{"id":10476,"date":"2016-06-20T19:16:08","date_gmt":"2016-06-20T19:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lichen.csd.sc.edu\/sce\/entries\/parker-school\/"},"modified":"2022-08-22T14:39:48","modified_gmt":"2022-08-22T14:39:48","slug":"parker-school","status":"publish","type":"entry","link":"https:\/\/www.scencyclopedia.org\/sce\/entries\/parker-school\/","title":{"rendered":"Parker School"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Parker School in Greenville County was one of the more innovative progressive schools in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. Described in 1941 as a \u201cmill town miracle\u201d by <em>Reader\u2019s Digest, <\/em>the Parker School embodied basic tenets of community education and progressive education. Lawrence P. Hollis organized the school to reflect Greenville mill owner Thomas Parker\u2019s utopian vision of work, school, and society. Mill village elementary schools in the west-side textile area of Greenville first constituted the Parker District in 1923; Parker High School opened one year later. In 1951 the Parker School District consolidated with other districts to form the Greenville Public School District. In 1985 the Parker High School building was closed and converted to a middle school.<\/p>\n<p>Attending to the \u201cneeds of the child,\u201d the Parker School established health, aesthetic, vocational, general education, leisure, and environmental programs for both students and adults. The school\u2019s elementary course of study emphasized learning units and the \u201cproject method,\u201d an instructional method focused on students\u2019 activities rather than on the printed book and recitation. The secondary school program connected traditional subjects with a focus on \u201ccenters of interest.\u201d A nationally recognized materials bureau collected documents used for student\/teacher-developed resource units. School activities took students into the surrounding community and throughout the state. While recognized throughout the United States for its innovative school practices, the Parker School embraced the objectives of welfare capitalism; its focus on \u201cvocation as textile training\u201d rather than \u201cvocation as general culture\u201d actually served to exclude the Parker School from a progressive education tradition.<\/p>\n<p>Ariail, Mary G., and Nancy J. Smith. <em>Weaver of Dreams: A History of the Parker District. <\/em>Columbia, S.C.: R. L. Bryan, 1977.<\/p>\n<p>Tippett, James. <em>Schools for a Growing Democracy. <\/em>Boston: Ginn, 1936.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Parker School in Greenville County was one of the more innovative progressive schools in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. Described in 1941 as a \u201cmill town miracle\u201d by Reader\u2019s Digest, the Parker School embodied basic tenets of community education and progressive education. Lawrence P. Hollis organized the school to reflect Greenville [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":17050,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","class_list":["post-10476","entry","type-entry","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","ecms-a-z","ecms-education","ecms-encyclopedia","ecms-greenville-county","ecms-p","ecms-upstate"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Parker School - South Carolina Encyclopedia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scencyclopedia.org\/sce\/entries\/parker-school\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Parker School - South Carolina Encyclopedia\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Parker School in Greenville County was one of the more innovative progressive schools in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. Described in 1941 as a \u201cmill town miracle\u201d by Reader\u2019s Digest, the Parker School embodied basic tenets of community education and progressive education. Lawrence P. 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