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Staci Niemeyer paper "Folk Dancing at the Marietta Johnson School of Organic Education"

 Collection
Identifier: MSS-0525

Scope and Contents

The collection contains an essay about folk dancing at the Marietta Johnson School of Organic Education, a school founded in 1907 in Fairhope, Alabama. Marietta Johnson was a well-known progressive educator who founded this school in south Alabama that allows children to learn without examinations or grades.

Dates

  • 1990 April 1

Conditions Governing Access

None

Biographical / Historical

Born in 1864, Marietta Johnson, a native of Minnesota, was an educator who believed in the organic or natural education of children. Mrs. Johnson had been a teacher in the normal system in Minnesota and had radical ideas on education reform. She felt that children should live natural lives, study the outdoors, not be forced to read at too young an age. In 1902 she moved to Fairhope, Alabama, where she opened the School of Organic Education in 1907. In 2007, the Marietta Johnson School of Organic Education celebrated its 100th anniversary.

In her "organic" school, tests were not administered, homework was withheld until high school, and grades were unknown. She required hand crafts and folk dancing along with the traditional academic curriculum. Her school was a magnet to young teachers and to artists, and was instrumental in building the reputation of Fairhope as an artists' colony. Encouraged and funded by friends in the small experimental community of Fairhope, Alabama, Mrs. Johnson began her revolutionary school on a ten-acre campus -- teaching, writing, training teachers in her method. Her little school attracted national attention, and she was one of the founders of the Progressive Education Association.

The school reached its zenith in the 1920s, in part because of John Dewey's book and its reference to Mrs. Johnson and her school. Through the great depression, two world wars and Mrs. Johnson's death in 1938, the Organic School has never closed its doors and is still operating in Fairhope.

Extent

0.05 Linear Feet (1 item, 17 pieces)

Language of Materials

English

Overview

Essay about folk dancing at the Marietta Johnson School of Organic Education, a school founded in 1907 by progressive educator Marietta Johnson in Fairhope, Alabama.

Provenance

Gift of Staci Niemeyer, 1990

General

To provide faster access to our materials, this finding aid was published without formal and final review. Email us at archives@ua.edu if you find mistakes or have suggestions to make this finding aid more useful for your research.

Processed by

Megan Quillivan and Donnelly Lancaster Walton, 2007; updated by Martha Bace, 2013
Title
Guide to the Staci Niemeyer paper "Folk Dancing at the Marietta Johnson School of Organic Education"
Status
Completed
Date
February 2008
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description
English
Script of description
Latin
Language of description note
English

Repository Details

Part of the The University of Alabama Libraries Special Collections Repository

Contact:
Box 870266
Tuscaloosa AL 35487-0266
205.348.0513