with members of the
Travelstead family, 2017
Craig Kridel
E. S. Gambrell Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Education
Curator Emeritus, Museum of Education
University of South Carolina
"One of the conditions of happiness is the opportunity of a calling,
a career which somehow is congenial to one’s own temperament." John Dewey
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During my 35 years at University of South Carolina, I served as curator of the Museum of Education, a research center oriented not for the general public (or for children, as is often assumed) but for pre-service and in-service teachers, administrators, and the local education community. Since, in the American South, all educational problems ultimately represent issues of race (and class), the facility became a civil rights museum with programs addressing issues of social justice and exhibitions featuring the important role of national and local activists and their efforts to transform schools into more just and equitable institutions.
When I accepted the role of curator, there were only three museums of education in the United States. The Museum afforded many unique opportunities for me to engage both national and local education communities while also maintaining a focused acquisitions program dedicated to the preservation of important archival materials. With an active career as an historian and theorist, I feel my most important role for the field of education has been in this service position with the Museum. Now, as an emeritus professor, I continue the spirit of this research-oriented/organizational work to establish an informal network of education sites of courage.
While activities at the Museum nourished my quest for civic engagement and social change, I also recognized the significance of educational history (and foundations of education courses) for the education of teachers. Shortly after my promotion to full professor, I was invited by the then-associate provost of the university to join a group of senior professors who were devoting themselves to undergraduate teaching. For over twenty years, I embraced this commitment, attempting to introduce undergraduates to the moral dilemmas of education (those inherent inequities and questionable values embedded in daily classroom life) while also emphasizing the noble role of the teacher focused on the interests and needs of students while also committed to social action. My experiences, during the late 1970s and early 1980s, as the Midwest Coordinator of the Society for Educational Reconstructionism (and the writings of Theodore Brameld, Michael Apple, Maxine Greene, Bill Ayers, and Michelle Fine) continued to guide my hopes and efforts at the university. I end my career with great satisfaction and contentment and am so thankful to my many students who are now engaged in efforts to improve South Carolina schools so that they may become more compassionate, more generous, more humane, and more thoughtful.
with Helen van Dongen after an oral history interview while conducting film research for the Eight Year Study manuscript, July 2006.
to break through the limits of the conventional
and the taken for granted,
we ourselves have to experience breaks
with what has been established in our own lives;
we have to keep arousing ourselves to begin again."
Maxine Greene
with Maxine Greene at the Museum of Education, 2001
William Ayers
Bill Ayers, Craig Kridel, Bob Bullough,
Museum of Education, 2007
with Peter Schickele at the
2008 AERA Conference, New York City
with André "The Wiz" De Shields
at the 2017 Travelstead Award presentation
with members of The Tigers, Carolina Shout, 2006
the Dewey tombstone
at the University of Vermont
with the same inscription as
the motto for the Museum
(the final passage from
A Common Faith)
My research interests include education during the late Jim Crow era (the Black High School Study catalog and oral history/web exhibition project and the Narratives documentary editing publication) and 1930s-1950s progressive education in the United States as represented in the Eight Year Study and other secondary school cooperative study programs.
As a former aesthetic educator, I continue to involve myself with various historical music organizations and research activities–notably, as coordinator of Berlioz Historical Brass (an ensemble devoted to the presentation of early 19th century brass instruments) and Harmoniemusik North America, historical brass organology (the research of early 19th century bass horns), and as a "special friend" of The Tigers (an African-American shout band).
I continue my research and service activities and maintain an office at Thomas Cooper Library.
Dr. Craig Kridel
University of South Carolina
[no university mailing address]
craig@sc.edu
These webpages are meant
to serve as an invitation for those
who wish to explore the field of education.
The views expressed are strictly
those of the author.
The contents
have not been reviewed
by the University of South Carolina.