Change on 120th Street

Of all the academic chairs in the U.S., probably none is more of a hot-seat than the presidency of Teachers College, Columbia University. The mecca of U.S. public schoolmen, T.C. has turned out a fourth of the nation's big-city (over 50,000 population) school superintendents. It lists among its alumni nearly a third of all U.S. deans of education and presidents of teacher-training institutions. As such, it has been more than any other campus the creator of the modern public school.

Last week, William F. Russell, 64, announced his coming retirement as head of Teachers College. Just 27 years had passed since he took over the post from his father.

"I'd Rather Be Right." As a student (Cornell and Teachers College), Russell came under the conflicting influences of John Dewey and William ("I'd rather be right than Progressive") Bagley. He survived the excesses of the psychological testers who seemed to think that education could be reduced to a series of quotients. Later, he observed William Heard Kilpatrick's philosophy ("We learn what we live"), which turned millions of pupils away from their books to endless activity projects. When T.C.'s Professor George Counts was going through his Utopian phase of daring schools to "build a new social order," Russell quietly warned against playing into the hands "of the extremist, left or right."

In recent years, he faced the increasingly bitter taunts of the liberal arts professors, who have long called 120th Street "the widest street in the world." But each year, some 13,000 teachers and administrators flock to that street. They take courses in everything, from "ideological conflicts and education in Asia" to "family meals" (Cookery 203) and organic chemistry. Though the college does go in for such miscellany as tap dancing ("Well," says Russell, "what would you do if you were a teacher in a small country school on a rainy day?") and a two-week course for janitors, this is only a minor, if highly publicized, part of its work. It has also contributed greatly to the psychology of learning, still does invaluable research in many fields.

Dreams & Danger. Most of the time, President Russell--a gentle man of Pickwickian build and conservative bent--has tried to walk straight down the middle of 120th Street. Last week, as he prepared to step down in favor of his like-minded former student, T.C.'s Dean Hollis Caswell, 52, President Russell could claim with justice that, at their best, T.C.'s doctrines have injected new humanity and freedom into the schools. But at their worst (as critics point out), they could lead to a wholesale intellectual retreat into a never-never land of growth without goal, and adjustment for its own sake. Pleading without much success for mutual understanding between extremists on both sides, President Russell had been close to the great dreams as well as the great dangers in modern U.S. education.

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