The boy attended the common schools and supported himself in Harvard College, where he was graduated in 1860 with distinction.
In 1862-63 he was a captain in the 48th Massachusetts Volunteers, but except for this period spent the Civil War years as principal of the Brown High School in Newburyport, Massachussets, where he married Fanny Stone Balch, Sept. 30, 1863.
In 1865 he became vice-principal and teacher of mathematics in the academy of the newly organized Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.
In 1869 he was made professor of geometry in the university and the next year dean of the polytechnic school and Thayer Professor of Mathematics and Applied Mechanics.
As originator and director from its organization of the St. Louis Manual Training School, opened in 1880 under the auspices of Washington University, he accomplished his most important work.
A large institution for general education on a new and definite plan, admitting boys as young as fourteen, this school became a leading educational experiment of the time and was the model for similar schools quickly established in other cities.
Woodward declared the essential feature of manual training to be "systematic study of tools, processes and materials" (Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1903, 1905, I, 1019), and urged its adoption not only to aid those inclined to industrial life, but as a means of assisting all boys to discover their "inborn capacities and aptitudes whether in the direction of literature, science, engineering or the practical arts" (Ibid. , pp. 1019 - 20).
Career
This post he distinguished until his retirement in 1910.
For girls he advocated domestic science as manual training's counterpart.
In 1886 on invitation from the Royal Commissioner of Education for the United Kingdom he delivered a series of lectures on manual education in Manchester.
He was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1905-06, of the St. Louis Academy of Science, 1907-08, and of the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, 1909-10.
His publications include: A History of the St. Louis Bridge (1881), The Manual Training School (1887), Manual Training in Education (1890), What Shall We Do With Our Boys?
(1898), Rational and Applied Mechanics (1912), "The Change of Front in Education" (Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, vol.
L, 1901), "Lines of Progress in Engineering" (Ibid. , vol.
LIV, 1904), "The Science of Education" (Ibid. , vol.
LVII, 1907), "The Rise and Progress of Manual Training" (Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1893-94, 1896, vol.
I), "At What Age Do Pupils Withdraw from the Public Schools?"
(Ibid. , 1894 - 95, 1896, vol.
II), "Manual, Industrial and Technical Education in the United States" (Ibid. , 1903, vol.
I) and numerous articles in periodicals.
He was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery, Kirkwood, Mo.
The day he was stricken he had spent soliciting funds for a manual training school for negro boys.
In equipment, love for his work, and kindling enthusiasm he approximated the ideal teacher.
[W. S. Heywood, Hist.
of Westminster, Massachussets (1893); Who's Who in America, 1914-15; Wm. Hyde and H. L. Conard, Encyc.
of the Hist.
of St. Louis (1899), vol.
IV; Jour.
of the Asso.
of Engineering Societies, Mar. 1914; L. F. Anderson, Hist.
of Manual and Indus.
School Educ.
(1926); C. P. Coates, Hist.
Religion
Woodward, Calvin Milton, , Massachusetts 1837 1914 Male Educator educator, was born near Fitchburg, Massachussets Great-great-grandson of John Woodward who settled at Westminster, Massachussets, in 1751, he was sixth among eleven children of Isaac Burnapp Woodward, Unitarian farmer and bricklayer, and Eliza Wetherbee, his wife.
Connections
Survived by his widow and three daughters from among their nine children, Woodward died at his home, two days after being seized by paralysis.
Wife:
,
Daughter:
C.
of the Manual Training School of Washington Univ. (U. S. Bureau of Educ., 1923), "The Veering Winds," Industrial Arts Mag., Sept. 1926, and "A Semi-Centennial Tribute to the Memory of Calvin Woodward," Industrial Education, Oct. 1926; C. A. Bennett, "Fifty Years Ago," Ibid., June 1929; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jan. 12, 1914, and St. Louis Republic, Mar. 10, 1910, Jan. 12, 13, 1914; information from Woodward's daughter, Mrs. Fanny Woodward Mabley, of Webster Groves, Mo.
