Eliot, Charles William 1834-1926

ELIOT, CHARLES WILLIAM 1834-1926

Educator, college president

Educational Leader

Charles W. Eliot was born into an established Boston family on 20 March 1834 and taught chemistry both at Harvard and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before being appointed president of Harvard in 1869. When his forty-year tenure as president of Harvard University ended in 1909, he left behind a strong educational legacy that had an enduring impact in the United States. In higher education the innovations he introduced at Harvard influenced institutions of higher education around the country and led to the emergence of the distinctly American university. He also shaped the development of the nation's secondary and elementary schools through his frequent writings and speeches on the subject, his involvement in educational associations, and his membership on various educational reform panels. In 1903, when Eliot was at the height of his influence, the National Education Association (NEA) selected him to be its national president. In an era with little government regulation or control, voluntary organizations like the NEA kept schools and colleges in close contact on policies, programs, and standards and provided forums for discussing educational reforms.

Reforms at Harvard

During President Eliot's administration, Harvard made the transition from a small liberal arts college to a modern university. In 1869, his first year as president, Harvard had roughly one thousand students and sixty professors; forty years later, in 1909, the university was the second largest in the country, with approximately fifty-five hundred students and six hundred faculty. Eliot took great pride in the school's growth, particularly because it was achieved along with Eliot's push to raise entrance requirements at Harvard. In 1897 he wrote, "I find that I am not content unless Harvard grows each year, in spite of the size which it has attained." His principal innovation at Harvard, however, was his introduction of the "elective system," by which he broke with the usual college practice of mandating a set curriculum for all students to follow and allowed Harvard students a greater role in determining their education. Harvard started implementing the elective system with vigor during Eliot's first year as president, and for all practical purposes, requirements for seniors were abolished by 1872. By 1895 the school's only requirements were freshman English and a freshman modern language course. Convinced of the virtues of the elective system, Eliot eventually saw electives as a student "right" and even as the very embodiment of American values. In 1907 he wrote that "The elective system is, in the first place, an outcome of the Protestant Reformation. In the next place, it is an outcome of the spirit of liberty."

Graduate Education

Eliot's second major innovation at Harvard was to bring coherence and purpose to the university's graduate and professional schools. His role in this regard is complex. Although Eliot himself never fully embraced the concept of graduate education, the graduate school at Harvard became the largest and most respected in the United States during his administration. Moreover, from the first year of his presidency Eliot worked to enhance graduate education at Harvard, even while doubting its ultimate utility. Because of the growth of Harvard's graduate school and similar schools at Johns Hopkins, Clark, and Chicago, graduate programs increasingly became a central part of the American university experience. In 1900 graduate studies had become so entrenched in the nation's higher education system that, when the American Association of Universities was founded, the presence of a graduate school became the defining requirement for admission.

Influence on Secondary Schools

Before 1900 Eliot's main influence on secondary education was exerted when he chaired the controversial Committee of Ten on Secondary School Studies. This committee's report in 1894 was frequently misinterpreted as the last-ditch effort of conservative educators to impose the traditional, classical curriculum on high-school students. In fact, however, the committee made a more subtle recommendation about secondary-school standards. Observing that "the secondary schools of the United States, taken as a whole, do not exist for the purpose of preparing boys and girls for colleges," the committee recommended that secondary schools not distinguish between students ending their academic careers at the high-school level and those going on to college. In the committee's view, a sound education good enough for those entering college was also the best education for those ending their studies in high school. At the same time, and seemingly, at first glance, in contradiction, the report urged secondary schools to establish an elective system of courses for their students. In 1894 Eliot, long a proponent of the elective system in the university, pushed mildly for the same system at lower educational levels. A decade later, however, Eliot was a much stronger advocate of electives. After first thinking elective courses should be offered to students at age eighteen, Eliot eventually favored lowering the age to four-teen, then thirteen. In time, he believed electives should begin in kindergarten.

Mental Discipline

How could Eliot urge that elective courses be established in secondary schools, yet, at the same time, advocate a common set of secondary school standards? For Eliot, these two recommendations were not inconsistent because he believed in the theory of "mental discipline," which held that, just like the muscles of the body, the mind had to be exercised to acquire strength. Unlike the majority of mental disciplinarians, however, Eliot did not have a list of preferred subjects for such "exercise." Electives, therefore, he judged appropriate. During the years 1900-1909 supporters of implementing the elective system in secondary schools were always a minority in America; nevertheless, they were a vocal minority and viewed Eliot as their champion.

Linking Higher and Lower Education Levels

Eliot believed advocating school reforms and serving on educational committees were only the first steps to improving the American educational system. Fundamental change, he thought, required creating links between the nation's universities and its public schools. To this end, in his early years at Harvard he encouraged members of the faculty to teach seminars and summer sessions for the benefit of schoolteachers. In the 1890s he went a step further by hiring for Harvard an instructor of pedagogy, Paul Hanus. In 1903 Hanus asked Eliot to create a School of Education that would train professional educators just as the law and medical schools trained professionals for their fields. Eliot, however, was not prepared to adopt this plan, instructing Hanus to "neither talk nor think" about such a school. In fact, the Harvard Graduate School of Education was not created until 1920, at which time Eliot, by then retired as president, gave the school his blessing as a "pioneering" venture. Meanwhile, during Eliot's presidency at Harvard he fostered other connections between the university and the public schools.

School Reform

Eliot strongly encouraged Harvard alumni groups to involve themselves in public-school reform; alumni groups responded to this challenge: for example, the Buffalo Harvard Club successfully lobbied Buffalo, New York, for a more "flexible" curriculum in the city's high schools. At a meeting of the Associated Harvard Clubs in 1908, ten clubs reported their interest in public education issues; to encourage continuing interest, Eliot gave each club a checklist for reforming city school systems. Even Eliot's interest in the women's division of Harvard, the Harvard Annex, later Radcliffe College, was strengthened by his conviction that this school played an influential role in public-school reform. Since many of its graduates chose teaching as their career, Eliot reasoned that these women, having obtained the same excellent education as Harvard men, were helping to up-grade the teaching profession.

Final Years

Eliot's retirement from Harvard in 1909 did not diminish his interest in the issues of American education. Retaining great energy even in his later years, Eliot in 1908 joined the General Education Board, then remained a member of that influential board for nearly a decade. He also served for many years as a member of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and between 1908 and 1925 was chairman of the museum's Special Advisory Committee on Education. In this position, according to the museum, he "was a leader in bringing about a right and proper system of instruction and training for students of Art." In addition, Eliot served in two associations dealing with preventive medicine, becoming the vice president of one, the National Committee for Mental Hygiene, and the founding president of the other, the American Social Hygiene Committee. The latter was a pioneering organization committed to sex education and the treatment and elimination of venereal diseases. Charles W. Eliot died on 22 August 1926 at his summer home in Maine. He was ninety-two years old.

Sources:

Hugh Hawkins, Between Harvard and America: The Educational Leadership of Charles W. Eliot (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972);

Henry James, Charles W. Eliot: President of Harvard University, 1869—1909 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930);

Edward A. Krug, The Shaping of the American High School (New York: Harper & Row, 1964);

Ralph Barton Perry, "Charles William Eliot," in Dictionary of American Biography, edited by Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone (New York: Scribners, 1931).