Background
John Milton Gregory was born at Sand Lake, New York, of transplanted New England stock, a son of Joseph G. Gregory, farmer-tanner, and Rachel Bullock.
(A classic treatise on excellence in teaching for over 100...)
A classic treatise on excellence in teaching for over 100 years, John Milton Gregory's The Seven Laws of Teaching continues to make a great impact on teachers. It explores seven basic principles of education teachers can use to improve their effectiveness in the classroom, including the laws of teaching, the teacher, the learner, the language, the lesson, the teaching process, the learning process, and review and application. Teachers of all kinds-in public schools, in churches, and in business-can use this classic to become better educators.
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John Milton Gregory was born at Sand Lake, New York, of transplanted New England stock, a son of Joseph G. Gregory, farmer-tanner, and Rachel Bullock.
His early education was received in a village school near his home and in Poughkeepsie Academy. He graduated from Union College in the class of 1846 when Eliphalet Nott was in mid-career as president.
After a brief period of teaching and studying law he was ordained to the Baptist ministry in 1847 and served in pastorates in Hoosick Falls, New York, and Akron, Ohio. He made a definite shift to educational work in 1852 when he took charge of a private high school in Detroit, Mich.
He joined the newly organized Michigan State Teachers’ Association in 1853 and soon became a founder and editor of the Michigan Journal of Education, thus inaugurating a progressive career of thirty years of leadership in public education in the Middle West.
He was elected superintendent of public instruction for Michigan and by réélection served from January 1, 1859, until 1864 when he refused réélection in order to accept the presidency of Kalamazoo College, a position which he held for three years. As superintendent he was ex officio a member and secretary of the Michigan state board of education which until 1861 was charged with the management of the Michigan State Agricultural College. First-hand knowledge of the workings of a new land-grant college in its early stages which he gained, together with his experience at Kalamazoo, fitted him for the beginning of his influential career as the first regent (president) of the Illinois Industrial University (now the University of Illinois) after its creation in 1867. In Illinois, as in other western states where land-grant colleges were established, strong pressure was exerted to insure a “practical” institution for farmers and mechanics.
The new regent sensed fully the meaning of this pressure but with the aid of several able members of the board of trustees he formulated clearly his “grand idea” of a new type of tax-supported institution for all the people of the state, “a true University. .. its central educational courses, while equally broad and liberal. .. to be selected to fit men for the study and mastery of the great branches of industry, rather than to serve as introductions to the study of law, medicine and theology”.
The next thirteen years he gave enthusiastically to building up a university, not a mere vocational school, in spite of inadequate revenues, public indifference, opposition in the faculty, and disciplinary difficulties with the students. Resigning as regent in 1880, he devoted several years to writing, travel, and incidental public service. Three times he served on commissions connected with international expositions: as United States commissioner to the Vienna Exposition in 1873; as judge in the educational department of the Centennial Exposition in 1876; and as Illinois commissioner to the Paris Exposition of 1878.
In 1881 he served as president of the Illinois State Board of Health, and later for about a year, as general superintendent of the educational work of the American Baptist Home Mission Society, concerning himself largely with schools in the South.
Two books came out of these years: A New Political Economy and The Seven Laws of Teaching, besides numerous published articles and addresses on educational subjects. Upon the organization of the first United States Civil Service Commission in 1883, he was appointed as one of the three members, resigning in 1885. He then spent five years abroad.
His last years were spent in literary, community, and religious work in Maryland, in California, and in Washington, D. C. , where he died.
(A classic treatise on excellence in teaching for over 100...)
He was twice married, in 1848 to Julia Gregory, a cousin, who bore him five children; in 1879 to Louisa C. Allen by whom he had one daughter who became his biographer.