Education on the Dalton Plan (Signed and Inscribed Association Copy)

First UK edition, first impression.  xvi, 212pp, with a portrait plate frontispiece (of Helen Parkhurst) and one fold-out chart towards rear.  Half bound in deep blue leather over blue cloth-covered boards, five raised bands and gilt lettering on spine.  Top edge gilt.  Marbled endpapers. Extra leaf tipped in bearing an inscription from Helen Parkhurt to [Rosa] Bassett, ‘Dear Miss Bassett, May our vision be true and may our faith continue as we do our but in helping society to make its adjustment, your friend, Helen Parkhurst, July 15 1922’.  12mo.  Boards are a little worn and marked, gently rounded on corners and spine ends.  Some faint and occasional spotting on first and last few leaves else internally neat, clean, bright and tight.

Helen Parkhurst was the creator of the Dalton Plan for education, a plan which aims to create a balance between a child talents and the needs of the community.  This 1922 volume is the foundational text for the philosophy of learning the Plan embodies.  In the midst of the intellectual ferment of the first few years of the 20th century, Parkhurst’s Dalton Plan was inspired by educational thinkers such as Maria Montessori and John Dewey and centres around the three pillars of House, Assignment and Laboratory.  In 1921, the English educationalist, Rosa Bassett – headmistress of Stockwell Secondary School in London (now the Rosa Bassett School) visited Parkhurst at her school in the United States.  Inspired by Parkhurst and her ideas, Bassett became a leading influence in the application of the Dalton Plan within an English secondary school.  Bassett, to whom Parkhurst inscribed this copy, is referenced in the preface as contributing ‘valuable accounts of experiements with the Dalton Laboratory Plan, conducted…in a London secondary school’, and contribution a chapter in the book on a year long experiment with the Plan at The County Secondary School for Girls in Streatham, London.  An important and evocative volume in the history of education and teaching.