Teachers College: The Early Years

The history of the creation and growth of Teachers College was chronicled in the mid 1950's by Professors Lawrence A. Cremin, David A. Shannon and Mary Evelyn Townsend in their seminal work "A History of Teachers College, Columbia University."

From the introduction:

The history of Teachers College, Columbia University, since its founding in 1887, is the history of American teacher education writ small. Born at a time when the whole conception of a rigorous and thorough professional education for teachers was far more a dream than in any way a reality, the College during the past half-century has been in the forefront of every major movement, issue, and conflict in American education. To its classrooms and laboratories have come students from every part of the United States and from every major nation of the world; from its portals have gone the men and women who have in one way or another shaped the educational destinies of two generations of children. This book tells the story of the College: of the milieu in which it came to be; of the men and women who first gave it life; of the problems which beset its early years; of its subsequent rise to pre-eminence on the American scene; of its ideas and its experiments; of its students and its faculty; of its character and its spirit.

Download a PDF of A History of Teachers College from the Teachers College Libraries Pocket Knowledge repository.