From Nursing to Nursery School: The Life and Works of Harriet M. Johnson from 1900-1934

Abstract

Much has been written about the educational life and works of Harriet Merrill Johnson (1867-1934) involving her work as Director of the very first laboratory nursery school in the United States and her revolutionary theories about nursery education. Little to nothing has been on paper about her visiting nursing work for the Henry Street Settlement, Hartley House settlement and other institutions, her unionist work for the Women‘s Trade Union League, and her landmark work with the Public Education Association of the City of New York introducing visiting teachers and Binet testing in public school education. In 1916, she was one of three founders of the Bureau of Educational Experiments, the later Bank Street College of Education, renowned for its progressive teachers and educators. Already throughout the first two decades of the twentieth century, Harriet M. Johnson together with her life-long companion Harriet Forbes formed an out-of-the-closet lesbian couple that was non-guardedly open and straightforward about their gender leaning. For several years the Forbes-Johnson duo formed a household together with another pair of women (~ the Marot-Pratt couple). Yet, they in all probability were the first candidly lesbian couple ever to adopt a child, bequeathing her with both their family names, baptizing her with a combined hyphenated family name (Forbes-Johnson), and raising her in their two-mother household. While this case study extensively describes the life of Harriet M. Johnson during the period 1900-1920, the authors certainly did not forget to examine her 1920-1934 educational theorizing about nursery education that until today without any question has been underreported in the literature — even by Bank Street College of Education. We cautiously remind readers that this is a descriptive article. Again, we sincerely hope that we encourage young researchers to build their analysis on this text!