In honor of my former colleagues, who begin a new year:
The world in which Teachers College of Columbia University was created in 1887 faced challenges much like those of today. Industrialization and technology were creating both enormous wealth and deep economic divisions and uncertainty. A vast new influx of people was pouring into U.S. cities from rural areas and from other nations around the world.
Teachers College reflected the collective consciousness of the era’s leading scholars, practitioners, philanthropists, and social reformers. It began humbly: In 1880, American philanthropist Grace Hoadley Dodge (1856 – 1914) created a “kitchen garden” school in NYC’s Greenwich Village to teach cooking, sewing, hygiene, and other practical arts to poor, immigrant women. By 1887, with the help of the Columbia University and with a site at West 120th Street donated by industrialist George Vanderbilt, Dodge’s kitchen garden school had evolved into a new kind of school devoted to teacher education. In 1892, the new institution formally incorporated under the name Teachers College. By the turn of the century, the vision for Teachers College had expanded again, marrying humanitarian concerns with the interrelationship between education, psychology and health.
Grace Hoadley Dodge was the most important driving force in the College’s creation. She was born in 1856, in Manhattan, the eldest of six children. Her grandfather and great-grandfather formed one of the largest copper mining corporations in the United States. It created the family’s vast wealth.1 Grace was mostly educated at home by private tutors, but also spent two years at Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Connecticut, between the ages16 -18 years old.
At 28 years of age in 1884, committed to helping working girls, she organized the first Working Girls Society among a group of silk workers. The specific objectives of the Society were to 1. furnish pleasant rooms where its members can pass the evening. 2. to organize classes for mutual enjoyment and improvement and 3. to collect a circulating library
Grace donated millions of dollars and years of service to philanthropic work. She was the main source of funds for the New York College for the Training of Teachers, which became Teachers College, eventually a school of Columbia University.
During the first half of the 20th century, Teachers College faculty members and graduates shaped the fields of education. Teachers College collaborated to create UNESCO3 in the wake of World War II, launching a teacher training program in East Africa that was the precursor to the Peace Corps. After World War II, in response to rapid development of new professional roles, the College led in the development of many fields of education. In the 1970s and 1980s, Teachers College luminaries championed the vision of providing all learners with access to the arts, afterschool programs and other supports.
1 “William E. Dodge Dead; Had Been in Poor Health.” (PDF)The New York
Times. August 10, 1903. Retrieved March 21, 2019.
2 Grace Dodge Dead; Noted for Charities . . . Founded Teachers College. The
New York Times (PDF) December 28, 1914. Retrieved March 21,2019.
3 The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
Organization (UNESCO) is an agency of the United Nations with the aim of
promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in
education, arts, sciences, and culture. UNESCO. 28 September 2012.
Archived 2012 from original 22 August 2020. Retrieved 19 August 2020.
