Elizabeth Farrell 1895 pioneered special education.

After graduation from Oswego, Farrell taught in a one-room schoolhouse at Oneida Castle. When she took a job in New York City, she formed the first ungraded class, devoted to helping students she described in her writings as “over-age children, so-called naughty children, and the dull and stupid children.* They were taken from any and every school grade. The ages ranged from eight to sixteen years. They were the children who could not get along in school.”

Classes modeled on Farrell’s spread throughout New York City and in 1906 she was appointed the Inspector of Ungraded Classes for the city, a newly created position.

A plaque discovered in Penfield Library dates to her death in 1932 and honors Farrell “who gave her life that the least might live as abundantly as their handicaps permitted.

“Beginning with a little group of boys in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, she became the tutelary of the ungraded classes for all of New York, deeming no child too atypical to be neglected,” reads the plaque.

Farrell pioneered the notion of special classes, not special schools, with the goal of returning the children to regular classes. She advocated for placement in special classes be based on the special needs of children, rather than IQ scores. She believed that schools should not exclude children, and that schools, hospitals, immigration services and the criminal justice system should work together to identify and help the special needs children.

In her insistence on treating each child as an individual, she echoes the philosophy of Edward Austin Sheldon.

Farrell would go on to lecture at Teachers College of Columbia University and New York University, and to found and edit the journal Ungraded. She founded the Council for Exceptional Children, which still serves educators of special needs children today.

Her influence extended all the way back to her alma mater, when Oswego established the Department of Special Training in 1916 to prepare special education teachers.

* Ed. note: The language Farrell used in her writing was typical of her day when describing children with special needs. It is repeated here only as historical record and does not reflect the views of SUNY Oswego or this magazine.

Hideo Takamine 1877 brought the Oswego Method to Japan

The son of an Aizu Samurai, Takamine, pictured at right, was part of a small delegation of Japanese students sent to America in the 1870s to study teaching methods.

He boarded with the family of Professor Hermann Krusi and is reputed to have spent a night at Shady Shore as a guest of the founder Edward Austin Sheldon.

Takamine studied zoology at Oswego and Cornell University, and at Oswego he absorbed the Oswego objective method of teaching and the Pestalozzian principles fostered by Sheldon.

After graduation, he returned home to Japan, bringing with him these revolutionary methods.

In a letter to “father” Krusi dated June 16, 1878, Takamine writes that he shared Krusi’s book on Pestalozzi with his principal at Tokyo Normal School, but the principal believed the “old curriculum — reading, writing, spelling, and number — is sufficient.

“This is quite different from my views,” writes Takamine. “I think the future of education is the cultivation of the mind, and for this purpose, the above curriculum is quite inadequate.”

Takamine taught at Tokyo Higher Normal School, rising to the principalship of that school in 1879. He was also principal of theTokyo Art School, Tokyo Music School and Tokyo Women’s Higher Normal School.

The Tokyo Normal School eventually became Tokyo University of Education, the forerunner of today’s Tsukuba University. SUNY Oswego has a long-standing relationship with Tsukuba, and has participated in student exchanges with the Japanese university.

Woodbridge N. Ferris

If ever there was a young man whose prospects for doing great things with his life were dim, it was Woodbridge Ferris. He was born to Stella and John Ferris Jr. on January 6, 1853, near Spencer, N.Y. In the mid-19th century, Spencer was considered part of the frontier and Ferris was literally born in a log cabin, the first of seven children. His great grandfather, Richard Ferris, was a veteran of the Revolutionary War who lived in Scarsdale, and spent the entire War for Independence as part of the New York militia patrolling Westchester County. Pvt. Ferris saw no action during the war, but as a veteran, he was entitled to land in western New York state as payment for his war-time service.

Woodbridge was fortunate to have parents who — despite their own lack of formal education — wanted him to receive some school. As Ferris recalled, “On a spring morning when I was four years of age, father walked with me to the rural schoolhouse, a distance of about one half mile. During the eight succeeding years, school was the horror of my life.” This was, no doubt, partly due to bullying by the older boys and partly due to his treatment by his teacher.

It is not surprising, given his family background, that Ferris’ verbal skills were weak. His teacher in the one-room schoolhouse would call him a “blockhead” when he struggled with his lessons, an experience he remembered the rest of his life, and in a perverse way may have contributed to his later interest in teaching. By age 10 Ferris could read aloud “fairly well” and one of his household duties was to read the weekly newspaper stories of the Civil War to his father.

Ferris recalled that the winter he was 12 years of age marked what he called the turning point in his school life. William Holdridge, a teacher who lived in the district, invited the arithmetic class to visit his home evenings. “His personal encouragement aroused in me a hunger for knowledge, a desire to do something and be something.” He also related a vivid recollection of another influential event:

At the age of thirteen, I decided that if father ever paroled me from “serving time” in the district school I would on receiving that parole declare my school education finished. [However,]… a seemingly trifling event occurred near the approach of my fourteenth birthday. I was sent on an errand to our nearest neighbor. I found the woman of the house overhauling an ancient district school library. My eye caught sight of a small volume entitled the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. I was granted the loan of this book. I read this book, in fact this is the first book that I ever really read. I enjoyed every page, I was thrilled, I was awakened, I was inspired. I said to myself, “why can’t I do something worth while?”

And thus, the boy who hated school and who had planned to end his formal education as soon as he could, took a fateful step and at age 14 enrolled in the Spencer Academy for a nine-month term. At age 16, Ferris decided to attend a teachers’ institute at Waverly, conducted by Dr. John French, who was recognized by the State of New York for “his wonderful educational ability by utilizing his services in teachers’ institutes for many years.”

Some 14,3000 students are now enrolled at Ferris State University.

Although there was no immediate teaching position available for young Ferris, he was able to convince one of the local district officials to let him have a “trial” appointment at a rural common school with a reputation for driving teachers out in short order. Although Ferris managed to survive his first year of teaching, he realized that he lacked the skills needed to become a more effective educator. In April 1870, he sought additional educational training at the Owego Academy. Before he could be admitted, he was required to take an entrance examination.

Ferris wrote in his diary, “I secured sufficient credits to be eligible for admission without examination to Cornell University.” But he did not attend Cornell University, which had accepted its first class of 412 undergraduates in 1868. Instead, he decided to attend the Oswego Normal and Training School, now Oswego State University of New York, an even smaller institution, founded in 1861 with nine students.

On February fourteenth, I arrived at Oswego, New York where the next day I entered upon my examination for entrance to the normal school. I was given one half year’s advanced credit on the classical course.

For all he admired [his Oswego] faculty members, Ferris held Sheldon in the highest esteem, thanks to an incident in May 1872. Sheldon had sent for Ferris, then a 19-year-old undergraduate in his third term. Ferris had just returned from the city police headquarters, charged with striking a local youth who insulted him. Dr. Sheldon apparently was aware of the circumstances of the incident and wanted to advise his hot-blooded young charge that he was to ignore future insults and practice a “philosophy of non-resistance.” Ferris responded, “…as gently as I knew how, that my constitution was so organized that I could not follow this advice. I promised to continue minding my own business, but when insulted I should defend myself. Dr. Sheldon smiled and made no further comment.”

In his autobiography Ferris accepted the fact that his offense was serious enough to have “sent him home but for the generosity of the president, Dr. Edward A. Sheldon.”

After two years at Oswego, Ferris’ funds were gone and he had not completed the teacher training course. He took a brief hiatus to earn money on the lecture circuit and in 1873 Ferris completed his training at Oswego and returned to Tioga County as principal of the Spencer Academy. With him was his wife, Helen, whom he had met while attending Oswego Normal School. She taught in the Spencer Academy and became Ferris’ partner when later in his life he founded the Big Rapids (Michigan) Industrial School, forerunner of Ferris State University in 1884 which celebrated its 125th anniversary in 2009.

It would be difficult to overstate Ferris’ accomplishments in the fields of education and politics. There is a story behind each achievement and Ferris’ efforts sometimes met with failure. The Big Rapids Industrial School went bankrupt twice before succeeding as Ferris Industrial School. His early candidacies for political office were not always successful and although he was a popular governor in Michigan, the “Good Grey Governor,” as he was called by his supporters, was defeated for re-election to a third term.

During his lifetime, Ferris overcame many obstacles and experienced a number of “turning points.” The common thread of these events was that each involved opening his access to more education and thus, his story illustrates a uniquely American process that has enabled greater social mobility among its people from the earliest years of the Republic. Perhaps his greatest achievement and legacy continues to affect the lives of thousands of students who are enrolled in the university that bears his name. For that, Dr. Sheldon may be owed a special debt of thanks.

Edward J. Reid, Ed. D., was raised on a farm in Van Etten, less than 10 miles from Woodbridge Ferris’ birthplace. He is an alumnus of SUNY Albany. After 38 years in education, he retired as Superintendent of the Owego Apalachin Central School District.

The nurseryman Edward Austin Sheldon would probably liken it to the seeds of the maple tree propelled by the wind.

Whatever metaphor is used, one thing is certain: The Oswego Method of learning by doing spread far and wide, thanks in large part to the work of alumni ambassadors who travelled the nation and world to share the founder’s principles.

“Many of the most competent graduates of the school had been invited to different cities to organize city training schools on the plan of the Oswego Training School, and to State Normal schools to organize training departments in connection with schools of practice,” Sheldon wrote in his autobiography.

Jennie Stickney carried the Oswego method to Boston. Sheldon called her “a sort of pioneer missionary for the new methods.”

Amanda Funnelle 1862 taught at the state Normal School at Terre Haute, Ind., and later helped organizing a training school in Detroit. Her travels would take her all over the country before she returned to Oswego to serve as principal of the kindergarten-training department.

Mary V. Lee 1863 and Mary McGonegal 1863 went to Davenport, Iowa, to start a city training school. Lee would go on to teach at the State Normal School at Winona, Minn., after which time she took a medical course and returned to Oswego to head the department of physiology and physical culture. Lee Hall, an athletic facility, is named for her.

Sheldon tells of graduates starting schools in Worcester, Mass., Portland and Lewiston, Maine, Paterson, N.J., and Dayton and Cleveland, Ohio.

Graduates weren’t the only ones spreading Sheldon’s system.

“Many representative educators from different parts of the country, and teachers from every grade were from time to time visitors to the training school and the public schools,” the founder noted.

William Phelps, the first principal of the New Jersey State Normal School in Trenton, now The College of New Jersey, led a delegation invited by Sheldon “to investigate the suspicious proceedings going on in the thriving lake port.”

Phelps would take the Oswego Method back to New Jersey, as well as to Minnesota, where he was to work after his New Jersey tenure. Oswego’s connection with TCNJ is still strong. Dr. R. Barbara Gitenstein, former Oswego provost, current president of TCNJ, was at Oswego from 1984 to 1991.

“From what I have said it will be seen that the Oswego school has had an important influence on the normal school system of this and other States. This influence was particularly felt in western and southwestern States, notably in Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota and California,” Sheldon wrote.

Woodbridge N. Ferris, Class of 1873: From Frontier Dweller to University Founder

From Hawaii to Oswego

Teaching Method Crosses the Pacific from Oswego to Japan

Oswego Alumna Pioneered Special Ed