



































The Making of a Progressive Educator:


The Making of a Progressive Educator: Flora White’s Letters from Africa (1885-87) 

 

 

 

Linda C. Morice 

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville 

  
Abstract 

This paper explores factors contributing to Flora 

White‟s transition from teaching in a public 

school to founding a private, child-centered 

school during the progressive era. Letters White 

wrote from southern Africa in 1885-87 suggest 

her transition was encouraged by the following:  

normal school training, the liberating effect of 

overseas travel, a restrictive environment that 

intensified her focus on students, and an 

organizational structure that provided leadership 

opportunities she might have been denied at 

home. 

 

Introduction 

In Founding Mothers and Others: Women 

Leaders during the Progressive Era, Sadovnik 

and Semel (2002) explore the lives of female 

teachers who established independent schools in 

the United States at the turn of the twentieth 

century. During a time when most progressives 

concentrated on improving public schools through 

scientific management techniques, curricular 

reform, and vocational education, these women 

created innovative schools that focused on the 

needs of middle class children. Although many of 

the biographical subjects in Founding Mothers 

and Others were virtually unknown, Rugg and 

Shumaker had, as early as 1928, highlighted the 

importance of practitioners who worked outside 

existing systems of public and higher education to 

create child-centered schools. The authors posed a 

question to readers:  

 

Where in the American school system 

could it start? Not easily in the great 

body of public schools, committed to 

mass education and domineered over by 

the disciplinarian conception. Not even 

in the laboratory schools of the new 

schools of education that were springing 

up all over the country, for they were 

immersed in a veritable slough of 

technique—the investigation of 

intelligence, the analysis of the learning 

processes in the school subjects, and the 

statistical study of school practice. 

No, the movement for a freer type of 

education had to be launched almost 

altogether from outside the school 

system. It came, after the preparatory 

years, essentially from laymen, parents 

of means desiring the best in the way of 

schools for their children, and 

enthusiastic free-lance teachers. (Rugg 

& Shumaker, 1969, pp. 48-49)  

 

Despite the recognition of the free-lance 

teachers‟ critical role, few sources reveal the 

process by which they came to eschew widely-

accepted educational practice to found their own 

child-centered schools. Some insights are offered 

in memoirs written by two educators who are 

featured in Founding Mothers and Others.  

In 30 Years with an Idea, Marietta 

Johnson (1974) explained why she rejected the 

prevailing pedagogy in public education (in 

which the curriculum was sacred) to found the 

child-centered Organic School in Fair Hope, 

Alabama. Johnson reported that, after reading 

Development of the Child by Nathaniel 

Oppenheim (1898), she had a “conversion” 

experience which changed her “entire scheme of 

thinking and teaching” (1974, p. xi). She recalled: 

 

I discovered that I had been forcing 

children „way beyond their powers, that 

I had practically been maiming their 

minds and emotions, and that the entire 

system under which I taught went 



2 

 

directly contrary to the natural needs of 

the child. I determined to do no more 

teaching until I knew more about 

children, and for several years I worked 

and studied, trying to find out what 

children needed, and what sort of 

environment would make for their finest 

growth. (Johnson, 1974, pp. xi-xii) 

 

Johnson found a practical course of action in 

Education and the Larger Life by Charles 

Manford Henderson (1902), and she began to 

experiment with her own small sons. Eventually 

she moved to the utopian colony of Fairhope, 

Alabama, where she opened the Organic School 

in 1907.  

In I Learn from Children, Caroline Pratt 

(1948) likewise discussed the life experiences that 

led to her founding of the City and Country 

School in New York City in 1914. She recalled, 

“My own education was given me, not in teacher-

training courses, not by professors of pedagogy, 

but by children themselves.” (1948, p. 7). Pratt‟s 

book details her first experiences in education—

as a teacher in a one-room country school, a 

student at Teachers College, a teacher of manual 

training in the Normal School for Girls in 

Philadelphia, and a free lancer who ran manual 

training shops in New York City. These 

initiatives culminated in Pratt‟s founding (in a 

three-room apartment in Greenwich Village) the 

City and Country School, emphasizing first-hand 

discovery.  

While Johnson‟s and Pratt‟s books are 

helpful, they have the limitation of being memoirs 

written years after the fact for commercial 

audiences. This paper explores a unique primary 

source—a collection of letters written by Flora 

White (1850-1948), whose early initiatives in 

child-centered education preceded those of 

Johnson and Pratt. White opened her first 

“experimental” school in Springfield, 

Massachusetts, in 1887, and in a letter to Anne 

Hathaway from 17 June, 1940 she described her 

first school as an “experiment in motor training as 

a means of education.” During the course of her 

career, White spoke on child-centered education 

to parent and professional groups; gave lectures in 

Boston that alternated (every other week) with 

those of William James; and taught at Westfield 

Normal School in an effort to meet an “acute” 

need for new teaching methods (“Life Facts,” 

1939, p. 5).  She received a job offer from 

Colonel Francis Parker to head a department at 

the Cook County Normal School, which she 

declined because her Westfield appointment was 

“so recent” (“Life Facts,” 1939, p. 5). In 1896, 

she presented a paper at the annual meeting of the 

National Education Association (NEA) at a time 

when, according to Rousmaniere (2005), NEA 

speakers were “all male and almost all 

administrators” (p. 106). One year later she 

founded Miss White‟s Home School for Children 

in Concord, Massachusetts; it received the 

endorsement of child-study advocate G. Stanley 

Hall “for its general methods and scope, and for 

the devoted personal attention each pupil is sure 

to receive.” (Miss White’s Home School, 1900, p. 

7).  

       

Contextualizing the letters 

Flora White wrote her letters in 1885-

87—immediately after teaching in a public 

school, and immediately before founding a child-

centered school in Springfield. During that two-

year period she traveled to the Cape Colony (now 

part of South Africa) where her sister Hattie was a 

teacher at the Huguenot Seminary at Wellington. 

Hattie had suffered a “breakdown,” and Flora 

resigned her teaching job in a Springfield public 

elementary school to lend assistance (Flora White 

to Harriet M. White and Mary A. White, 6 June, 

1887). She accepted a position (with paid 



3 

 

transportation) teaching English to the sons of 

Dutch, English, and Huguenot settlers in “the 

Paarl” (Dutch for “pearl”), near Wellington. As 

she traveled by steamship from the U. S. to 

Liverpool (with a short visit in London) and then 

to Cape Town on H. M. S. “Spartan,” White was 

accompanied by Abbie Ferguson, a founder of the 

Huguenot Seminary.  

Eleven years earlier, Ferguson and Anna 

E. Bliss—both graduates of Mount Holyoke 

Seminary in Massachusetts—had gone to 

Wellington at the invitation of Andrew Murray, 

moderator of the Dutch Reformed Church. 

Murray was troubled by what he perceived to be a 

dearth of rigorous academic instruction for 

middle class white girls in the Cape Colony. 

Ferguson and Bliss brought the curriculum, rules, 

traditions, and architectural plans of Mount 

Holyoke to southern Africa, where they were 

greeted by an overflow of young women between 

the ages of fifteen and twenty. Although Flora 

White resided at Huguenot Seminary for a short 

time before returning home during the summer of 

1887, her long-term residence in the Cape Colony 

was at the Paarl in the rural home of her principal 

Mr. le Roux, his wife, and their children.  

By the time White returned to 

Massachusetts, Hattie‟s health had improved. The 

record of Flora‟s two-year experience exists in 31 

letters she wrote to her sister Mary (a public 

school teacher) and their mother, Harriet M. 

White, both of Springfield, Massachusetts. The 

letters show that White did not experience a 

conversion as described by Marietta Johnson. 

Neither did her lessons in child-centered 

education come exclusively from children, as 

Caroline Pratt contended. Rather, White‟s 

evolution as a child-centered educator was 

encouraged by several sources: her normal school 

training, the liberating experience of overseas 

travel, a restrictive environment that intensified 

her focus on students, and an organizational 

structure that allowed her to gain leadership 

experience that might have been denied to her at 

home. These points will be amplified below.  

 

Review of literature 

Apart from those already named, few 

sources describe the process by which educators 

rejected widespread instructional practices in 

public schools and adopted a child-centered 

curriculum. According to Sadovnik and Semel 

(2002), most of the founders of child-centered 

schools were women. Tyack (1974) details the 

bureaucratization and standardization in public 

education to which child-centered teachers 

objected, as well as the gender stereotyping that 

caused men to be appointed as administrators 

supervising a feminized teaching force. Three 

classics provide helpful background on the 

antecedents of child-centered schools. Kliebard 

(1986) discusses the ideological lines in U. S. 

education at the turn of the twentieth century in a 

chapter entitled “The Curriculum versus the 

Child.” His focus, however, is on G. Stanley Hall 

and John Dewey, not women teachers. Cremin 

(1969) emphasizes G. Stanley Hall‟s role in 

changing pedagogical opinion by shifting 

attention from teaching to the student. In Life and 

Confessions of a Psychologist, Hall (1923) details 

his own involvement in child-study assisted by 

four female kindergarten teachers. The result was 

a paper titled “The Contents of Children‟s Minds” 

that suggested teachers could not assume a 

common body of knowledge among children 

entering school (pp. 374-414). Hall‟s book offers 

the names of other women who collected bodies 

of data that were important to his work on 

childhood.  

It is noteworthy that Flora White‟s 

transformation from public school teacher to 

founder of a child-centered school occurred 



4 

 

during her two years of overseas travel. Marietta 

Johnson‟s founding of the Organic School also 

occurred during a significant relocation when she 

and her husband moved from their native 

Minnesota to Fair Hope, Alabama. Caroline 

Pratt‟s gradual evolution to child-centered 

educator involved multiple changes of place, from 

her original home in upstate New York to 

Philadelphia and New York City. Given those 

commonalities, it is appropriate to consult the 

literature of women‟s travel writing to gain 

further insight into White‟s experience during 

1885-87.  

Schriber (1997) wrote that although men 

have a long history of travel in the West, women 

did not venture to other parts of the globe until 

the early nineteenth century. Those who did were 

“accidental” tourists accompanying their fathers 

or husbands, largely for commercial or political 

reasons (p. 2). With the advent of steam-powered 

ships of the 1820s—and the subsequent 

introduction of “luxurious steam palaces” that 

traversed the Atlantic beginning in the 1860s—

U.S. women began to go abroad in larger 

numbers, and for their own reasons (p. 2). Siegel 

(1994) noted that the women “skirted a delicate 

course” because their travel—especially when 

unchaperoned—was viewed as inappropriate for 

their gender (p. 2). McDowell (1999) wrote that 

this was in part because the concept of women‟s 

travel challenged the West‟s spatial association 

between women and home. Bijon and Gacon 

(2009) and Blunt (1994) found that women who 

wrote about their travels experienced an increase 

in individual freedom. Blunt (1994) contended 

that this occurred because travel presented an 

opportunity to transgress or question ideas that 

were accepted at home. Schriber (1997) noted that 

travel gave women an opportunity to interact with 

“the other” and afforded them a sense of freedom 

that helped to prepare the way for the “New 

Woman” of the Progressive Era (pp. 21, 37).  She 

also asserted that travel gave Americans a sense 

of cultural and intellectual superiority over their 

fellow citizens. Blanton (2002) noted, however, 

that women who traveled in colonial 

environments also demonstrated sympathy for 

subjugated people. She suggested this stemmed, 

in part, from the women‟s position outside the 

dominant patriarchal structure at home and 

abroad.  

 

Sources and methodology     

Primary sources for the paper include 

letters Flora White wrote to her widowed mother, 

Harriet M. White, and sister, Mary A. White, who 

resided in Springfield, Massachusetts, when Flora 

lived and traveled in the Cape Colony. Other 

important primary sources include White‟s 

unpublished manuscript titled “Life Facts of Flora 

White and Family Recorded March 18, 1939” as 

well as her published and unpublished speeches. 

The secondary sources—in addition to those 

already cited—include White‟s school bulletins, 

Duff‟s (2006) thesis on the history of the 

Huguenot Seminary, and histories of South Africa 

by Thompson (2000), Ross (2008), Meredith 

(2007), and Elphick and Davenport (1997). 

The methodology was, first, to carefully 

review White‟s letters for expressions of 

dissatisfaction with public schools and, second, to 

juxtapose her correspondence against six “New 

Articles of Faith,” that Rugg and Shumaker 

identified in 1928 as exemplifying child-centered 

education (1969, p. 54), and will be described 

below. A third step was to examine White‟s 

professional work following her return to 

Massachusetts to determine the extent to which 

she acted upon expressed sentiments that 

reflected the “New Articles of Faith.” The 

discussion of White‟s letters begin with a 



5 

 

consideration of her experience with public 

schools.  

 

Flora white’s experience with public education 

Prior to going to the Cape Colony, White 

had over eight years of experience teaching in 

public schools. With no formal training, she had 

decided to “try…[her] hand” at teaching in a rural 

school at Hawley, Massachusetts and then in 

1875 entered a two-year teacher training program 

at Westfield Normal School (“Life Facts,” 1939, 

p. 3).  Westfield primarily prepared residents of 

the five western Massachusetts counties for 

teaching jobs in the public schools. During 

White‟s attendance there, the principal was John 

Dickinson, a follower of Pestalozzi who later 

became Secretary of the Massachusetts State 

Board of Education. Dickinson believed that 

learning occurred in stages associated with the 

age of the child. He also utilized “object 

teaching” in which new material was introduced 

to children “through senses other than words” 

(Brown, 1988, p. 51). Dickinson‟s beliefs 

strongly influenced the teacher training program 

during White‟s attendance at Westfield. 

White graduated from normal school in 

1877 and taught in public schools in West 

Springfield and Springfield during a time when 

Massachusetts became the most urban of the 

states. Industrialization was occurring rapidly as 

homogenous communities of Yankee farmers 

strained to absorb large numbers of immigrants. 

Urban superintendents responded to demographic 

changes by replacing the decision-making 

processes of village schools with top-down, 

bureaucratic practices designed to control 

students, teachers, and principals. Tyack (1974) 

noted that, in the new order, “each step of the 

educational process was carefully prescribed by 

professional educators” (p. 40). Looking back on 

her career in 1896, Flora White criticized the 

standardization and regimentation of the period, 

noting, “It has long been a fancy of mine that 

nature covers her face and weeps whenever she 

beholds a schoolhouse” (“Physical Effects of 

Sloyd,” 1896 , p. 3). White bemoaned the “dreary 

brick buildings on small plots of ground, where 

children are driven into rooms by fifties and 

sixties, yes even by hundreds with the hobgoblin 

of the law and the truant officer behind them, and 

then compelled to sit for five long hours each 

day” with few opportunities for movement 

(“Physical Effects of Sloyd,” 1896 , p. 5). 

 

Article One: Freedom v. Control 

Rugg and Shumanker wrote that the first 

“New Article of Faith” was, “Free the legs, the 

arms, the larynx of a child, … and you have taken 

the first step towards freeing his mind and spirit” 

(1969, p. 55). To accomplish that end, child-

centered educators replaced the “lock-step 

precision” of scientific managers and “[f]ixed 

seats nailed to the floor” with an “informal, 

intimate atmosphere” evidenced by “[l]ight, 

movable tables and chairs” ” (1969, p. 55). In 

March 1887—months before she left the Cape 

Colony to return to Massachusetts—Flora White 

was already envisioning a school that encouraged 

student movement. She urged Mary to resign her 

public school position and expressed hope that the 

sisters might open a new school in Springfield: 

 

I do dread your going on in the Public 

School and I think if you have a 

comfortable house and a nice little 

school in it you will be much better off 

than now. Don‟t you think you could 

send a doz. or so chairs and 1 or two low 

tables, like the kindergarten table, for 

them to sit around in place of desks. 

Would not Mr. Bradley let you have 

them? (Flora White to Mary A. and 

Harriet M. White, 6 March 1887) 



6 

 

 

In the same letter, White imagined the “informal, 

intimate atmosphere” described by Rugg and 

Shumaker: 

 

I care more about a plot of ground than 

the house & we would only be cozy in 

small quarters—I can‟t explain to you 

now the tremendous importance in my 

mind of the plot of ground if our school 

becomes what I want it to become. It 

would be nice if we could have a house 

quite to ourselves… I want the school 

rooms a part of the house or at least 

joined to it in some way when we have 

our own.” (Flora White to Mary A. and 

Harriet M. White, 6 March 1887) 

 

To Rugg and Shumaker, the first “New 

Article of Faith” involved “an easier, more 

natural group life” and “[f]reedom to develop 

naturally, to be spontaneous, unaffected, and 

unselfconscious…” (1969, p. 56). Before White 

could promote freedom in children, however, she 

had to establish personal freedom in her own life. 

White‟s correspondence suggests that, through 

travel, she had new opportunities to develop in 

that direction.  

Early in her journey, White sensed the 

opportunity for liberation and growth that foreign 

travel presented. The transformation is evident in 

her letters. On the first night of her initial voyage 

across the Atlantic, she told herself, “there is 

nobody I want to know except those lovely 

looking people [Mrs. Babcock and her daughter 

Mrs. Martin, both of Chicago] who kept by 

themselves & noticed no one… I did not expect in 

the least to become acquaintances with them” 

(Flora White to Harriet M. White and Mary A. 

White, 3 August, 1885). By the time she arrived 

in England White wrote, “I formed such a 

pleasant friendship on board the steamer with 

those Chicago people… Mrs. Martin & I are 

going to write one another” (Flora White to 

Harriet M. White and Mary A. White, 3 August, 

1885). Less than one month later, as White 

traveled to the Cape Colony via Madeira on the 

steamship “Spartan,” she viewed the trip with 

optimism—even exhilaration—writing, “I do not 

have a single feeling of dread about anything and 

mean to enjoy everything and everybody” (Flora 

White to Harriet M. White and Mary A. White, 

30 August, 1885).  As she anticipated her arrival 

at Cape Town, White confidently wrote to her 

mother and sister, “I really am a fine sailor and 

stand the rolling beautifully—in fact I rather like 

it today. I have been exalting myself generally but 

I await your reprimands. You are both home now 

and I do hope as well & happy as I am” (Flora 

White to Harriet M. White and Mary A. White, 

30 August, 1885). 

Another example of White‟s growing 

personal freedom is seen in her stopover in 

London. Abbie Ferguson became ill, and White 

stayed with her for two days. As Ferguson 

showed signs of improvement, White consulted a 

guidebook and explored London on her own. The 

correspondence suggests this was new behavior 

on White‟s part. She reported, “I started off by 

myself. Imagine me prowling about the big city 

alone—It is very easy & does not seem bigger 

than any city when you are in it” (Flora White to 

Harriet M. White and Mary A. White, 6 August, 

1885).  

White‟s developing self confidence is also 

evident in interactions with women and men on 

the “Spartan” who—unlike the Chicago 

travelers—were not U. S. citizens. In August 

1885, White wrote, “Everybody is so very nice to 

me that I am afraid my head will be quite turned 

with attention. I have had so many toasts & 

speeches & compliments & things made to me I 

feel like locking my cabin door & not coming out 

at all” (Flora White to Harriet M. White, 30 



7 

 

August, 1885). White reported that her fellow 

travelers looked to her for entertainment. To their 

delight, the spontaneous young woman staged 

tableaux (depictions of scenes) and arranged 

other group activities. For example, White 

convinced passengers to dress up in a “sheet and 

pillow masquerade” noting, “You could not tell 

the gentlemen from the ladies” She also 

persuaded an English traveler to give a talk on 

London, organized singing, and narrated a “comic 

pantomime” of the Eve of Waterloo, with six 

passengers acting the parts. White reported, “It 

was simply killing” (Flora White to Harriet M. 

White, 30 August, 1885).  

Just before her arrival in Cape Town, the 

ship captain extracted a promise from White, 

thereby suggesting her life in the Cape Colony 

might differ from the relaxed spontaneity of the 

“Spartan.” White wrote, “The Capt. made me 

promise to write him if I got blue and wanted my 

address. He told me over and over again not to 

change or allow myself to rust” (Flora White to 

Harriet M. White, 30 August, 1885). 

 

Article Two: Child Initiative v. Teacher 

Initiative 

Rugg and Shumaker characterized the 

second “New Article of Faith” as the 

“reorientation of the entire school around the 

child,” in marked contrast to the teacher-centered 

or principal-centered school (1969, p. 56). 

White‟s school at the Paarl was not child-

centered; however, it lacked the bureaucratic 

organization of the Springfield public schools. 

This created professional opportunity for a 

creative and resourceful teacher who 

demonstrated leadership potential. As early as 

November 1885, White was weighing school 

leadership opportunities. She wrote her mother: 

 

There is a girls school here at the Paarl 

& I have been asked to take charge of it 

if I would like to—It has been badly 

managed & a great need is felt of having 

a change created—I think perhaps I shall 

take charge of the Primary Department 

another quarter—I am not sure—There 

is certainly more need of good teaching 

there than in Mr. le Roux‟s school for he 

keeps his in excellent working order—

There is nothing to influence my taking 

it except my own personal choice in the 

matter—Mr. le Roux would be very 

sorry to have me go from his school—

but he would get the benefit of it if I did 

as the boys from the Primary School go 

into his. So he is willing I should do just 

as I like in the matter. (Flora White to 

Harriet M. White, 14 November, 1885) 

 

Although White opted to stay with Mr. le Roux, 

he left the school before she returned to 

Massachusetts. White assumed some of his duties 

before the new principal‟s arrival. In April 1887 

she wrote, “In one week more we will have our 

new Principal and I will be glad—the school is 

too headless now though it goes pretty well on the 

whole” (Flora White to Harriet M. White, n.d. 

April 1887).  

Throughout her stay at the Cape Colony, 

White‟s letters indicate that students were the 

focus of her interests.  This was due to her 

diligence as a teacher as well as to her isolation 

and general lack of opportunity for young women 

in the Cape Colony. White‟s letters confirmed 

this as, for example, when she wrote her mother 

and sister in May 1886, “I don‟t know if you will 

be interested in all this about my boys but they 

are the only thing I have to interest me” (Flora 

White to Harriet M. White and Mary A. White, 

23 May, 1886). The degree to which the Paarl 

contrasted with the atmosphere White 

encountered on the “Spartan” is evident in a letter 



8 

 

White wrote to her sister shortly before returning 

home: 

 

It will seem so sweet to have real 

companionship again after these two 

years of hermitage. I hope I have not 

grown crusty [an apparent reference to 

the captain‟s comment]. I am firmly 

convinced though that prolonged stay 

would transform me outwardly and as 

far as all practical purposes are 

concerned entirely into a wide, stolid, 

prolific Dutch “Vrau.” You will have to 

pinch me to keep me trim. I never think 

to smile now. I incline my head slowly 

and very slightly to show recognition, 

and impassively shake hands on all 

possible occasions. However I am not 

seriously alarmed but when the presence 

is removed I shall rebound fast enough. I 

find that I am of a very cock-like and 

rubbery temperament. I can sustain a 

good deal of pressure without being 

ultimately affected by it (Flora White to 

Mary A. White, 28 February, 1887). 

 

Some of White‟s dissatisfaction with her 

environment may have stemmed from her dislike 

of Mrs. le Roux, whom she described as selfish, 

jealous, unchristian, and having very few friends. 

When Mr. le Roux was no longer principal of the 

school and White moved to live at the Huguenot 

Seminary, she regarded her new living situation 

as an improvement. 

In communicating her primary focus on 

students, White described one class of boys 

between the ages of ten and twelve as follows: 

“They are not very bright as scholars, but I mean 

to make them as I never enjoyed teaching any 

pupils more than the boys of this school” (Flora 

White to Harriet M. White, 9 August, 1886). In 

another letter she reported that her boys were 

away from school for two days, taking 

standardized exams. White expressed hope that 

they would do well, noting, “I have worked ever 

so hand for them and I think the boys appreciate 

it. I am not tired now though” (Flora White to 

Harriet M. White, 20 March, 1887). On another 

occasion she wrote:  

 

I am as well as can be and very much 

interested in my boys and work. They 

are such nice boys—one of them, a 

handsome Jew, who is gentlemanly and 

a beautiful scholar is going to leave in a 

few days—His people are going up to 

the Diamond Fields to live—He feels 

very badly about leaving school but 

thinks his father will be able to send him 

back as a boarder after a few months—

They have not been in the Colony but a 

few years and came from London. (Flora 

White to Harriet M. White and Mary A. 

White, 23 May, 1886)  

 

Article Three: The Active School 

Rugg and Shumaker noted that in child-

centered schools, “pupils are active—physically 

active, mentally active, artistically active. There is 

a large amount of actual physical exertion, of 

overt bodily movement of a wide variety of 

sensory contacts, of the type of energy-release 

which is ordinarily designated as play” (1969, p. 

58). There are several instances in which White‟s 

letters show her preference for active learning. In 

one letter White chides her sister Mary: “[Y]ou 

don‟t seem to think much of my dear little school. 

You make me laugh calling them brats & 

bedlam” (Flora White to Mary A. White, 27 

December, 1885). When she and Hattie prepared 

for a student concert in Wellington, White 

referred to “about 20 children in all, such splendid 

bright-rollicking boys, just as affectionate and 

sweet as they can be” (Flora White to Harriet M. 

White, 25 November, 1886). She and Hattie took 

the children into the laundry room for practice. 

White described the scene: 



9 

 

 

You should have seen the little fellows 

there, singing with might—and … me 

tapping out the time with a broom stick 

as demurely as possible. They just 

graded in size, each one a tiny bit higher 

than the next younger—Such dear little 

fellows I never saw—they went right for 

my heartstrings with a tug. (Flora White 

to Harriet M. White, 25 November, 

1886) 

 

Another letter describes a pageant given 

by the older boys that recalled White‟s tableaux 

on the “Spartan”: 

 

They have a few scenes from King John 

and a little modern drama besides. 

Maggie [Abbie Ferguson‟s niece] and I 

made a complete set of armor for King 

John out of paste board covered with tin 

foil—The shield was of dark glazed 

paper bordered with silver and a huge 

lion in the center—the result of my 

artistic genius? —we got a real helmet 

and covered it properly and managed the 

whole thing very nicely. (Flora White to 

Harriet M. White, n.d. Winter 1887) 

 

Article Four: Child Interest as the Basis of a 

New Educational Program 

Rugg and Shumaker wrote that while a 

traditional school was organized around subjects, 

the new school sets up a program of work that 

“has a personal connection with the immediate 

life of the child” (1969, p. 61). Although White‟s 

school at the Paarl was organized by subject, she 

was quick to respond when students expressed a 

need or interest. For example, one night when she 

was reading in the le Roux home White was 

approached by a representative of five boys who 

boarded in the dormitory outside. The boys 

wanted to join her and asked to come inside for a 

prayer. White did not want to refuse them and 

requested that they return at nine o‟clock. She 

stopped what she was doing and used the 

available time to look for and write a prayer that 

would be appropriate for them. White explained: 

 

I am in the habit of petitioning in my 

private devotions and though 

wonderfully adapted to my own needs 

they did not seem to apply exactly to the 

case of family devotions—I was quite 

wild—I rushed to my room & got the 

prayer book. Everything was too short, 

besides the boys knowing them was a 

drawback—I tried to piece some… 

[prayers] together but the patchwork was 

not a success. I decided that the prayers 

for public service in church did not 

exactly apply to family worship either—

I then tried to make up a nice one & 

learn it by heart but it was no use, there 

was not time enough. I rushed to my 

room again, seized pen & paper & wrote 

out one—a very good one I think—I hid 

it in a book on the table—I knelt by the 

table & prayed into the book & read—I 

think I was not discovered by the boys—

If I was not they surely must have 

thought me very fluent in prayer…what I 

wanted I prayed for—so I am not at all 

ashamed of the performance. (Flora 

White to Harriet M. White, n.d. August 

or September, 1886) 

 

Article Five: Creative Self-Expression 

Rugg and Shumaker noted that traditional 

schools sought to encourage “conformity to a 

pattern imposed from without” (1969, p. 63). The 

new school, by contrast, elicited “self expression 

in all of the arts, in discovering a marvelously 

creative youth” (Ross & Shumaker, 1969, p. 63).  

White—who frequently illustrated her 

letters with sketches—had a strong interest in her 

students‟ creative self expression. In November 

1885 she reported, “My boys are doing so well in 

drawing and enjoy it so much. I feel quite 



10 

 

enthusiastic” (Flora White to Harriet M. White, 

14 November, 1885). White devoted one letter to 

her efforts at encouraging a budding student poet. 

As an adult, the subject of her letter—Eugene 

Marais—became a famous naturalist and poet and 

who led the Afrikaans language movement. White 

described the young Marais‟ creative talents as 

follows: 

 

I am sure the boy has genius and I am so 

anxious if he has to have it developed—

He is such a sweet demure boy that cares 

only for reading and being in the fields 

by him self—He has read Dante & 

Petrarch, Milton, Shakespeare—in fact 

nearly all the classics but if course 

knows nothing of Modern Literature—I 

mean that which is first afloat now. He 

has the truest ring in his appreciation of 

the beautiful—He comes from the 

Transvaal and is of French Huguenot 

decent—the other day he wrote some 

verses full of patriotic resentment 

against English rule for the Colony—I 

will send you some things he has written 

in the package that goes by Miss Bliss 

and you must show them to Mr. Brooks 

and perhaps Mrs. Foote and see what 

they say of my little boy poet. 

He is such a sweet boy and has had 

no chance of being spoiled in any way—

I had a nice long talk with him last night 

about his reading and writing—He says 

sometimes he gets quite agitated in 

school or some place where something is 

said or occurs which arouses him and he 

wants to write it but he can‟t then and in 

an hour or two the feeling has passed 

away and he thinks no more about it—I 

am so interested in him and feel quite 

sure that he has real genius in him. He is 

a very fair scholar—he would be about 

in the Sophomore class at Amherst or 

any ordinary college—and he is about 15 

now I think. (Flora White to Harriet M. 

White and Mary A. White, 23 May, 

1886)  

  

New Article Six: Personality and Social 

Adjustment 

Rugg and Shumaker characterize the final 

“New Article of Faith” as providing an 

environment by which each child can learn to live 

with others and yet retain his personal identity” 

(1969, p. 64). In one letter to her mother, White 

applauded a plucky student who came to her 

defense when White challenged the Paarl‟s 

traditional gender roles.  An adult reader had 

written the local paper to question the wisdom of 

having “a lady teacher” in the boys‟ school. The 

“offended” pupil responded, stating “that he 

would defy the Paarl to produce a more 

competent or capable teacher than Miss White. 

She reported that it “of course was too silly & 

boyish a thing to do for no one had spoken of me 

& those who said (about a lady teacher) knew 

nothing about me except I was a female. But I 

liked the boy‟s spirit in standing up for his teacher 

(Flora White to Harriet M. White, 9 August, 

1886).  

Whether she was discussing the plucky 

youngster, the Jewish student, or Eugene Marais, 

White showed little interest in limiting the boys‟ 

individuality. At the same time, she emphasized 

the importance of living harmoniously with 

others, as evidenced by a thank-you letter she 

received from one of her students: “I thank you 

very much for your good instructions you have 

given me in school & another thing that I want to 

tell you is that, that you have learned me to 

behave in school for at first you yourself know 

that I had no manners to behave in school” (John 

Van Breda to Flora White, 15 June, 1887).  

 

White’s return 



11 

 

During the summer of 1887, Flora White 

returned to Massachusetts with a clear focus. 

Shortly after her arrival, she and Mary founded a 

small private school in a Springfield home “to 

experiment in motor-training as a means of 

education” (Flora White to Anne Halfpenny, 17 

June, 1940). Motor-training, or the development 

of fine and gross motor skills, reflected the first 

and third “New Articles of Faith” described by 

Rugg and Shumaker (1969). While no documents 

remain from the White sisters‟ Springfield school, 

the progression of Flora‟s career show that she 

continued to be engaged by issues of student 

freedom and physical movement. During the 

summer of 1891, she studied motor training and 

pedagogy in Sweden and paid her way with a 

short story she sold to Harper’s. (The story, “Zan 

Zoo,” appeared under a male pen name in 1891. 

Set in the Cape Colony, it sympathetically 

portrayed a black servant girl who was abused by 

her white mistress, who bore a resemblance to 

Mrs. le Roux!)  White also trained under Baron 

Nils Posse at the Normal School of Gymnastics in 

Boston (becoming his Associate Principal in 

1895), and taught woodworking and gymnastics 

at Westfield Normal School. In 1897 she received 

a diploma from the Sloyd Training School in 

Boston (Sloyd” is an English adaptation of the 

Swedish slojd, or handcraft, and the Sloyd 

Training School used physical activity in 

handcraft production as a means of formative 

education) and also founded Miss White‟s Home 

School for Children in Concord, Massachusetts. 

The school operated until 1914 when it closed at 

Mary White‟s request, due to her health. The 

sisters had hoped to travel in Europe, but the First 

World War prevented them from doing so. 

Instead, they retired to Heath, Massachusetts, the 

town of their birth.  

Flora White described the Concord school 

as “an effort in the direction of organic education” 

(Miss White’s Home School 1900, p. 1) with an 

unusual feature: 

 

The mental work is reinforced by 

opportunities for motor training that 

cannot be obtained elsewhere. Through 

childcraft, sloyd, games, gymnastics, and 

careful attention to department, the body 

is made the ready instrument of the 

mind. (Miss White’s Home School 1906, 

p. 2) 

 

Throughout her career, White lectured to 

women‟s clubs and professional groups on a 

variety of educational topics. In her speeches she 

promoted a respect for each child‟s individuality 

and cautioned against interfering with nature‟s 

plan for its development. White felt the teacher 

should “surround the growing life with suitable 

materials for its use and… watch and wait 

patiently for its unfolding, letting it select and 

draw until itself those things which it desires and 

needs” (“Child Training and Evolution,” part 2, p. 

11). She advised teachers to “learn of the child 

the road of its desires, and travel along that 

road—hand in hand with it—beside it, not in front 

of it….[or] above it” ( “Physical Effects of 

Sloyd,” 1899, p. 9). Her advice coincides with 

Rugg and Shumaker‟s (1969) second, fourth, and 

sixth “New Articles of Faith.” 

Finally, White was a strong advocate for 

fostering students‟ creative self expression, as in 

the fifth “New Article of Faith.” Her views 

stemmed from a belief that the goal of education 

is “More life and fuller” for all students (Rugg 

and Shumaker, 1969). White thought that too 

often schools imposed their own systems of work 

on children and concentrated excessively on task 

completion, which signaled the end of growth. In 

one unpublished speech, White described a boy 

whose mind was seen by the “orthodox school” to 

be in a chaotic state. Rather than training the 



12 

 

boy‟s mind to a predetermined standard (thereby 

causing resentment in the child), White felt the 

school should accept the chaos of the boy‟s mind 

as normal, and let him “test and do and dare” 

(“Child Training and Evolution,” part 2, pp. 6-

10). Miss White‟s Home School produced alumni 

who excelled at creative self expression, 

including sculptor Mary Ogden Abbott (a 

graduate of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston 

who exhibited her work in the Department of the 

Interior in Washington, D. C.) and Henry Howard 

Brooks (a member of the Guild of Boston Artists 

who exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of 

Fine Arts and the Corcoran Gallery in 

Washington). 

 

Conclusion and epilogue 

In June 1940, at eighty years of age, Flora 

White wrote the President of the Alumni 

Association at Westfield State College, her alma 

mater. Recalling her professional 

accomplishments, White observed it had been an 

“extremely crowded” career. She noted with 

pleasure that Miss White‟s Home School was “a 

marked success” and “the climax of my 

educational work” (Flora White to Anne 

Halfpenny, 17 June, 1940). Still resistant to pre-

determined standards of education, she was quick 

to note:  

 

I made it clearly understood that…[Miss 

White‟s Home School] was an 

experiment in educational values; that it 

stood upon the merits of its theories and 

would be in no way dominated or 

influenced by college requirements. My 

pupils however found no difficulty in 

passing college examinations. (Flora 

White to Anne Halfpenny, 17 June, 

1940) 

Flora White‟s correspondence in 1885-87, 

as well as her subsequent professional work, 

show her transition to child-centered education 

occurred not because of a conversion experience, 

nor because of lessons learned solely from 

children. Rather, White‟s evolution was the result 

of multiple factors, including her normal school 

training, the liberating experience of overseas 

travel, a restrictive environment that intensified 

her focus on students, and an organizational 

structure that provided leadership opportunities 

she might have been denied at home.  Ever the 

child-centered educator, White‟s career fulfilled 

the hope expressed by one of her boys as she left 

the Paarl in 1887: “Dear Miss White we thank 

you very much for all the trouble you have taken 

to teach us… If you perhaps intend teaching again 

in America I hope that you may take it up as 

diligently as you have done it here” (Isaac Roos 

to Flora White, 16 June, 1887). 

 

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14 

 

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