Bernard Feder

Bernard Feder (1924- )served in WWII, in units as varied as the 11th Airborne Division and mobile signal intelligence operations. He finished his service as supervisor of signal operations in the Tokyo GHQ of AFPAC, the Armed Forces in the Pacific.He sometimes jokes that he served directly under General MacArthur (MacArthur's office was on the fourth floor of the Dai Ichi Building; signal operations occupied the bulk of the third floor.)

After the war, he taught social studies and was an administrator in the NYC high schools, leaving in 1966 to take a position at Hofstra University as professor of education and coordinator of secondary student teaching. His first book, Viewpoints:USA was based on his view of traditional history education as a stultifying exercise in memorizing what has been described as "one damn fact after another." His view was that students should practice history the way historians do--sifting and evaluating evidence and arriving at conclusions consistent with that evidence. From history textbooks, his writings expanded to anything that interested him, including his wife Elaine's area of the arts therapies, and he collaborated with her in writing two books in that field. The Feders have also written widely for magazines and newspapers, including Psychology Today, Human Behavior, Social Education, The Nation, the New York Times and the St.Petersburg (FL)Times.

With the death of his wife,Elaine--his life partner and collaborator--in May, 2010, he invited Robyn Flaum Cruz, Editor-in-Chief of The Arts in Psychotherapy, and former president of the American Dance/Movement Therapy Association, to collaborate in the revision of The Art and Science of Evaluation in the Arts Therapies. Chapters have been contributed by Barbara Wheeler, past president of the American Music Therapy Association and Donna Betts, a leading authority on art therapy assessment and rating procedures.