“Isolated Learning Is Doubtful Learning”: The Case of Howalton Day School, an African-American Private School in Chicago, 1947–1986

"Isolated Learning Is Doubtful Learnings The Case of Howalton Day School, an African­American Private School in Chicago, 1947­1986 Anne Meis Knupfer Introduction In 1946, three African­American female teachers founded Howalton Day School, considered the first private, non­sectarian African­American school in the United States. The school's model of community drew largely from two traditions: the DuBoisian model of the "talented tenth," in which more privileged African Americans assumed leadership positions in the community and also assisted those less fortunate;1 and a Deweyan model, which emphasized strong commu­ nity­school collaboration, built upon the students' interests and backgrounds, and encouraged teachers' pedagogical innovations. To a large degree, these mod­ els were complementary, especially in their visions of school­community rela­ tions, strong parental involvement, and students' intellectual and social devel­ opment. However, there were also differences in their practices and activities. Howalton teachers, many of whom had taken education courses at the Univer­ sity of Chicago, enacted Dewey's educational ideas mainly through their experi­ mental pedagogies and classroom structures. However, they used the DuBoisian model in two specific types of activities: those of "social uplift," an African­ American tradition of assisting community members who were poorer, infirm, and elderly; and through the sponsorship of African­American history, litera­ ture, music, and arts. Because Howalton School was founded during the Chicago Black Renaissance, a pan­African intellectual and artistic movement from 1930 to 1955, the teachers were able to draw from many African­American commu­ nity institutions' resources. One such institution was the nearby George Cleve­ land Hall Library, the first African­American library in Chicago whose collection of African­American literature and history was prodigious.2 In this article, I discuss how Howalton Day School built upon these two models, at least through the 1960s. During the 1970s and 1980s, however, finan­ cial difficulties and personnel turnover presented challenges to the school, in­ E&C/Education and Culture 21(1) (2005): 3­17 4 3 14 • Anne Meis Knupfer eluding its commitment to Deweyan principles. The school's decline in enroll­ ment and consequent closure in 1986 raise the question of whether Howalton teachers and administrators might have reified Dewey's ideas to the point that the "Howalton way" became less experimental. My discussion first begins with an examination of the overcrowded, segregated, and inequitable conditions in Chicago's African­American public schools, which prompted the three African­ American teachers to found Howalton. African­American Schools on Chicago's South Side in the 1940s During the late 1930s and the 1940s, the conditions of African­American schools in Chicago were dismal: classrooms were overcrowded, which resulted in half­ day sessions; schools were largely segregated; buildings were dilapidated; teacher turnover was great, since many new white teachers were assigned to African­ American schools, then requested transfers; and the curriculum was generally exclusive of African­American history, literature, and the arts. The African­American migration, as well as limited school building con­ struction, had resulted in overcrowding in many of Chicago's African­American schools then. From 1929 to 1943, African­American student enrollment in at least twenty­seven of the southside schools had increased by 88 percent. Nearly one­third of these new students were recent African­American migrants from Mississippi and Arkansas. The increased enrollment meant that as of 1941 the average African­American classroom had a high student per teacher ratio of 41 to l.3 Despite crowded conditions, the president of the Chicago Board of Educa­ tion countered that African­American students in the Chicago schools fared much better than those in southern schools. However, he skirted the issue of overcrowding, referring instead to better­prepared teachers and a higher expen­ diture per African­American student in Chicago than in the South. What he did not compare were differences in expenditures between Chicago's white and Afri­ can­American students: an average of twelve more dollars spent on those stu­ dents attending white schools. School administrators attempted to resolve overcrowding through double shifts, which meant that most African­American students attended schools for only half­days. Of the fifty­five elementary "double schools" in 1939, thirteen were in African­American communities and affected nearly...