Oak Lane Day School, located in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, was an independent school founded in 1916 which served preschool and elementary-aged children, which also operated an eight-week children's camp program in the summer. The school's stated mission was to honor each child's individuality in a setting that fostered intellectual, creative, academic and personal growth. Oak Lane placed an emphasis on art and art history, music, and drama. Also included in its academic curriculum were language arts (reading and writing), math, physical education, science and social studies. From 1965 until closure in June 2010, the school's country-like campus included a stream, pond, woods, meadows, specimen trees and animal life of all kind which supported environmental studies.
Heads of the school
History
Originally known as Oak Lane Country Day School, Oak Lane was established in 1916 and for 44 years was located in Cheltenham Township just north of Philadelphia on Oak Lane Road (not to be confused with a nearby but discontiguous Philadelphia street named Oak Lane). The school's founders used the model of the Progressive Education Movement to support a religiously, racially and economically diverse student population. Oak Lane's first head of school was Francis Marion Garver who later became director of the elementary division of the School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. The first chairman of Oak Lane's board of trustees was Dr. Morris Jastrow, Jr., the great scholar of Middle East languages and librarian of the University of Pennsylvania. Other trustees included members of prominent Philadelphia families in the early 1900s: Milton Sloss; Jay F. Schamberg, M.D.; Jerome J. Rothschild; Maurice Fleisher; Samuel Simeon Fels; Albert M. Greenfield; Lessing J. Rosenwald; Joseph Snellenburg; Alice Fleisher Liveright; and Judge Horace Stern.
In 1921, Francis Mitchell Froelicher became headmaster. Froelicher came from the Park School of Baltimore that was founded in 1912 by his father, Professor Hans Froelicher of Goucher College. Professor Froelicher was one of the leaders of the Progressive Education movement in America and served as a consultant to Oak Lane's founders in 1915. Francis Froelicher was elected president of the Progressive Education Association of America while he was Oak Lane's headmaster, and upon his departure in 1927, he went on to found the Fountain Valley School of Colorado.
Progressive education was a movement begun in the late 19th century in reaction to the influence of the industrial revolution on education. The Oak Lane catalog of 1924 stated that the school "is a protest against a system of education which apparently considers that children can be properly educated by factory methods." It also explained that the school "is not experimental, but accepts and puts into practice the principles established by those working in the field of educational psychology."
The 1924 school catalog listed the following as members of Oak Lane's Advisory Board: Felix Adler, of the Ethical Culture School in New York; David Werner Amram, professor of law of the University of Pennsylvania; John Dewey, Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University; Frank Graves, New York State Commissioner of Education; Henry Holmes, Dean of the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University; Eugene Randolph Smith, former Headmaster of the Park School; and Ambrose Suhrie, Dean of the School of Education in Cleveland.
From 1927 to 1931, William Burnlee Curry, a native of England and graduate of Oxford University, was headmaster. He had previously taught at Bedales School, a progressive school in England, and brought to Oak Lane a large retinue of teachers, many of them family. His wife, Mrs. Curry, taught nursery school, her sister, Miss Magaret Isherwood, taught English, and another relative, Miss Dorothy Cowley, was the librarian. Curry later became head of Dartington Hall School, one of the early progressive schools in England. While at Oak Lane, Curry hired Boris Blai, who was a student of Auguste Rodin, to become the fine arts teacher. Blai went on to found Tyler School of Art in 1935. Blai took with him another Oak Lane art teacher, Furman Finck, who later in his career painted a portrait of President Eisenhower.
In 1927, Oak Lane became accredited with the Secondary School Commission of the Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools of the Middle States and Maryland. Oak Lane also became recognized by the Department of Public Instruction of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.