Before a packed audience at Manhattan's Horace Mann School, two old men slowly mounted the platform. They had come to deliver eulogies. One was slow-spoken 88-year-old Pragmatist John Dewey. The other was white-haired William H. Kilpatrick, 76, Columbia's fiery ex-professor of education. Both, in their time, had been rebels. They had come to honor a third. Boyd H. Bode (rhymes with soda) had walked in their steps in progressive education, but he was no meek disciple. "Whatever of mine goes through Bode," said John Dewey, "comes out different."
The son of a stern Calvinist...