Friends & Education
Quaker Education
The Historical Connection between FGC and Education
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting's "Covenant on Education"
It's in the Walls
Love is Our Subject Matter and our Process
Book Review: "Radical Presence: Teaching as Contemplative Practice"
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The Historical Connection between FGC and Education
By Deborah Haines
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Council on Education? The Friends Council on Education (FCE) serves Quaker education by advising and consulting with schools about their work as Friends institutions. Council schools include nursery, elementary, and secondary schools in the United States. The seventy-eight schools served are some of the oldest in North America, with traditions that play a major part in the Quaker heritage of the Western World. The Council promotes the development of the theory and practice of Quaker education. It helps schools define and maintain their identities, visions, and missions as religious institutions under the care of the Religious Society of Friends. Heads of schools, board members, administrators, and teachers in member schools all utilize the services of the Council. The Friends Council on Education encourages Friends Schools to work cooperatively on projects related to Quakerism and its Testimonies. It also acts as a clearing house for "best practices" in Quaker education so that all Friends schools can share their knowledge and resources. The Council serves as the voice for Quaker schools to the Religious Society of Friends, the educational community, and in the national dialogue on education.
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For more about the work of FCE please contact them at: Friends Council on Education, 1507 Cherry St., Philadelphia, PA 19102. Phone: 215-241-7245. Fax: 215-241-7299. Email: QuakerEd@aol.com. Web: http://friendscouncil.org |
he Friends Education Conference was organized in 1896, as part of the great gathering at Swarthmore College, which also included the Friends Philanthropic Union, the First Day School Association and the Friends Religious Conference. Four years later, in Chautauqua, New York, the Education Conference became one of the four founding partners in the establishment of FGC.
From the beginning the Education Conference included Friends from all seven Hicksite yearly meetings, stretching from Philadelphia to Illinois. Their mission was to strengthen and improve Quaker schools and to promote the ideals of liberal education among Friends. Early topics of discussion included: whether Friends should continue to support their own elementary schools, or throw their support to the expanding public schools; the place of physical education in developing well rounded students; the proposed establishment of teacher training institutes for Quaker teachers; and how to encourage more Friends to send their children to college, especially to Swarthmore College, founded in 1869 as the Hicksite response to Orthodox Haverford.
The conferences gave Friends involved in education a chance to share their ideas, their concerns, and their enthusiasm. The sense of community was especially important to those from rural and outlying areas. As Hannah Plummer remarked after the closing session of the Education Conference at Chautauqua: "These papers have had the same effect on me as martial music upon an old war-horse. Education has always been one of my great interests in life."
After 1900, "Education" became one of the standing program committees of FGC. In 1930, the Education Committee took steps to establish the Friends Council on Education to give full time attention to their concerns. The new organization thrived, and for the next three decades the FGC Education Committee served as little more than a liaison to FCE, until being laid down 1966. In 2000 the Friends Council on Education, long totally independent, was freed from any further responsibility to report to its parent body.
From FGConnections. Friends General Conference, 1216 Arch Street 2B, Philadelphia, PA 19107. Connections Home and Past Issues
