Educators of vision
Lucy Larcom, who taught writing, literature and history from 1854 to 1862, may be the best known of Wheaton’s 19th-century faculty. She certainly characterized the innovative teacher-scholars who would follow her as Wheaton faculty members. The founder of the student literary magazine Rushlight (which still exists), Miss Larcom also was the catalyst behind the creation of “Psyche,” an intellectual discussion group. In the classroom, she defied accepted methods of teaching history and English literature, eschewing recitation and memorization in favor of discussing ideas. A close friend of poet John Greenleaf Whittier, Miss Larcom compiled several anthologies published under his name, from which she received steady royalty income.
Seminary teacher Mary Jane Cragin, a graduate of Bridgewater Normal School (now Bridgewater State College), made significant contributions in mathematics. Nicknamed “Miss Why?” by students, Mary Jane Cragin pioneered the teaching of geometry without textbooks, encouraging her pupils to think through and solve mathematical problems on their own. This teaching method earned Miss Cragin national acclaim after she left Wheaton to teach at the St. Louis Normal School (Missouri), where she later became principal. Five years after her death, National Teachers Monthly praised Mary Cragin as “a woman who came as near the ideal of true teacher, everything considered, as any that we have known.”
A third outstanding educator during Wheaton’s early history was Clara Pike, who graduated from Wheaton in 1866, and returned to teach science from 1869 to 1901. At her urging, Wheaton built science facilities and acquired equipment unusually sophisticated for a female seminary. Miss Pike regularly attended classes at the Women’s Laboratory of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and invited MIT professors to lecture at Wheaton. In planning the seminary’s science courses, Miss Pike consulted extensively with Ellen Swallow Richards, the founder of the Women’s Laboratory at MIT.