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Scarce cloth hardcover, xiii + 276pp + 8 pages of b&w photos, NOT ex-library. Book is clean and bright, untanned, with unmarked text, free of inscriptions and stamps, firmly bound. A short corner crease to the boards and a portion of leaves. Clean outer page edges. Dust jacket shows moderate wear, a few short edge-tears. -- The Putney school - a small but influential residential preparatory school in rural Vermont - was established in 1935 to demonstrate the viability of Progressive ideas about education. Susan M. Lloyd here tells the story of Putney School's first 30 years, focusing in particular on the school's founding principal, Carmelita Hinton, a passionate social reformer and educator whose unconventional administration broke all the rules of how schools should be run. Lloyd relates how Hinton bought two working farms on two square miles of Vermont land and built a coeducational boarding school around democratic values. The dairy farm on which the school depended for its generous scholarship program demanded the cooperation and "real world" skills that had been prized by John Dewey; a challenging academic and arts program fostered individuality; community life on a Vermont hilltop made world-reformist visions seem possible. "Utopia was at hand," wrote Hinton. For years the school was successful under Hinton's firm guidance. But in 1949 the teachers made it clear that Putney could not remain one woman's school any longer. When Hinton refused to relinquish her autocratic control of the school, most of the faculty formed a union and went on strike. This traumatic event, which at first seemed to be the end of the school, became its new beginning. During the next 20 years, Putney's utopian community became an institution and, strengthened by a conventional American corporate organization, not only survived its founder's retirement but matured under her successor, a man of profoundly democratic leanings. -- "Susan McIntosh Lloyd's 'biography' of Putney's first 30 years adds richness and detail to the history of education and of women. The stories of Putney School and of Carmelita Hinton add an important dimension to our understanding of mid-20th-century American life, of the practical realization of influential ideas about schooling, of the ethos of the world of a restless, thoughtful woman, of the strains of institution building." (From the foreword by Theodore R. Sizer) -- "This is a superb book, blending the biography of a fascinating, energetic, contradictory, visionary woman, Mrs. Hinton; a unique school; and the larger context of progressive education, the Great Depression, war and revolution, McCarthyism, and above all the utopian tradition in the United States. The book is vivid, fair-minded, candid, and wonderfully written." (David Tyack, Stanford University) -- Contents: I. Beginnings: 1890-1936 1. A Passion for Adventure 2. One to Get Ready 3. Shaping Time: The First Year; II. "Utopia Was at Hand": 1936-1948 and Beyond 4. Work I 5. Work II 6. A Way of Life: Religion, Sex, and Other Essentials 7. Time Passing; III. A Hinge: 1948-1949 8. Strike; IV. Learning Endurance: 1949-1965 9. The Pioneers Dig In 10. Looking Outward 11. Turning Points 12. Students: Notes from the Underground; Notes; Appendix: Faculty and Staff; Index.
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