Background

James Earl Russell was born on his father's farm near Hamden, Delaware County, N. Y. , the only son and the eldest of nine children of Charles and Sarah (McFarlane) Russell. His father's parents had come to the United States from Falkirk, Scotland, about 1818. His mother had grown up in the vicinity of Hamden.

Education

Russell received his early education in the local rural schools and at Delaware Academy in nearby Delhi. In 1883 he won a New York State Regents' scholarship to Cornell University, where in his senior year he concentrated in classical philology and philosophy under the tutelage of Benjamin Ide Wheeler and Jacob Gould Schurman. He received the A. B. degree in 1887 with first honors in philosophy. Later he studied pedagogy at Jena under Wilhelm Rein and received the Ph. D. degree in 1894.

Career

Deciding on a teaching career, Russell taught Latin and Greek for three years in private preparatory schools and in 1890 became headmaster of the Cascadilla School in Ithaca, N. Y. While in Ithaca he also served as review editor of the School Review, an educational journal established by Schurman, for which he systematically reviewed educational literature from throughout the world.

Dissatisfied with the rigid formalism prevailing in American secondary schools, Russell determined to study the systems used in other countries, and in 1893 he resigned his headmastership and went to Germany. He worked with Johannes Volkelt (philosophy), Friedrich Ratzel (geography), and Wilhelm Wundt (psychology) in Leipzig in 1894. He also visited secondary schools in France and England. Although he fundamentally disliked the authoritarian and antidemocratic characteristics of the German empire, Russell was favorably impressed by the training given to German teachers and by the way the German educational system prepared individuals for their roles in society.

Russell left Germany convinced that the subjects taught and the methods used in public education should reflect the underlying philosophy and the pragmatic needs of a country; that in a democracy education should assist all citizens to realize their highest intellectual and occupational capacities; that a high degree of professional training was necessary and desirable for teachers; and that education itself was a subject worthy of study and research at the university level.

Returning to the United States in 1895, Russell accepted an appointment as professor of philosophy and pedagogy at the University of Colorado at Boulder. During his two-year stay, he successfully reorganized and expanded the university's program for the training of teachers. He also began to achieve a national reputation through his publications and through his increasing activity in state and national educational associations.

In September 1897 Russell accepted an invitation to become head of the department of psychology at Teachers College in New York City, then a struggling normal school affiliated with Columbia University and primarily concerned with training kindergarten, domestic science, and manual training teachers. The affiliation with Columbia was in danger of being terminated because of philosophical and jurisdictional disputes between an influential group of Teachers College trustees and representatives of Columbia headed by President Seth Low and Prof. Nicholas Murray Butler. Russell was able to win the confidence of all parties to the controversy and proposed a new administrative arrangement by which Teachers College became a professional school and an integral part of the university structure. Within three months after his arrival in New York, he was named dean.

Over the next few years Russell developed a concept and a curriculum for a professional school of education of university caliber. He early began bringing to the faculty outstanding young men and women who shared his educational vision. He helped them see the possibilities for teaching and research in their fields, and then left them free to build their own programs; thus, while he gained wide respect within his profession, he never achieved so great a popular reputation as did some of his faculty.

Russell possessed a remarkable ability to recognize talent. Among the new faculty members he recruited, at a time when they were still relatively unknown, were Edward L. Thorndike in experimental psychology, David Snedden in educational sociology, David Eugene Smith in mathematics, Mary Swartz Rose in nutritional chemistry, Thomas D. Wood in physical education and hygiene, Paul Monroe in the history of education, George D. Strayer in educational administration, and William H. Kilpatrick in educational theory and philosophy. John Dewey, the Columbia philosopher, also lectured at Teachers College.

Russell's strong belief in the importance of research in education led to the establishment by Teachers College of the experimental Speyer School in 1902 and the Lincoln School in 1917, as well as the Institute of Educational Research (1921), the International Institute (financed in 1923 by a $1, 000, 000 grant from the International Education Board), and the Institute of Child Welfare Research (1924). His belief that trained educators were needed in many areas outside the traditional academically oriented schools led him to encourage the establishment at Teachers College of programs for such fields as nursing, rural education, scouting, citizenship education, adult education, and vocational education. Throughout his career at Teachers College, Russell received strong support from an influential and devoted group of trustees headed by Grace H. Dodge and V. Everit Macy, who not only admired his professional vision but also respected his efficient management of the College's resources.

When he retired from the deanship of Teachers College in 1927, the trustees chose as his successor his son William, himself an educator of note. In retirement James Russell devoted his time to other educational activities. He had helped organize the American Association of Adult Education and served as its first president, 1926-30, and thereafter as chairman and then honorary chairman until his death. He was a member of the National Council on Radio in Education, and worked in a variety of capacities with the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and 4-H Club organizations.

Russell was also known in agricultural circles for his scientific breeding of dairy cattle. His Glenburnie Farm herds of Guernsey cattle, maintained first near Peekskill, N. Y. , and later near Lawrenceville, N. J. , were famous for their bloodlines and for their milk production records. He served on the New Jersey Milk Control Board and, from 1932 to 1940, as a member of the New Jersey State Board of Health. He died of cancer at his home in Trenton, N. J. , in 1945, at the age of eighty-one; his ashes were placed in the family plot in the cemetery at Lawrenceville, N. J.

Achievements

• During Russell's tenure, Teachers College became the "intellectual crossroads" of the progressive education movement in the United States. He developed college into the nation's leader in the advanced training of elementary and secondary school teachers, administrators, and supervisors. The College's enrollment grew from 169 students in 1897 to nearly 5, 000 in 1927, its budget expanded from $250, 000 to $2, 500, 000, its physical plant from two buildings to seventeen, and its endowment from nothing to nearly $3, 000, 000. In three decades it had become perhaps the largest and most influential university school of education in the world. He also wrote several articles on German education which received wide attention in the United States and were collected as "German Higher Schools" (1899); Abraham Flexner called the book one of the best studies ever made of German education.

Works

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  • American Education Series. The Trend in American Education - New York, Boston, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Chicago: 1922

    ( About the Book Books dealing with State and local histo...)

  • German Higher Schools the History, Organization and Methods, Secondary Education in Germany (Classic Reprint)

    (No apology is necessary, I assume, in presenting to the r...)

  • The Trend in American education

    ( About the Book Books about Teaching Methods discuss th...)

  • Founding Teachers College: Reminiscences of the Dean Emeritus (The Grace H. Dodge lectures)

    (FULL TITLE "Founding Teachers College: Reminiscences of t...)

  • German Higher Schools: The History, Organization, and Methods of Secondary Education in Germany - Primary Source Edition

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • Die Volkshochschulen (German Edition)

    (Die Volkshochschulen by James Earl Russell. This book is ...)

  • Industrial Education: Cop.2

Membership

Member of the National Council on Radio

Connections

Russell married Agnes Fletcher in Delhi, N. Y. , on June 19, 1899. They had four sons: William Fletcher, Charles, James Earl, and John McFarlane. After his first wife's death in 1927, Russell married Alice Forman Wyckoff on January 24, 1929.

Father:

Charles Russell

Mother:

Sarah (McFarlane) Russell

Spouse:

Agnes Fletcher

Spouse:

Alice Forman Wyckoff

Son:

Charles Russell

Son:

William Fletcher Russell

Son:

John McFarlane Russell

Son:

James Earl Russell