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Many a new Progressive school opened. Landmarks were Miss Helen Parkhurst's Dalton School in Manhattan, which introduced the famed Dalton Plan of work contracts for individual pupils, and Carleton Washburne's system in Winnetka, Ill., which became in 1919 the first public Progressive school system in the U. S.
Today the Dalton School no longer uses the original Dalton Plan and Winnetka is considered a little backward by Progressive educators. Their present idols are Superintendent Paul Misner's schools in Glencoe, Ill., which have achieved a remarkably close tie-up with the community's general life, and Superintendent Alexander Jerry Stoddard's high schools in Denver, where the "core curriculum" (i.e., building all studies around core subjects, such as "Modern Living") is in full flower.
These shifts of affection illustrate the one fact on which all Progressive educators agree: Progressive Education is not standardized and they hope it never will be. Cited by Executive Secretary Redefer as a horrible example of devotion to a device instead of progress is the doggedness of a Progressive school teacher who one day hit upon the momentarily happy idea of having Bozo, a pet dog, write imaginary letters to her pupils. Her pupils have been learning reading from Bozo for 15 years.
Because Progressive Education is not standardized, it makes great demands on its teachers who, besides having learning, skill and wholesome personalities, must be resourceful, creative. The history of Progressive Education is the history of great teachers. Mainspring of the Progressive movement today, however, is not its teachers but its propagandists, a group of youngsters whose job it is to sell Progressive Education. Top-notch propagandists are Stanford University's Curriculum Expert Paul R. Hanna; Ethical Culture School's cadaverous Director Vivian T. Thayer; (secondary school curriculum expert); hard-boiled Alice V. Keliher, chairman of P. E. A.'s Commission on Human Relations; plump, persuasive Mental Hygienist Caroline Zachry. Chief organizer and propagandist, however, is Executive Secretary Redefer.
Portrait of a Progressive. Like many another Progressive educator. Frederick Lovatt ("Red") Redefer is a Quaker. He was born, however, the ninth child of a poor Methodist minister, in Haverstraw, N. Y. Graduated from traditional public schools in Brooklyn and Great Neck, L. I., he got a civil engineer's degree at Swarthmore and a chance to make his fortune in business, but he decided to return to Swarthmore to study education.
He won highest honors there, taught for a year at Progressive Oak Lane Country Day School in Philadelphia, became at 26 superintendent of Glencoe's schools. Arch-patriot Elizabeth Billing, who lives in nearby Kenilworth, soon listed Pacifist Redefer in her "red network." When Glencoe, a rich Chicago suburb, was frightened by Depression into dropping art, music and manual training from its curriculum, Redefer quit as superintendent, became in 1932 P. E. A.'s executive secretary.