Teaching
Addams lectured throughout the United States, at various colleges and social settlements. For example:
- In February 13, 1899, she went on a typical lecture tour—leaving Chicago on February 13, she spoke at Wells College in Aurora, New York on the 14th; at Auburn Seminary the next day; at Wells again on the 16th; then to New York for a quick stopover; then to Boston where she made two appearances at woman's clubs on the 18th; two more appearances on Sunday; on to the University of Vermont on Monday; back to Boston for two more appearance on Tuesday; two more on Wednesday, and two on Thursday; then she was off to Meadville, Pennsylvania; to Harrisburg, Richmond, Virginia, and Columbia, South Carolina, before returning home.
Although many of these speeches were not academic, others were, and Addams' division between academic and everyday thought was dramatically different from that of her typical male academic colleagues. In addition, she offered college courses through the Extension Division of the University of Chicago. She declined offers from the university to become directly affiliated with it, including an offer from Albion Small, chair of the Department of Sociology, of a graduate faculty position. She declined in order to maintain her independent role outside of academia. Her goal was to teach adults not enrolled in formal academic institutions, because of their poverty and/or lack of credentials. Furthermore, she wanted no university controls over her political activism.
Addams was a charter member of the American Sociological Society, founded in 1905. She gave papers to it in 1912, 1915, and 1919. She was the most prominent woman member during this period.
Read more about this topic: Jane Addams
Famous quotes containing the word teaching:
“What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes? Take fifty of our current proverbial sayings—they are so trite, so threadbare, that we can hardly bring our lips to utter them. None the less they embody the concentrated experience of the race and the man who orders his life according to their teaching cannot go far wrong.”
—Norman Douglas (1868–1952)
“Teaching creativity to your child isn’t like teaching good manners. No one can paint a masterpiece by bowing to another person’s precepts about elbows on the table.”
—Gurney Williams III (20th century)
“Mrs. Zajac knows you didn’t try. You don’t just hand in junk to Mrs. Zajac. She’s been teaching an awful lot of years. She didn’t fall off the turnip cart yesterday. She told you she was an old-lady teacher.”
—Christine Zajac, U.S. fifth-grade teacher. As quoted in Among Schoolchildren, “September” section, part 1, by Tracy Kidder (1989)