Caroline Pratt
Pioneer of Progressive Education
A trailblazer and a visionary, Caroline Pratt pursued – and then transformed – one of the few career paths available to women of her time and one of the few true pathways available for social mobility: education.
“Children learn eagerly and well when they have need of the knowledge.”
“Childhood’s work is learning, and it is in his play...that the child works at his job.”
Caroline Pratt’s story
Did you know?
Caroline Pratt led a vibrant life as part of a community of progressive artists, labor organizers and progressive thinkers in the bustling Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. She lived with her life partner, Helen Marot, who was a writer, librarian and labor organizer focused on child labor and working conditions for women, until Marot’s death in 1940.
Caroline Pratt is the inventor of the unit blocks that are ubiquitous in early childhood classrooms to this day
She was the writer of one of the most powerful, and practical, texts on progressive education, I Learn from Children.
Caroline Pratt was one of, if not the first, educator to put the new progressive education ideas of the early 1900s into actual practice
Caroline Pratt was the founder of City and Country School
Early Years
Born in Fayetteville, New York, in 1867, she attended primary school while enjoying the freedom and independence of active play in her rural hometown. She spent time working with and observing farmers and craftspeople.
After graduating high school, she began teaching first grade in the village school. This led to her moving to New York City and enrolling at Teachers College for further training.
Her initial studies mirrored her time working in early childhood education but the Manual Training Shop caught her attention. After graduating, she took a position at the Philadelphia Normal School for Girls, developing her understanding of the transformative power of hands-on learning while teaching future teachers woodworking. In both experiences, her worlds of education and active play began to converge but the constraints of existing opportunities and conventional approaches proved frustrating.
Life’s Work
Pratt returned to New York ready to develop her own school and design her own materials and methods. In 1913, she opened the experimental Play School with an inaugural kindergarten class. Here, school would focus on drawing out children’s innate curiosity via open-ended, play-based, hands-on learning including running school stores or a post office and a practice Pratt innovated — field trips.
Pratt herself manufactured the first wood unit blocks. These simple shapes allowed children to engage with complex ideas. The Rhythms program invited movement, music and materials such as balls, hoops, and balloons as tools of student expression.
The school expanded with the support of Lucy Sprague Mitchell, who served as the Play School’s first kindergarten teacher and went on to found Bank Street College and School for Children. In 1921, it was renamed the City and Country School, one of the first progressive schools in the country.
Legacy
Caroline Pratt remained principal of the City and Country School until her retirement in 1945, and she served as principal emerita until her death in 1954.
The integrated curriculum framework developed at City and Country School is still in use today and the school remains a leader in the field. Pratt’s memoir, I Learn from Children, part of the canon of progressive education. Wooden unit blocks are now one of the common, versatile and dynamic materials of the preschool classroom.
Her life partner, Helen Marot, was a labor activist focused on the conditions of women working in the textile industry in New York. Part of a circle of women reformers, Pratt and Marot’s life in New York revolved around the Progressive Era’s efforts to improve the lives of women, children, and workers and reimagine what was possible in the world.