The Bureau of Educational Experiments
And so, in 1916, the Bureau of Educational Experiments was born and soon
lodged in rented quarters on Varick Street in Lower Manhattan. Lucy Mitchell
set out to conduct research on child development in experimental schools
and to that end she staffed the Bureau with a doctor, psychologists, a
social worker, and teachers – all experienced with children, and
all at work on a joint study in as free an atmosphere as possible.
By 1918, a nursery school was opened at the Bureau's new quarters in
a series of houses (including the Mitchells') on West 12th and West 13th
Streets. Harriet Johnson directed the Nursery School, whose graduates
were passed along to Caroline Pratt's City and Country School. And all
the while, Bureau staff continued to observe and collect data on the development
of the children.
Mrs. Mitchell herself became a student of children's language, and she
recorded children's remarks and the stories they told. She concluded that
formal imposition of "meaning" hampered children's language
as a medium of creative expression. She found that the children's natural
expression reflected their keen awareness of the world.
An important fruit of her research was the Here and Now Storybook, which
was published in 1921 and became an all-time bestseller among children's
books. It was the first step in the Bureau's effort to improve the quality
of children's literature, an effort that continues to this day.
Children at the Nursery School and at City and Country were given opportunities
to draw, paint, and model in clay – unusual forms of expression in
schools at that time. Indeed, their education was recognized as something
other than a prescribed curriculum. Children in the Harriet Johnson Nursery
School and at City and Country, under the auspices of the Bureau, had
all of New York City as their classroom: to ride a ferry boat, to visit
a zoo, to look at a massive bridge – to inquire, to understand, and
to replicate them and their purposes in clay, with blocks, and with paints.
In 1926, the Working Council of the Bureau began a process of appraisal
of the program of the past ten years and a rethinking of objectives and
strategies. What emerged from this process was a bold new strategy for
bringing about change in the field of education: the development of a
teacher education program that would result in a new kind of teacher for
a new kind of school. Research would continue; the clinical approach in
the real world of the classroom would continue; the work on children's
literature would continue. But the central strategy for effecting educational
reform would be the development of a teacher education program that would
serve as a model to the education world.
In 1930 came another historic moment in the Bureau's life: the acquisition
of the old Fleischman's Yeast brewery and storage building. Its address
was to become synonymous with the best in early childhood education: 69
Bank Street. It was fireproof, sturdy, and spacious, had room for the
Nursery School to expand and, most important, had room for the new Cooperative
School for Teachers.
This was a joint venture between the Bureau and eight other experimental
schools. Student teachers worked at their various schools Monday through
Thursday and came to Bank Street for classes, seminars, and conferences
from Thursday afternoon through Saturday noon. While it might have been
simpler to have had all of them working at the school on Bank Street,
the staff welcomed the diversity of experience that the different teachers
brought together from their city, suburban, and rural schools.
One of the important experiences for student teachers was something called
"the long trip" – a field visit to some distant site: a
coal mine, or a venture with visiting nurses, some complete change of
venue to unsettle preconceptions and to challenge the monolithic thinking
that a teacher might have built up over a period of time.
From these field trips and from other sources grew the advisement process.
Unique to Bank Street, somewhat like the system at an English university,
the process features a senior member of the Bank Street faculty and several
student teachers in an intense personal and professional examination of
what it takes to be a good teacher. Individual student teachers learn
to build on their personal strengths and correct their weaknesses to become
the best teachers they can be. Today, advisement remains at the core of
all graduate study at the College.
After the move to Bank Street, the study of children continued at the
Bureau, and the results were published in books, journals, and regular
bulletins for dissemination to the educational community. New curricula
were developed, classroom material produced, and children's books written.
In 1937, a Division of Publications was established to do the work of
writing for and about children. The Bank Street Writers Laboratory was
founded, and it continues today to give encouragement to writers to produce
books for children that are consistent with the Bank Street understanding
of how children develop. Among the writers affiliated with the Lab were
such shining lights of children's literature as Margaret Wise Brown (Good
Night Moon) and Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are.)
In 1943, the New York City Board of Education asked that workshops be
given to some of its teachers on the Bank Street methods, and Bank Street
faculty began to work directly with public school teachers in their own
classrooms. The innovative approaches that had long been the work of Bank
Street were no longer considered a threat to the established order. In
1946, Bank Street began to offer night and weekend courses for nonmatriculated
students. Soon some 500 people were attending these courses.
In 1950, the Board of Regents of the State of New York granted the school
– the name now changed, at the Regents' request, to Bank Street College
of Education – the right to confer the degree of Master of Science
in Education. The core curriculum remained the training of college graduates
in the teaching of nursery and elementary school children. And for the
next two decades students, both adults and children, made their way to
69 Bank Street to learn and grow.
In the 1950s, Bank Street's Research Division conducted studies of teachers
and the ways in which different kinds of educational environments influenced
children's development. The National Institute of Mental Health awarded
Bank Street a $1 million grant to develop a series of studies focused
on the school as a vehicle for promoting mental health.
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