|
Eliza Cooper Blaker (1854–1926) was an educator who headed the free kindergarten movement in Indianapolis and started the Teacher’s College of Indianapolis in her home. Eliza A. Cooper was born in Philadelphia on March 5, 1854. She was raised a Quaker in a family struggling financially. Instead of pulling Blaker out of school to work in the cotton mills, Coopers’ mother allowed her to attend the Girls Normal School (teacher’s college) of Philadelphia. She graduated in June 1874 as class valedictorian.〔Ray E. Boomhower, “The Thing is Right! Eliza Blaker and the Free Kindergarten Movement,” Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History 16 no. 1 (Winter 2004): 30.〕 After graduation, Blaker was hired at a Kindergarten in Philadelphia and married her childhood friend Louis Blaker in 1880. In 1882 the Hadley Roberts Academy, a private school located in Indianapolis, began seeking a kindergarten teacher and Blaker was recommended. She accepted the position and moved to Indianapolis. Shortly after arriving, however, Blaker took a position at the Indianapolis Free Kindergarten and Children’s Aid Society to help the impoverished children. Many of these children did not have enough clothing or food, so the society attempted to obtain donations in the community to help the children get these necessary items.〔Boomhower, 33.〕 In 1884, the society incorporated with Blaker serving as superintendent. She saw teaching as almost a form of extended mothering.〔Emma Lou Thornbrough, Eliza A Blaker: Her Life and Work, (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1956), 73.〕 She explained: "Every school teacher is a foster mother. She is helping the mother in the rearing of her children. The teacher that has not a great mother heart should not have charge of your children in a school room for a number of hours every day. School teaching would be drudgery if we did not love it. It would be abject slavery to any one who did not love children. We must love little children if we are going to help them."〔As quoted in Erin J. Gobel, Three Necessary Things: the Indianapolis Free Kindergarten and Children’s Aid Society, 1880–1920, (Thesis, Indiana University, 2010), 21.〕 To this end, Blaker only wanted female teachers and denounced corporal punishment (hitting children for misbehaving).〔Boomhower, 34.〕 In 1882, Blaker also began to educate kindergarten teachers from her home. In 1905, these informal classes became formally known as the Teachers College of Indianapolis. In 1883 Blaker had eight students, and by 1903 that number jumped to 344.〔Gobel, Three Necessary Things: the Indianapolis Free Kindergarten and Children’s Aid Society, 1880–1920, 14.〕 By 1907 a total of 49,353 children had enrolled in thirty-five free kindergartens in Indianapolis and upwards of 5,500 teachers had been trained under Blaker’s tenure.〔Rachel Lapp and Anita Stalter, More than Petticoats Remarkable Indiana Women, (Guilford, CT: Morris Book Publishing, 2007), 56.〕 Blaker continued her work as an educator until her death on 4 December 1926.〔 〕 In 1930, the Teacher’s College became part of Butler University. ==References== 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Eliza Cooper Blaker」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|