William H.

Kilpatrick
American educator, college president, and philosopher of education William H. Kilpatrick
(1871-1965) was one of the great teachers of his time and a leading figure in the American
progressive education movement.

William Heard Kilpatrick, son of James Hines Kilpatrick, a Baptist pastor, and Edna Perrin
(Heard) Kilpatrick, was born in White Plains, Georgia, on November 20, 1871. Having
completed his early education in the local school system he enrolled at the age of 17 as a
sophomore at Mercer University in Georgia, a Baptist institution that listed Kilpatrick's
grandfather among its founders and original trustees. Kilpatrick graduated second in his class in
1891. Kilpatrick then completed a year of graduate study in mathematics and physics at Johns
Hopkins University. At the end of that year he returned to Mercer, where he was awarded an
M.A. degree in 1892 for his work at Hopkins.

For his first job in education Kilpatrick accepted a position as a teacher of mathematics at a
combination elementary-secondary school in Blakely, Georgia; he was appointed principal after
his first year at the school. While teaching in Blakely, Kilpatrick took summer school courses in
education at Rock College and began to develop a serious interest in the teaching-learning
process.

After three years in Blakely, Kilpatrick returned to Johns Hopkins for another year of graduate
work and then moved on to Savannah, Georgia, where he taught for a year and also assumed the
duties of school principal at the Anderson Elementary School. Toward the end of that school
year, Kilpatrick accepted an appointment as professor of mathematics and astronomy at Mercer
University. He taught at Mercer from 1897 to 1906, serving during the last two of those years as
acting president. Meanwhile, he married Marie Beman Guyton of Marianna, Florida, on
December 27, 1898. They had three children, two of whom died in infancy.

Owing to doctrinal differences with the authorities at Mercer, Kilpatrick resigned in 1906 and
accepted a position in a Columbus, Georgia high school, once again working in a dual capacity
as teacher (of mathematics) and school principal. The following year he accepted a scholarship
to study education at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he remained as student and
faculty member until he retired in 1938. In May 1907, a few months before Kilpatrick started his
graduate work at Columbia, his wife died of tuberculosis. He was married for the second time to
Margaret Manigault Pinckney in 1908.

Kilpatrick was awarded a part-time appointment at Teachers College in 1909. He took his
doctorate in 1912, was appointed associate professor in 1915, and was promoted to full professor
in 1918. In addition to his positions at Columbia, Kilpatrick held appointments during his long
career as visiting lecturer or professor at the University of Georgia, the University of Kentucky,
the University of Minnesota, the University of North Carolina, Northwestern University, the
University of the South, and Stanford University. He also visited schools abroad and lectured in
Austria, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), China, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic and
Slovakia), Egypt, Holland, India, Japan, Korea, and Turkey.

Kilpatrick was extremely active in both educational and civic organizations, serving at various
times, for example, as chairman of the American Youth for World Youth, president of the board
of trustees of Bennington College, president of the John Dewey Society, chairman of the board
of the League for Industrial Democracy, and president of the Urban League of Greater New
York.

During the 1920s and 1930s Kilpatrick became one of the most influential progressive educators
of the period. With the exception of John Dewey himself, Kilpatrick was perhaps the figure most
frequently associated with progressivism by educators and the lay public alike. He was also
viewed by scholars as a disciple of Dewey and a popularizer of the latter's educational
philosophy. Kilpatrick did not particularly object to this appraisal of his work, although it
probably constituted an injustice to his own contributions to educational theory. At Columbia,
Kilpatrick once found fault with himself in his diary for being able to "find so little to object to in
John Dewey's position." By the same token, Dewey is said to have called Kilpatrick "the best
[student] I ever had."

Kilpatrick shared with Dewey the desire to have the school curriculum reflect to some extent
students' interests and purposes and to place problem-solving at the core of the educational
process. He moved somewhat beyond Dewey, however, in the extent of his opposition to the
traditional curriculum, organized in advance and presented to children in the form of fixed
subject-matter. Kilpatrick's theory of learning emphasized what he called "purposeful activity"
engaged in by pupils as they worked on a variety of projects. His methodological views were set
forth in "The Project Method," an essay that appeared in the Teachers College Record in 1918
and was later expanded into a book entitled Foundations of Method (1925). Over the years some
60,000 reprints of the essay were sold in pamphlet form, and Kilpatrick was firmly established as
the nation's leading spokesman for progressive education.
Kilpatrick's concern for the child's interests and purposes did not result in an excessive
educational individualism. Like his mentor John Dewey, Kilpatrick managed to bridge the gap
between the child-centered and the society-centered factions of the progressive education
movement. With regard to the latter, for example, he edited The Educational Frontier (1933), a
yearbook that stressed the need for formal education to focus on contemporary social issues and
problems and to prepare children to participate intelligently in the formulation of ideas for social
change. The Educational Frontier, which historian Lawrence A. Cremin has labeled "the
characteristic progressivist statement of its decade," developed indirectly out of an informal
discussion group that Kilpatrick had chaired for several years at Teachers College. In 1934
several members of the group, including Kilpatrick, George Counts, and Harold Rugg, had a
hand in launching The Social Frontier (called Frontiers of Democracy after 1939), a reformist
educational journal of remarkable vitality during its nine years of existence. Kilpatrick co-edited
the journal from 1939 to 1943.
Although writing did not come easily to Kilpatrick, he was the author of 14 books and hundreds
of articles. In addition to those mentioned previously, his most important publications
include: The Montesorri System Examined (1914), A Source Book in the Philosophy of
Education (1923), Education for a Changing Civilization (1926), Education and the Social
Crisis (1932), Remaking the Curriculum (1936), Selfhood and Civilization (1941),
and Philosophy of Education (1951).

Apart from his writings, Kilpatrick's profound influence on American education was attributable,
in large part, to his extraordinary skills as a teacher and lecturer. His ability to galvanize classes
consisting of hundreds of students was legendary, and it has been estimated that he taught close
to 35,000 students at Teachers College, many of whom eventually assumed positions of
educational leadership across the country.

After he retired in 1938 Kilpatrick remained active in civic affairs and continued to lecture at a
number of universities. His second wife died in the fall of 1938, and Kilpatrick married Marion
Ostrander, a former student of his, on May 8, 1940. Kilpatrick died in New York City on
February 13, 1965.