University of Chicago Collective of Curriculum Professors

The department of education at the University of Chicago has been the intellectual home for a variety of influential voices in curriculum studies, historically ranging from the work of John Dewey [Page 913]at the University Laboratory School through to the scholarship of Phillip Jackson in the 1990s and theoretically ranging from the science of education of Charles Judd to the human relations approach of Herbert Thelen. In addition, the University of Chicago was the base for classical liberal arts proposals of Robert Maynard Hutchins, Mortimer Adler, and the sharp criticisms of higher education and popular culture by Allan Bloom.

Dewey's tenure at the University of Chicago was relatively brief (18961904), and he served as professor of philosophy while founding the Laboratory School where he developed and evaluated his ideas on child development and activity learning. Dewey was a frequent visitor to Hull House and gathered further insight into the dynamics of experiential education from the programs offered by Jane Addams. Relative to application to the public schools, Dewey served as mentor and colleague to Ella Flagg Young, the first woman to assume superintendence of a large urban school system. Drawing on these experiences, Dewey produced works (The Child and the Curriculum and The School and Society) that proved to be among his most accessible and are significant early contributions to curriculum thought. Colonel Francis Parker, widely known for his advocacy of group and activity-based education centered on engaging the interests of children, accepted an offer to establish a teacher training institute and elementary demonstration school on the University of Chicago campus. The Chicago Institute was established at the University of Chicago and became the basis of the Department of Education at the university. In 1902, the Chicago Institute and the Laboratory School merged.

With the departure of Parker and then Dewey in 1904, the Department of Education took on a new identity, largely dominated by the vision of Charles H. Judd. Trained in Wilhelm Wundt's school of experimental psychology at the University of Leipzig, Judd was convinced that scientific study could advance the scholarship status of education as it was doing for psychology. Judd preferred to engage in field studies and educational experiments to measure the effectiveness of instruction as represented in his work, Measuring the Work of the Public Schools in 1916. Under Judd, the University of Chicago attracted students who furthered the scientific study of the public schools, educational policy-making bodies, and other universities. The early works of Harold Rugg and George Counts, for example, both working under Judd, evidence this focus on empirical investigation.

The effort to establish a “science” of curriculum development was evident in the activity analysis proposal of Franklin Bobbitt. Influenced by social efficiency experts such as Frederick Taylor in industry, Bobbitt suggested school instruction should emulate tasks performed by capable adults in society. Skills, particularly those most frequently needed in productive and efficient living, were analyzed to their specific elements, then carefully cataloged and translated into learning experiences for students in schools. Assumed in this model was the skill base that would make for a productive life. Bobbitt's 1918 statement, The Curriculum, is a contender as the first major modern book on curriculum. In 1924, Bobbitt produced a practical recipe for activity analysis curriculum building in How to Make a Curriculum. Bobbitt's prescription for curriculum development was widely regarded as “scientific,” given it was based on empirical observation of activities ordered into specific behaviors. The basis of this model, however, was the imitation of existing skills rather than the development of new knowledge and skills for a future society.

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