Old-Fashioned Progressive

In the dining hall of Chicago's Francis W. Parker School one night last week, 40 teachers and headmasters from private schools all over the city gathered for a dinner in honor of a distinguished colleague. After 35 years, Perry Dunlap Smith was retiring as headmaster of the North Shore Country Day School in Winnetka. For many a U.S. educator, the retirement was something of a milestone. A disciple of the late Colonel Parker, Headmaster Smith has spanned the whole history of the American progressive movement, and his own school has become one of the most famous of its kind in the U.S. But in an era plagued by so much educational flapdoodle, even conservative critics have had to admit that Smith represents progressivism at its best.

Freedom & Responsibility. The son of a Chicago realtor, Smith joined the progressive movement early. After five years at the Louis Nettelhorst Public School ("We did everything by the numbers--opening desks, closing desks, picking up pencils"), he was enrolled with two of his brothers as one of the first pupils in Colonel Parker's experimental Chicago Institute. There Parker preached a doctrine of "freedom with a balancing responsibility" and of learning from actual materials as well as from books. In spite of the fact that Smith went on to the orthodox Hill School of Pottstown, Pa. ("So you're one of those rule-by-love boys," snorted one master), he never forgot the teachings of Colonel Parker.

In 1919, when a group of Winnetka parents decided to start a school of their own, they picked Smith to be its first headmaster. By that time, he had graduated from Harvard, taught at both Hill and Parker and had a pretty good idea of what sort of school he wanted. He had no use for sterile drill or mathematical marking, but he also refused to follow the free-for-all philosophy of some progressives. In matters of discipline, he was sure of one thing: "A child never respects a person" he can walk over."

Avenues to the Soul. Since then, Perry Smith has ruled over his 290 students and eight buildings with a genial but unchallenged authority. A big (6 ft. 2 in.), broad-shouldered man, he started each day by shaking hands with every child in the lower school--partly to put them at ease and partly to teach them good manners. He played the double bass in the school orchestra, gave a course in Shakespeare, taught an amiable sort of social philosophy under the title "Social Standards" (alias "S.S." or "Snappy Stories"). Though North Country Day goes in heavily for art, music and dramatics ("The avenues to the child's soul," says Smith), such activities do not count for credit, nor do they replace formal academic training.

Since Smith believes that the school should be not a substitute for the family, but an extension of it, he treats parents as sort of ex officio partners. They take part in administration, even occasionally man the switchboards and serve food in the cafeteria. As for coeducation, Smith follows an unorthodox course. In the lower grades, boys and girls are put together; later, as they develop different interests, they are gradually separated. In their sophomore year in high school, they are brought back together again.

Last week, at his banquet, Perry Smith delivered one final plea for the middle way of the "oldfashioned progressive." He denounced those who would sweep away all discipline and intellectual content from the school ("Certainly the old-fashioned progressive never advocated any such thing"). He also deplored those who insist that everything progressive is wrong. "As one great headmaster put it, 'You are neglecting to put the fear of God into [children].' Yes, perhaps so, but it is my belief that we put the love of God into children, and that is far better."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.