On the occasion of the Graduate School of Education's centennial, John de Cuevas wrote an article for Harvard Magazine detailing the 100 years since the first Harvard appointment of a professor in pedagogy. As the School reaches the midpoint of its capital campaign, we asked de Cuevas to update his 1991 article.

Do we believe in higher education or hire education? Should the goal of education be to prepare children for "their greatest happiness," as Thomas Jefferson believed, or for their place in society as breadwinners, as Benjamin Franklin advised? What should children learn? Why are American children doing poorly in math and reading compared to children in other industrialized nations? Is something wrong with our schools? Are they in crisis? Where do we stand on issues of school choice, busing, vouchers? What is education all about, anyway, and what can we do to improve it?

Those are some of the questions that besiege educators these days, reflecting persistent problems of schooling whose solutions at times appear ever more elusive because of the controversies they generate. Yet those questions are of primary importance to this nation's 56 million schoolchildren, at least two-thirds of whom attend public schools. They are also the grain that Harvard's Graduate School of Education thrives on, the grist for its mill.

In the heat of Harvard's current capital campaign, the Ed School (as everyone calls it) rides the crest of a wave of energy, optimism, and what Dean Jerome T. Murphy terms "practical idealism," the belief that the School can make a difference in education through research and practice. He is somewhat less sanguine about finances, although very encouraged by the momentum of recent fundraising efforts. The Ed School is compelled to be one of the most enterprising of Harvard tubs, with an endowment at the end of fiscal 1996 of $128.2 million, less than 1.5 percent of Harvard's $8.7 billion. On a per-student basis the Ed School's share of the endowment is the lowest--only $111,478. With a $60 million campaign goal, almost half of which will be used to support faculty, the Ed School is working to improve its student/faculty ratio of 22/1. The School also strives to increase financial aid assistance so that it can offer the kind of aid that other schools at Harvard provide. With nearly 70 percent of the School's campaign goal raised, Murphy is confident that the School will leverage its resources to continue to improve upon its current wave of progress.

Finances notwithstanding, Murphy's mission for the School is "to advance the education of children and adults around the world, while focusing special attention on the learning of all students in the United States by developing leaders in education, generating ideas, and promoting a national dialogue." He approaches these goals with the zest of . . . well, a missionary, calling himself "an unabashed enthusiast" and referring to his faculty as "the dream team." The Ed School's excellence, he believes, rests on "really committed people taking on some of the most intractable problems of society because we have something to offer."

Linking Research to Practice

Indeed, the Ed School has a great deal to offer. Its primary concerns are training and research. The training applies to professionals in education, not just teachers and administrators in schools and universities, but other professionals as well -- psychologists, counselors, health and social workers. And education embraces not only the education of children, although that is the School's main focus, but also adult education, as evidenced by the recently established National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy.

In training professionals -- primarily new and experienced teachers and administrators in schools and universities -- the Ed School offers a wide range of courses at the master and doctoral levels, including a special program for Harvard undergraduates who want certification to teach. Beyond courses in education, the School has developed a variety of programs over the years that attract people from different disciplines who seek to increase their knowledge and professional skills in areas related to education. The Principals' Center, for example, the first of its kind when established in 1981, draws principals to Cambridge from around the country for discussion of common concerns. Over 100 similar centers across the country have emulated this model to nurture effective schools. An office for Programs in Professional Education offers conferences, workshops, summer institutes, and year-long seminars on specific topics or areas of interest. The Harvard Education Forum sponsors dozens of events on campus each year that convene authors, business leaders, filmmakers, and leaders in education for debate and discussion of a broad range of current issues.

Research at the Ed School, which focuses primarily on national issues, tends to fall into three broad categories: learning and teaching, human development, and educational policy. Each category is represented by one of the School's three major divisions: Learning and Teaching (L&T); Human Development and Psychology (HDP); and Administration, Planning, and Social Policy (APSP). Policy issues have long been of major concern, but the emphasis in recent years has been shifting to issues of learning and teaching. In fact, L&T, once the smallest of the three divisions, will soon match the others in size. In research, the Ed School has developed what Academic Dean Susan Moore Johnson calls "a whole new set of methodologies that have changed how research is done, from ways of measuring the effects of national education policy to observing how children respond in classrooms to interviewing troubled adolescents in clinical settings."

In the last three years, thanks to a grant from the Spencer Foundation, the School has been able to fund 18 doctoral students (six each year for a three-year period) to serve as research assistants to faculty members while pursuing their own studies. The grant has resulted in two student research conferences, modeled on the professional kind, that consist of symposia, panels, and roundtable discussions.

Murphy's Dream Team

The Ed School's excellence in research and its reputation as one of the leading schools of education in the nation rests on an outstanding faculty. Among its best known members are Howard Gardner, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, and Robert Coles, all three MacArthur award winners; Carol Gilligan, acclaimed for her contributions to the psychology of women; Gerald Lesser, one of the principal architects of Sesame Street; Robert LeVine, whose studies of learning in different cultures around the world have won him international renown; Richard J. Light, originator of The Harvard Assessment Seminars on teaching and learning; Richard Murnane, a leading economist in the field of education whose most recent book (with co-author Frank Levy of M.I.T.), Teaching the New Basic Skills, has received significant attention in the press; Catherine Snow, internationally known for her work on children and language; and Charles V. Willie, an authority on school choice.

More recently appointed faculty members include Richard Elmore, a specialist in education policy and school reform; Gary Orfield, an authority on civil rights, urban policy, and school desegregation; and Judith Singer and John Willett, whose courses in statistics attract students from all over the Boston area and constitute one of the best programs in quantitative research anywhere.

Among the distinguished newcomers are Ann Brown, who specializes in issues of learning and teaching; Richard Chait, an authority on administration in higher education; and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, an expert on immigration and its effects on schools.

World-Class Students

The students who enroll at the Ed School tend to be racially, ethnically, and geographically diverse. The 1,150 currently enrolled range in age from 21 to 65, the average being 33; 70 percent of them are women; 26 percent represent minority groups; and 10 percent come from abroad. They include 494 doctoral degree candidates (about 75 new ones enroll each year) and 548 master's candidates, most of whom complete their studies in a year. Others come for certification as teachers or as special students in a variety of categories.

They sign up for courses, concentrations, and programs designed, not only to prepare them for professional work in education, but to give them -- whenever possible -- immediate practical experience in the workplace. Indeed, through several of its programs, the Ed School puts the knowledge and expertise of both faculty and students to work in local schools and communities. A group of students and faculty, for instance, are working with the Jeremiah Burke school to assist this Dorchester high school in implementing an ambitious technology program. The School is working to strengthen its connections with local schools and recently created an office for school partnerships to coordinate these efforts.

Concentrating on Learning

The Ed School aims for a broad balance in the courses it offers. One of its newest concentrations, Arts in Education, gives students the opportunity to study the role of arts in human development and educational practice, as well as policy issues that affect the arts in education. According to Jessica Davis, the concentration's director, "the time was ripe to start a program like this because the crisis in the support for education in the arts was so severe." The Ed School, she says, has made "a strong statement that it believes in the importance of the arts in education."

Another expanding concentration is Technology in Education (TIE). As the drive to get computers into every classroom and link schools to the Internet increases, so too does the need for thoughtful development and assessment of how technology, in all its forms, can be used as an effective teaching tool. It makes sense, then, that the TIE concentration is officially a part of L&T, and also that it is open to students from other divisions at the Ed School as well as other schools at Harvard. In fact, according to George Brackett, who directs the concentration, for those interested in designing educational software or using technology in educational environments, the Ed School is the only place at the University that offers appropriate courses. With the School's commitment to taking a leadership role in the field and with technology concentrators now numbering 50, the concentration may eventually become a program. (The difference being that students must apply to enter a program in advance of registering, whereas they may elect a concentration at any time during their course of study.)

Making the Most of Technology

Given the explosion in technological advances, the School has made it a priority on campus and is currently conducting a search for a new senior faculty member (or two, if Murphy can find a way to finance it) in technology and education. Murphy sees integrating technology into many facets of the School's teaching and research efforts as a mandate that will expand the already strong contribution to the field. And the School is also casting a wider technological net. An internal technology advisory group has been active for the past two years implementing recommendations for improving the use of technology in Ed School classrooms, offices, library, and public spaces. The group has begun installing new desktop hardware and software in all faculty and staff offices, has improved teleconferencing facilities at the School's conference center, and has upgraded equipment at the media center. Such improvements cost money, of course, so that making the right technological decisions on a limited budget has to be one of the School's primary concerns.

Influence beyond Cambridge

In addition to regular curricular offerings like those in arts and technology, the Ed School is also home to a number of influential projects and programs. Perhaps the most famous of them is Project Zero (known as PZ to staff members), codirected by Howard Gardner and David Perkins. Started in 1967, PZ has become a nationally known center for broadly based educational research and development, one that is also actively involved with schools. PZ looks at how children learn and at what Gardner, renowned for his theory of multiple intelligences, calls "the landscape of the child's mind." Over the years, PZ has had a far-reaching effect on education in this country, prompting one insider to say, "We're not Zero for nothing."

More than a decade ago, the School established the Harvard Family Research Project to help frame national thinking about the ways families, schools, and communities can work together. The Project has helped states and school districts nationwide by providing information about successful partnerships to bolster children's development and academic achievement.

Another outstanding program is the one in Risk and Prevention, an interdisciplinary concentration that, in partnership with local schools, trains students in fostering children's development and resilience to prevent antisocial and self-destructive behaviors. Established in 1992 by psychologist Robert Selman and in the past year directed by Gil Noam (they both hold joint appointments at the Ed School and the Medical School), Risk and Prevention works at keeping Boston-area at-risk children and youth in school and out of trouble. The 50 master's students in the program participate in a year-long practicum that gives them hands-on experience in schools, hospitals, and other social service organizations, in addition to their coursework. An increasing number of doctoral students are also focusing their work in the area of risk and resilience.

It should be clear that what the Ed School has to offer more than justifies Dean Murphy's enthusiasm. The School not only influences policy and practice nationally, it also contributes significantly to the local community. Scholarship at all levels is firmly linked to practice, both faculty and students seeking practical applications for their theoretical work. As Richard Murnane puts it, "We share a sense of working together on important issues that will affect some of the least advantaged people in our society." And even though the Ed School struggles to make ends meet, its relative poverty is a matter of pride among students. As Gary Orfield suggests, Ed School students "know that education is not a financially rewarding profession, but they're determined to do it anyway, which is one of the great things about this place."