Malcolm Paul Douglass

Background

Malcolm Douglass was born on August 18, 1923, in Pullman, Washington. He was the son of Aubrey Douglass.

Education

Malcolm Douglass completed high school in Sacramento before enrolling at Pomona College in 1941. After fighting in Europe as a United States infantryman during World War II, he earned his Bachelor of Arts from Pomona College in 1947, followed by a Master of Arts from Columbia University in 1948 and a Doctor of Education from Stanford University in 1954.

Career

Malcolm Douglass was a noted reading teacher and theorist who was director of the Claremont Reading Conference. His teaching career began at public schools in Sacramento and San Lorenzo, during the late 1940s and early 1950s. From 1950 to 1954, he was also an elementary school principal in San Lorenzo. Malcolm began his long career at what is now Claremont Graduate University in 1954 as an assistant professor.

Malcolm Douglass moved up to a professor of education from 1963 until his retirement in 1994. In 1971 he founded the Center for Developmental Studies in Education and served there as a director until 1989. Malcolm was also the director of the Claremont Reading Conference from 1959 to 1989.

Besides, Malcolm Douglass was a writer. As a reading teacher, he had researched methods of reading instruction around the world. He wrote about his theories in such books as The History, Psychology, and Pedagogy of Geographic Literacy and through editing the Claremont Reading Conference series for four decades. Other of his works included Social Studies: From Theory to Practice in Elementary Education, Reading in Education: A Broader View, Learning to Read: The Quest for Meaning, and several scholarly articles.

Achievements

• Malcolm Douglass was widely known as an educator and writer. He was an emeritus professor of education at the Claremont Graduate University. Also, Malcolm was a founder of the Center for Developmental Studies in Education. As a writer, his books included The History, Psychology, and Pedagogy of Geographic Literacy, Social Studies: From Theory to Practice in Elementary Education, Reading in Education: A Broader View, and Learning to Read: The Quest for Meaning.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The History, Psychology, and Pedagogy of Geographic Literacy

    (This book brings to teachers and others concerned about e...)

    1998
  • Social Studies 1967
  • Reading in education 1973
  • Learning to Read 1989

Views

As a reading teacher who had researched methods of reading instruction around the world, Malcolm Douglass was an advocate of the "whole language" approach that says that children learn to read better through exposure to good books rather than by focusing only on grammar and spelling. Malcolm also believed that students in many foreign countries were more proficient readers in part because they started school later and thus had more experience with the language before formal instruction began. One example was Norway, where Douglass spent several months in 1969 studying the schools and their approach to reading. The key factors he found in that nation’s success included having teachers stay with the same students for at least three years and teaching all students together instead of separating them by ability. He also noted that Norwegian students did not begin school until age 7 when they were more prepared to master the instruction.

Quotations: "There's a long tradition in this country that you learn to read by studying reading and that people who have problems just didn't study very well. But increasingly, we understand this isn't where the problem is."

Connections

Malcolm Douglass was married to Enid Marie. They had three children: Malcolm Jr., John Aubrey, and Susan Douglass Yates.

Father:

Aubrey Douglass

Aubrey Douglass was a founding faculty member at what became Claremont Graduate School. He went on to serve as California's associate superintendent of education under Governor Earl Warren.

Wife:

Enid Marie Douglass

Enid Marie Douglass's maiden name was Hart. From 1982 to 1986, she served as the city's mayor.

Son:

Malcolm Paul Douglass Jr.

Paul Douglass is a professor emeritus of English and American Literature at San Jose State University, where he directed the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies and the Steinbeck Fellows Program. He is the author of Lady Caroline Lamb: A Biography, and co-editor, with Frederick Burwick, of a facsimile edition of Lord Byron and Isaac Nathan's A Selection of Hebrew Melodies, Ancient and Modern.

Son:

John Aubrey Douglass

John Aubrey Douglass is a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California - Berkeley. He is the co-editor of Globalization's Muse: Universities and Higher Education Systems in a Changing World, and the author of The Conditions for Admissions and The California Idea and American Higher Education.

Daughter:

Susan Douglass Yates