William McAndrew was an American school administrator.
Background
William McAndrew was born on August 20, 1863 in Ypsilanti, Michigan. He was the younger of two children (both boys) of William and Helen (Walker) McAndrew. His father, who had come to the United States from Scotland, at first engaged in the furniture business and later assisted his wife, the first woman doctor in Michigan, in the management of the sanatorium which she had established. Both parents were liberal minded; they shared in conducting Sunday afternoon forums, held in an Ypsilanti barn, where such figures as Susan B. Anthony and John B. Gough were frequent guests.
Education
As early as his college days at the University of Michigan McAndrew demonstrated the traits of temperament that were to make him a vigorous if not always a popular administrator. As a freshman he wrote a theme on educational mismanagement, and he later wrote notes to faculty members on the value of their courses. Graduating in 1886, he at once entered the field of education as superintendent of schools for St. Clair, Mich. He subsequently received the degree of M. Pd. from the State Normal College at Ypsilanti in 1916.
Career
In 1889 McAndrew went to Chicago as a teacher at the Hyde Park High School, becoming principal shortly afterward. He was discharged in 1891, according to his own account because he had refused to affix his name to "a lie on a diploma stating that the son of a book publisher had successfully completed a course of study. " Disillusioned, he left education to become advertising manager and district passenger agent for the Great Northern Railway in St. Paul, Minn. In 1892, however, he accepted the position of principal in the high school of Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, N. Y. He remained there as principal until 1914. Although offered the post of superintendent of schools in Detroit in 1912, McAndrew after some deliberation refused, and in 1914 he was elected associate superintendent of the New York City schools, in which position he served for ten years. In 1924 McAndrew was called to Chicago to take over a school system badly riddled by political manipulation under the recent administration of Mayor William Hale Thompson. He embarked vigorously on a program of reform, but many of his measures conveyed the implication that the teaching staff itself had been negligent. More important, his efforts to institute a tightly disciplined chain of command ran directly counter to the prevailing philosophy of the Chicago school system, that of Ella Flagg Young, which gave the teachers a substantial advisory voice in the evolution of policy through quarterly "teachers' councils. " McAndrew's abolition of these councils aroused widespread and bitter hostility among the teaching staff. When "Big Bill" Thompson sought to return to office in 1927 he seized on this discontent and made the promise to oust McAndrew one of the major issues of his campaign. Characteristically linking it with an appeal to Chicago's substantial German and Irish groups, he charged that McAndrew a "stool pigeon of King George" had introduced pro-British history textbooks into the schools. Elected on this and other issues, Thompson had his school board suspend McAndrew and subject him to a four months' public "trial" devoted chiefly to the textbook charges, after which he was dismissed. The dismissal was subsequently overruled by the courts. McAndrew devoted the rest of his career to writing and lecturing. From 1928 on he reviewed (frequently in quaint style) forty or more books a month for School and Society, conducted the philosophical "Happy to Say" page in the Nation's Schools, and made almost innumerable speeches for teachers' associations, graduating classes, and other gatherings. He died of cancer at his home in Mamaroneck, N. Y. , at the age of seventy-three and was buried at Ypsilanti.
Achievements
Views
The New York state department of education and the daily press supported his ideas on discipline, pupil self-government, sororities, one-dollar graduation dresses, demonstrations of infant care, and many other live topics that made his school the most favorably publicized secondary school in the city. He believed firmly that schools should fit youth for the citizenship needed in a democracy.
Personality
Imaginative and bold in thought and speech, McAndrew was master of a direct, trenchant style both on the platform and with his pen. Always a man of colorful personality, he stood out as one of the strongest and most rugged individualists in public education.
Connections
McAndrew had married Susan Irvine Gurney of Dover, Maine, in 1893. They had three children: Helen, Mary, and John.