Occupation educator Period 1914 - 1979 Name Stanwood Cobb Spouse Nayan Whitlam (m. 1919) | Nationality US Children none Role Author | |
Born November 6, 1881
Newton, Massachusetts ( 1881-11-06 ) Genre non-fiction, poetry and religious Subject education and Baha'i Faith Died December 29, 1982, Chevy Chase Books The essential mysticism Education Harvard Divinity School, Dartmouth College | ||
Stanwood Cobb (November 6, 1881 – December 29, 1982) was an American educator, author and prominent Baha'i of the 20th century.
Contents
He was born in Newton, Massachusetts to Darius Cobb - a Civil War soldier, artist and descendent of Elder Henry Cobb of the second voyage of the Mayflower - and Eunice Hale (nee Waite) - founding president of the Ladies Physiological Institute of Boston and mother of Cobb's four sisters and two other brothers. He studied first at Dartmouth College, where he was valedictorian of his 1903 or 1905 graduating class, and then at Harvard Divinity School, earning an A.M. in philosophy and comparative religion 1910. His thesis work, Communistic Experimental Settlements in the USA observed that every such settlement had failed within a generation because of an inability of communism to get people to subordinate their own desires for the good of the group. In 1919 he married Ida Nayan Whitlam. Cobb was a member of several literary associations and of the Cosmos Club of Washington, D.C..
Cobb lived internationally for some years before settling in Chevy Chase, Maryland, where he died.
Career as educator
In 1907–1910, Cobb taught history and Latin at Robert College in Constantinople (now Istanbul), followed by several years teaching in the US and Europe. He later headed the English department at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland (1914–15), taught at Asheville School in Asheville, North Carolina (1915–16), and was instructor of history and English at the United States Naval Academy (1916–19). Frustrated by the teaching experience at the Academy, Cobb heard a lecture by Marietta Johnson who helped marshal and crystallize his thoughts on education practice and curriculum theory. As a result, in 1919, Cobb founded the Chevy Chase Country Day School, of which he was the principal until his retirement, and, active in the progressive education movement in the United States, became a founder and motivating force, first secretary, and eventually president (1927–1930) of The Association for the Advancement of Progressive Education, later renamed in 1931 as Progressive Education Association (PEA) and then American Education Fellowship. The first president was Arthur E. Morgan. Later the influential John Dewey served as president. Cobb resigned the Presidency in 1930 following the influx of supporters of George Counts who moved the focus of the Association from a student-centred learning approach to one of a social policy oriented approach to education theory. However, between the enormous impact of World War II on all thought and the involvement of many members of the PEA in communism and the general atmosphere of Anti-communism in the United States the achievements of the PEA both before Cobb's resignation and after were largely lost and ended the efforts of the Association shortly after the Carnegie Foundation and Rockefeller Foundations withdrew their support.
Life as a Baha'i
After looking at Theosophy and Reform Judaism and other themes in religion Cobb investigated the Baha'i Faith after a series of articles in the Boston Transcript on the religion attracted his attention. He pursued the interest to Green Acre conference center in Eliot, Maine in 1906 during his studies at Harvard Divinity School seeking to be a Unitarian minister. Sarah Farmer much affected Cobb and Thornton Chase was giving a series of talks. It was on that occasion that he became a Baha'i.
Between 1909 and 1913 he met with `Abdu'l-Baha five times (twice in Akka and several times during the latter's travel to Europe and the US). In 1911 Cobb and a number of others gave talks in honor of the personal invitation by `Abdu'l-Baha to pilgrimage of Louis Gregory.
Cobb was a founding member of the Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Washington D. C. in 1933, and served on various committees (for example Cobb was Chairman of the Teaching Committee in 1935) and edited two Baha'i journals: Star of the West in 1924, and World Order from 1935-39.
Books and articles authored
Cobb was a prolific writer. Among his books were:
Similar to his books, the focus of Cobb's articles has been education and Baha'i oriented - he has contributed to or anthologized by:
as well as