Register 50 Seats Remaining
Connie Goddard discusses her new book, the intellectual heritage of the Bordentown School and the effort to reopen the campus as a school and open space for the public. Registration requested.
About the book (from the publisher):
Founded in 1883, the Chicago Manual Training School (CMTS) was a short-lived but influential institution dedicated to teaching a balanced combination of practical and academic skills. Connie Goddard uses the CMTS as a door into America’s early era of industrial education and the transformative idea of “learning to do.” Rooting her account in John Dewey’s ideas, Goddard moves from early nineteenth century supporters of the union of learning and labor to the interconnected histories of CMTS, New Jersey’s Manual Training and Industrial School for Colored Youth, North Dakota’s Normal and Industrial School, and related programs elsewhere. Goddard analyzes the work of movement figures like abolitionist Theodore Weld, educators Calvin Woodward and Booker T. Washington, social critic W.E.B. Du Bois, Dewey himself, and his influential Chicago colleague Ella Flagg Young. The book contrasts ideas about manual training held by advocate Nicholas Murray Butler with those of opponent William Torrey Harris and considers overlooked connections between industrial education and the Arts and Crafts Movement.
An absorbing merger of history and storytelling, "Learning for Work" looks at the people who shaped industrial education while offering a provocative vision of realizing its potential today.
About the author:
Connie Goddard is the author of "Learning for Work: How Industrial Education Fostered Democratic Opportunity" (UI Press, 2024). Her research focuses on the religious roots of schooling in colonial America, 19th century schools on the American frontier, and contemporary issues in urban education. her dissertation treats the legacy of Chicago’s educational stateswoman Ella Flagg Young, the theorist and administrator who taught John Dewey how schools function as social institutions. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2005. Following her training, she taught at the Chicago City Colleges and then joined the Peace Corps, teaching for two years in Romania. Upon her return, she taught as an adjunct at Mercer County Community College and at the state prison in Rahway, an experience that led to her new book's conception.
AGE GROUP: | Adults |
EVENT TYPE: | Lectures & Panels | Humanities | Education | Civic Life | *Registration Requested |
