Endowments; Working class--Education; Adult education; New York (N.Y.); Thomas Davidson School; Breadwinners' College; Davidson, Thomas, 1840-1900; Cohen, Morris Raphael, 1880-1947
Format
correspondence
Genre
Business correspondence
Origin Information
1886
Physical Description
microfilm, 16 mm, b&w
digitized microfilm
Note (Reel no.)
Reel 85
Note
PDF may contain multiple grant documents.
The Thomas Davidson School for Wage-earners, 307 Henry Street, New York City, has begun registration and will open for the term on October 4. The school, which aims to provide a liberal education for wage-earners willing to devote their evenings to st udy, was founded in 1899 by the late Thomas Davidson." [SOURCE: Society for the Advancement of Education. School & Society, vol. 2, no. 39, 25 Sep. 1915, pp. 458. Google Books, https://books.google.com/books?id=6-9AAQAAMAAJ. Accessed 16 Oct. 2018.] "Thomas Davidson (25 October 1840 – 14 September 1900) was a Scottish-American philosopher and lecturer... Davidson's most successful work was in connection with the Educational Alliance in New York, where he attained wide popularity by a series of lectures on sociology. A special class was formed for Jewish young men and women, whom he introduced to the great writers on sociology and their problems. He aimed at founding among them what he called a 'Breadwinners' College,' but his work was cut short by his sudden death in Montreal, Quebec..." [SOURCE: "Thomas Davidson (philosopher)." Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Davidson_(philosopher). Accessed 16 Oct. 2018.] "Davidson's encounter with Cohen and his associates convinced him that he must act upon his ideals. As Davidson lectured on 'The Problems Which the Nineteenth Century Hands Over, for Solution, to the Twentieth,' he stressed the need for a liberal education as preparation for the new century (cf. Davidson, 1902). After the lecture a young man arose and asked how 'people like us who work nine or ten and sometimes more hours a day... who have few books and no one to guide or instruct us, [can] obtain a liberal education?' Davidson replied, 'That is... the chief educational problem which the nineteenth century hands over to the twentieth,' and much to the amazement of his audience, he committed one night a week to their instruction (Dublin, p. 203; cf. Cohen, pp. 103-104). Thus was born the Breadwinners' College that Davidson organized in association with the People's Institute and the Educational Alliance, again with the financial assistance of Pulitzer. The school operated evenings, Saturdays, and Sundays, and was designed to raise laborers to a higher level of intellectual and spiritual power by helping them partake of the historical riches of the human race. Soon Davidson was teaching a class in 'sociology and culture, in accordance with the historical method.' He described his goals as disabusing the students of 'superficial views of a socialistic or anarchist sort,' imparting to them 'a healthy attitude towards society, to do away with the vengeful sense of personal or class wrong, and to arouse faith in individual effort and manly and womanly self-dependence.' He hoped 'to lift their lives out of narrowness and sordidness and give them ideal aims' (Davidson, 1907b, p. 80). According to Elizabeth Flower and Murray G. Murphey, 'Students grew into professionals and teachers, and the list of those associated with the college reads like a Who's Who of the next generation's intelligentsia and reformers' (Flower and Murphey, p. 2: 486). In a concrete example of the St. Louis Hegelians' notion of alienation and return, during the summer Davidson alienated many of his students from ghetto life by taking them to the scenic beauty of Glenmore where they studied with some of the finest philosophical minds in the country. No doubt, those students returned to the Lower East Side at the end of the summer with vastly expanded horizons and aspirations." [SOURCE: Good, James. “The Value of Thomas Davidson.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, vol. 40, no. 2, 2004, pp. 303. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40320993. Accessed 16 Oct. 2018.] "One additional important fact with respect to the Davidson-Cohen relationship needs to be mentioned. Immediately after Davidson's death, Cohen and other young students who had been attached to him decided that it was imperative that the work that Davidson had started at the Educational Alliance be continued. They therefore established the Breadwinners' College. There were to be no degrees, no credits, no teachers' salaries, but adult education offered to all takers. (No school with such an objective was in existence in New York at the time; the New School for Social Research was opened in 1919.) Cohen was for some years principal or chairman of the executive committee. There were classes in Latin, French, German, algebra, ancient history, modern history, and other high school-level courses, as well as college-type courses, such as those on the Book of Job, on philosophy, and on the philosophy of history. In addition the college (also called the Davidson School) organized clubs, Sunday outings, and a summer camp for weekends and holidays. The attractiveness of the school is indicated by the fact that in 1902-3 there were 783 students in the classes, and that altogether in that year close to 1,400 benefited from its program. The Breadwinners' College continued for eighteen years, until 1918, its program in a way taken up by the New School for Social Research, with which Cohen became identified as the school's first lecturer and where he taught a weekly course for many years." [SOURCE: Konvitz, Milton R. "Morris Raphael Cohen." The Other New York Jewish Intellectuals, edited by Carole S. Kessner, NYU Press, 1994, pp. 131. Google Books, https://books.google.com/books?id=pUcTCgAAQBAJ. Accessed 16 Oct. 2018.]
Language
English
Library Location
Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University