Introducing Teachers College

The People Behind TC

Teachers College was founded in 1887 by the philanthropist Grace Hoadley Dodge and philosopher Nicholas Murray Butler to provide a new kind of schooling for the teachers of the poor children of New York, one that combined a humanitarian concern to help others with a scientific approach to human development.

The founders early recognized that professional teachers need reliable knowledge about the conditions under which children learn most effectively. As a result, the College's program from the first included such fundamental subjects as educational psychology and educational sociology.

The founders also insisted that education must be combined with clear ideas about ethics and the nature of a good society; consequently programs were developed in the history of education and in comparative education.

As the number of school children increased during the twentieth century, the problems of managing the schools became ever more complex. The College took on the challenge and instituted programs of study in areas of administration, economics and politics. Other programs developed in such emerging fields as counseling, curriculum development and school health care.

More recently, the College has been contending with the difficult problems of urban education, reaffirming its original mission in providing a new kind of education for those left most in need by society or circumstance. The College continues its collaborative research with urban and suburban school systems that strengthen teaching in such fundamental areas as reading, writing, science, mathematics and the arts; prepares leaders to develop and administer psychological and health care programs in schools, hospitals and community agencies; and advances technology for the classroom, developing new teaching software and keeping teachers abreast of new developments.