Becoming an African American Progressive Educator:
Narratives from 1940s Black Progressive High Schools

“Resurrecting significant and lost voices of educators Miss Prim, Miss Parker, Mrs. Thomas, and graduating seniors Sarah and Herbert, this edited collection of rich narratives and creative nonfiction portrays elegantly what it meant to ‘become’ an African American progressive educator in the South in the 1940s and 1950s, animated by educators committed at once to equity, excellence, building character, and preparing students immersed in life journeys littered with racism. While much has been written on Jim Crow schools, segregation, the politics of white resistance, and the struggle for desegregation, this volume fills a haunting gap in our knowledge of black education in the mid-20th century South. A gift to students, teachers, and researchers, Craig Kridel catalogues in exquisite detail the thoughtful curricular decisions, pedagogical practices, and the deep culturally rich relationships engaged, in classrooms, by African American educators working with African American youth, from within the dangerous, damaging, and violent limits of white supremacy, a decade prior to Brown v. Board of Education, as they dedicated themselves full-body, mind and soul, to carving spaces for building skills, confidence, character, and dreams.” Michelle Fine, Distinguished Professor of Critical Psychology, Women’s Studies, American Studies and Urban Education at the Graduate Center, City University of New York

“In a time when discussions of education— particularly those concerning African American students—often center on school choice, academic achievement gaps, and the detriments of re-segregation, this volume adds insight and perspective on the forward-thinking teaching and techniques from an era that has been overlooked and unfortunately widely unsung in historical studies. Growing out of nearly a decade and a half of research that focused on some of the South’s many influential schools, students, and teachers of the 1940s, Craig Kridel captures the voice of these black educators, administrators, and community members and raises awareness about the strides, barriers, and curricular innovations of black schools, thereby enriching the narrative of what it meant to be a black educator and scholar in the years before the litigation of Brown v. Board of Education.” Cleveland L. Sellers, Jr., President Emeritus, Voorhees College, and former Director of the African American Studies Program at the University of South Carolina

Progressive Education in Black High Schools.
This publication is available for free. Download a pdf

I am involved with an historical civil rights project and a school experimentation project
that was staged during the Brown/post-Jim Crow era.
.
with SNCC members Cleveland Sellers and Chuck McDew

Encyclopedia of Curriculum Studies
Craig Kridel, Editor
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Reference, 2010

2011 Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Title
2011 AERA Curriculum Studies Book Award:  Honorable Mention

“The credibility of The Encyclopedia of Curriculum Studies is enhanced by its editor as well as over 200 contributors drawn from the leading scholars in the field of Education.  This publication is a highly recommended addition for academic libraries in institutions where programs in Education are offered.” — reviewed by Dr. Nancy F. Carter,  University of Colorado, Boulder, Choice Magazine

Stories of the Eight Year Study:
Reexamining Secondary Education in America

by Craig Kridel and Robert V. Bullough, Jr. with a Foreword by John I. Goodlad
published in 2007 by SUNY Press

2008 AERA Curriculum Studies Book Award

“Craig Kridel and Robert Bullough, Jr. have performed an important act of scholarly reclamation; the sort we inhabitants of the United States of Amnesia sorely need . . . . Kridel and Bullough have resurrected an extraordinary conversation on the part of gifted scholars and classroom practitioners. Rendering social and intellectual history in quick, deft strokes, they follow Emerson's dictum that all history is biography, telling the story through nine vivid short biographies of the educators who contributed the most to the Study.” — reviewed by Joseph Featherstone, Teachers College Record, January 16, 2007

with Stories of the Eight Year Study co-author, Bob Bullough, and John Goodlad
who wrote the foreword to our publication, 2006

“Even though I have read a good deal and written a little about the Eight Year Study, Stories of the Eight Year Study served as a primer on the subject, ridding me of myths, misunderstandings, and false premises . . . . I was barely into the prologue when I began to realize that I was in for a provocative, humbling intellectual journey.”—John I. Goodlad, University of Washington

     “Skillfully blending intellectual history with biographies of leaders in reform, Kridel and Bullough give a balanced and persuasive account of the aims and achievements of progressive pedagogy at that time. And issues they raise about collaboration in reform, belief in democracy, faith in teachers, and trust in inquiry have powerful echoes in policy debates today.”—David Tyack, Stanford University

     “Stories of the Eight Year Study fills in many empty places in the history of American education. It makes wonderfully visible some of the movers and thinkers who brought ‘progressive education’ to life in a not always sympathetic world. Also, it corrects insightfully and eloquently some of the distortions that have prevented our publics from seeing or understanding the relation between progressivism and the “community in the making” John Dewey called democracy. Kridel and Bullough make clear the incompleteness of a movement that anticipated the urgent difficulties facing public education today. In doing so, in shedding light on a democratic education still “in the making,” they remind us of open possibilities, of responsible and imaginative work still to be done.”—Maxine Greene, Teachers College, Columbia University

     “Stories of the Eight Year Study reminds us of a time in American educational history when our educational values embraced a broad array of important educational goals. Schools were to attend to not only the intellectual life of the student, but to their social, physical, and emotional life as well. One of the ideas progressives did not forget is that relationships matter and it is not possible to isolate specific causes from broader consequences. The child, one might say, is ineluctably whole and so, too, must be education. Craig Kridel and Robert V. Bullough have given us a useful resource for anyone interested in understanding an important aspect of American educational history. But its lessons go beyond historical understanding, they provide a view of education that can counteract the blinkered vision of schooling that permeates our current deliberations about school reform.”—Elliot W. Eisner, Stanford University

     “Historians, educational philosophers, and curriculum scholars will find in this book a lasting resource and reference. But it is destined for a wider audience and a more active purpose: anyone who wants to understand the sorry state of our schools and the anemic condition of democracy today will find ample information and ideas in this book; anyone who wants to participate in rethinking what is to be done will find here a handbook for action. Stories of the Eight Year Study is the most important education book to appear in years.”—William C. Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago

     “Stories of the Eight Year Study tells the story of the dozen most creative years of reflection about American education, along with sparkling biographical narratives of nine educators who contributed centrally to creative inquiry into educational reform. This remarkable book is rich with details that bring the lives of our predecessors vividly before us. In this imaginative inquiry, social change is encountered along with experiment, exploration, and discovery. These nine educators made a fresh start. So can we. Kridel and Bullough’s book gives us the hope that if such exciting times and lives existed once, they can live again in our present day, and in us.”—Jay Martin, University of Southern California and author of The Education of John Dewey

Books of the Century Catalog
published by the Museum of Education in 2001

“an extremely handsome document from the cool class of its cover to the elegant layout and print of its interior.”
––Elliot W. Eisner, School of Education, Stanford University

“comments on the books are fascinating; the catalog will be extremely useful to historians, teachers, and other educators in grasping what went on during this period.”
––David R. Krathwohl, College of Education, Syracuse University