Marietta Johnson
Radical Educator
and
Instrument of God‟s Peace
I‘d like to make clear from the beginning that I do not fashion
myself an authority on Marietta Johnson‘s spirituality. I have
simply prepared a presentation of my interpretation of readings
about her work that I have come across and how they seem to me
to indicate a very spiritual perspective. Many of you may have a
greater understanding of Marietta Johnson‘s work having
attended the Organic School yourselves and quite possibly there
are those of you who have differing perspectives on her work. I
thank you for allowing me to present mine to you here.
Just as the philosopher Jean Jacque Rousseau paved the way
for the French Revolution and Tolstoy, the Bolshevik
Revolution, Marietta Johnson at the turn of the last century
dreamed of paving the way for a revolution in the education of
children. Education was life itself to Marietta Johnson and
should be a growing, changing, life-long process which she
chose to call ―Organic.‖ Her radical philosophy of education was
indeed revolutionary and was made practical in the experimental
school she founded in Fairhope, Alabama. In 1907, believing that
organic education was the ―salvation of the day‖ Mrs. Johnson
said, ‖Let the triune organism – body , mind, spirit – develop
today and tomorrow we will approach perfection.―
Let me back up a bit here and tell you a little about how
Marietta Johnson came to believe so strongly in her organic
method of educating children. Born Marietta Louise Pierce on
October 8, 1864, near St. Paul, Minnesota, she grew up in a
closely knit, farming family that included a twin sister and six
other siblings. Marietta attended public school in St. Paul and
graduated in 1885 from the State Normal School at St. Cloud.
She began her work as a teacher with five years of service in
rural Minnesota schools and taught every elementary school
grade and several high school subjects on her way to becoming a
"training" or "critic" teacher in the normal schools at St. Paul and
Moorhead, Minnesota. She had an enthusiastic and charismatic
personality and her faith in herself was always a hallmark of her
personal style.
That faith was shaken however to its foundation in 1901,
when she had an epiphany of sorts which she called ―a
conversion experience." Marietta Johnson used this religious
imagery to explain the intensity of her experience which began
when she read the 1898 book, The Development of the Child, by
Nathan Oppenheim. Dr. Oppenheim was a pediatrician at Mt.
Sinai Hospital in New York City and one of the country‘s first
child developmental theorists. He wrote, "The world has a wrong
idea of its children." Parents and teachers who think of children
as "adults in small" and of childhood as a time for mastering
adult behavior are causing children harm--in some cases
irreparable harm.‖
According to Dr. Oppenheim, children are "absolutely
different from adults, not only in size, but also in every element
which goes to make up the final state of maturity." Seeing
children as constantly changing, Oppenheim wrote that they
needed "special treatment and a special environment" to guide
and encourage their development.
As Marietta Johnson read on, she began to question virtually
everything she had ever learned about teaching. She felt remorse
and shame at what she had been teaching teachers and convinced
herself that her efforts had violated the "order of development of
the child‘s nervous system". Marietta Johnson‘s revolutionary
method of educating children resulted from this awareness and
she called Dr. Oppenheim's book her "Educational Bible."
Supplemented with works by John Dewey, Friedrick Froebel and
other child-centered educators as well as the spiritual writings of
Emmett Fox and philosophers Thoreau and Rousseau, Marietta
Johnson‘s philosophy took its shape.
I‘d like to call your attention to lines written by some of the
spiritual writers and philosophers whose works influenced
Marietta Johnson‘s philosophy of education. Along-side these
quotes are ones by Marietta Johnson which demonstrate the
similarities in their thinking.
“What you get by
achieving your
goals is not as
important as what
you become by
achieving your
goals.”
Henry David Thoreau
“Why is it that
with increased
intellectual power,
we often have
tremendous
spiritual poverty?”
Marietta Johnson
”We should not
teach children the
sciences; but give
them a taste for
them.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“All teachers and
parents should use
the motto:
„Direction without
domination; liberty
without license.‟
Marietta Johnson
“Make no
comparisons with
other children – no
competitors.”
Jean-Jacque Rousseau
“I want him to learn,…
not from books but
from things,”
Jean-Jacque Rousseau
“Any school system in
which one child may
fail while another
succeeds is unjust,
undemocratic,
uneducational.“
Marietta Johnson
“Instead of being
taught facts, children
should be helped to
understand their
experiences.”
Marietta Johnson
“One of the first
conditions of
happiness is that the
link between Man and
Nature shall not be
broken.”
Leo Tolstoy
“In the name of God,
stop a moment, cease
your work, look
around you.”
Leo Tolstoy
“All children need
nature and to enjoy
and experience
things out of doors
– all this is highly
educational for
younger and also
for older children.”
Marietta Johnson
“The letter killeth
but the spirit
giveth life.”
Jesus
“Love one another.”
Jesus
“The child should be
saved from creeds and
doctrines. He should be
helped to grow in
unselfishness.”
Marietta Johnson
“True spiritual
consciousness rejoices in
the presence of an infinite
love, a love that includes
all life.”
Marietta Johnson
“Life, and life more
abundant, is ours for
“Orthodox
Christianity seems the taking. This does
not mean we should
to be made up of
teach religious dogma
attempts to enforce
to the little child. It
all sorts of rules
means we should
and outward ritual merely let him live
observances.”
sincerely, frankly, and
child-like.”
Emmet Fox
Marietta Johnson
”The art of life is to
live in the present
moment, and to make
that moment as
perfect as we can by
the realization that
we are the
instruments and
expression of God
Himself.”
Emmet Fox
“True spiritual
consciousness is a
consciousness that
reaches out with
perfect confidence
and joy toward the
finer, higher life
that is man‟s by
right of his divine
essence.”
Marietta Johnson
Marietta Johnson recognized man‘s divine essence and called
this spirit ―Love.‖ She wrote, ―Love is spirit and no child
prospers in spirit except its spiritual needs are fed by Love.‖ In
choosing the teachers for her school Mrs. Johnson insisted on
three fundamental requisites and the first and most important to
her was ―that they love, understand, and be sincerely interested
in children.‖ The second was that they have sufficient
scholarship and the third, that they be interested in all matters of
social welfare.‖
Marietta Johnson‘s life‘s work took on such zeal that it
bordered on the religious and it is my opinion that she served as
―An Instrument of God‘s Peace.‖ In the educating of children,
where there had been rigidity, she introduced flexibility and
creativity, where there had been criticism, she offered
acceptance, where there had been fear, she encouraged selfconfidence and where there had been competition, she modeled a
spirit of cooperation and mutual respect. She may not have
espoused a particular religious philosophy for her students to
follow but Marietta Johnson‘s faith in children and her zeal and
dedication to their education translated into her passing on to
them what she felt were important spiritual values.
My sister in law Mary Lois Timbes confirmed for me that the
spirit with which Marietta Johnson founded the Organic School
still prevailed during her years at the school. A member of the
Organic School‘s 1958 graduating class, Mary Lois told me that
there were no classes in religion nor were there any classes in
self-confidence. Her exact words were, ―We had a spirit of love
for each other and for our school that transcended the ability to
articulate it. In her book Youth in a World of Men, Mrs. Johnson
wrote that the mention of God -- the entity that might sit on a
distant throne -- was not the way to imbue young children with
such a spirit. She felt spiritual awareness would thrive in a
healthy, loving atmosphere.‖
It was in this healthy, loving atmosphere that Marietta
Johnson provided children a place where they could be
appreciated for who they were and enjoy their childhood free
from the fear of not measuring up as well as from the pressures
that can accompany reward.
Grades were never used to motivate Marietta Johnson‘s
students nor were they revealed to the students or their parents.
Teachers did keep records and grades were sent to the State as
required by law for high school students. In fact, while speaking
with Frankie Laraway recently, I learned that he had come across
his records many years after graduating from the Organic School
and to this day cannot understand why he did not get an ―A‖ in
Dr. Campbell‘s Physics class. I‘m sure it must have been an
oversight, Frankie.
For the younger students up until high school, there were no
tests or grades at the Organic School. Each child was expected to
simply show up and do his or her best. Because of this nurturing
atmosphere of acceptance, Marietta Johnson‘s students came to
love learning for its own sake rather than for the grade it might
earn them. As strongly as she believed children should not be
manipulated into behaving in a prescribed way through strict
religious teachings, Mrs. Johnson believed that assigning grades
to students‘ work encouraged them to be manipulative and
insincere. It was her intention that her students find the
experience of learning to be its own reward.
Marietta Johnson‘s revolutionary and radical method of
educating children gained her the attention of many prominent
individuals of the times. Among those individuals who lent their
support to the visionary educator was soap magnate Joseph Fels
whose $11,000 gift underwrote much of the school's early
growth and helped the school move in 1909 to a new location
one block off Fairhope's main street, to the school building and
ten-acre site the Fairhope Single Tax Colony provided rent and
utility free. That same building now houses the Marietta Johnson
Museum.
Mrs. Alexander Graham Bell, Mrs. Woodrow Wilson and
Mrs. Henry Ford were among other prominent patrons who
helped sponsor Mrs. Johnson‘s lecture tours which took her all
across this country and abroad. It was on one such trip abroad in
1925, that Marietta Johnson was a presenter along with Dr.
Maria Montessori at a conference in Heidelberg, Germany.
Visitors to the Marietta Johnson Museum often ask me how the
two educators‘ philosophies compare. Both women founded
schools in the same year, 1907. Dr. Montessori, a psychiatrist,
started her experiment in an inner city neighborhood in Rome,
Italy while Mrs. Johnson started her school in Fairhope,
Alabama. While both philosophies were child-centered, from
what I have read, Maria Montessori‘s philosophy of education
called for a more specific curriculum than did Marietta Johnson‘s
method which put into practice Mrs. Johnson belief that a child
should have the freedom to be guided by his or her own natural,
instinctive curiosity.
As far as our topic this morning is concerned it is interesting
to note that Dr. Montessori was a Roman Catholic and my
understanding of her method in its early days is that it reflected a
Catholic orientation. While Marietta Johnson considered herself
a Christian, she espoused no particular religious philosophy at
her school. Rather she encouraged reverence in her students for
nature and all of creation as well as compassion and honesty in
their dealings with one another.
Because of her lecture tours and her particular popularity in
the New York City area where the New York Times regularly
gave Marietta Johnson positive publicity, including a full-page
interview in March of 1913, the radical educator gained
widespread attention. Soon after the 1913 interview ran, a group
of socially prominent women in Greenwich, Connecticut, formed
the Fairhope League which was later to be called The Fairhope
Educational Foundation. The Foundation served as a fund raising
entity for the fledgling little school in far off Fairhope, Alabama.
These same women supported Marietta Johnson‘s Fairhope
Summer School which was also known as The Edgewood
School where she conducted an ongoing summer school in
Greenwich for teachers, parents, and others interested in organic
education.
Interestingly enough, Henry Ford considered endowing Mrs.
Johnson‘s Organic School in Fairhope, but ultimately decided
not to lend his financial support - it is thought - because of its
lack of religious instruction. Throughout Marietta Johnson‘s
writings, we see illustrated her belief in the importance of
spirituality over organized religion.
In her first book, Youth in a World of Men, Mrs. Johnson
wrote very pointedly about spirituality and religion in the lives of
children. She states that ―being taught to live a sincere, frank and
open life is the best way to bring out a child's innate spiritual and
moral sense,‖ and continues to add that ―a child's interpretation
of so-called religious teaching can lead to the idea of an
anthropomorphic god who is merely a big man off on a throne
somewhere, who may or may not be good to him.‖ ―This, she
writes, is probably the worst thing that can come to a child."
In Marietta Johnson‘s Organic School, a child would be and I
quote, ―allowed to live in such a simple, sincere way as
eventually to develop the idea that his relation to God is
expressed in his love for his fellow men and his relation to his
fellow men indicates his relation to the Divine." She wrote, "He
grows in this thing called love, the essence of which is giving;
his religion will be one of devoting himself utterly to causes and
objects of his affection, and this affection will grow in
confidence in himself, in his fellows, and in the universe."
Also on the subject of religion in her book Youth in a World
of Men, Mrs. Johnson writes, ―Man is too apt to meddle; he is
too anxious to make others do right. This, of course, is an
egotistical self-consciousness, very far from a true religious
spirit. In our zeal to 'save souls' we may be anything but
religious. Too often our 'love of God' makes us quite intolerant
and critical of our fellows."
Social Justice was another important dimension of Marietta
Johnson‘s philosophy of education and is clear evidence of the
deep spirituality that lay beneath it. I use the term spirituality
here in the sense that I believe Marietta Johnson used the word –
as it connotes unity and inter-dependence rather than
separateness or distinction. Fairhope, being an experimental
community founded in 1894 on ideals that fostered a more
equitable opportunity for all members of society— not simply
the wealthy, was an ideal setting for Marietta Johnson‘s
experimental school. The early single taxers appreciated Marietta
Johnson‘s philosophy of education which recognized the value of
fostering those ideals early in a child‘s formation and as I
mentioned earlier, they supported her efforts by donating the 10
acre parcel of land and the school house in the center of town.
Again in her book Youth in a World of Men Mrs. Johnson
writes, "Education must prevent prejudice, and preserve the open
mind. If education ministers to growth, the reward at each step
will be capacity for more growth. This capacity will be
evidenced by keenness of interest, by strength of concentration,
by spontaneity and sincerity, by a growing appreciation of others
and a consciousness of interdependence – the developing of the
socialized mind."
And she adds, "Every subject in the curriculum should be
studied, not to prepare for college, not to master the subject, not
even to ―prepare for life,‖ but rather for the joy of clear thinking,
for the development of power, the establishment of a center of
thought and understanding and a love of truth that cannot be
shaken by prejudice or greed."
In 1910, along with NAACP founder W. E. B. Du Boise,
Marietta Johnson spoke to members of the Twentieth Century
Club in Buffalo, New York. Founded in 1894, The Twentieth
Century Club was the first social club in this country run by
women for women. No doubt at that meeting in 1910, Marietta
Johnson and Dr. Du Boise exchanged ideas on the equality of the
races.
Sadly back in Fairhope, because of the cultural norms of the
times, the ideals inherent in Marietta Johnson‘s beliefs and her
Organic Philosophy of Education as well as those of the early
Fairhope Single Taxers were deemed impractical and believed to
jeopardize both Fairhope experiments. Unfortunately as a result,
both the Organic School and the Colony were segregated despite
the intentions and ideals of their founders.
It was not until the high school years that a prayer was
introduced into school life at Marietta Johnson‘s Organic School.
A non-sectarian prayer of reverence for the planet believed
written by Mrs. Johnson was said at each morning‘s assembly.
You will find it printed here.
Organic School Prayer
Give us thy harmony, O Lord,
That we may understand,
The beauty of the sky,
The rhythm of the soft wind's lullaby,
The sun, the shadows, the woods in the spring,
And thy great love
That dwells in everything.
We find no dogma nor strict religious teaching in Mrs.
Johnson‗s prayer. What we do find is a deep respect for the
handy-work of the Creator as well as a plea that we might live in
harmony and be ever mindful of the presence of love in all of
creation.
At Marietta Johnson‘s School of Organic Education, children
found that presence of love. It was expressed in the respect and
acceptance they were shown and encouraged to show to one
another. Children were encouraged to enjoy their childhood and
because each child was allowed to grow at his own individual
pace and expectations were simply for him to do his best, there
were no failures at Mrs. Johnson‘s school.
The ―Prolonging of Childhood,‖ Mrs. Johnson said was the
―Hope of the Race.‖ I believe those words are as true today as
when Marietta Johnson spoke them. After-all, a child‘s sincere,
open, honest and accepting nature along with a child‘s sense of
wonder and curiosity encourage an atmosphere which brings
about what we most need in today‘s world and can best be
described as harmony – where all people live with mutual
respect, beautifully blending together as ONE.
Thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts on
Marietta Johnson and her beautiful, nurturing philosophy of
Organic Education and I invite you to come by and visit me soon
at the Marietta Johnson Museum which is located at 10 S. School
St. Fairhope, Alabama in the west wing of the historic Bell
Building.
Maggie Mosteller-Timbes, Director
Marietta Johnson Museum
January 24, 2013