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{{short description|American historian}}

{{Infobox philosopher
{{Infobox philosopher
| main_interests = American educational history
| main_interests = American educational history
| image =
| image =
| caption =
| caption =
| birth_name = Lawrence Arthur Cremin
| birth_name = Lawrence Arthur Cremin
| birth_date = {{birth date|1925|10|31}}
| birth_date = {{birth date|1925|10|31}}
| birth_place = [[Manhattan]], [[New York]]
| birth_place = [[Manhattan]], [[New York (state)|New York]]
| death_date = {{death date and age|1990|9|4|1925|10|31}}
| death_date = {{death date and age|1990|9|4|1925|10|31}}
| death_place = [[New York City]])
| death_place = [[New York City]])
| alma_mater = [[Columbia University]] <br> [[City College of New York]]
| alma_mater = [[Columbia University]] <br> [[City College of New York]]
| institutions = [[Teachers College, Columbia University]]
| institutions = [[Teachers College, Columbia University]]
| school_tradition =
| school_tradition =
| influences =
| influences =
| influenced =
| influenced =
| notable_ideas =
| notable_ideas =
}}
}}
'''Lawrence Arthur "Larry" Cremin''' (October 31, 1925 in [[Manhattan, New York]] – September 4, 1990) in New York City was an [[History of education in the United States|educational historian]] and administrator.<ref name=NYT1990>{{citation |work=New York Times |title=Obituary: Lawrence Cremin, 64, Educator and a Prize-Winning Historian |url=http://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/05/nyregion/obituary-lawrence-cremin-64-educator-and-a-prize-winning-historian.html |date=September 5, 1990 }}</ref>
'''Lawrence Arthur Cremin''' (October 31, 1925 – September 4, 1990) was an American [[History of education in the United States|educational historian]] and administrator.<ref name=NYT1990>{{citation |work=New York Times |title=Obituary: Lawrence Cremin, 64, Educator and a Prize-Winning Historian |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/05/nyregion/obituary-lawrence-cremin-64-educator-and-a-prize-winning-historian.html |date=September 5, 1990 }}</ref>


==Biography==
==Biography==
Cremin received his B.A. and M.A. from [[City College of New York]], and his Ph.D. from [[Columbia University]] in 1949, after which he began teaching at the [[Teachers College, Columbia University]] in New York City. In 1961 he became the Frederick A. P. Barnard Professor of Education and a member of Columbia's history department, directing the Teachers College's Institute of Philosophy and Politics of Education in 1965-1974 before becoming the college's 7th president in 1974-1984, after which he returned to teaching and research.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://c250.columbia.edu/c250_celebrates/remarkable_columbians/lawrence_arthur_cremin.html|title=Lawrence Arthur Cremin|publisher=|accessdate=25 July 2016}}</ref>
Cremin attended [[Townsend Harris High School]] in Queens, and then received his B.A. and M.A. from [[City College of New York]]. His Ph.D. is from [[Columbia University]] in 1949. He began teaching at the [[Teachers College, Columbia University]] in New York City. He married Charlotte Raup, the daughter of two other Columbia professors: educational psychologist [[Robert Bruce Raup]] of Teachers College, and economist [[Clara Eliot]] of [[Barnard College]].<ref name=NYT1990/>


In 1961 he became the Frederick A. P. Barnard Professor of Education and a member of Columbia's history department, directing the Teachers College's Institute of Philosophy and Politics of Education in 1965-1974 before becoming the college's 7th president in 1974–1984, after which he returned to teaching and research.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://c250.columbia.edu/c250_celebrates/remarkable_columbians/lawrence_arthur_cremin.html|title=Lawrence Arthur Cremin|access-date=25 July 2016}}</ref>
⚫
He was noted for trying to close the intellectual gap between Teacher's College as a trade school, and the university as a research center. At the Teachers College Cremin broadened the study of [[History of education|American educational history]] beyond the school-centered analysis dominant in the 1940s with a more comprehensive approach that examined other agencies and institutions that educated children, integrating the study of education with other historical subfields, and comparing education across international boundaries.<ref>{{cite journal |author=Sol Cohen |url=http://historicalstudiesineducation.ca/index.php/edu_hse-rhe/article/view/1558/1648 |title=Lawrence A. Cremin: Hostage To History |journal=Historical Studies in Education |year=1998 |volume= 10#1-2 |pages= 180-204}} (fulltext)</ref>


⚫
At the Teachers College, Cremin broadened the study of [[History of education|American educational history]] beyond the school-centered analysis dominant in the 1940s with a more comprehensive approach that examined other agencies and institutions that educated children, integrating the study of education with other historical subfields, and comparing education across international boundaries.{{sfn|Cohen|1998}}
⚫
In 1985 while remaining on the Columbia and Teachers College faculties, he assumed the presidency of the [[Spencer Foundation]], a Chicago-based educational research organization.<ref name=NYT1990 />


Cremin was a member of both the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]] and the [[American Philosophical Society]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Lawrence Arthur Cremin |url=https://www.amacad.org/person/lawrence-arthur-cremin |access-date=2022-05-20 |website=American Academy of Arts & Sciences |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=APS Member History |url=https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=Lawrence+A.+Cremin&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=&year-max=&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced |access-date=2022-05-20 |website=search.amphilsoc.org}}</ref>
⚫
Cremin won the 1962 [[Bancroft Prize]] in [[History of the United States|American History]] for his book ''The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957'' (1961), which described the [[anti-intellectual]] emphasis on non-academic subjects and non-authoritarian [[teaching methods]] that occurred as a result of mushrooming enrollment. He was awarded the 1981 [[Pulitzer Prize for History]] for ''[[American Education: The National Experience, 1783-1876]]'' (1980).<ref>{{cite video

⚫
In 1985 while remaining on the Columbia faculties, he assumed the presidency of the [[Spencer Foundation]], a Chicago-based educational research organization.<ref name=NYT1990 />

⚫
Cremin won the 1962 [[Bancroft Prize]] in [[History of the United States|American History]] for his book ''[[The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957]]'' (1961), which described the [[anti-intellectual]] emphasis on non-academic subjects and non-authoritarian [[teaching methods]] that occurred as a result of mushrooming enrollment. He was awarded the 1981 [[Pulitzer Prize for History]] for ''[[American Education: The National Experience, 1783-1876]]'' (1980).<ref>{{cite video
| year =1988
| year =1988
| title =Teacher in America, Part I (1988)
| title =Teacher in America, Part I (1988)
| url =https://archive.org/details/openmind_ep291
| url =https://archive.org/details/openmind_ep291
| publisher =The Open Mind
| publisher =The Open Mind
| accessdate =February 20, 2012
| access-date =February 20, 2012
}}</ref><ref>{{cite video
}}</ref><ref>{{cite video
| year =1988
| year =1988
Line 35: Line 41:
| url =https://archive.org/details/openmind_ep292
| url =https://archive.org/details/openmind_ep292
| publisher =The Open Mind
| publisher =The Open Mind
| accessdate =February 20, 2012
| access-date =February 20, 2012
}}</ref>
}}</ref>


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The historiography of education turned bitter in the 1960s, as New Left radical historians denounced the history of American education as a failure when it came to promoting democracy and equality. Cremin avoided the debates, although in 1977 he did make clear his support for the traditional liberal interpretation. While admitting that occasionally educational institutions, being human, “have been guilty of their full share of evil, venality, and failure" he argued:
The historiography of education turned bitter in the 1960s, as New Left radical historians denounced the history of American education as a failure when it came to promoting democracy and equality. Cremin avoided the debates, although in 1977 he did make clear his support for the traditional liberal interpretation. While admitting that occasionally educational institutions, being human, “have been guilty of their full share of evil, venality, and failure" he argued:
:Contrary to the drift of a good deal of scholarly opinion during the past ten years, I happen to believe that on balance the American education system has contributed significantly to the advancement of liberty, equality, and fraternity, in that complementarity and tension that mark the relations among them in a free society....The aspirations of American education have been more noble than base, and that its performance over the past two centuries has been more liberating of a greater diversity of human energies and potentialities than has been the case in most other eras and in most other places.<ref>Lawrence A. Cremin, ''Traditions of American Education'' (1977) p 127</ref>
:Contrary to the drift of a good deal of scholarly opinion during the past ten years, I happen to believe that on balance the American education system has contributed significantly to the advancement of liberty, equality, and fraternity, in that complementarity and tension that mark the relations among them in a free society....The aspirations of American education have been more noble than base, and that its performance over the past two centuries has been more liberating of a greater diversity of human energies and potentialities than has been the case in most other eras and in most other places.<ref>Lawrence A. Cremin, ''Traditions of American Education'' (1977) p 127</ref>

== Interviews ==
''Does Going to School ‘Interrupt’ a Child’s Education? -'' The Open Mind - April 4, 1976<ref>{{Cite web |last=Lee |first=Brian |date=1976-04-04 |title=Does Going to School 'Interrupt' a Child's Education? |url=https://www.thirteen.org/openmind-archive/education/does-going-to-school-interrupt-a-childs-education/ |access-date=2023-04-05 |website=Richard Heffner's Open Mind Archive |language=en-US}}</ref>

''Teacher in America, Part I'' - The Open Mind - May 21, 1988<ref>{{Cite web |last=Lee |first=Brian |date=1988-05-21 |title=Teacher in America, Part I |url=https://www.thirteen.org/openmind-archive/education/teacher-in-america-part-i/ |access-date=2023-04-05 |website=Richard Heffner's Open Mind Archive |language=en-US}}</ref>

''Teacher in America, Part II'' - The Open Mind - May 21, 1988<ref>{{Cite web |last=Lee |first=Brian |date=1988-05-21 |title=Teacher in America, Part II |url=https://www.thirteen.org/openmind-archive/education/teacher-in-america-part-ii/ |access-date=2023-04-05 |website=Richard Heffner's Open Mind Archive |language=en-US}}</ref>

''High Tech and Our 'Education President''' - The Open Mind - January 22, 1989<ref>{{Cite web |last=Lee |first=Brian |date=1989-01-22 |title=High Tech and Our 'Education President' |url=https://www.thirteen.org/openmind-archive/education/high-tech-and-our-education-president/ |access-date=2023-04-05 |website=Richard Heffner's Open Mind Archive |language=en-US}}</ref>

''Popular Education and Its Discontents'' - The Open Mind - March 17, 1990<ref>{{Cite web |last=Lee |first=Brian |date=1990-03-17 |title=Popular Education and Its Discontents |url=https://www.thirteen.org/openmind-archive/education/popular-education-and-its-discontents/ |access-date=2023-04-05 |website=Richard Heffner's Open Mind Archive |language=en-US}}</ref>


==Publications==
==Publications==
* The American Common School: An Historic Conception. New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1951, OCLC 01330861
* {{cite book|author= |title=Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876-1957 |year=1961|publisher=Knopf |oclc=175047 }}
* {{cite book|title=[[The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957]] |year=1961|publisher=Knopf |oclc=175047 }}
* The Wonderful World of Ellwood Patterson Cubberley: An Essay On The Historiography of American Education. New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1965.
* The Genius of American Education. University of Pittsburg Press, 1965. LCCN 65-28146
* Public Education
* Traditions of American Education
* American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607-1783
* {{cite book |title=[[American Education: The National Experience, 1783-1876]] |publisher= Harper & Row |year= 1980 }}
* {{cite book |title=[[American Education: The National Experience, 1783-1876]] |publisher= Harper & Row |year= 1980 }}
* American Education: The Metropolitan Experience, 1876-1980
* {{cite book|author=|title=Popular Education and its Discontents |year= 1990|publisher=Harper & Row|isbn=978-0-06-016270-2}}
* {{cite book|title=Popular Education and its Discontents|year=1990|publisher=Harper & Row|isbn=978-0-06-016270-2|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/populareducation00crem}}


==References==
==References==
{{Reflist}}
{{Reflist}}


==Further reading==
==Bibliography==
{{Refbegin}}
* Cohen, Sol. "Lawrence A. Cremin: Hostage To History," ''Historical Studies in Education'' (1998) 10#1-2 pp 180–204.
* {{cite journal
⚫
* Finn, Chester E. "Traditions of American Education, by Lawrence A. Cremin," [https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/traditions-of-american-education-by-lawrence-a-cremin/ ''Commentary'' June 1, 1977], review essay
|first=Sol |last=Cohen |url=http://historicalstudiesineducation.ca/index.php/edu_hse-rhe/article/view/1558/1648 |title=Lawrence A. Cremin: Hostage To History |journal=Historical Studies in Education |issn=0843-5057
|year=1998 |volume= 10#1-2 |pages= 180–204
|doi=10.32316/hse/rhe.v10i1.1558 |doi-access=free }} (fulltext)
⚫
* {{citation |last=Finn |first= Chester E. |title=Traditions of American Education, by Lawrence A. Cremin |url=https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/traditions-of-american-education-by-lawrence-a-cremin/ |work=[[Commentary (magazine)|Commentary]] |date= June 1, 1977 }} (book review)

* Howe, Daniel W. "Review: The History of Education as Cultural History" ''History of Education Quarterly'' (1982) 22#2 pp. 205-214 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/367749 review of ''American Education: The National Experience, 1783-1876'']

* Kelly, Matthew Gardner. "The mythology of schooling: the historiography of American and European education in comparative perspective." ''Paedagogica Historica'' 50.6 (2014): 756-773.
* {{cite journal |last=Rury |first= John L. |title=Transformation in perspective: Lawrence Cremin's Transformation of the school |year=1991 |journal=History of Education Quarterly |volume= 31 |issue= 1 |pages= 67–76 |doi= 10.2307/368783 |jstor=368783 }} (book review)
* {{citation |last=Parker |first= Franklin |title=Lawrence Arthur Cremin (1925-90), US Educational Historian and President, Teachers College, Columbia University (1974-84): Contributions to Higher Education |via=ERIC |year=1993 |url=http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED359125.pdf }} (fulltext)
* {{citation |last=Parker |first= Franklin |title=Lawrence Arthur Cremin (1925-90), US Educational Historian and President, Teachers College, Columbia University (1974-84): Contributions to Higher Education |via=ERIC |year=1993 |url=http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED359125.pdf }} (fulltext)

* Rury, John L. "Transformation in perspective: Lawrence Cremin's Transformation of the school." (1991): 67-76. [http://www.jstor.org/stable/368783 in JSTOR]
===Primary sources===
* {{citation |first=Paul L. |last=Houts |title= A Conversation with Lawrence A. Cremin |work= National Elementary Principal |issn=0027-920X |volume=54 |year=1975 |pages= 23–35 }}

* {{citation |title=History: 'A Lamp To Light the Present' |url=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/1988/03/16/07490025.h07.html |work= [[Education Week]] |volume= 7 |number=25 |date=March 16, 1988 }} (interview with Cremin)

{{Refend}}


==External links==
==External links==
* {{citation |url=https://archive.org/details/openmind_ep290 |via=Internet Archive |date=1990 |title=Popular Education and Its Discontents |work=[[The Open Mind (TV series)|The Open Mind]] |publisher= }} (video of interview with Cremin)
* {{citation |url=https://archive.org/details/openmind_ep290 |via=Internet Archive |date=1990 |title=Popular Education and Its Discontents |work=[[The Open Mind (TV series)|The Open Mind]] }} (video of interview with Cremin)
* [http://findingaids.cul.columbia.edu/ead//nnc-rb/ldpd_11502746 Lawrence A. Cremin Papers, 1932-2007] at Columbia University, New York, NY


{{Authority control}}
{{Authority control}}
{{PulitzerPrize HistoryAuthors 1976–2000}}
{{PulitzerPrize HistoryAuthors 1976–2000}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cremin, Lawrence A.}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cremin, Lawrence A.}}
[[Category:Columbia University alumni]]
[[Category:Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni]]
[[Category:Columbia University faculty]]
[[Category:Columbia University faculty]]
[[Category:Teachers College, Columbia University faculty]]
[[Category:Teachers College, Columbia University faculty]]
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[[Category:1925 births]]
[[Category:1925 births]]
[[Category:1990 deaths]]
[[Category:1990 deaths]]
[[Category:Guggenheim Fellows]]
[[Category:American historians of education]]
[[Category:American historians of education]]
[[Category:Scholars of American education]]
[[Category:Scholars of American education]]
[[Category:Townsend Harris High School alumni]]
[[Category:Townsend Harris High School alumni]]
[[Category:20th-century American historians]]
[[Category:20th-century American historians]]
⚫
[[Category:20th-century American writers]]
[[Category:Education school deans]]
[[Category:Education school deans]]
[[Category:American male writers]]
[[Category:20th-century American male writers]]
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[[Category:American male non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:Historians from New York (state)]]
[[Category:Bancroft Prize winners]]
[[Category:Members of the American Philosophical Society]]

Revision as of 19:17, 15 December 2023

Lawrence A. Cremin
Born
Lawrence Arthur Cremin

(1925-10-31)October 31, 1925
Manhattan, New York
DiedSeptember 4, 1990(1990-09-04) (aged 64)
New York City)
Alma materColumbia University
City College of New York
InstitutionsTeachers College, Columbia University
Main interests
American educational history

Lawrence Arthur Cremin (October 31, 1925 – September 4, 1990) was an American educational historian and administrator.[1]

Biography

Cremin attended Townsend Harris High School in Queens, and then received his B.A. and M.A. from City College of New York. His Ph.D. is from Columbia University in 1949. He began teaching at the Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City. He married Charlotte Raup, the daughter of two other Columbia professors: educational psychologist Robert Bruce Raup of Teachers College, and economist Clara Eliot of Barnard College.[1]

In 1961 he became the Frederick A. P. Barnard Professor of Education and a member of Columbia's history department, directing the Teachers College's Institute of Philosophy and Politics of Education in 1965-1974 before becoming the college's 7th president in 1974–1984, after which he returned to teaching and research.[2]

At the Teachers College, Cremin broadened the study of American educational history beyond the school-centered analysis dominant in the 1940s with a more comprehensive approach that examined other agencies and institutions that educated children, integrating the study of education with other historical subfields, and comparing education across international boundaries.[3]

Cremin was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.[4][5]

In 1985 while remaining on the Columbia faculties, he assumed the presidency of the Spencer Foundation, a Chicago-based educational research organization.[1]

Cremin won the 1962 Bancroft Prize in American History for his book The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957 (1961), which described the anti-intellectual emphasis on non-academic subjects and non-authoritarian teaching methods that occurred as a result of mushrooming enrollment. He was awarded the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for History for American Education: The National Experience, 1783-1876 (1980).[6][7]

In 1990 Cremin published Popular Education and Its Discontents before dying of a sudden heart attack.

Debates

The historiography of education turned bitter in the 1960s, as New Left radical historians denounced the history of American education as a failure when it came to promoting democracy and equality. Cremin avoided the debates, although in 1977 he did make clear his support for the traditional liberal interpretation. While admitting that occasionally educational institutions, being human, “have been guilty of their full share of evil, venality, and failure" he argued:

Contrary to the drift of a good deal of scholarly opinion during the past ten years, I happen to believe that on balance the American education system has contributed significantly to the advancement of liberty, equality, and fraternity, in that complementarity and tension that mark the relations among them in a free society....The aspirations of American education have been more noble than base, and that its performance over the past two centuries has been more liberating of a greater diversity of human energies and potentialities than has been the case in most other eras and in most other places.[8]

Interviews

Does Going to School ‘Interrupt’ a Child’s Education? - The Open Mind - April 4, 1976[9]

Teacher in America, Part I - The Open Mind - May 21, 1988[10]

Teacher in America, Part II - The Open Mind - May 21, 1988[11]

High Tech and Our 'Education President' - The Open Mind - January 22, 1989[12]

Popular Education and Its Discontents - The Open Mind - March 17, 1990[13]

Publications

  • The American Common School: An Historic Conception. New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1951, OCLC 01330861
  • The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957. Knopf. 1961. OCLC 175047.
  • The Wonderful World of Ellwood Patterson Cubberley: An Essay On The Historiography of American Education. New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1965.
  • The Genius of American Education. University of Pittsburg Press, 1965. LCCN 65-28146
  • Public Education
  • Traditions of American Education
  • American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607-1783
  • American Education: The National Experience, 1783-1876. Harper & Row. 1980.
  • American Education: The Metropolitan Experience, 1876-1980
  • Popular Education and its Discontents. Harper & Row. 1990. ISBN 978-0-06-016270-2.

References

  1. ^ a b c "Obituary: Lawrence Cremin, 64, Educator and a Prize-Winning Historian", New York Times, September 5, 1990
  2. ^ "Lawrence Arthur Cremin". Retrieved 25 July 2016.
  3. ^ Cohen 1998.
  4. ^ "Lawrence Arthur Cremin". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 2022-05-20.
  5. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2022-05-20.
  6. ^ Teacher in America, Part I (1988). The Open Mind. 1988. Retrieved February 20, 2012.
  7. ^ Teacher in America, Part II (1988). The Open Mind. 1988. Retrieved February 20, 2012.
  8. ^ Lawrence A. Cremin, Traditions of American Education (1977) p 127
  9. ^ Lee, Brian (1976-04-04). "Does Going to School 'Interrupt' a Child's Education?". Richard Heffner's Open Mind Archive. Retrieved 2023-04-05.
  10. ^ Lee, Brian (1988-05-21). "Teacher in America, Part I". Richard Heffner's Open Mind Archive. Retrieved 2023-04-05.
  11. ^ Lee, Brian (1988-05-21). "Teacher in America, Part II". Richard Heffner's Open Mind Archive. Retrieved 2023-04-05.
  12. ^ Lee, Brian (1989-01-22). "High Tech and Our 'Education President'". Richard Heffner's Open Mind Archive. Retrieved 2023-04-05.
  13. ^ Lee, Brian (1990-03-17). "Popular Education and Its Discontents". Richard Heffner's Open Mind Archive. Retrieved 2023-04-05.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Houts, Paul L. (1975), "A Conversation with Lawrence A. Cremin", National Elementary Principal, vol. 54, pp. 23–35, ISSN 0027-920X
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