Left. Idealized Childhood. Image from Children's Singing Games. Mari Ruef Hofer, 1901/revised 1914. Right: Montreal children attending 'camp' at Lake Chapleau (circa) 1911. From brochure Old Brewery Mission. Mountain Air Work. "1,000 women and children in 1912" "$8.00 will keep one woman and four children. No boys over 8 years.

1912 was the year the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Quotient test was published and the term IQ entered the lexicon. Also that year Maria Montessori published her international bestseller about her experiences teaching in the slums of Rome, and the Montessori Method was born.

Ironically, the two theories seem to contradict each other. The IQ test measures a child's intellectual potential in relation to other children and seems to say 'biology is destiny' and the Montessori Method infers that each child is a well of unique potential, and that traditional education is a form of slavery; Maria Montessori believed that children learn best at their own pace and only need guidance from adults and the proper environment to learn.

Both theories have had a huge influence on  20^th century education. The Ladies Home Journal wrote about Montessori in their October 1913 issue, so no doubt the Nicholsons knew about it.

The Montessori Method, still considered by some a 'revolutionary' theory, did not come out of nowhere. Over the previous decades - with raising economic standards - it had been dawning on people that children had an inner life, that they were flowers to be nurtured and not clay to be moulded.

Not so surprisingly, the Eugenics Movement was launched in 1910, according to Elaine Dewar in The Second Tree. With eugenics, the human race could eliminate 'defectives', the insane, the blind and deaf and, in some people's minds, prisoners, paupers, even people with red hair, applying the principles of Darwin and Mendel. Even Alexander Graham Bell (whose wife was deaf) signed on as chair person, apparently. Carrie Derick, founder of the Montreal Suffrage Association in 13 was a botanist/geneticist (and Canada's first female full professor)  and also a proponent of not-so-natural-selection, proving again that ALL THINGS ARE CONNECTED. So Derick was a feminist and suffragist, but not NECESSARILY a social reformer who believed "all men are created equal."  Read this excellent thesis on the Canadian eugenics movement and Derick's prominent place. The eugenics movement was inherently racist since immigrants were often considered carriers of deficient genes. But Carrie Derick was President of the Montreal Council of Women in 1912 and the MCW was sympathetic to the  immigrant plight, more than most people anyway. Read The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould if you have a chance.

Read some excerpts from A Course In Play,  Educational Foundations. November 1909. CLICK HERE