Main Line School Night, part 4 – “Associated Adult School of Suburban Philadelphia

The Spring term of 1940 was the last which Wayne School Night operated alone. Plans were already well underway for the merger with Lower Merion and by September, 1940, catalogues advertised “The New Radnor-Lower Merion Center of Education, Culture, Fun, The Mecca of the Main Line.” Twenty-nine courses were offered, including one on the “Historic Main Line,” by Harry Emerson Wildes, author of “Valley Forge”, “The Delaware” and “Anthony Wayne.” Another course with a nostalgic backward look was the “Epic of American Transportation.” which featured talks on “Wayside Inns and Conestoga Wagon Days”, “Steamboats on the River,” “From Turnpike to Super Highway” and many others.

In contrast to these two courses one was called “America Looks Ahead”, which attempted to answer some of the questions to be raised by a war that was still only on the horizon as far as our country was concerned. Ten eminent students of world affairs discussed different aspects of America’s future. Among them were Dr. Felix Morley, president of Haverford College; Jesse H. Holmes, professor of Philosophy, Swarthmore College; Dr. Ernest Minor Patterson, president of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and Wilheim Sollman, formerly secretary of the Interior under Chancellor Stresemann of Germany. School Night was attempting to help its students to face the country’s problems squarely.

By this time the “Associated Adult Schools of Suburban Philadelphia” had held several area meetings under the leadership of Mr. Creutzburg, who had been elected president of that group of seven schools. These soon included Upper Darby, Nether Providence, Pitman, N. J., Swarthmore, Cheltenham and Narberth, in addition to the Main Line group. Organized originally as a discussion group when problems common to all the adult schools could be discussed, it had become an invaluable source of information and guidance for new adult schools as they were established.

The school when it went out of existence in 1942 was still operating under Mr. Creutzburg as president; Raymond P. Worrell as vice-president; R. Leland Smaltz as secretary; S. Eugene Kuen, Jr., Philadelphia, as treasurer, and an executive committee composed of Jason L. Fenimore, Wayne; Jacqueline Link, Merion; Wendell B. Stewart, Cynwyd, and Guier S. Wright, Bryn Mawr. These had been chosen from a Board of Directors made up of 15 representatives from Radnor and Lower Merion townships.

In the Spring of 1948, after a silence of almost six years School Night, “by popular request”, was again with us. A short term of six weeks started on March 18 in Lower Merion High School. Its success warranted the resumption of the once-popular adult education program with its Full term held in Radnor High School and its spring term at Lower Merion.

By the Fall term of 1948, the 11th semester for School Night, the even balance between representation from the two townships had again been struck on the Board of Directors. Assisting Mr. Creutzburg as president were R. D. Kreitler as vice-president, Robert W. Trout as secretary and Harry M. Buten as treasurer.

On Monday night of this week, Lincoln’s Birthday, the 16th semester of Main Line School Night inaugurated the first of its ten sessions at Lower Merion. Enrollment was almost 1000 by registration night on February 5, according to Walter Whetstone, Jr., the registrar. This will probably reach about 1300 by the beginning of the second class on February 19. While this does not reach the all-time high of 1612 students of one year ago, it is still an indication of the lasting interest felt in Pennsylvania’s first adult education school, founded in Wayne in February, 1938.

(For the material used in these few articles the writer is indebted to Mr. Creutzburg and to Douglas C. Wendell. The latter kept publicity scrap books concerning School Night which are of increasing value as the years go by.)

Main Line School Night, part 3 – Wayne School Night

From its beginning in the late winter and early spring of 1938 until the fall term of October, 1940, Wayne School Night followed in a general way the original pattern set by its founders when they first conceived the idea in December, 1937. As stated in earlier columns, our local adult school was an adaptation of a highly successful experiment conceived a few years earlier in Maplewood, N. J. Then in the fall of 1940 Lower Merion joined forces with Radnor, thus inaugurating Main Line School Night. Plans called for a fall semester in Wayne each year, and a spring semester in the Lower Merion High School in Ardmore.

For four terms this joint program continued in existence, at first a highly successful one enthusiastically backed by the people of the two adjacent townships and participated in by many from neighboring communities. During the fall term of 1941, however, war clouds were darkening the horizon. In December the catastrophe of Pearl Harbor shook America from coast to coast. The fall term was almost over . . . the School Night board hesitated before launching on its plans for a spring term.

Eventually the decision to continue was made . . . the new catalogue invited the public to “take a vacation from trouble and care . . . come to School Night.”. It was a time of unrest and uncertainty . . . the beginning of a year that saw America’s entry into a war that was to last four long years, for her. Citizens of Lower Merion and Radnor townships and all their neighbors were busy with other matters than “School Night”. There were Civil Defense meetings and classes, Red Cross was organizing classes in First Aid and Home Nursing, Nurses Aides, Gray Ladies. The suburbs were buzzing with wartime activities.

Enrollment in “School Night” classes dropped off from their former high level. Attendance in these classes grew less and less. And then came gas rationing . . . With School Night finances at a low level never before experienced, its Board gave up the struggle. There were no more sessions until March, 1948, when the cheery caption on the on the catalogues stated that “By popular request, School Night again brings you an adult Education Program.”

This brief summary, however, passes over far too lightly the story of School Night up to its revival in the Spring of 1948, the School Night as it will go into its 16th semester on Monday evening, February 12, in Lower Merion High School. To go back a bit . . . on March 27, 1939, the very first annual meeting was held, with thirty members of our community sufficiently interested to serve as directors. Following the general meeting, these directors elected an Executive Board composed of Harry C. Creutzburg as president; T. Bayard Beatty as vice-president; Jason L. Fenimore as treasurer, with Mrs. T. Magill Patterson, Douglas C. Wendell and Paul Clark to complete the Board.

The semester just ending has offered 28 courses. Of the 844 registrants at the time of the annual meeting, 454 had come from outside the township while 390 were residents of it. The significance of this was a little difficult to determine. Perhaps it was because the fame of Wayne’s Adult Education program was spreading all the while. At any rate, before the semester was over, the total registration was approximately 1000.

Thirty courses were offered in the fall of 1939, when registration could be made to William L. Caley, of Wayne, registrar, by mail or in person. There were also registration stations in Ardmore and in Norristown. “Marriage and Family Relationships”, with the Rev. John Scott Everton as moderator, was one of the specially featured courses for those “18 years or older”. Mr. Everton was then pastor of the Wayne Baptist Church. A “Last Minute Flash” announced a Current Events Course “covering world news combined, whenever possible, with a critical analysis of the main currents of propaganda flooding into America over the air and on the printed page.” This was given by Joseph H. Forrest, of Radnor High School.

Other Wayne instructors included Leo M. Curtin, then Director of Physical Education at Radnor High School, who kept three games of indoor baseball going every Monday night. T. Bayard Beatty, Jr., taught a class in pencil drawing; Elizabeth B. McCord conducted a course on “Books of the Day”; Franklin F. Trainer, Jr., had a class in photography so popular that there had to be two sections of it while Henry V. Andrews had another two-section class in public speaking. Isabel Jacobs Ruth taught “Dynamic Diction”, O. Howard Wolfe had a lecture course in “Money and Banking”, C. Chauncey Butler, then instructor in Mathematics in Radnor High School taught “Mathematics for Fun!” Charles C. Smith, also of the High School faculty, had a class in “Frontiers of Modern Science”. Mary Jacobs Wright and Edith Wood Atkinson taught “Contract Bridge”, while James Veeder had charge of “Social Dancing”. In short more than half of the 30 courses had local instructors.

(To be continued)

Main Line School Night, part 2 – Upper Darby Adult School, Wayne School Night

(Your columnist stated in last week’s issue of “The Suburban” that “School Night” had its first session in February, 1939. This date should have been February, 1938.)

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In inaugurating School Night, Wayne had the distinction of being the first community in Pennsylvania to adopt the informal type of adult school, centered in the public school system. In so doing it followed in the footsteps of Maplewood, N. J., which had started its back-to-school experiment four years before, under the direction of Mr. Keith Torbert. However, it was but a short time after the beginning of School Night in Wayne that two other Philadelphia suburban communities took up the idea.

In Upper Darby the Father’s Association of the high school sponsored a short term school beginning two weeks before the spring term of Wayne School Night ended. Then by Fall, Swarthmore had opened its “Adult Night at School” with an enrollment of over 200 in its eleven courses.

At the November meeting of the Lower Merion School Board, its members considered establishment of classes similar to those in operation in Radnor and Upper Darby. Superintendent S. W. Downs was authorized to make an investigation and report back to the Board at a later meeting. However, it was not until October 1940 that such a plan was put into operation when Lower Merion, joining forces with Radnor, formed the Main Line School Night Association.

From its small beginning in the Spring of 1938, the Upper Darby Adult School became a flourishing institution by October of that year. At that time it was offering 22 courses, registering about 1200 by its opening night. May prospective students were turned away from those classes which had limited registration. Additional members in classes with unlimited registration soon brought the total number of students to well past the 1200 mark.

At the same time enrollment in Wayne School Night reached the 700 mark and more with the beginning of its second semester, with registrants coming from 51 other communities. These ranged from points as far away as Camden, Philadelphia, Whitford, Downingtown, Ambler, Chatham Village, Conshohocken, Uwchian and even Claymont, Delaware! Public interest and community support were rapidly growing. Other members were added to the original Board of Directors of 19, as listed in last week’s column. Among these were Mrs. Ruth W. Cady, Dr. A. J. Culver, R. T. Eichelberger, Hubert F. Ellson, Mrs. Charles B. Finley, Dr. Henry G. Fischer, Oliver H. Jackson, Stanton C. Kelton, Hermna Lengel, Mrs. Alex Makarov, John S. Renwick, T. Griffiths Roberts, Mrs. Edwin A. Schoen, Robert Trent and L. M. Wilson.

The Fall program was inagurated with a series of three forum lectures on successive Monday evenings before the formal beginning of the School Night program on Monday, October 10. The first was a talk on “The Crisis in American Civilizaiton”, by Dr. Will Durant, author of a number of thought-challenging books. The second told “What the G-Men are Doing,” a lecture by Major W. H. Drane Lester, an aide to J. Edgar Hoover in the F. B. I. On the third Monday evening Harrison Forman, traveler, explorer, writer and photographer, discussed “The Far East Aflame.”

A special feature article written by H. W. Fry in the evening “Bulletin”, under date of September 30, 1938, had the heading “Fathers and Mothers Go to School” and in further explanation “He Learns Fishing and She Studies Exercises.” The article combined comments on both Wayne’s School Night and Upper Darby’s Adult School, stating among other things that “the courses in both schools represent a blending of the old academic and practical recreational desires of the grown-ups.”

On its editorial page the Main Line “Times” of September 14, 1938 (it was then a daily) said that “School Night is a project worthy of enthusiastic support by all who are interested in the world about them and who seek worthwhile recreation. In addition to the lecture program, bringing some of the nation’s best minds to the Main Line in discussions of problems in the world of today, School Night offers a wide variety of courses in subjects, ranging from basket-weaving to history. It is one of the best examples we have seen of the current widespread movement in adult education.”

“The Suburban” generously supported the hometown project, both on its editorial page and in its news columns. In the former it predicted that “School Night” is here to stay and that in years to come it will seem as indispensable as the public library.” In an edition of later date it urges support for the forum idea instituted in the second semester of School Night. “An ambitious venture for a suburban community?” it asks, and then replies, “No, rather a sane and logical development. Living in the shadow of a great metropolis, we have been too prone to look to the city for cultural and educational entertainment. The Main Line can and should support a forum.”

Even “The Banker” had an article of interest on “School Night in the Schools”, written by Jason L. Fenimore, treasurer of the Wayne Title and Trust Company, and a director of School Night. He writes in particular of two classes of especial importance in banking circles, “Money and Banking”, taught by O. Howard Wolfe, of the Philadelphia National Bank and a resident of Radnor, and “The Anatomy of American Capitalism”, taught by Dr. Karl Anderson of the Economics Department at Bryn Mawr College.

In all some 700 to 800 people enjoyed this first Fall of School Night, which ended with an old-time song-fest to which all were welcome. There were exhibits of the work of various classes, a one-act play by the Dramatic Art group and singing by the choir of men’s and women’s voices, led by Dr. Henry Gordon Thunder. And then everyone joined in the singing of familiar Christmas carols, a happy ending to a good ten weeks of School Night.

Main Line School Night, part 1 – Lower Merion High School, Upper Darby Adult School

On Lincoln’s birthday, February 12, the sixteenth semester of Main Line “School Night” starts in Lower Merion High School. The fact that it is Lincoln’s birthday is purely coincidental in this connection. The interest and importance of the event is that “School Night”, starting in a small way in Wayne in February, 1939, has grown to the point where at the Spring term of one year ago it had reached an enrollment of some 1620 in Lower Merion High School. The first joint session of Wayne and Lower Merion Township was held in the Fall of 1940. Except for a few of the war years “School Night”, either as a Wayne project or later as a Main Line one, sponsored jointly by Radnor and Lower Merion townships, has been in continuous existence as an adult education medium.

To those who were interested in this undertaking in the closing months of 1938 and the early ones of 1939 it is a heartwarming thing to walk towards Radnor High School now on a crisp October Monday evening, or a wintry one in November or early December. The building is ablaze with lights, every moment the wide front doors swing open upon some one intent on reaching his or her class on time. Automobiles are parked for blocks around – pedestrians are coming from every direction, all with one mecca–their adult education school, started 12 years ago by a small group of interested citizens, a school now strengthened and enlarged by union with Lower Merion. Wayne’s first enrollment reached the then rather startling total of over 400. The record enrollment since has been 1200.

To one man more than to any other, or even to any group of men and women, School Night owes its birth in this community–and its continued success as the years go by. Fired with enthusiasm by the success of a similar project in Maplewood (N. J.) and his belief that adult education would be supported in Wayne, Harry Creutzburg initiated “School Night” in his own community, and by enthusiasm and his hard work he has carried it on in Radnor and Lower Merion High Schools until the project has reached the pinnacle of success. From the beginning he has been not only chairman of the organization, but its most ardent backer and hardest working man of all!

In the December issue of “Reader’s Digest” there appeared an article on a highly successful back – to – school experiment that had been started in Maplewood (N. J.) four years before. It was just then joining forces with South Orange, N. J., in greatly enlarged quarters and with a more extensive program of studies. Mr. Creutzburg took the article to A. M. Ehart, editor of “The Suburban”, who was interested enough to republish the article in full in the December 31 issue of his weekly paper. By the January 7 issue of “The Suburban” plans had progressed to the point where definite announcement was made that “early in February . . . one of the most interesting and perhaps far-reaching experiments ever attempted in our community and township will be inaugurated.” Not only was the tentative date set, but a list of subjects for possible courses was presented. It was a long list–out of it some 12 or 14 were to be chosen. In the end this resolved itself into 11, ranging from “Great Personalities of History” to “Pottery”.

Soon every shop window in Wayne and the adjacent suburbs displayed posters advertising the fact that “The Registration Night Party” for “School Night” would be held on January 31 in Radnor High School. By this time “School Night” had been chosen as the official name for the new organization. It has always been the personal opinion of this columnist that Mr. Creutzburg’s simple reversal of the conventional term “Night School” had much to do with the charm and interest always associated with the Wayne experiment.

At the Registration School Night Party, Mr. Creutzburg presided at the meeting held in the High School auditorium. T. Bayard Beatty, then principal of that school, told in detail of his visit to the Maple Adult School and noted their interest in a similar experiment about to be carried out in Wayne. Mrs. T. Magill Patterson, then a member of the Radnor Township School Board, listed the various classes, describing the nature of each of the 11 and telling something of the teachers and lecturers. Dr. Theodore L. Reller, Professor of Adult Education at the University of Pennsylvania, was the principal speaker. A writer and lecturer of note, Dr. Reller told especially of the adult education currently carried on in England and Denmark. Paul Clark concluded the program with instruction on the process of the enrollment which was to follow the meeting.

Some 269 registrants was the sum total of that evening’s enrollment. Later additions brought this up to over 400. Courses included “Horticulture and Gardening”, taught by outstanding members of the National Gardeners Association, the State Department of Agriculture and the Morris Arboretum; “Nearby Colonial History”, taught by S. Paul Teamer, principal, Tredyffrin – Easttown High School; “The Play Way to Health” where the age limits were from “sophomore to senility”, with Miss Elvina Castle and Leo M. Curtin, then director of Physical Training at Radnor High School, as instructors; “Public Speaking” as taught by Henry V. Andrews, Director of Speech at Girard College. Other courses included “Contract Bridge Bidding” with Mrs. Edith Wood Atkinson as teacher; “Great Personalities of History” as taught by Harold C. B. Speight, Dean of Men at Swarthmore College; “Clothing and Personality” with Mrs. Edith T. Bechtel as lecturer; “The Changing Scene” with various lecturers form week to week; “The Land of Youth” as taught by Mrs. Dorothy Waldo Phillips, popular speaker at Parent-Teacher groups; “The Lure of Rod and Line” with various speakers and “Pottery”, a course of short talks, demonstrations and handwork as conducted by E. deForest Curtis.

By the time “School Night” went into its second session it had gained such widespread fame that “news photographers’ flash-bulbs were flaring in every class room” with pictures being taken for the Evening “Public Ledger” and the Sunday “Philadelphia Record”. The New York “Times” had been “making inquiries.” An article had even appeared in the Christian Science “Monitor”.

Enrollment had jumped to 430 and was still going upward. A delegation from Upper Darby, interested in setting up a similar plan in their school, had been conducted through “School Night’s” various classes. Many communities were represented among the registrants of the School. The committee was busy refuting rumors that the teaching expenses of “School Night” were being defrayed in whole or in part by W. P. A. funds. So popular did the public speaking courses become that there were soon three sections instead of one. As many as 42 guest tickets were issued on one night. Questionnaires were being issued to ascertain the students’ preferences among some 50 courses suggested for the Fall term.

The few citizens who had been sufficiently interested in adult education to initiate “School Night” were now assisted by a well-organized committee. Those serving on it were Mr. Creutzburg, chairman; Martin L. Gill, Jr., secretary; Jason I. Fenimore, Jr., treasurer; Mrs. T. Magill Patterson, Paul Clark, T. Bayard Beatty, Mrs. F. Ashby Wallace, John R. Shaw, Dr. Seneca Egbert, Dr. Henry G. Fischer, Warren Lentz, Miss Grace A. Burdick, Rev. John Scott Everton, Leo M. Curtin, Charles R. Mintzer, Mrs. Frederick A. McCord, E. deF. Curtis, Douglas C. Wendell and Rhodes R. Stabley. After 12 years, two of these 19 maintain their membership on the board, Mr. Creutzburg as its chairman and Mrs. Patterson, whose membership has never lapsed since the beginning. Death removed Dr. Egbert some years ago. Change of residence has taken others while different interests have diverted the remainder.

(To be continued)