What can be learned by studying children? How can studying children impact and transform early childhood education? For example, closely examining the opening vignette reveals important principles about children’s learning and engagement. As the children responded to the Water City earthquake, they drew on their knowledge of the world around them. An earthquake had occurred in Christchurch, New Zealand two days earlier. When the children’s block building collapsed, the New Zealand earthquake immediately became Water City reality, their New York City, created through their minds and with unit blocks. The transport of injured people to the hospital alone required a lot of knowledge and expertise, including about above ground transportation, where many roads were impassable due to the earthquake, and about the subway underground. The children considered different routes to the hospital to determine the shortest route with the least cost, and they thought about who would take care of the injured people along the way. They shared and processed information while playing interactively: their serious work. 

I observed the scenario illustrated in the opening vignette when I visited Professor Emerita Harriet Cuffaro of the Bank Street College of Education at the City and Country School in New York City on February 24, 2011. I had been visiting City and Country School regularly since 2006 to do research in their archives. In 2009, I joined Cuffaro to give lectures for the teachers of the Lower School. A friendship was born, and we have since corresponded about the history of City and Country School, Bank Street, and the pioneer women of the Bureau of Educational Experiments. At the time of my visit in 2011, Cuffaro was the school’s advisor and staff developer, and she invited me to visit the class portrayed in the opening vignette.  

Originally called Play School, City and Country School was a laboratory school for the Bureau of Educational Experiments from 1919 until 1929. The Bureau of Educational Experiments, now known as The Bank Street School for Children and the Bank Street College of Education, was established to investigate conditions in settings for young children with the aim of improving them. Many classrooms at the time were overcrowded, and children and teachers faced problems such as poverty, poor health, rote learning, and child labor. The history of the Bureau of Educational Experiments shows how people who felt strongly about positively impacting society worked in various ways to improve education in particular. This history provides insight into the relationship between social circumstances and education.  

This article provides an overview of the history of the Bureau of Educational Experiments and examines the work of a group of women who came together to found the Bureau in 1916. At a time when men dominated the fields of psychology, philosophy, education, and other disciplines, all of these women were deeply motivated to promote educational reforms, developing innovative practices that benefited both children and teachers. Each brought her own unique resources and experiences to expand their network of dedicated women. They came together to collaboratively think and learn, work, and share their expertise about child development and learning to transform the field. They considered how their research applied to the education and care of young children. Over time, their attention turned to the preparation of teachers too. The knowledge, skills, and dispositions they brought to the work helped lead to positive changes in the long run. Their stories illustrate the qualities of early childhood educational professionals and can inform and inspire the work of early childhood educators today. 

The Bureau of Educational Experiments 

The Bureau of Educational Experiments was an innovative educational institution founded in 1916 by Lucy Sprague Mitchell and Harriet Johnson. (See “Lucy Sprague Mitchell: Champion for Experiential Learning” in the September 2014 issue of Young Children for more about Sprague Mitchell). The Bureau was established to study children and their environments and to share this knowledge with teachers and those who worked directly with children. Its original aims were to collect and share information regarding progressive education and to support educational research (Staring 2013). It began as a kind of clearinghouse for educational knowledge, researching and publishing bulletins on experimental schools and conducting psychological testing at New York’s public schools. The Bureau had two laboratory schools associated with it: Play School (which was founded in 1913 and joined the Bureau in 1919) and Nursery School, founded in 1919. Play School was later renamed City and Country School. The Bureau became Bank Street College of Education, and Nursery School developed into Bank Street School for Children. 

 While the Bureau of Educational Experiments was founded primarily by Lucy Sprague Mitchell and Harriet Johnson, there was a cadre of women associated with the Bureau from its inception to today. This is the story of many of those women. 

The Network of Women Who Contributed to the Bureau of Educational Experiments 

Many of the women connected with the Bureau of Educational Experiments made substantial contributions to a number of professions before they became associated with the Bureau. Some of these include Caroline Pratt, Edna Smith, Helen Marot, Mary Marot, Harriet Johnson, Harriet Forbes, and Lucy Sprague Mitchell. The brief biographies shared below, which highlight the women’s work as labor movement advocates, union organizers, and innovative teachers and nurses, demonstrate how the qualities and experiences they gained in those fields enabled them to work successfully for the Bureau. 

Labor Advocacy and Trade Union Work: Researching and Speaking for Change  

Several charter members of the Bureau of Educational Experiments were active in labor research and advocacy and in trade union work. One was Caroline Pratt. Pratt was born in Fayetteville, New York in 1867. At age 25, she began classes in the two-year Professional Diploma Course in Kindergarten Methods and Manual Training at the New York City College for the Training of Teachers. The College, founded in 1887 to train teachers of children experiencing poverty, was later renamed Teachers College. After graduating from Teachers College, Pratt moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she taught woodworking at the Normal School for Girls and at the College Settlement.  

In Philadelphia, Pratt met Helen Marot, a librarian. Together, they researched the working and living conditions of the custom tailoring industry. They presented their results, first at a meeting of tailors and later at a meeting of the Christian Social Union. The April 13, 1901 Church Standard (an Episcopal Church newspaper in Philadelphia at the time) reported that Pratt and Marot’s presentation was a “cool, plain statement of horrible facts. . . . It told of hours of work practically unlimited save by the time fixed for the delivery of goods, and of nauseous and unsanitary conditions.” They published a statistical article and a booklet about their research results, plausibly the first scientific publications on conditions in the US clothing industry (Marot & Pratt 1901; Marot & Pratt 1903). Their research was a profound experience that revealed the appalling conditions for clothing industry workers and their children. As a result, they became even more driven to improve working conditions and other aspects of the society in which they lived.   

In late 1901, Pratt and Helen Marot moved to New York, where Helen Marot conducted a study on the salaries paid to charity workers, nurses, housekeepers, matrons, and nursery school staff and another study on child labor. She published several reports; these were widely discussed. She was also active in trade union life and became secretary of the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL).  

Many women who would later contribute to the Bureau of Educational Experiments were active in the WTUL. These included Harriet Forbes, Harriet Johnson, Caroline Pratt, Edna Smith, Evelyn Dewey, and Helen Marot’s sister, Mary Marot. In November 1909, the largest strike by women workers in the history of the US labor movement, the Shirtwaist Makers’ Strike, began in order to combat draconian factory and shop working conditions, low wages, and long hours. The strike lasted more than two months, with approximately 30,000 garment workers, mostly women, protesting in picket lines in the bitter cold.  

Helen Marot, as secretary of the New York chapter of the WTUL, led the support (including legal support) for the strike. Caroline Pratt served on WTUL’s finance committee and raised large sums of money for the strike fund. Evelyn Dewey (who would publish the book Schools of To-Morrow with her father John Dewey in 1915) joined Harriet Forbes, Harriet Johnson, the Marots, Caroline Pratt—and other women renowned for their work in education, women’s suffrage, and politics—on the picket lines. The strike produced some, but certainly not sufficient, improvements in working conditions. After it ended in February 1910, this group of socially involved women turned to other work, including teaching, testing, or other union activities. Indeed, they continued to engage in professional practices that were aimed at positively impacting others and society, and they continued to hone the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that they would later apply to the Bureau of Educational Experiments.  

Innovative Teaching: Supporting Learning Through Active Experiences 

In addition to being active in trade union work, Pratt was a woodworking teacher at Hartley House and other social settlements, or institutions that provided services, such as early education and health care, to improve living conditions in a community (Davis 1967). Hartley House issued a monthly magazine regularly reporting on Pratt’s classes in “manual training.” She recorded her observations of children working and playing almost every day, so she was able to describe and analyze her observations. She gave lectures about her innovative teaching methodology in other settlement houses and published articles explaining her work. She wrote that when students feel encouraged to develop their own activities—to think, decide, investigate, reflect, and evaluate—they become increasingly confident. Not only do they learn from their mistakes, but they also take ownership of their learning. When they have responsibility for their own work, students are able to sharpen their judgment, and they become less satisfied with imitation (Pratt 1902). Because they did not work from prepared drawings, Pratt’s students had to develop the habit of thinking carefully before acting and creating a self-designed wooden plaything, decoration, animal, or doll. Pratt kept track of her students’ progress, the use they made of their work, and what they thought became of the models they created. She believed that record keeping made their work purposeful.  

Ultimately, Pratt’s ambition went beyond teaching carpentry: her goal was to improve society through teaching. She felt that she was not only a woodworking teacher, but also a social settlement reformer whose contributions would change society for the better. She wanted her students to become, in the words of later psychologists, self-actualized and contributing members of society. In November 1908, Pratt left Hartley House and divided her time between working for trade unions and designing and making wooden dolls and toys, eventually including her unit blocks. She continued to publish articles, now about the usefulness of her wooden playthings—another way she shared her expertise to transform the learning experiences offered to children. When Pratt later joined the Bureau, she used the skills and experiences she gained during her years teaching woodworking to further hone her vision of education. Through her observations, analysis, and writing, Pratt gained an understanding of and appreciation for the role of choice, agency, and interest in children’s development and learning. This knowledge, along with her skills in observation and analysis, served the Bureau well, where daily meetings were held to review the events and observations of the day. This helped develop a solid and lively research agency. 

Visiting Nurses and Visiting Teachers: Developing Relationships with Families  

In 1903, Pratt and Helen Marot befriended two nurses, Harriet Johnson and Harriet Forbes. Johnson completed a course in hospital economics at Teachers College (1902) and graduated from the nursing program at Sloane Maternity Hospital in New York City (1903). Forbes was a graduate of Vassar and completed the same courses as Johnson. In 1903 both began work as visiting nurses at Henry Street Settlement and Hartley House. Visiting nurses attended to a variety of social and medical issues: treatment and prevention of diseases; child labor; and education about drainage, ventilation, and sanitary living conditions in overcrowded housing. Forbes and Johnson were also among the founders of the Hospital Economics Association, and Johnson was its first treasurer. While Johnson published their work in American Journal of Nursing and in Visiting Nurse Quarterly Magazine, they jointly published Home Nursing, a book that highlighted all the basic hygiene skills they promoted during their home visits (Forbes & Johnson 1905). 

Along with other early members of the Bureau, Johnson and Forbes demonstrated a willingness to study and learn, persevere, and work with others, including those with backgrounds different from their own. They were continually involved in their community, and they shared their research and observations through publications. 

These short professional biographies show that Johnson and Forbes continued to develop professionally, did not shy away from doing both practical work (nursing) and abstract work (hospital economics), and did far-reaching groundwork for society. As they visited homes, they improved the physical health, sanitary conditions, and developmental opportunities of many in overcrowded conditions and worked with recent immigrants who were navigating a new country and ways of life. 

Johnson and Forbes met Mary Marot while at their home base at Hartley House. During the 1890s, Mary Marot was a kindergarten teacher in Philadelphia and the treasurer of the Philadelphia branch of the International Kindergarten Union (of which she was a charter member), now Childhood Education International. Around the turn of the twentieth century, Mary Marot moved to New York and taught at the Ethical Culture School. Not much later, she became Director of Children’s Work at Hartley House, where she befriended Johnson and Forbes. After they discussed the implications of the work of visiting nurses, Marot began to theorize about the feasibility of visiting teachers to prevent child labor and truancy, to help people send their children to school, and to give families and educators an opportunity to discuss and solve problems, such as those arising from poverty and overcrowded living conditions. Mary Marot began working as a visiting teacher in the spring of 1906. 

The Public Education Association (PEA) of the City of New York supported Marot in organizing an informal home and school visiting committee, and the visiting teacher program was born. The PEA led campaigns against child labor and for compulsory education, school meals, and sex education. In 1907, the informal home and school visiting committee joined the PEA, and in 1908, Mary Marot became chairperson of the committee. She developed a plan that, according to John Dewey, was the most important reform to date that would lead to major changes. In 1909, both Harriet Johnson and Harriet Forbes joined the committee to work as visiting teachers full time.  

Founding Play School and the Bureau of Educational Experiments 

City and Country School, called Play School until 1919, was cofounded in September 1913 by Caroline Pratt and Edna Smith as a preschool and kindergarten for the children in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village neighborhood. 

Edna Smith, born in 1885 in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, was the daughter of the President of the Western Wheeled Scraper Company and had studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. She inherited part of her parents’ wealth, used it for philanthropic purposes, and financially backed Play School for a year. During that time, she also worked with Pratt to mentor the children at Play School. 

At the end of 1911, Lucy Sprague, Dean of Women at the University of California, visited Manhattan, where she completed internships with leading women in social settlement and education. There she became aware of the achievements of the women discussed above. Two years later, Sprague married economist Wesley Mitchell and they moved to New York, where she began volunteering for the PEA visiting teacher program under Harriet Johnson. Beginning in 1914, Lucy Sprague Mitchell also worked under Elisabeth Irwin, another PEA pioneer of intelligence testing (and later a charter member of the Bureau). She then accepted the position of chairman of the PEA Committee on Hygiene of School Children, published two articles on sex education, and, in the fall of 1915, began working as Head of the Psychological Survey, the new PEA testing agency. That same year, Evelyn Dewey also began working for the PEA, where she grew to be a skilled administrator of psychological tests. 

In 1916, when the Mitchells moved to a huge house in Washington Square North, Smith and Pratt’s Play School moved into the stable at the back of the house. The Psychological Survey offices also moved onto the Mitchells’ property. The testing agency employees began working from their home. At the time, Harriet Johnson was working on an assignment for the PEA Visiting Teachers Program to describe the program at the First National Conference of Visiting Teachers and Home and School Visitors, co-organized by the National Education Association, held in New York City in the summer of 1916.  

Finally, the Bureau of Educational Experiments was founded in early 1916, when Lucy Sprague Mitchell inherited a large fortune and, together with her husband and Harriet Johnson, founded the Bureau. Charter members were Evelyn Dewey, Harriet Forbes, Elisabeth Irwin, Harriet Johnson, Mary Marot, Lucy Sprague Mitchell, and Caroline Pratt, among others not discussed here. One of three honorary Bureau members was John Dewey. In 1919, Harriet Johnson founded Nursery School.  

These short profiles of some of the women involved in the Bureau in its early years are part of a larger story of a network of women actively working toward a more equitable society. Through their previous work in diverse fields, they had all come to believe that their insights and experiences should be shared widely. They were passionate about pursuing social reform through education. Their experience shows that much can be learned by observing children and their environments and that teamwork is needed to create positive change. 

What Can We Learn from These Bureau of Educational Experiments Pioneers? 

There is so much we can learn from the pioneering women who were active in the Bureau of Educational Experiments during its early years. Here are some of the takeaways for us as early childhood professionals. 

• We bring knowledge, skills, and talents to the children we teach. The women of the Bureau of Educational Experiments came from different professional backgrounds, such as social work, nursing, woodworking, and even policy and advocacy. Every early childhood professional brings unique abilities and knowledge, which can be used to benefit the children as well as the adults with whom they work.  
• We learn many things by closely studying children. All of those who have worked for or with the Bureau of Educational Experiments believed that children have much to teach us, and we can use what we learn from them to develop or enhance what and how we teach. Caroline Pratt’s 1948 autobiography, I Learn from Children, emphasizes that working with children is how we gain knowledge about their development, interests, and learning. Just as the Bureau pioneers learned from children, we can gain insights about children’s development and learning from children themselves. 
• We can share our knowledge about children’s learning through networking and active engagement. The Bureau of Educational Experiments began with a group of women who networked to create and disseminate bulletins and information about children, a school for children, professional development, and eventually, a graduate program for teachers and others who work with children. This was at a time when media beyond newspapers and bulletins was virtually nonexistent. Today we have many ways to share ideas and knowledge with others, including networking and engagement in professional organizations such as NAEYC. 
• We can use children’s ideas to develop the curriculum. During her time at City and Country School, Pratt advocated using children’s ideas to develop the curriculum (Pratt 1926), an approach which the school continued to follow. Consider the example of my visit to the City and Country School presented in the opening vignette. The Water City project was planned and implemented by 6-year-olds who developed and researched their own questions throughout the project. Today, even if teachers have a prescribed curriculum, we can still use children’s ideas to enhance their knowledge and learning.  
• Finally, we can start with the “here and now” when we teach and work with children. Based on the approach described by Pratt that continues to the present day, the City and Country School and the Bank Street School for Children start with what children know and move to the unknown from there. Children learn about the classroom, the school, and the immediate community before they begin studying faraway places and times. We can always start with what children know before asking children to learn about other places or times.  

Photograph © Getty Images
Copyright © 2024 by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. See Permissions and Reprints online at NAEYC.org/resources/permissions. 

References

Davis, A.F. 1967. Spearheads for Reform: The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890–1914. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 

Forbes, H., & H.M. Johnson. 1905. Home Nursing: Motherhood—Care of Children. New York: Collier. 

Marot, H., & C.L. Pratt. 1901. “Wages of Garment Makers in the Philadelphia Trade.” In Industrial Commission on Immigration, Reports of the Industrial Commission on Immigration. Volume XV of the Commission’s Reports, 723–43. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. 

Marot, H., & C.L. Pratt. 1903. The Makers of Men’s Clothing: How They Live, What They Get. Report of an Investigation Made in Philadelphia. Philadelphia, PA: Philadelphia Branch of the Consumers’ League.  

Pratt, C.L. 1902. “Carpentry Classes.” In Hartley House, Fifth Annual Report of Hartley House; 409, 411, 413 West 46th Street, New York. July 1st, 1901–September 30th, 1902, 20–26. New York, NY: Hartley House. 

Pratt, C.L. 1926. “Curriculum-Making in the City and Country School.” In The Twenty-Sixth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education: The Foundations and Technique of Curriculum-Construction. Part I: Curriculum-Making: Past and Present, ed. G.M. Whipple, 327–32. Bloomington, IL: Public School Publishing Company. 

Pratt, C.L. 1948. I Learn from Children: An Adventure in Progressive Education. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. 

Staring, J. 2013. “Midwives of Progressive Education: The Bureau of Educational Experiments 1916–1919.” PhD diss., University of Amsterdam, pure.uva.nl/ws/files/1744443/131513_thesis.pdf.