Bringing montessori to America

BRINGING

MONTESSORI

to AMERICA

BRINGING

MONTESSORI

to AMERICA

S. S. McClure, Maria Montessori,

and the Campaign to Publicize Montessori Education

GERALD L. GUTEK AND PATRICIA A. GUTEK

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487–0380

uapress.ua.edu

Copyright © 2016 by the University of Alabama Press

All rights reserved.

Inquiries about reproducing material from this work should be addressed to the University

of Alabama Press.

Typeface: Garamond

Manufactured in the United States of America

Cover photograph: Maria Montessori and S. S. McClure; courtesy of Bain Collection,

Library of Congress

Cover design: Michele Myatt Quinn

∞

The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American

National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library

Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Gutek, Gerald Lee, author. | Gutek, Patricia, 1941– author.

Title: Bringing Montessori to America : S.S. Mcclure, Maria Montessori, and the campaign

to publicize Montessori education / Gerald L. Gutek and Patricia A. Gutek.

Description: Tuscaloosa : The University of Alabama Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical

references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015031838| ISBN 9780817318970 (cloth : alk. paper) |

ISBN 9780817389314 (e book)

Subjects: LCSH: Montessori method of education—United States. | McClure, S. S. (Samuel

Sidney), 1857–1949 | Montessori, Maria, 1870–1952.

Classification: LCC LB1029.M75 G88 2016 | DDC 371.39/2—dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015031838

Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Preface ix

1. S. S. McClure: Cyclone in a Frock Coat 1

2. Maria Montessori: “An Educational Wonder-Worker” 28

3. The Montessori Method 41

4. Creating a Favorable Climate of Opinion for the Montessori Method in

the United States 57

5. McClure’s Magazine Publicizes Montessori 77

6. McClure and the Montessori Educational Association 109

7. Montessori’s American Lecture Tour, December 1913 121

8. The Montessori-McClure Breakup 150

9. Montessori Education in the United States Post-McClure 186

10. McClure and Montessori: The Later Years 212

Notes 223

Bibliography 251

Index 257

Illustrations

FIGURES

1. S. S. McClure, from The Booklovers Magazine, January 1903. 1

2. Maria Montessori at her desk, from Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s A Montessori

Mother, published by Henry Holt and Company in 1912. 28

3. “Montessori children at dinner,” from Maria Montessori, The Montessori

Method: Scientific Pedagogy, as Applied to Child Education in “The Children’s

Houses.” 41

4. S. S. McClure and Maria Montessori during her American lecture tour, De￾cember 1913 (Harris and Ewing, photographer, Library of Congress). 121

5. Above: “Training the sense of touch.” Below: “Learning to read and write

by touch.” Both from Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method: Scientific

Pedagogy, as Applied to Child Education in “The Children’s Houses.” 146

6. Above: “Children touching letters.” Below: “Making words with cardboard

script.” Both from Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method: Scientific

Pedagogy, as Applied to Child Education in “The Children’s Houses.” 147

7. Postcard advertising S. S. McClure’s lecture series on the Montessori Method.

1914 (Special Collections and Archives, Knox College Library, Galesburg,

Illinois). 187

TABLES

1. Maria Montessori’s December 1913 Lecture Tour Report of Net Receipts

(Montessori’s, Keedick’s and McClure’s Shares of Net Receipts in Dollars) 166

2. Maria Montessori’s December 1913 American Lecture Tour Receipts and

Expenses 167

Preface

This book tells the story of the meeting of two remarkable individuals, Maria

Montessori and Samuel Sidney (S. S.) McClure, in the second decade of the twen￾tieth century. Maria Montessori (1870–1952) is acclaimed internationally as one

of history’s great pioneering educators. Montessori schools operate worldwide in

countries as culturally diverse as the United States, the United Kingdom, India,

the Netherlands, Spain, and her native Italy, all nations in which she taught and

lectured. Montessori’s biographers agree that she was a unique individual, a re￾markable woman, a physician, and an educator who used her medical and scien￾tific training, her life experience, and her insights to construct a highly innovative

philosophy and method of education. Her method challenged the conventional

educational wisdom of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Not only

did she have to challenge the rote and routines in schools, she had to overcome

the late Victorian era’s gender-based restrictions that defined women as wives,

mothers, caregivers, and in some cases primary school teachers and nurses. Her

biographers, especially Rita Kramer and Phyllis Povell, tell the life story of a de￾termined woman who successfully surmounted the barriers that limited the free￾dom of women to chart new careers.

While the life story that Montessori’s biographers tell is true, might there be

something more to the woman whose students refered to her as La Dottoressa

(the doctor)—the physician turned educator? The five years from 1910 to 1915

when she was connected with S. S. McClure, her American publicist, reveal a

multidimensional woman who, while truly a great educator, was a complex per￾sonality, determined at all costs to control what she had created.

Montessori’s relationship with S. S. McClure (1857–1949) provides a fascinat￾ing account of an initially promising, then tortured, relationship between two

very strong but totally different personalities. While Montessori’s biographers

have stood in awe of their subject, history has not been as generous to McClure.

x • preface

Today, books on American history, particularly on the Progressive Era, devote

a few lines, perhaps a single short paragraph, to McClure and the journal he

founded, McClure’s Magazine. The energetic publisher and editor, once acclaimed

as the pioneer of modern American publishing and journalism, certainly would

resent his contemporary place at history’s margins. However, when McClure met

Montessori in 1910, his fame in the United States, perhaps even in Western Eu￾rope, overshadowed that of the Italian educator.

McClure commanded center stage in American journalism during the height

of the Progressive Era, the years from 1890 to 1920. During these three decades,

reform-minded political leaders, journalists, settlement house workers, conser￾vationists, and educators formed a loose but broad coalition to root out politi￾cal and corporate corruption and reform American life and institutions. The ar￾ticles of leading Progressives such as Theodore Roosevelt and Jane Addams were

featured in the pages of McClure’s Magazine. When McClure brought Montes￾sori to lecture in America’s major cities in 1913, the Progressive former Princeton

University president, Woodrow Wilson, was in the White House. Montessori’s

educational philosophy even reached the nation’s first family as Wilson’s daughter

Margaret became an enthusiastic Montessori supporter and a founding member

of the Montessori Educational Association established by McClure and Mabel

and Alexander Graham Bell.

McClure, who came to the United States as an immigrant lad from Northern

Ireland, epitomized the American model of the successful self-made man who

climbed, in Horatio Alger style, from rags to riches. But in McClure’s case the

riches were transitory. As an enterprising and innovative publisher of a leading

national magazine, McClure sought to dissolve the distinction between elite and

popular literature. He introduced American readers to Rudyard Kipling, Arthur

Conan Doyle, and Robert Louis Stevenson through the serialization of their nov￾els. He hired the great investigative Progressive journalists Ida Tarbell and Lincoln

Steffens as writers for his magazine. He possessed an uncanny acumen in search￾ing out and popularizing talented authors and reporters. McClure believed that

Maria Montessori was indeed a talented figure, a genius, in the usually staid field

of education. With boundless enthusiasm, McClure developed an ambitious plan

to bring Montessori to the American public with him on a joint lecture tour and,

later, create a Montessori teacher training institute.

The story of McClure and Montessori is about the meeting, intersection, and

interfacing of two highly interesting but very different persons. This intersection

occurred in the twentieth century’s second decade when prospects for progress

seemed bright. But, halfway through that decade the lights would go out all over

Europe, as World War I, the Great War, dimmed these prospects.

The relationship between McClure and Montessori went through stages that

are examined in the chapters in this book. First, biographies of McClure and

preface • xi

Montessori tell readers about the lives and careers of these two main characters

at the time of their relationship. However, other leading personalities come into

and out of the McClure-Montessori saga: Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the

telephone, and his wife, Mabel; Gilbert Grosvenor, the editor of the National Geo￾graphic and the treasurer of the Montessori Educational Association; Carl Byoir,

pioneer in American public relations; Dorothy Canfield Fisher, noted writer;

Margaret Wilson, a daughter of President Woodrow Wilson; Anne E. George,

the first American trained by Montessori; Lee Keedick, the lecture impresario;

Helen Parkhurst, founder of the Dalton Plan of Education; and William Heard

Kilpatrick, the Progressive Columbia University professor. These noteworthy per￾sons of their times were drawn, like moths to a bright light, by Montessori. Much

of the illumination of Montessori’s ideas came from the series of articles about her

in McClure’s Magazine from 1910 to 1912. McClure’s campaign to publicize Mon￾tessori in the United States led to her triumphal lecture tour in 1913.

Our book narrates the story of the dynamic but difficult relationship between

McClure and Maria Montessori from 1910 to 1915; it describes and interprets

the agreements, misunderstandings, and tensions between these two dramatically

charged personalities. McClure, a publisher, had decided that he would capitalize

on Montessori’s method and become its leading proponent in the United States.

Montessori, in turn, was determined that only she would control the method

that she had developed.

The questions explored in the following chapters are:

1. How did such different personalities decide to cooperate in bringing the Mon￾tessori Method to America?

2. Did Montessori seek to use McClure’s Magazine and connections to promote

her method?

3. How did McClure seek to profit from his association with Montessori?

4. Did McClure’s irrepressible enthusiasm and lack of attention to details doom

the relationship with Montessori?

5. Did financial issues over the profits from the sale of Montessori’s didactic ap￾paratus and other items contribute to the disintegration of the Montessori￾McClure relationship?

5. Why was the successful establishment of Montessori education in America

delayed for three decades after the break-up of the McClure-Montessori rela￾tionship in 1915 until its renaissance in the mid-1950s?

Our research on the McClure-Montessori story has been enjoyable, entertain￾ing, and challenging. We were helped along our way by the capable and highly

professional archivists at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, and the Indiana

University’s Lilly Library in Bloomington, Indiana. Yolande Wersching, the Head

xii • preface

Librarian of Lewis Library at Loyola University, Chicago, was especially help￾ful in finding and assessing articles, books, and dissertations on our subject. We

are very grateful for the superb translators who translated the French and Italian

handwritten and hard-to-read correspondence of Maria Montessori and her as￾sociates. Dorina Spiering translated from Italian and Anie Sergis translated from

French. Sabine Haenen of Legal Confidential Certified Translations in the Neth￾erlands translated from French while using her knowledge of Italian to accurately

interpret Montessori’s meaning.

We are also grateful for the expert genealogical assistance on Anne E. George

by our friend Joanne Periolat Siadak.

We hope that you will enjoy reading our book as much as we enjoyed research￾ing and writing it.

1

S. S. McClure

Cyclone in a Frock Coat

The personalities of S. S. McClure, editor and publisher, and Maria Montessori,

physician and educator, made them the most unlikely of associates. Their short

transatlantic alliance was both energized and flawed by their distinctive traits of

character. The McClure-Montessori relationship, from 1910 to 1915 is a fascinat￾ing historical episode that reverberated with alternating currents of enthusiasm

and depression, trust and mistrust, promise and failure.

Born in 1857 and thirteen years older than Montessori, McClure’s life circum￾stances were dramatically different from the Italian educator. Unlike the gentility

Figure 1. S. S. McClure (The

Booklovers Magazine, January 1903).

2 • chapter 1

and security of Montessori’s middle-class family, Samuel McClure, the son of

Scots-Irish working-class parents, endured an insecure childhood. Born on Febru￾ary 17, 1857, at his maternal grandparents’ home in County Antrim, in the north￾east section of Northern Ireland, he was named Samuel after his paternal grand￾father. Unlike Maria Montessori, an only child, Samuel was the oldest of Thomas

and Elizabeth (Gaston) McClure’s four surviving sons.

In 1858, Thomas bought a small nine-acre farm at Drumalgea from his father,

Samuel McClure Sr. Because he could not support his family solely by farm￾ing, Thomas McClure left for Scotland to work as a laborer in the shipyards in

Glasgow. An accident at work took his life at age 32, in November 1864. Thomas

McClure’s twenty-seven-year-old widow, Elizabeth, who was pregnant, returned

to her mother’s home with her sons. In addition to sons Samuel, John, and Thomas,

a son named Robert died when he was one and one-half years old. Subsequently,

the youngest McClure son, born in 1865 after Thomas’s death, was also named

Robert.

Facing a bleak future in Antrim, Elizabeth decided her only hope was in America.

By selling her farm back to her father-in-law for one hundred pounds she was able

to pay for the passage. On June 14, 1866, Elizabeth McClure and her four young

sons sailed from Londonderry on the Mongolia, landing at Quebec June 26. She

planned to go to Indiana where her two married sisters and two single brothers

were living, in Lake and Porter Counties. After traveling by train for seven days,

Elizabeth and her children arrived in Valparaiso, in northwest Indiana on July

3, 1866. Nine-year-old Samuel McClure now began his new life as an American.

With some reluctance Elizabeth’s sister, married to a Mr. Coleman, took in the

five McClures. The Colemans, who lived on a farm near Valparaiso with a large

family of their own, were financially strained with the addition of the McClures

to their household. To bring in desperately needed funds, Elizabeth hired out as

a laundress; but as she was required to live in her employer’s home, leaving the

four McClure boys added an unwelcome burden on her sister.

Samuel McClure, in his Autobiography, published in 1914, largely shaped the

narrative of his early life. He told the story of the Irish immigrant lad in Indiana,

who in Horatio Alger style, went from “rags to riches.” He relished telling of his

upward climb from poverty and obscurity to wealth and fame. Like the Scottish

Andrew Carnegie, McClure came as an immigrant child to the United States. As

with Carnegie, McClure’s account, though sometimes embellished, was largely

true.

McClure, who would become an editor, said he had loved books and reading

as long as he could remember. He had learned to read at age four as a pupil in

a national school in Antrim. McClure remembered how as a child he searched

for something to read: “During these years the lack of reading matter was one of