defense of women as being as capable as men. It is a plea for all religions to allow women to serve as priests and ministers. Also in 1993, her A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, is her best known international best seller. It traces the changing concepts of God: from pagan times, to the Hebrew prophets, to the Greeks and Romans, to early Christians, to Islam, to the 16th century Enlightenment thinkers, to the l9th century Death of God philosophers, to our time. This tour de force is not an easy book. But its rich detail and historical coverage make it worth the try.
FP: 1996, Jerusalem, One City, Three Faiths, traced the frictional relations of Christians, Jews and Muslims in the holy city over the last 5,000 years. She is not optimistic that the knotty Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be easily or quickly solved. An Israeli critic, writing in the Jerusalem Post, accused Armstrong of being a pro-Muslim apologist who disparaged Jews and Christians.
BJP: 2000, The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, is a history of religious fundamentalism since 1492. It appeared before the horror of September 11, 2001 and was snapped up by readers as a plausible explanation. Religious fundamentalists, Armstrong explained, are militant splinter groups who break away from major religions when they (splinter groups) see the parent religion turn unalterably from original principles. Fundamentalists are true believers who when they see themselves marginalized, pushed aside, and about to be eliminated lash out at change, progress, modernity. Determined not to be wiped out, they organize, plot how to survive, and the more radical misguided few use violence to destroy those who, they believe, have wronged or betrayed them.
FP: 2000, Islam, A Short History, is another attempt to show Islam in its best light. She shows how Muhammad the Prophet gave Muslims the Koran; how in it he stressed peace, good works, and charity. She again countered as incorrect the West's misconception of Islam as warlike. Followers of Islam, she explained again, are urged to create a just and charitable community.
BJP: Karen Armstrong has written much and lectured widely. There is repetition. One can get lost. Can you pin down her core beliefs about religions and their conflicts. What are her passions?
FP: She has four passions: 1-She is passionate about wanting to correct stereotypes and misconceptions we Westerners have about Islam. 2-She passionately wants us to know what fundamentalism is, how the term is used, why it has arisen recently; why we've been shocked by its violent eruption among Islamic extremists. 3-She passionately wants readers to understand that concepts of God have changed over thousands of years; that how we think about God has changed as human problems have changed. 4-She passionately believes that the test of a good religion is its compassion, how it treats its have-nots, its sick and its poor. And now, for another perspective, we condense the content of two TV interviews with Karen Armstrong seen and heard by millions of viewers.
BJP: Here is the gist of the Brian Lamb-Karen Armstrong interview on C-Span, Booknotes, Sept. 22, 2000. Lamb asked her: when were you first interested in writing about God? Armstrong answered, repeating facts already mentioned: I never intended to be a writer. After I left the convent I thought I had finished with God. I was tired of religion. I fell into writing about religion by accident. I lost my teaching job because I'm an epileptic. I wrote my first autobiography, Through the Narrow Gate, 1981, to make sense out of my life. The program manager of a new British TV station who read it asked me to write the scenario for and help film a documentary series on St. Paul's life. I needed the work, lived in Jerusalem with an Israeli film crew, and was at first skeptical about the authenticity of the St. Paul story. But in Jerusalem, seeing the three faiths living side by side, interviewing Jews, Christians and Muslims, seeing how each adhered to his or her faith, "I came back to a sense of the divine."
FP: Lamb asked her: What is your religion now? Armstrong answered: I say jokingly that I am a freelance monotheist. I draw strength from all three religions and am open to wisdom from any other faith. I see my former Catholicism as part of a great human search for meaning in a flawed and tragic world. I search after God, after the divine, after the ultimate about which there is no end. Lamb asked her: What has been the biggest problem in your life?
BJP: Armstrong answered: Adjusting. As Catholics in England my family were a minority. We lived in a tight subculture, a ghetto, like the Jews. In the convent I was cut off from the world. After seven years, I went back to a totally transformed world. Everyone was protesting the war in Vietnam about which I knew nothing. I gave up on religion after leaving the convent. After working on religious documentary films in Jerusalem, I adjusted to researching and writing the history of religions. Adjusting has been my hardest but necessary problem.
FP: Lamb said: You wrote your first autobiography, went to Jerusalem to write about St. Paul, and have written ten or so other books. Are they all still in print? Armstrong answered: My second autobiographical book, Beginning the World, is out of print. The publisher wants to reprint it but I resist. I was then in grief, was suicidal, was utterly miserable. I still need to come to terms with that horrible time in my life. Lamb asked: Which of your books has sold the most and how many? Armstrong answered: A History of God, no idea how many, but there are over half a million copies in over 30 languages.
BJP: Lamb said: There are some six billion people on earth: two billion are Christians, of which just over a billion are Roman Catholic, 1.2 billion are Muslims, and only 15 million are Jews. Why have so few Jews written so much and had so much written about them? Armstrong answered: Jews have had a tragic history. Their very existence has been threatened in the last thousand years since the Crusades. So they continually ask themselves and write about: Who am I? Why am I here? Is there a God? Why be Jewish when it brings so much suffering and pain?
FP: Lamb asked: Why have the Jews been so persecuted? Armstrong answered: Anti-Semitism is a terrible European disease. Consider how it arose: the Roman Empire fell; barbarians overran Europe; Europe fell into the Dark Ages; European civilization came to a virtual halt. Europe struggled for a comeback on the world stage, with the Crusades as its first cooperative act. Europeans felt inferior, an out group, afraid, and truculent. So they projected this fear into hating others. They hated the Muslims because Muslims had the Holy Land; hated Greek Orthodox Christians because they escaped the Dark Ages, hated Jews because Jews, wanderers without a homeland, had learned how to survive, some even to prosper.
BJP: Lamb asked: How did the lies about the Jews originate? Armstrong answered: Jews were easy scapegoats To remember their past, their reason for being, they clung to ritual, holidays, customs. It was easy to single out Jews by dress and manner and tar them with bizarre myths, such as Jews kill little children at Passover and use their blood to make unleavened bread to remind them of their escape from Egypt. This ridiculous myth showed the disturbed European mind. This prejudice persisted against all common sense. Hitler used it and other lies to fuel his Nazi Holocaust.
FP: Lamb asked: Why did you write your book titled Islam? What does the word "Islam" mean? Armstrong answered: Islam means to "surrender" to Allah (Arabic name for God), to give up posturing, to stop calling attention to one's self, to surrender ego. Muhammad (c.570-632), the Prophet, asked fellow Muslims to prostrate themselves to Allah, the same one God of the Jews and Christians. Now, Christians often presented God in human terms like themselves and ascribed to God some of their own prejudices. Christian Crusaders went into battle crying, "God wills it," as they murdered Muslims and Jews. Muslims, wary of this behavior, speak of Allah, God, ultimate reality, as a state of purity. Islam's basic values are peace and good works. Because a few Islamic extremists are violent, we in the West, see all Islam as violent. This is not so, said Armstrong.
BJP: Lamb asked: What about Buddha, about whom you are now writing a book? Armstrong said: Buddha stressed self abnegation, continuous effort to lose one's ego, to empty one's self. That's why all we know about him can be put in a thimble. Few can achieve total abnegation. But in so striving, one sees things ever clearer. Lamb asked: Well, Karen, now back to Islam and Muhammad the Prophet. Who was he?
FP: Armstrong answered: Muhammad was a concerned merchant of Mecca, in what is now Saudi Arabia. Around 610 A.D., Arabia was a desert without crops or resources. Tribes fought within and among themselves for survival. Muhammad knew that Jews and Christians looked down on Arabs as barbaric pagans who had no prophets, no Bible. Claiming revelations from on high, Muhammad dictated in beautiful poetry insights that formed the Koran. That book stressed that Allah required Muslims to humble themselves by prayer, to live righteously, and to dispense justice and charity. [End of Lamb-Armstrong interview].
BJP: Here is the gist of the Bill Moyers-Karen Armstrong interview on his PBS TV program NOW. Moyers asked Armstrong: if you were God, would you do away with religion? Armstrong replied: The test of a good religion is its degree of compassion. When religion concentrates instead on ego or on belligerence, God must weep. Moyers asked: Why have there been so many atrocities in the history of religion?
FP: Armstrong replied: Some extremists are angry enough to kill. Examples: the 9-11 Islamic fanatics, the European Crusaders, the orthodox Jew who assassinated Yitzhak Rabin. When fanatics commit atrocities in the name of God, or for the glory of God, that's bad religion. When you ask fanatics, "what about compassion?" They answer, "what's the point of having religion if we can't use it to hurt people who are hurting you?"
BJP: Moyers asked: Why do fanatics have this attitude? Armstrong replied: Fear. It comes from cold fear. Fundamentalists are true believers. Convinced that their basic beliefs are being crushed out of existence, they strike back. Such violence was associated with religion from the beginning. The Hebrew Prophets and later religions, seeing every single human as sacred, transcended this barbarism.
FP: Moyers asked: How do you value the sacredness of others? Where does compassion come from? Armstrong replied: Compassion comes when you put yourself in another person's position, when you make a friend of a stranger. Genesis tells how Abraham sat outside his tent in the hot afternoon and watched three strangers approach. Most of us would not bring strangers who might be dangerous into our home. Abraham welcomed them into his home. Abraham asked his wife to prepare an elaborate meal for them.
BJP: Armstrong continuing: It turned out that one of the strangers was Abraham's God. Abraham's act of compassion led to a divine encounter. In Hebrew the word for holy, Kadosh, also means separate or other. Sometimes the otherness of a stranger, one not of our ethnic or ideological or religious group, instead of repelling us, can bring us out of our selfishness and give us insight into the otherness which is God. [End of Moyers-Armstrong interview].
FP: Betty, despite Karen Armstrong's trials and tribulations, she has achieved success. Born in 1944 she is now in 2003 age 59. What does she say about her lifestyle as a professional single woman?
BJP: She answered that in her article, "The Loneliness of the Intellectual Woman," New Statesman, Vol. 129, Issue 4489 June 5, 2000), pp. 23-24. She begins (I paraphrase): I sometimes smile wryly when I hear myself described as an 'ex-nun'. True, I no longer observe poverty, chastity and obedience, vows I kept for seven years as a nun. I am no longer poor and am certainly not obedient. But I have never married, continue to live alone, pass my days in silence as I did in the cloister, and spend my life writing, thinking, and talking about God and spirituality.
FP: Armstrong continued: Being solitary holds no terrors for me. A writer must spend long hours alone. Somebody once called me a 'gregarious loner.' I enjoy company, but I feel lost if I do not spend time by myself each day. I love my work. I can't wait to get to my desk. I can't wait to get to the library.
BJP: She continued on marriage: I have always assumed that, one day, I would find somebody to love and would get married like everybody else. But I have been unsuccessful with men. Yet I also realize that, had I had a normal family life and responsibilities, I would not have written as much. Perhaps to succeed as a writer, it has been necessary for me to fail as a woman. She continued: I have to live a good deal of the time inside my own head. It takes an immense effort to drag a book from sources into my mind and then from my mind onto paper. It demands concentration. For months, I retreat from the outside world. The real drama is enacted in my head.
FP: She continued: Now, in a man, this concentration is regarded as noble and inspiring. But in a woman it is often condemned as selfish. Why? Men think women must be primarily caregivers and serve the family. I am taken to task for appearing unfriendly, impenetrable, and inaccessible when producing a new book. Others scold me for remaining single. But I [she must have smiled] have h dad no choice in the matter. Betty, as we end, what do you think is Karen Armstrong's value to us, to the reading public, to scholarship?
BJP: She is a phenomenon, a valuable contributor to our understanding of religious conflicts. We admire her gumption in rising above adversity. We admire her ability to write and to lecture widely. She has given us fuller understanding of problems on religious differences. Frank, what is Karen Armstrong writing now?
FP: Two books to be published next year in 2004: one is another autobiographical book; the other is on the Axial Age, from 600 BCE to 200 BCE, which saw an explosion of religious ideas from Confucius, Tao, Buddha, the Jewish prophets, Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle. She continues to probe and to share that mysterious mystical unknowable intelligence called God.
BJP: Where does she find that mysterious mystical unknowable intelligence called God?
FP: She says she finds God where ordinary people are concerned about others. Where the lowly are lifted, the sick healed, justice reigns, peace is made universal. Where transformed people work together to make future generations healthier and happier. Where the test of a good religion, a good faith, is its capacity for compassion. Compassion leads a person, family, society or country to correct wrongs and do justly. For her, so far, where there is compassion, there is God.
BJP: Let's stop on that note. END
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"Karen Armstrong (1944-) as Master Teacher: A Dialogue on the British Ex-Nun, Author, and Historian of Religion."
By Franklin Parker and Betty J. Parker, bfparker@frontiernet.net
Betty J. Parker: Frank, explain our interest in Karen Armstrong. Why have so many readers, wanting to understanding why Muslim extremists hate us, turned to
her books on religion? Why have so many study groups spent months analyzing her 1993 book, A History of God? What circumstances made her, for a time at least, as writer and lecturer, also a master teacher?
Franklin Parker: Her interviews on CNN, C-Span's Booknotes, and elsewhere have impressed many. She is a English-born former nun who is a notable historian of religion. Her books and speeches help us understand religious conflicts. Betty, what else explains Karen Armstrong's appeal?
BJP: Her historical perspective helps us understand, for example, , why they attack us. Yet, she cautions us to separate Islam's fundamentalist minority from its peaceful majority. Readers find her explanations provocative and plausible. Frank, describe her life.
FP: Her two autobiographical books, Through the Narrow Gate, 1981, and Beginning the World, 1983, tell of her birth on Nov. 14, 1944, near Birmingham, England. Her father, John O. S. Armstrong, from Ireland, married Eileen Hastings (nee McHale) Armstrong, a born English Catholic. Since Catholics are a minority in Anglican England, understandably, her middle class family lived in an enclave of fellow Catholics. The father was a scrap metal dealer. Karen grew up small, chubby, introverted, and serious, unlike her prettier extroverted younger sister, Lindsey, who later became an actress and radio performer and lived in California.
BJP: Karen attended the Convent of the Holy Child Jesus School in Birmingham. She early determined to enter that same teaching order of nuns. Her motivation? When she was 12 her sister Lindsey, then nine, almost died of diphtheria. Karen prayed that if Lindsey lived she would think of becoming a nun. Lindsey recovered. Karen pushed that promise to the back of her mind. Later, a lay Catholic teacher of physics in Karen's school, Miss Jackson, became a nun. Karen gazed at Miss Jackson's picture in nun's habit on the school bulletin board. She thought she saw in Miss Jackson's eyes the joy and serenity she hoped to achieve herself.
FP: Also, Karen's Granny, her mother's mother, as a girl wanted to become a nun but was stopped by her parents. Disappointed, Granny was unhappy all of her life. Karen always thought her Granny should have been given a chance to become a nun.
BJP: In her mid-teens, Karen thought her girl friends too worldly, too trendy, too "boy crazy." Self-conscious about her dumpy body and less than attractive appearance, she increasingly turned inward, away from the material world, toward books and literature. Growing up Catholic she was comforted by ritual, saints, holy days, and holy visions. Her father, proud of her school success, hoped she would be the first in the family to attend a woman's college at Oxford University.
FP: Karen spoke to the mother superior of her convent school about becoming a nun. The mother superior advised her to wait and see if she felt the same after finishing high school. When Karen was 15 her father asked: "What do you want to do?" She answered: "I want to be a nun."
BJP: Her parents tried to dissuade her. They listed the pleasures she would give up, the vows she would be compelled to follow. The mother superior told her parents that Karen was young, bright, was seemingly sincere in wanting to be a nun; that experienced superiors would observe, test, and monitor her training; that there were set times when she could leave if she proved not to have the calling. On Sept. 14, 1962, at 17, with her parents' wary approval, Karen entered the training convent in Tripton, near London. With mystic resolve to find and serve God, she faced a life of poverty, chastity, obedience.
FP: Her teaching order was founded in the 1840s under the strict rules of 16th century Spanish soldier Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556), founder of the Jesuits. Wearing a novice's confining habit; given a new name, Martha, symbol of a new life, she slept on a hard narrow bed in a dorm-like room with nine other entrants; rose at dawn; washed with carbolic soap; and had to eat everything on her plate. To leave a scrap invited censure, even macaroni and cheese which always made her sick. Her chores were ones she had either never done before or had done poorly before. Postulants prayed five hours daily and performed tasks under the rule of silence. In the one hour of talk allowed each evening, personal and trivial chatter was discouraged.
BJP: Close friendships were also discouraged, as were touching, embracing, or unduly befriending others inside or outside the community. The intent was to reduce human closeness to a minimum, the better to find and serve God. Publicly she controlled her inner despair and hurts. Her sobs at night were less over hard work than over loneliness, giving up family and friends, humbling herself, trying to eliminate ego, in order to be a perfect nun.
FP: She was awkward, inept, nervous. She found food repulsive, lost weight from anorexia, was ill. Yet she had to clean, sweep, sew, cook, and pray. Most frightening were her unaccountable fainting spells. These brought unwanted attention and shame. In the first one, 1963, during morning meditation, she saw bright flashing lights, smelt a horrible odor, broke out in a cold sweat, fell on the floor stiff and unconscious. She awoke shaking, kicking, crying, surrounded by concerned novices and nuns. These spells occurred sporadically.
BJP: Her superiors attributed her fainting spells to hysteria and nervousness They thought her spells were an unconscious bid for sympathy. She was assigned penance intended to strengthen her religious vows. Penance included prayers said standing for an hour or so with arms extended in the form of a cross. She performed self flagellation in a secluded room, striking her back over each shoulder with a corded rope. Another penance was to kiss the feet of her sisters, 70 of them, in the dining hall while they ate.
FP: Her superiors did send her to a physician who, unable to find a physical cause for her problems, accepted her superiors' belief that she was a nervous young nun. Despite difficulties she finished her training, took the veil, and prepared to become a teaching nun. Her superiors, seeing promise in her academic abilities, decided she should prepare to teach English literature in their parochial high schools. They sent her to St. Anne's College, Oxford University, where she was studious, timid, hesitant, but gradually spoke up in small discussion groups. She impressed her tutors with her good mind. She read widely in Oxford's Bodleian Library, wrote weekly papers, and absorbed great literature and history.
BJP: Inwardly, she questioned blind obedience to Catholic dogmas. Her anorexia continued. Her fainting spells recurred. Physically ill, distraught, not able to find God, she sensed that continuing as a nun would kill her or drive her mad. On January 6, 1969, the Feast of Epiphany, the day of miraculous insights, when nuns symbolically renew their vows, she explained her doubts to her superiors. She asked to leave the cloister to seek God in the world.
FP: A sympathetic mother superior who had known her since school days, contacted the Mother Provincial, who spoke to Karen and approved her leaving the order. Karen wrote the bishop, asked to be released from her vows, asked that his dispensation be forwarded to the Sacred Congregation for Religious in Rome. On January 27, 1969, the official papers arrived from Rome. Having entered at 17, now at 24, after seven years, no longer a nun, she was depressed and uncertain.
BJP: A small scholarship enabled her to continue her studies at Oxford. She strove to overcome depression, to adjust to the strange outside world, to get used to miniskirts, raucous music, gyrating dancing. In her second autobiographical book, Beginning the World, she wrote of being lost, of being "in the world, but not of it."
FP: While she grieved at leaving the convent, her college tutor nominated her for a competitive academic prize. She spent six hours in competition with others writing papers about the novel, tragedy, and verse. When the University Registry letter came, she stared at it, not believing that she had won the Violet Vaughan Morgan Prize for Literature. This prize gave her new assurance.
BJP: Another bright spot at Oxford was the Stanley family. Both Judith and Edwin Stanley taught at Oxford and needed a live–in student to help care for their 10 year old autistic son Simon, a highly strung epileptic. Needing the job, Karen successfully coped with Simon's erratic behavior, was warmed by this kind family. But her sense of failure and her occasional fainting spells continued.
FP: Karen remained at Oxford, 1969-73, four years, receiving the B.A. degree in literature. She then taught English Literature at the University of London's Bedford College, 1973-76, three years. She had a failed love affair with an equally troubled Oxford student, was treated by a psychiatrist, had a nervous breakdown, and was suicidal.
BJP: The climax came at age 38 while she taught English at a girls' high school in Dulwich, England, 1976-82, six years. At the end of a play she had directed, while thanking the student actors and guests, she experienced flashing lights, perspiration, light-headedness. She fainted. In the emergency room of the local hospital, examined by a neurologist, Dr. Wolfe, she described her previous attacks going back to 1963 when she was 18. He gave her an EEG test to measure her brain waves. He diagnosed her condition as sporadic brain wave irregularity leading to temporal lobe epilepsy, probably from a birth defect. He assured her that the epilepsy was controllable by drugs. He said she should have had an EEG test much, much earlier.
FP: The weight of anxiety about her sanity was lifted. She knew from young Simon Stanley's case that epilepsy is treatable. The right medication was soon found. She has not had an epileptic seizure since. But the head of the Dulwich girls school, worried that epilepsy would frighten parents, replaced her. Her job lost, barred from teaching because of prejudice against epilepsy, she was at another low point, another crossroads.
BJP: To make sense of her shattered life she wrote her first autobiographical book, Through the Narrow Gate? The title came from the New Testament, Matthew 7:12: "Enter by the narrow gate, since the gate that leads to perdition is wide, and the road spacious, and many take it; but it is a narrow gate and a hard road that leads to life, and only a few find it."
FP: Her editor asked that she revise her first bitter draft to include good things that had kept her a nun for seven years. Her final version speaks of the beauty of the liturgy, the belief that every moment of life has eternal significance, her optimism that she would find God, appreciation for the fellow nuns who broke the rules to befriend and comfort her. Her nun's training came at the wrong time. Second Vatican Council reforms (1962-64) were being debated but not yet implemented. Had she entered a few years later, her training would have been lighter and brighter. All would have been different.
BJP: Glowing reviews of her Through the Narrow Gate, a best seller, brought her to the attention of a specialized London college and led her to another teaching job, this time about religion. In 1982 she was asked to teach about Christianity at London's Leo Baeck College for the Study of Judaism and the Training of Rabbis and Teachers. The door of opportunity had opened to her next career as a historian of religion.
FP: The program manager at England's then new TV Channel 4 asked her to write scripts for a six part TV series about the life and work of St. Paul. She worked for some years with an Israeli film crew in Jerusalem. She interviewed Jews, Christians, and Muslims. A successful TV series resulted, along with a book on St. Paul titled The First Christian, 1984, and two other books of interviews she had with Israeli Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Thus, in her late thirties and early forties, she found herself and her life's work. Each succeeding book made her a better known researcher and writer on the histories and conflicts of the major religions.
BJP: Frank, what if Vatican reforms had been in effect when she entered? What if her training as a nun had been more humane and she had remained a nun? What if her superiors had not sent her to Oxford to study? Any other "ifs"?
FP: What if neurologist Dr. Wolfe had not diagnosed her epilepsy? What if medication had not controlled it? What if she had not come to the favorable attention of Leo Baeck College officials, and to England's Channel 4 TV officials—what would have happened?
BJP: We would not have Karen Armstrong, author of some international best sellers on religion and religious conflicts. Here are some of her major books and their themes: 1981, Through the Narrow Gate; and 1983, Beginning the World, her two autobiographical books already mentioned. 1984, The First Christian, about St. Paul; and Varieties of Religious Experiences; 1985, Tongues of Fire; the last two books based on her interviews in and around Jerusalem.
FP: 1986, The Gospel According to Woman: Christianity's Creation of the Sexual War in the West. Armstrong showed how the medieval witch craze, sex-denying Victorian England, and today's Christianity have all perpetuated mistrust of the human body and fear of women. She criticized theologians, scholars, and others who have made women, including herself, victims of Christian dogma about the inferiority of women.
BJP: 1988, Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today's World. Armstrong wrote that in waging wars against each other the three major religions have wasted lives and treasure; that false images, ridiculous perceptions, and absurd demons have haunted them. These three religions, she wrote, must learn to look at the world from one another's viewpoints.
FP: 1992, Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet. Armstrong's respectful, reverential life of Muhammad tried to correct the West's misconceptions about Islam and its founder. Many Westerners believe wrongly that Islam is a violent religion. It was not violent in origin. About 610 A.D., Muhammad, a merchant from Mecca in what is now Saudi Arabia, saw that his squabbling tribesmen needed a holy book, as the Jews and Christians had the Bible. He gave them the Koran, as revealed to him, stressing that Arabs were descended, like Jews and Christians, from Abraham; that Allah, which means God, is the same one God of the Jews and Christians. The Koran, Armstrong stressed, urged prayer, good works, justice, and charity.
BJP: 1993, The End of Silence: Women and Priesthood, is Armstrong's defense of women as being as capable as men. It is a plea for all religions to allow women to serve as priests and ministers. Also in 1993, her A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, is her best known international best seller. It traces the changing concepts of God: from pagan times, to the Hebrew prophets, to the Greeks and Romans, to early Christians, to Islam, to the 16th century Enlightenment thinkers, to the l9th century Death of God philosophers, to our time. This tour de force is not an easy book. But its rich detail and historical coverage make it worth the try.
FP: 1996, Jerusalem, One City, Three Faiths, traced the frictional relations of Christians, Jews and Muslims in the holy city over the last 5,000 years. She is not optimistic that the knotty Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be easily or quickly solved. An Israeli critic, writing in the Jerusalem Post, accused Armstrong of being a pro-Muslim apologist who disparaged Jews and Christians.
BJP: 2000, The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, is a history of religious fundamentalism since 1492. It appeared before the horror of September 11, 2001 and was snapped up by readers as a plausible explanation. Religious fundamentalists, Armstrong explained, are militant splinter groups who break away from major religions when they (splinter groups) see the parent religion turn unalterably from original principles. Fundamentalists are true believers who when they see themselves marginalized, pushed aside, and about to be eliminated lash out at change, progress, modernity. Determined not to be wiped out, they organize, plot how to survive, and the more radical misguided few use violence to destroy those who, they believe, have wronged or betrayed them.
FP: 2000, Islam, A Short History, is another attempt to show Islam in its best light. She shows how Muhammad the Prophet gave Muslims the Koran; how in it he stressed peace, good works, and charity. She again countered as incorrect the West's misconception of Islam as warlike. Followers of Islam, she explained again, are urged to create a just and charitable community.
BJP: Karen Armstrong has written much and lectured widely. There is repetition. One can get lost. Can you pin down her core beliefs about religions and their conflicts. What are her passions?
FP: She has four passions: 1-She is passionate about wanting to correct stereotypes and misconceptions we Westerners have about Islam. 2-She passionately wants us to know what fundamentalism is, how the term is used, why it has arisen recently; why we've been shocked by its violent eruption among Islamic extremists. 3-She passionately wants readers to understand that concepts of God have changed over thousands of years; that how we think about God has changed as human problems have changed. 4-She passionately believes that the test of a good religion is its compassion, how it treats its have-nots, its sick and its poor. And now, for another perspective, we condense the content of two TV interviews with Karen Armstrong seen and heard by millions of viewers.
BJP: Here is the gist of the Brian Lamb-Karen Armstrong interview on C-Span, Booknotes, Sept. 22, 2000. Lamb asked her: when were you first interested in writing about God? Armstrong answered, repeating facts already mentioned: I never intended to be a writer. After I left the convent I thought I had finished with God. I was tired of religion. I fell into writing about religion by accident. I lost my teaching job because I'm an epileptic. I wrote my first autobiography, Through the Narrow Gate, 1981, to make sense out of my life. The program manager of a new British TV station who read it asked me to write the scenario for and help film a documentary series on St. Paul's life. I needed the work, lived in Jerusalem with an Israeli film crew, and was at first skeptical about the authenticity of the St. Paul story. But in Jerusalem, seeing the three faiths living side by side, interviewing Jews, Christians and Muslims, seeing how each adhered to his or her faith, "I came back to a sense of the divine."
FP: Lamb asked her: What is your religion now? Armstrong answered: I say jokingly that I am a freelance monotheist. I draw strength from all three religions and am open to wisdom from any other faith. I see my former Catholicism as part of a great human search for meaning in a flawed and tragic world. I search after God, after the divine, after the ultimate about which there is no end. Lamb asked her: What has been the biggest problem in your life?
BJP: Armstrong answered: Adjusting. As Catholics in England my family were a minority. We lived in a tight subculture, a ghetto, like the Jews. In the convent I was cut off from the world. After seven years, I went back to a totally transformed world. Everyone was protesting the war in Vietnam about which I knew nothing. I gave up on religion after leaving the convent. After working on religious documentary films in Jerusalem, I adjusted to researching and writing the history of religions. Adjusting has been my hardest but necessary problem.
FP: Lamb said: You wrote your first autobiography, went to Jerusalem to write about St. Paul, and have written ten or so other books. Are they all still in print? Armstrong answered: My second autobiographical book, Beginning the World, is out of print. The publisher wants to reprint it but I resist. I was then in grief, was suicidal, was utterly miserable. I still need to come to terms with that horrible time in my life. Lamb asked: Which of your books has sold the most and how many? Armstrong answered: A History of God, no idea how many, but there are over half a million copies in over 30 languages.
BJP: Lamb said: There are some six billion people on earth: two billion are Christians, of which just over a billion are Roman Catholic, 1.2 billion are Muslims, and only 15 million are Jews. Why have so few Jews written so much and had so much written about them? Armstrong answered: Jews have had a tragic history. Their very existence has been threatened in the last thousand years since the Crusades. So they continually ask themselves and write about: Who am I? Why am I here? Is there a God? Why be Jewish when it brings so much suffering and pain?
FP: Lamb asked: Why have the Jews been so persecuted? Armstrong answered: Anti-Semitism is a terrible European disease. Consider how it arose: the Roman Empire fell; barbarians overran Europe; Europe fell into the Dark Ages; European civilization came to a virtual halt. Europe struggled for a comeback on the world stage, with the Crusades as its first cooperative act. Europeans felt inferior, an out group, afraid, and truculent. So they projected this fear into hating others. They hated the Muslims because Muslims had the Holy Land; hated Greek Orthodox Christians because they escaped the Dark Ages, hated Jews because Jews, wanderers without a homeland, had learned how to survive, some even to prosper.
BJP: Lamb asked: How did the lies about the Jews originate? Armstrong answered: Jews were easy scapegoats To remember their past, their reason for being, they clung to ritual, holidays, customs. It was easy to single out Jews by dress and manner and tar them with bizarre myths, such as Jews kill little children at Passover and use their blood to make unleavened bread to remind them of their escape from Egypt. This ridiculous myth showed the disturbed European mind. This prejudice persisted against all common sense. Hitler used it and other lies to fuel his Nazi Holocaust.
FP: Lamb asked: Why did you write your book titled Islam? What does the word "Islam" mean? Armstrong answered: Islam means to "surrender" to Allah (Arabic name for God), to give up posturing, to stop calling attention to one's self, to surrender ego. Muhammad (c.570-632), the Prophet, asked fellow Muslims to prostrate themselves to Allah, the same one God of the Jews and Christians. Now, Christians often presented God in human terms like themselves and ascribed to God some of their own prejudices. Christian Crusaders went into battle crying, "God wills it," as they murdered Muslims and Jews. Muslims, wary of this behavior, speak of Allah, God, ultimate reality, as a state of purity. Islam's basic values are peace and good works. Because a few Islamic extremists are violent, we in the West, see all Islam as violent. This is not so, said Armstrong.
BJP: Lamb asked: What about Buddha, about whom you are now writing a book? Armstrong said: Buddha stressed self abnegation, continuous effort to lose one's ego, to empty one's self. That's why all we know about him can be put in a thimble. Few can achieve total abnegation. But in so striving, one sees things ever clearer. Lamb asked: Well, Karen, now back to Islam and Muhammad the Prophet. Who was he?
FP: Armstrong answered: Muhammad was a concerned merchant of Mecca, in what is now Saudi Arabia. Around 610 A.D., Arabia was a desert without crops or resources. Tribes fought within and among themselves for survival. Muhammad knew that Jews and Christians looked down on Arabs as barbaric pagans who had no prophets, no Bible. Claiming revelations from on high, Muhammad dictated in beautiful poetry insights that formed the Koran. That book stressed that Allah required Muslims to humble themselves by prayer, to live righteously, and to dispense justice and charity. [End of Lamb-Armstrong interview].
BJP: Here is the gist of the Bill Moyers-Karen Armstrong interview on his PBS TV program NOW. Moyers asked Armstrong: if you were God, would you do away with religion? Armstrong replied: The test of a good religion is its degree of compassion. When religion concentrates instead on ego or on belligerence, God must weep. Moyers asked: Why have there been so many atrocities in the history of religion?
FP: Armstrong replied: Some extremists are angry enough to kill. Examples: the 9-11 Islamic fanatics, the European Crusaders, the orthodox Jew who assassinated Yitzhak Rabin. When fanatics commit atrocities in the name of God, or for the glory of God, that's bad religion. When you ask fanatics, "what about compassion?" They answer, "what's the point of having religion if we can't use it to hurt people who are hurting you?"
BJP: Moyers asked: Why do fanatics have this attitude? Armstrong replied: Fear. It comes from cold fear. Fundamentalists are true believers. Convinced that their basic beliefs are being crushed out of existence, they strike back. Such violence was associated with religion from the beginning. The Hebrew Prophets and later religions, seeing every single human as sacred, transcended this barbarism.
FP: Moyers asked: How do you value the sacredness of others? Where does compassion come from? Armstrong replied: Compassion comes when you put yourself in another person's position, when you make a friend of a stranger. Genesis tells how Abraham sat outside his tent in the hot afternoon and watched three strangers approach. Most of us would not bring strangers who might be dangerous into our home. Abraham welcomed them into his home. Abraham asked his wife to prepare an elaborate meal for them.
BJP: Armstrong continuing: It turned out that one of the strangers was Abraham's God. Abraham's act of compassion led to a divine encounter. In Hebrew the word for holy, Kadosh, also means separate or other. Sometimes the otherness of a stranger, one not of our ethnic or ideological or religious group, instead of repelling us, can bring us out of our selfishness and give us insight into the otherness which is God. [End of Moyers-Armstrong interview].
FP: Betty, despite Karen Armstrong's trials and tribulations, she has achieved success. Born in 1944 she is now in 2003 age 59. What does she say about her lifestyle as a professional single woman?
BJP: She answered that in her article, "The Loneliness of the Intellectual Woman," New Statesman, Vol. 129, Issue 4489 June 5, 2000), pp. 23-24. She begins (I paraphrase): I sometimes smile wryly when I hear myself described as an 'ex-nun'. True, I no longer observe poverty, chastity and obedience, vows I kept for seven years as a nun. I am no longer poor and am certainly not obedient. But I have never married, continue to live alone, pass my days in silence as I did in the cloister, and spend my life writing, thinking, and talking about God and spirituality.
FP: Armstrong continued: Being solitary holds no terrors for me. A writer must spend long hours alone. Somebody once called me a 'gregarious loner.' I enjoy company, but I feel lost if I do not spend time by myself each day. I love my work. I can't wait to get to my desk. I can't wait to get to the library.
BJP: She continued on marriage: I have always assumed that, one day, I would find somebody to love and would get married like everybody else. But I have been unsuccessful with men. Yet I also realize that, had I had a normal family life and responsibilities, I would not have written as much. Perhaps to succeed as a writer, it has been necessary for me to fail as a woman. She continued: I have to live a good deal of the time inside my own head. It takes an immense effort to drag a book from sources into my mind and then from my mind onto paper. It demands concentration. For months, I retreat from the outside world. The real drama is enacted in my head.
FP: She continued: Now, in a man, this concentration is regarded as noble and inspiring. But in a woman it is often condemned as selfish. Why? Men think women must be primarily caregivers and serve the family. I am taken to task for appearing unfriendly, impenetrable, and inaccessible when producing a new book. Others scold me for remaining single. But I [she must have smiled] have h dad no choice in the matter. Betty, as we end, what do you think is Karen Armstrong's value to us, to the reading public, to scholarship?
BJP: She is a phenomenon, a valuable contributor to our understanding of religious conflicts. We admire her gumption in rising above adversity. We admire her ability to write and to lecture widely. She has given us fuller understanding of problems on religious differences. Frank, what is Karen Armstrong writing now?
FP: Two books to be published next year in 2004: one is another autobiographical book; the other is on the Axial Age, from 600 BCE to 200 BCE, which saw an explosion of religious ideas from Confucius, Tao, Buddha, the Jewish prophets, Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle. She continues to probe and to share that mysterious mystical unknowable intelligence called God.
BJP: Where does she find that mysterious mystical unknowable intelligence called God?
FP: She says she finds God where ordinary people are concerned about others. Where the lowly are lifted, the sick healed, justice reigns, peace is made universal. Where transformed people work together to make future generations healthier and happier. Where the test of a good religion, a good faith, is its capacity for compassion. Compassion leads a person, family, society or country to correct wrongs and do justly. For her, so far, where there is compassion, there is God.
BJP: Let's stop on that note. END
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End.
Lawrence Arthur Cremin (1925-1990), U.S. Educational Historian, Career, Publications, Reviews of Major Works, Criticism, Obituaries.
By Franklin Parker and Betty J. Parker, bfparker@frontiernet.net
Lawrence A. Cremin's parents (Arthur T. Cremin and Theresa [Borowick] Cremin) owned the private New York Schools of Music. Lawrence worked there part-time while attending the Model School (elementary) of Hunter College and Townsend Harris High School, a public high school for the gifted. He entered City College of New York, 1940 (age 15 1/2), served in the U.S. Army Air Corps, and received the City College B.S. degree, 1946.
At Columbia University's Teachers College (hereafter TC), he earned the M.A. (1947) and Ph.D. degrees (1949) under distinguished professors Lyman Bryson, George S. Counts, Harold O. Rugg, Bruce Raup (whose daughter Charlotte, a mathematics teacher, he married on September 19, 1956), John L. Childs, Kenneth Benne, and R. Freeman Butts.
At TC he was instructor, 1949-51; assistant professor, 1951-54; associate professor, 1954-57; and professor, 1957-61; then held a joint appointment as TC's Frederick A.P. Barnard Professor of Education and professor in Columbia University's history department, 1961-90. He directed TC's Division of Philosophy, Social Sciences, and Education, 1958-74; directed its Institute of Philosophy and Politics of Education, 1965-74; was TC president, 1974-84; and also Spencer Foundation president, 1985-90.
Cremin wrote The American Common School: An Historic Conception, New York: Teachers College Press, 1951, his revised TC doctoral dissertation; (with major professor R. Freeman Butts) A History of Education in American Culture, New York: Holt, 1953; (with D.A. Shannon and M.E. Townsend) History of Teachers College, Columbia University, New York: Columbia University Press, 1954; Public Education and the Future of America, Washington, DC: National Education Association, 1955; (with Merle L. Borrowman) Public Schools in Our Democracy, New York: Macmillan, 1956; and edited The Republic and the School: Horace Mann on the Education of Free Men, New York: Teachers College Press, 1957, with excerpts from Horace Mann's writings, first of 52 volumes in the "Classics in Education" series, which Cremin edited.
His seventh book won the 1962 Bancroft Prize in American History: The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876-1957, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961. Cremin saw progressive education as part of a larger movement of Progressivism, "a vast humanitarian effort to apply the promise of American life" to a "puzzling new urban-industrial civilization," a many faceted movement that sought "to use the school as a fundamental lever of social and political regeneration."
Evaluating the book 30 years later, educational historian John Rury thought Transformation "an indispensable piece of any educational historian's library." Reading it as an undergraduate, he was thrilled at how Cremin had made educational history exciting and meaningful; it was the "starting point toward [his] becoming an historian of education," a sentiment repeated by educational historian Michael B. Katz.
Reviewing Transformation in 1964, educational philosopher Paul Nash faulted Cremin for not defining progressive education; and for not relating it to Rousseau, Comenius, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Peirce, and James. Cremin, Nash felt, was not sympathetic to progressive education, which was not dead but still waiting to be tried.
Cremin's well written, prize winning Transformation helped advance a new interpretation of U.S. educational history. A Fund for the Republic conference in 1958 found U.S. educational history "shamefully neglected by American historians." A Fund-sponsored Committee on the Role of Education in American History (founded May 1956) offered grants to history department faculty or students for research on the role of education in American history.
The new interpretation first came in historian Bernard Bailyn's Committee-funded Education in the Forming of American Society: Needs and Opportunities for Study, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1960. He criticized as "educational missionaries" Paul Monroe (1869-1947) and Monroe's student at TC, Ellwood P. Cubberley (1868-1941). Their dominant textbooks were evangelistic in using school history to inspire teachers with professional zeal. In contrast, Bailyn saw education as including the influence of family, community, church, race relations, apprenticeship training, the economy, and formal schools. He saw education "as the entire process by which a culture transmits itself across the generation." Emphasizing the complex socioeconomic and political structure which education served, Bailyn led educational historians to rethink assumptions about education and its history.
Educational historian Sol Cohen blamed excessive criticism of the Monroe-Cubberley flawed historiography on liberal arts and science faculty antipathy toward educationists. Public school weaknesses from the 1930s were blamed on John Dewey and his disciples. This disdain increased as educational history was often used to support social reconstructionism, an ineffectual, short lived urging of educators to use schools to solve socioeconomic problems. Younger educational historians like Cremin turned from progressive educators and identified with Bailyn, the Committee, and liberal arts historians. The History of Education Society and its History of Education Quarterly withdrew from patronage by progressive education organizations. Cremin's Transformation, published a year after Bailyn's book, became a prestigious and admired standard of a new U.S. educational historiography.
Cremin's Wonderful World of Ellwood Patterson Cubberley: An Essay in the Historiography of American Education, New York: Teachers College Press, 1965, traced the origin of the Monroe-Cubberley laudatory approach to educational histories of European countries Henry Barnard published in his American Journal of Education (1855-82) and in his federal Bureau of Education publications (Barnard was Commissioner, 1867-70). This view was reflected in state centennial histories of education (1776-1876) and influenced Monroe and Cubberley.
Cremin's Wonderful World of...Cubberley was originally a paper he read at a 1964 Committee on the Role of Education in American History symposium. There he was invited by American Historical Association and U.S. Office of Education officials to write a comprehensive history of U.S. education for the Office of Education's 1967 centennial. He accepted, thinking that he could complete a 3-volume history in 7 years. But the American Education trilogy took 23 years and covered 1,775 pages of text, plus 240 pages of bibliographic essays.
Before the trilogy, Cremin gave the Horace Mann Lectures, University of Pittsburgh, published as The Genius of American Education, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1965. Cremin saw the essence of U.S. education as its commitment to popularization, a main theme of the trilogy.
Volume one, American Education, The Colonial Experience, 1607-1783, New York: Harper and Row, 1970, showed how inherited European educational agencies were transformed to serve U.S. civic and economic needs. His Public Education, New York: Basic Books, 1976, from his February 1975 John Dewey Society lectures, and Traditions of American Education, New York: Basic Books, 1977, from his March 1976 University of Wisconsin Merle Curti lectures, explored the trilogy's ideas and themes.
Volume two, American Education, The National Experience, 1783-1876, New York: Harper and Row, 1980, analyzed the trilogy's theme of popularization, or increasing accessibility to schools and other learning agencies for students of diverse abilities, backgrounds, and ages; and the theme of proliferation of schools and colleges, plus such numerous non-school educative agencies as newspapers, libraries, clubs, bookstores, and so on.
Volume three, American Education, The Metropolitan Experience, 1876-1980, New York: Harper and Row, 1988, explored the theme of politicization, or using schools rather than political action alone to solve social problems. These three themes affected schools greatly as the U.S. became a nation of cities, exporting its culture to the world. After World War II, U.S. schools were increasingly criticized, their mediocrity bemoaned, and their weaknesses blamed for America's relative world economic decline. Despite alleged quality debasement, Cremin pointed to the phenomenal growth of U.S. schools and how much they attempted, even while they fell short. The genius of U.S. education, he wrote, its popularization and proliferation, allowed almost everyone to learn and to rise through learning, especially in cities, which he saw as learning and teaching cornucopias.
In a published forum evaluating Metropolitan Experience, Cremin replied to three educational historians' critical comments. He conceived of the trilogy as a synthesis, a selective reinterpretation of U.S. educational history, showing how popularization, proliferation, and politicization became U.S. education's chief characteristics, leading to both achievement and problems.
Cremin liked the complexity of education in big cities because they offer an extraordinary range of curricular and educational opportunities. The eight New Yorker case studies in Metropolitan Experience took from the city's educational milieu what they wanted and needed, often in non-school educative agencies. Examples: Alfred E. Smith, Jr.'s most important educational experience came, not from public schools, but from lower Manhattan political clubhouses; Elizabeth D.H. Clarke's most important educational experience came from her family and the YWCA; Chinese immigrant Hop Kun Leo Chiang's most important educational experience came from the laundry business; and so on.
An admirer wrote: "Metropolitan Experience by itself is a seminal work in American educational historiography...a rich and learned text.... Cremin's breadth of knowledge is staggering."
An extreme critic wrote: "His trilogy, many in the field argue, was ponderous as well as scholarly, a chore to write and to read. The prose was choppy and the themes much open to question. The field had passed Cremin by. While a voracious reader, he never seemed to learn anything from those who criticized him. He read the radicals and referenced them in his massive bibliographies, but had he really learned a thing? Quite simply, schools matter more than Cremin thought. His work will remain more irrelevant as reform movements from the right and left continue to define our age."
Cremin died of a heart attack, September 4, 1990, aged nearly 65. His students and colleagues remembered him as a voracious reader who seemed to recall all that he had ever read. His classes were packed, he was well organized, and he lectured with intellectual vigor.
Among many honors were his 15 honorary degrees. He gave eight distinguished lecture series, most of them published; was advisory editor for the Arno Press's "American Education: People, Ideas, Institutions" series, which reprinted 161 important out-of-print education books, 1970-72; and he helped found the National Academy of Education and was its second president.
He was a university lecturer and administrator of note. Yet Cremin's renown as educational historian rests on his Transformation, the American Education trilogy, and his influence on his students.
Appendices
Cremin as Editorial Advisory Board Member of these Journals:
American Journal of Education
American Scholar
Education Research and Perspectives (Australia)
History of Education (England)
History of Education Journal
International Review of Education
Journal of Family History
Sociology of Education
Teachers College Record (Cremin was associate editor, 1952-59)
Institutions Where Cremin Was a Guest Professor:
Bank Street College of Education
Harvard University, 1957, 1961
Seminar in American Studies at Salzburg, Austria, 1956
Stanford University, 1973
University of California, Los Angeles, 1956
University of Wisconsin
Cremin as Board of Trustees Member:
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences
Charles F. Kettering Foundation
Children's Television Workshop
John and Mary Markle Foundation
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
Rockefeller Archive Center
Spencer Foundation
World Book Yearbook
Year Book of Education (jointly published by Teachers College, Columbia University and University of London)
Cremin as Distinguished Lecturer:
Horace Mann Lecturer, University of Pittsburgh, 1965
Sir John Adams Memorial Lecturer, University of London, 1966
Cecil H. Green Visiting Professor, University of British Columbia, 1972
Merle Curti Lecturer, University of Wisconsin, 1976
Sir John Adams Memorial Lecturer, University of California, Los Angeles, 1976
Vera Brown Memorial Lecturer, National Institute of Education, 1978
Distinguished Visiting Lecturer, Simon Fraser University, 1982
Irving R. Melbo Visiting Professor, University of Southern California, 1982
Cremin as Professional Organization Member (and Offices Held)
President, History of Education, 1959
President, National Society of College Teachers of Education, 1961
President, National Academy of Education, 1969-73 (founding member in 1965)
American Philosophical Society
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Antiquarian Society
Society of American Historians
Council on Foreign Relations
Other Offices Cremin Held
Chair, Curriculum Improvement Panel, U.S. Office of Education, 1963-65
Chair, Regional Laboratories Panel, U.S. Office of Education, 1965-66
Chair , Carnegie Commission on the Education of Educators, 1966-70
Vice Chair, White House Conference on Education, 1965
Cremin's International Travel:
Head of delegation of American educators to People's Republic of China, summer 1978
Lectured extensively in England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, Israel, and Sweden
Cremin's Fellowships and Awards:
Phi Beta Kappa
Guggenheim Fellowship, 1957-58, for research in history of American education
Pulitzer Prize in History, 1981
Bancroft Prize in History, 1962
Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, 1964-65; Visiting Scholar, 1971-72
American Educational Research Association's Award for Distinguished Contributions to Educational Research, 1969
New York University's Award for Creative Educational Leadership, 1971
Columbia University's Butler Medal in Silver, 1972
College of the City of New York's Townsend Harris Medal, 1974
New York Academy of Public Education's Medal for Distinguished Service to Public Education, 1982
Hunter College's President's Medal, 1984
Carnegie Corporation of New York Medal, 1988
Cremin's Honorary Degrees:
L.H.D., City University of New York, 1984
Litt.D., Columbia University, 1975
L.H.D., Ohio State University, 1975
LL.D., University of Bridgeport, 1975
LL.D., University of Rochester, 1980
L.H.D., Kalamazoo College, 1976
Litt.D., Rider College, 1979
LL.D., Miami University, 1983
L.H.D., Suffolk University, 1983
L.H.D., Widener University, 1983
L.H.D., College of William and Mary, 1984
L.H.D., Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 1984
L.H.D., Northern Illinois University, 1984
L.H.D., State University of New York, 1984
L.H.D., George Washington University, 1985
Cremin's Administrative Positions:
Director, Division of Philosophy, Social Sciences, and Education, Teachers College, 1958-74
Director, Institute of Philosophy and Politics of Education, Teachers College, 1965-74
President, Teachers College, 1974-84
President, Spencer Foundation, Chicago, 1985-90
Cremin's Books, With Reviews/Evaluations of His Major Books:
1951: The American Common School: An Historic Conception. New York: Teachers College Press.
1953: (With R. Freeman Butts). A History of Education in American Culture. New York: Holt.
1954: (With D. A. Shannon and M.E. Townsend). A History of Teachers College, Columbia University. New York: Columbia University Press.
1955: Public Education and the Future of America. Washington, DC: National Education Association.
1956: (With Merle L. Borrowman). Public Schools in Our Democracy. New York: Macmillan.
1957: (Editor). The Republic and the School: Horace Mann on the Education of Free Men. Classics in Education No. l. New York: Teachers College Press.
196l: The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876-1957. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Reviewed by: Barnard, Harry V. Current History, Vol. 41, No. 239 (July 1961), p. 51.
Reviewed by: Beck, John M. School Review, Vol. 69, No. 4 (Winter 1961), pp. 488-490.
Reviewed by: Brickman, William W. School and Society, Vol. 89, No. 2201 (December 16, 1961), p. 442.
Reviewed by: Chambliss, J. J. "The View of Progress in Lawrence Cremin's The Transformation of the School,'" History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 1 (March 1963), pp. 43-52.
Reviewed by: Cunningham, L. L. American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 67 (March 1962), p. 602.
Reviewed by: Hechinger, Fred M. New York Times Book Review (July 9, 1961), p. 3.
Reviewed by: Hogan, David John. Class and Reform: School and Society in Chicago,1880-1930. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985, pp. xiii, 228-229, 316-317.
Reviewed by: Horlick, Allan Stanley. "The Rewriting of American Educational History," New York University Education Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Summer 1974), pp. 25-28.
Reviewed by: Kraft, Ivor. Nation, Vol. 194 (June 9, 1962), p. 521.
Reviewed by: Leeper, Robert R. Educational Leadership, Vol. 23, No. 4 (January 1966), pp. 349-350.
Reviewed by: Mann, Arthur. American Historical Review, Vol. 67, No. 1 (October 1961), pp.156-157.
Reviewed by: Marland, Sidney P. Chicago Sunday Tribune (August 13, 1961), p. 5.
Reviewed by: Nash, Paul. "The Strange Death of Progressive Education," Educational Theory, Vol. 14, No. 2 (April 1964), pp. 65-75, 82.
Reviewed by: Qualey, C. C. Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 77, No. 3 (September 1962), pp. 472-473.
Reviewed by: Rudy, Willis. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 340 (March 1962), p. 155-156.
Reviewed by: Rury, John L. "Transformation in Perspective: Lawrence Cremin's Transformation of the School," History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 3l, No. 1 (Spring 1991), pp. 67-76.
Reviewed by: Russo, Francis X. "Educational Wastelands Revisited," Choice, Vol. 25, Nos. 11 & 12 (July/August 1988), p. 1661 [entire article, pp. 1659-1669].
Reviewed by: Toch, Thomas. In the Name of Excellence: The Struggle to Reform the Nation's Schools, Why It's Failing, and What Should Be Done. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 44-47.
Reviewed by: Watson, James E. Social Education, Vol. 26, No. 2 (February 1962), p. 112.
Reviewed by: Weiss, Robert M. History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 2 (June 1962), pp. 130-132.
Reviewed by: Woodring, Paul. Saturday Review, Vol. 44, No. 15 (April 15, 1961), pp. 70-71.
1965: The Genius of American Education. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Reviewed by: Sizer, Theodore R. Teachers College Record, Vol. 68, No. 4 (January 1967), pp. 341-343.
1965: The Wonderful World of Ellwood Patterson Cubberley: An Essay in the Historiography of American Education. New York: Teachers College Press.
Reviewed by: Brubacher, John S. Teachers College Record, Vol. 67, No. 3 (December 1965), pp. 230-232.
Reviewed by: Cartwright, William H. American Historical Review, Vol. 71, No. 2 (January 1966), pp. 725-726.
Reviewed by: Hodysh, Henry W. "A Note on History, Educational Policy, and the Uses of the Past," Alberta Journal of Education, Vol. 37, No. 4 (December 1991), pp. 323-332.
Reviewed by: Journal of American History, Vol. 52, No. 3 (December 1965), p. 678.
Reviewed by: Tyack, David. Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Spring 1966), pp. 202-205.
1969: (With Lee J. Cronbach, Patrick Suppes, et al.). Research for Tomorrow's Schools: Disciplined Inquiry for Education. New York: Macmillan.
1970: American Education, The Colonial Experience, 1607-1783. New York: Harper and Row.
Reviewed by: Book List, Vol. 67, No. 14 (March 15, 1971), pp. 567, 572.
Reviewed by: Borrowman, Merle L. Teachers College Record, Vol. 73, No. 1 (September 1971), pp. 117-120.
Reviewed by: Choice, Vol. 8, No. 2 (April 1971), p. 268.
Reviewed by: Cohen, D. Ronald. Socialization in Colonial New England," History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Spring 1973), pp. 73-82.
Reviewed by: Demos, John. Commonweal, Vol. 94, No. 6 (April 16, 1971), pp. 145-146.
Reviewed by: Hofstadter, Beatrice Kevitt. "Schooling in Democracy," Commentary,
Vol. 52, No. 5 (November 1971), pp. 85-86.
Reviewed by: Kalisch, P. A. Library Journal, Vol. 95, No. 16 (September 15, 1970), p. 2910.
Reviewed by: Lazerson, Marvin. "Lawrence Cremin and the American Dilemma," American Journal of Education, Vol. 99, No. 1 (November 1990), pp. 95-104.
Reviewed by: Middlekauff, Robert. Journal of American History, Vol. 58, No. 2 (September 1971), pp. 432-434.
Reviewed by: Powell, A. G. Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 4, No. 2 (May 1971), pp. 250-255.
Reviewed by: Publishers Weekly, Vol. 198, No. 15 (October 12, 1970), p. 51.
Reviewed by: Sizer, Theodore R. Saturday Review, Vol. 54, No. 12 (March 20, 1971), pp. 50-51.
Reviewed by: Tolles, Frederick B. American Historical Review, Vol. 77, No.1 (February 1972), pp. 198-200.
Reviewed by: Tully, Alan. "Literacy Levels and Educational Development in Rural Pennsylvania, 1729-1775," Pennsylvania History, Vol. 39, No. 3 (1972), pp. 301-312.
Reviewed by: Vassar, Rena. William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 4 (October 1971), pp. 679-681.
1976: Public Education. New York: Basic Books.
Reviewed by: Borrowman, Merle L. Teachers College Record, Vol. 79, No. 1 (September 1977), pp. 139-144. (also reviewed 1977 Traditions of American Education.)
Reviewed by: Choice, Vol. 13, No. 8 (October 1976), p. 1028.
Reviewed by: Christian Century, Vol. 93, No. 26 (August 18/25, 1976), p. 714.
Reviewed by: Cunningham, Jo Lynn. Science Books, Vol. 13, No. 1 (May 1977), p. 11.
Reviewed by: Eckberg, Carol. Library Journal, Vol. 101, No. 11 (June 1, 1976), p. 1283.
Reviewed by: Featherstone, Joseph. New York Times Book Review (November 21, 1976), pp. 58-60.
Reviewed by: Hechinger, Fred M. "The World is a Classroom," Saturday Review, Vol. 3, No. 18 (June 12, 1976), p. 34, 36.
Reviewed by: Instructor, Vol. 86, No. 2 (October 1976), p. 198.
Reviewed by: Marani, Vicki. National Review, Vol. 28, No. 39 (October 15, 1976), p. 1137.
Reviewed by: Mehl, Bernard. Journal of Education, Vol. 159, No. 2 (May 1977), pp. 114-117.
Reviewed by: Publishers Weekly, Vol. 209, No. 8 (February 23, 1976), p. 113.
Reviewed by: Wagoner, Jennings L., Jr. "Historical Revisionism, Educational Theory, and an American Paideia." History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Summer 1978), pp. 201-210.
1977: Traditions of American Education. New York: Basic Books.
Reviewed by: Book List, Vol. 73, No. 16 (April 15, 1977), p. 1222.
Reviewed by: Borrowman, Merle L. Teachers College Record, Vol. 79, No. 1 (September 1977), pp. 139-144. (Also reviewed 1976 Public Education.)
Reviewed by: Butcher, Patricia Smith. Library Journal, Vol. 102, No. 13 (July 1977), p. 1491.
Reviewed by: Choice, Vol. 14, No. 5/6 (July/August 1977), p. 726.
Reviewed by: Christian Century, Vol. 94, No. 17 (May 11, 1977), p. 460.
Reviewed by: Church, Robert L. "Democracy and Education Reaffirmed," Reviews in American History, Vol. 6, No. 1 (March 1978), pp. 29-35.
Reviewed by: Finn, Chester E., Jr. "School and Society," Commentary, Vol. 63, No. 6 (June 1977), pp. 89-91.
Reviewed by: Fisher, David Hackett, "David Hackett Fisher on History, " New Republic, Vol. 177, No. 23 (December 3, 1977), p. 24.
Reviewed by: Fiske, Edward B. New York Times (April 16, 1977), p. 23.
Reviewed by: Hopkins, Thomas R. Educational Leadership, Vol. 36, No. 2 (November 1978), pp. 154-155.
Reviewed by: Instructor, Vol. 87, No. 2 (September 1977), p. 242.
Reviewed by: Kirkus Reviews, Vol. 45, No. 3 (February 1, 1977), pp. 130-131.
Reviewed by: Mattingly, Paul. H. Journal of American History, Vol. 64, No. 4 (March 1978), pp. 1149-1150.
Reviewed by: Publishers Weekly, Vol. 211, No. 4 (January 24, 1977), p. 323.
Reviewed by: Rippa, S. Alexander. American Historical Review, Vol. 82, No. 5 (December 1977), pp. 1320-1321.
Reviewed by: Science Books, Vol. 14, No. 1 (May 1978), p. 10.
Reviewed by: Smith, Wilson. History: Reviews of New Books, Vol. 5, No. 10 (September 1977), pp. 221-222.
Reviewed by: Wagoner, Jennings L., Jr. "Historical Revisionism, Educational Theory, and an American Paideia," History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Summer 1978), pp. 201-210.
Reviewed by: Wright, Richard A. Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 7, No. 4 (July 1978), pp. 438-439.
1980: American Education, The National Experience, 1783-1876. New York: Harper and Row.
Reviewed by: Atlantic, Vol. 246, No. 5 (November 1980), p. 98.
Reviewed by: Cohen, D. Ronald. Journal of Southern History, Vol. 47, No. 3 (August 1981), pp. 441-442.
Reviewed by: Coughlin, Ellen K. "An Eloquent History of Education, Chronicle of Higher Education, Vol. 21, No. 1 (August 25, 1980), p. 29.
Reviewed by: Finn, Chester E., Jr. Book World (Washington Post), Vol. 10, No. 32 (August 10, 1980), pp. 25-26.
Reviewed by: Howe, Daniel W. "The History of Education as Cultural History," History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Summer 1982), pp. 205-214.
Reviewed by: Ihle, Elizabeth. "This Pulitzer-Prize Winner Moves Beyond the Scope of Traditional Education History," Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 62, No. 10 (June 1981), pp. 749-750.
Reviewed by: Katz, Michael B. American Historical Review, Vol. 86, No. 1 (February 1981), 205-206.
Reviewed by: Kirkus Reviews, Vol. 48, No. 11 (June 1, 1980), pp. 748-749.
Reviewed by: Kraus, Joe W. Library Journal, Vol. 105, No. 13 (July l980), p. 1511.
Reviewed by: Lazerson, Marvin. "Lawrence Cremin and the American Dilemma," American Journal of Education, Vol. 99, No. 1 (November 1990), pp. 95-104.
Reviewed by: Lazerson, Marvin. "Lawrence Cremin's Democracy in America," Reviews in American History, Vol. 9, No. 3 (September 1981), pp. 382-386.
Reviewed by: Lynn, Kenneth S. "The Making of a Disciple," New York Times Book Review, Vol. 86 (January 25, 1981), p. 23.
Reviewed by: Michaelsen, Robert S. Church History, Vol. 51, No. 2 (June 1982), p. 229.
Reviewed by: Publishers Weekly, Vol. 217, No. 21 (May 30, 1980), p. 80.
Reviewed by: Roche, John F. America, Vol. 143, No. 13 (November 1, 1980), pp. 275-276.
Reviewed by: Sedlak, Michael W. Journal of American History, Vol. 68, No. 1 (June 1981), pp. 125-126.
Reviewed by: Smith, L. Glenn. Educational Studies, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Winter 1981-82), pp. 468-469.
Reviewed by: Smylie, James H. Religious Education, Vol. 84, No. 4 (Fall 1989), pp. 620-624. (Also reviewed Metropolitan Experience below.)
Reviewed by: Spaeth, Robert L. "Persons More Than Places in a Compelling Story," Change, Vol. 12, No. 6 (September 1980), pp. 58-59.
Reviewed by: Welter, Rush. Teachers College Record, Vol. 82, No. 4 (Summer 1981), pp. 702-705.
1988: American Education, The Metropolitan Experience, 1876-1980. New York: Harper and Row.
Reviewed by: Beirne, Charles J. America, Vol. 160, No. 7 (February 25, 1989), pp. 177-178.
Reviewed by: BJC. Booklist, Vol. 84, No. 12 (February 15, 1988), pp. 957-958.
Reviewed by: Bowyer, Carlton H. Educational Forum, Vol. 53, No. 1 (Fall 1988), pp. 93-96.
Reviewed by: Church, Robert L. et al, "The Metropolitan Experience in American Education," History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Fall 1989), pp. 419-446.
Reviewed by: Cohen, Sol. "Review Essay, Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The Metropolitan Experience 1876-1980," Historical Studies in Education, Vol. 1 (Fall 1989), pp. 307-326.
Reviewed by: Cordasco, Frank. Choice, Vol. 26, No. 1 (September 1988), p. 192.
Reviewed by: Crunden, Robert M. "A Liberal Synthesis," Reviews in American History, Vol. 16, No. 4 (December 1988), pp. 652-656.
Reviewed by: Foote, Timothy. Book World (Washington Post) , Vol. 18, No. 13 (March 27, 1988), p. 6.
Reviewed by: "Forum: The Metropolitan Experience in American Education," History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Fall 1989), pp. 419-446.
Reviewed by: Gutmann, Amy. New York Times Book Review, Vol. 93 (May 8, 1988), p. 17.
Reviewed by: James, Thomas. Journal of American History, Vol. 75, No. 4 (March 1989), pp. 1340-1341.
Reviewed by: Kirkus Reviews, Vol. 56, No. 2 (January 15, 1988), p. 99.
Reviewed by: Lazerson, Marvin. "Lawrence Cremin and the American Dilemma," American Journal of Education, Vol. 99, No. 1 (November 1990), pp. 95-104.
NEA Today, Vol. 7, No. 2 (October 1988), p. 19 (1).
Reviewed by: Publishers Weekly, Vol. 237, No. 4 (January 26, 1990), p. 4l4.
Reviewed by: Reese, William J. Christian Science Monitor, Vol. 80 (June 3, 1988), p. B4.
Reviewed by: Reimen, Jacqueline. Journal of American Studies, Vol. 23, No. 2 (August 1989), pp. 332-334.
Reviewed by: Rodgers, Daniel T. Journal of Social History, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Winter 1989), pp. 388-391.
Reviewed by: Solberg, Winton U. Church History, Vol. 59, No. 1 (March 1990), pp. 128-130.
Reviewed by: Stuttaford, Genevieve. Publishers Weekly, Vol. 233, No. 4 (January 29, 1988), pp. 419-420.
Reviewed by: Sutherland, Neil. Educational Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Fall 1990), pp. 315-318.
Reviewed by: Veysey, Laurence. American Historical Review, Vol. 95, No. 1 (February 1990), p. 285.
Reviewed by: Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 64, No. 4 (Autumn 1988), p. 116.
1990: Popular Education and Its Discontents. New York: Harper and Row.
Reviewed by: Best, John Hardin. History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Spring 1991), pp. 179-181.
Reviewed by: Blair, Christine E. Religious Education, Vol. 86, No. 3 (Summer 1991), pp. 487-488.
Reviewed by: Carbone, M.J. Choice, Vol. 27, Nos. 11/12 (July/August 1990), pp. 1867-1868.
Reviewed by: Cremin, Lawrence A. "The 'Ideal' of Popular Education" (Excerpts from Popular Education and Its Discontents), Education Week, Vol. 9, No. 23 (February 28, 1990), p. 30.
Reviewed by: Digilio, Alice. "Making Schools Work," Book World (Washington Post), Vol. 20, No. 21 (May 27, 1990), p. 4.
Reviewed by: Haber, Samuel. Journal of American History, Vol. 77, No. 4 (March 1991), p. 1414.
Reviewed by: Howe, Harold, II. Teachers College Record, Vol. 92, No. 2 (Winter 1990), pp. 316-319.
Reviewed by: Publishers Weekly, Vol. 236, No. 21 (November 24, 1989), p. 65.
Reviewed by: Reference & Research Book News, Vol. 5, No. 3 (June 1990), p. 25.
Reviewed by: Weakland, Allen. Booklist, Vol. 86, No. 10 (January 15, 1990), p. 957.
Reviews of the Combined 3 Volumes of American Education
Dyer, Thomas G. "Review Essay: From Colony to Metropolis: Lawrence Cremin on the History of American Education," Review of Higher Education, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Winter 1990), pp. 237-244.
Hawes, Joseph M., and N. Ray Hiner. Children in Historical and Comparative Perspective: An International Handbook and Research Guide. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991, p. 503.
Herbst, Jurgen. "Cremin's American Paideia," American Scholar, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Winter 1991), pp. 128-129, 132-134, 136-138, 140. (Also reviewed Popular Education and Its Discontents.)
Articles and Speech by (or Interviews with) Cremin
Cremin, Lawrence A. "Curriculum Making in the United States," Teachers College Record, Vol. 73, No. 2 (1971), pp. 207-220.
_________________. "The Decline and Fall of Progressive Education," in Background Readings: The White House Conference on Education, July 20-21, 1965. Washington, DC: U.S. Office of Education,1965, pp. 58-60.
_________________. "The Ecology of American Education," New York University Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Spring 1972), pp. 2-5.
_________________. "The Education of the Educating Professions," Research Bulletin (Horace Mann-Lincoln Institute), Vol. 18, No. 3 (1978), pp. 1-8 (Charles W. Hunt Lecture given at the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, February 21, 1978. ERIC ED 148 829); American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, The Knowledge Base for the Preparation of Education Personnel, Yearbook 1978, Volume 1. Washington, DC: AACTE, 1978, pp. 3-24.
_________________. "Family-Community Linkages in American Education: Some Comments on the Recent Historiography," Teachers College Record, Vol. 79, No. 4 (May 1978), pp. 683-704.
_________________. "The Free School Movement--A Perspective (Discussion and Postcript)," Notes on Education, No. 2 (October 1973), pp.1-11; Today's Education, Vol. 63, No. 3 (1974), pp. 71-74; also in Alternatives in Education; Infopac No. 8. Washington, DC: National Education Association, 1974.
_________________. "Further Notes Toward a Theory of Education," Notes on Education (Institute of Philosophy and Politics of Education, Teachers College, Columbia University), No. 4 (March 1974), pp. 1-11.
_________________. "George S. Counts as a Teacher: A Reminiscence," Teaching Education, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Winter 1988), pp. 28-31.
_________________. "John Dewey and the Progressive Education Movement," The School Review, Vol. 67, No. 2 (Summer 1959), pp. 160-173.
_________________. "Looking Back," National Elementary Principal, Vol. 52, No. 6 (1973), pp. 8-13.
_________________. "The Popularization of American Education Since World War II," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 129, No. 2 (1985), pp. 113-120.
_________________. "The Problematics of Education in the 1980s: Some Reflections on the Oxford Workshop," Oxford Review of Education, Vol. 9, No. 1 (1983), pp. 9-20.
_________________. "The Progressive Movement in American Education: A Perspective," Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Fall 1957), pp. 251-270.
_________________. "Public Education and the Education of the Public," Teachers College Record, Vol. 77, No. 1 (September, 1975), pp. 1-12. Reprinted in History, Education, and Public Policy, edited by Donald R. Warren. Berkeley, CA: McCutchan Publishing Corp., 1978, pp.22-34, 49-50.
_________________. "School is Only One of the Nation's Teachers," New York Times (November 14, 1976), p. 30.
_________________. "History: 'A Lamp To Light the Present,'" (an interview), Education Week, Vol. 7, No. 25 (March 16, 1988), pp. 5, 20.
Friedman, John. "Striving Towards Quality and Equality in Education," American Educator, Vol. 2, No. 2 (1978), pp. 17-19.
Houts, Paul L. "A Conversation with Lawrence A. Cremin," National Elementary Principal, Vol 54, No. 3 (1975), pp. 22-35.
Ryan, Kevin et al. "An Interview with Lawrence A. Cremin," Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 60, No. 2 (October 1978), pp. 112-116.
Westerhoff, John [interview with Lawrence A. Cremin]. "Freeing Ourselves from the Mythmakers," Myth and Reality: A Reader in Education. Glenn Smith and Charles R. Kniker, editors. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1975, pp. 4-11.
Writings About Cremin:
Angelo, Richard. "Ironies of the Romance and the Romance with Irony: Some Notes on Stylization in the Historiography of American Education Since 1960." Paper read at the Canadian History of Education Association and the United States History of Education Society Joint Meeting, October 14-16, 1983.
Bremer, John. "John Dewey and Lawrence Cremin's Public Education," National Elementary Principal, Vol. 56, No. 1 (1976), pp. 32-38.
Buder, Leonard. "New History of Education in U.S. Under Way with Carnegie Aid," New York Times (February 23, 1965).
Button, Warren. "Creating More Useable Pasts: History in the Study of Education." Paper read at American Educational Research Association, March 27-31, 1987. ERIC ED 155 088.
Butts, R. Freeman. "Public Education and Political Community," History, Education, and Public Policy, edited by Donald R. Warren. Berkeley, CA: McCutchan Publishing Corp., 1978, pp. 90-108, 113-115.
Cohen, Sol. "History of Education as a Field of Study: An Essay on Recent Historiography of American Education." History, Education, and Public Policy, edited by Donald R.Warren. Berkeley, CA: McCutchan Publishing Corp., 1978, pp. 35-49, 50-53.
Cohen, Sol. "The History of the History of American Education, 1900-1976: The Uses of the Past," Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 46, No. 3 (August 1976), pp. 298-330.
Hechinger, Fred M. "A Warning on the Decline of Quality in Teacher Education," New York Times, June 16, 198l.
________________. "Lawrence Cremin: Looking Toward the Heights," Saturday Review/World, Vol. 2, No. 3 (October 19, 1974), pp. 54-55.
Hiner, N. Ray. "History of Education for the 1990s and Beyond: The Case for Academic Imperialism," History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Summer 1990), pp. 137-160.
Hodysh, Henry W. "T.S. Kuhn's Idea of Progress and Its Implications for Theory Choice in the Historiography of Education," Journal of Educational Thought, Vol. 18, No. 3 (December 1984), pp. 136-151.
Horlick, Allan Stanley. "Landmarks in the Literature: The Rewriting of American Educational History," New York University Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 4 (1974), pp. 25-28.
McLachlan, James. "Lawrence Cremin on American Higher Education: A Review Essay," History of Higher Education Annual, Vol. 8 (1988). Evanston, IL: School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University, 1988.
Parker, Franklin. "Lawrence Arthur Cremin (1925-90), U.S. Educational Historian and President, Teachers College, Columbia University (l974-84): Contributions to Higher Education." Academic Profiles in Higher Education. Edited by James J. Van Patten. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992, pp. 277-305. Same in CORE (Collected Original Resources in Education), XVI, No. 32 (June, 1992), Fiche 1 AO4.
Randolph, Scott Kellogg. (Ed.D.). "An Analysis of the Committee on the Role of Education in American History and Lawrence Cremin's Revisionist View on the Nature of History of American Education." Rutgers, The State University, 1976. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. 181 pp.
Ravitch, Diane. The Revisionists Revised: A Critique of the Radical Attack on the Schools. New York: Basic Books, 1977.
Schlossman, Steven L. "Family as Educator, Parent Education, and the Perennial Family Crisis." Paper read at the Parents as Educators Conference, November 19-21, 1978. ERIC ED 187 425.
Shapiro, H. Tsvi. "Functionalism, Ideology, and the Theory of Schooling: A Review of Studies in the History of American Education," Paedagogica Historica, Vol. 22, No. 1-2 (1982), pp. 157-172.
______________. "Society in the History of Educational Change: A Brief Review of Studies by Bernard Bailyn and Lawrence Cremin," Educational Theory, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Summer 1978), pp. 186-193.
Sloan, Douglas. "Historiography and the History of Education," Review of Research in Education, 1. Fred M. Kerlinger, editor. Itasca, IL: F. E. Peacock Publishers, 1973, pp. 239-269.
Urban, Wayne J. "Historiography," Encyclopedia of Educational Research, Fifth Edition. Harold E. Mitzel, Editor in Chief. Vol. 2. New York: Free Press, 1982, pp. 791-793.
Warren, Donald R. "History of Education," Encyclopedia of Educational Research, Fifth Edition. Harold E. Mitzel, Editor in Chief. Vol. 2. New York: Free Press, 1982, pp. 808-817.
Wilson, Andrea. "Two Partnership Models Aimed at Easing Transition from School to the World of Work." Paper read at the National Conference on Urban Education, November 18-21, 1978. ERIC ED 179 653.
Biographical Sketches of Cremin:
"Cremin, Lawrence A(rthur)," Contemporary Authors: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Authors and Their Works. Ann Evory, editor. Vols. 33-36. First Revision. Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1978, p. 216.
_____, Contemporary Authors: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Authors and Their Works. Hal May and James G. Lesniak, editors. New Revision Series, Vol. 29. Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1990, pp. 100-101.
_____, Directory of American Scholars, Eighth Edition, Vol. 1. New York: R.R. Bowker Co., 1982, p. 157.
_____, International Who's Who 1990-91 Fifty-Fourth Edition. London: Europa Publications Ltd., 1990, p. 345.
_____, Who's Who in America, 1990-91, 46th Edition, Vol. l. Wilmette, IL: Marquis Who's Who, 1990, p. 705.
_____, Who's Who in World Jewry: A Biographical Dictionary of Outstanding Jews. I. Carmin Karpman, editor. Tel-Aviv, Israel: Olive Books of Israel, 1978, p. 178.
Obituaries and Memoirs of Cremin:
Lagemann, Ellen Condliffe, and Patricia Albjerg Graham. Lawrence A. Cremin (October 31, 1925-September 4, 1990), A Biographical Memoir. Washington, DC: National Academy of Education, 1992 (brief version in Educational Researcher, Vol. 20, No. 5 [June-July 1991], pp. 27-29.
Lawrence A. Cremin, October 31, 1925-September 4, 1990. A Memorial Tribute. New York: St. Paul's Chapel, Columbia University, Sunday, September 30, 1990. Tributes by David L. Cremin [son], David S. Tatel, Harold J. Noah, and Ellen Condliffe Lagemann.
"Lawrence A. Cremin," New York Times, September 5, 1990, p. D21.
"Lawrence A. Cremin," New York Times Biographical Service, Vol. 21 (September 1990), p. 809.
"Lawrence A. Cremin, October 31, 1925-September 4, 1990," TC Today, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Fall 1990), pp. 1, 5.
"Prize-winning Author Cremin Dies at Age 64," Education Week, Vol. 10, No. 2 (September 12, 1990), p. 4.
Ravitch, Diane. "Lawrence A. Cremin (October 31, 1925-September 4, 1990)," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 135, No. 4 (December 1991), pp. 599-603.
Ravitch, Diane. "Lawrence A. Cremin," The American Scholar, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Winter 1992), pp. 83-89.
U.S. Educational Historiography Bearing on Cremin:
Bailyn, Bernard. Education in the Forming of American Society: Needs and Opportunities for Study. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960.
Buck, Paul H. et al. The Role of Education in American History. New York: Fund for the Advancement of Education, 1957.
Committee on the Role of Education in American History. Education and American History. New York: Fund for the Advancement of Education, 1965.
Kaestle, Carl F. "Conflict and Consensus Revisited: Notes Toward a Reinterpretation of American Educational History," Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 46, No. 3 (August 1976), pp. 390-396.
Warren, Donald R., ed. History, Education, and Public Policy. Berkeley, CA: McCutchan Publishing Corp., 1978.
[References in articles that list Cremin's books are in Social Sciences Citation Index, A to Z, 1A (January to April, 1992), column 1424, and in earlier SSCI indexes.].
END.
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