The Oxford Stamp, and Other Essays: Articles from the Educational Creed of an American Oxonian
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
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Franklin Ridgeway Aydelotte was an American educator. He was active in the Rhodes Scholar program, helped evacuate intellectuals persecuted by the Nazis during the 1930s and served as director of the Institute for Advanced Study during World War II.
Background
Franklin Aydelotte was born on October 16, 1880 in Sullivan, Indiana, United States to William Ephraim Aydelotte, a prosperous proprietor of a wooden mill, and Matilda Brunger Aydelotte. According to records Aydelotte had at least one sister.
Education
Aydelotte attended Indiana University where he was an English major. He graduated in 1900. Then he took Major of Arts in English at Harvard in 1903.
Aydelotte also became one of the first Rhodes Scholars and studied at Brasenose College, Oxford University.
Career
Upon graduating Frank Aydelotte worked briefly as a reporter and then taught English at the Southwestern State Normal School in California, Pennsylvania, for six months.
From 1901 to 1902 he taught at Indiana University and then took a break from work to take the Master's degree in English at Harvard which he accomplished in 1903.
He then taught for two years at Louisville Male High School in Louisville, Kentucky.
In 1905 he won a Rhodes Scholarship and studied at Brasenose College of Oxford University. The Oxford experience was crucial in shaping Aydelotte's philosophy of higher education.
Aydelotte married Marie Jeanette Osgood on June 23, 1907, and by the terms of the Rhodes Trust, Aydelotte was compelled to resign his scholarship after he married; but the couple remained at Oxford until late 1907, while he completed the requirements for the Bachelor of Letters.
Aydelotte was drawn less to scholarly research than to seeking the most effective ways of teaching English literature and rhetoric to American undergraduates, whose motivation tended to be more vocational than intellectual. Thus, he became associate professor of English at Indiana early in 1908 and was professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1915 to 1921. From 1914 to 1921 he was editor of the American Oxonian, and in 1917 he became American secretary of the Rhodes Trust.
Widely known to educators and foundation executives, in 1921 he accepted the presidency of Swarthmore College, an institution of 500 students and fifty teachers. Aydelotte wasn't impressed with the way the College operated when he became President, so he immediately started implemented changes, most notably the Honors program similar to the practices he faced in Oxford University. He introduced the Honors program at Swarthmore, based on his experiences at Oxford.
Based on the premise that the only true education is self-education, the system created seminar courses for selected students that were more challenging than the regular curriculum. These students would not receive grades or examinations, but took oral examinations at the end of the senior year given by external examiners. This replaced the lecture method of teaching for the advanced students, and introduced the notion of the students reaching the faculty. This method of teaching has become the signature of a Swarthmore College education.
That and a variety of smaller administrative decisions expanded the college to an economically viable size and developed a broad-based liberal arts educational curriculum that stressed academic excellence.
In 1940 Aydelotte left Swarthmore to become the second director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. He had been a trustee since its founding in 1930 and had known Abraham Flexner, the founding director, since their days as schoolteachers in Louisville. Flexner had ruled the institute autocratically; after his departure, staff and scholars insisted on greater voice in its administration. Aydelotte's tenure at the institute was the least satisfying phase of his career. Financial constraints complicated the introduction of provisions for scaled compensation and for annuities after retirement, and the outbreak of World War II and personal conflicts among scholars created much unhappiness. He retired in 1947 and was succeeded by J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Aydelotte was able to do many things well because of his robust constitution, sanguine disposition, capacity to distinguish the essence from the miscellany, and unusual skill in personal relationships.
Connections
On June 23, 1907 he married Marie Jeanette Osgood; they had one son.