Memoirs of Mary D. Bradford
Subtitle: autobiographical and historical reminiscences of education in Wisconsin, through progressive service from rural school teaching to city superintendent
By: illustrated with photographs
Publisher: The Antes press
Published: 1932
Place of publication: Evansville, Wis
Language: eng
Number of pages: 542
Subjects: Education; History
Description: Born in the farming community of Paris, Kenosha County, in 1856, Mary Davison Bradford was forced by her father's ill health to begin teaching at the age of sixteen, before she had finished high school, and she continued to work actively as an educator until 1922. Bradford describes how she taught in small rural schools, in the expanding Kenosha system, and at centers of educational experimentation such as Central State Teachers College at Stevens Point and the Stout Training School at Menomonie. Eventually appointed Superintendent of Schools in Kenosha, Bradford instituted kindergarten, vocational training programs, breakfast programs for needy children, and politically independent procurement and hiring processes, and advocated courses in citizenship and health education. Bradford's autobiography chronicles the development of Wisconsin's public school system in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Wisconsin had a strong commitment to primary, secondary, and higher public education in this era, and Bradford's work reflects at the grassroots level many of the pedagogic reforms then sweeping the country.
Notes: "All of this book except the last three chapters and the appendix appeared serially in ʻThe Wisconsin magazine of history.ʾ"--Foreword.