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Edna Noble White
A white woman with a dimpled chin, dark hair in an updo, wearing eyeglasses and a dark top with a white collar
Edna Noble White, from a 1918 publication
BornJune 3, 1879
Fairmount, Illinois
DiedMay 4, 1954
Highland Park, Michigan
Occupation(s)Educator, college professor, home economist
Known forDirector of the Merrill-Palmer Institute from 1919 to 1947

Edna Noble White (June 3, 1879 – May 4, 1954) was an American educator. She was director of the Merrill-Palmer Institute in Detroit from 1919 to 1947, and president of the American Home Economics Association from 1918 to 1920. She was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1993.

Early life and education

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White was born in Fairmount, Illinois, the daughter of Alexander Lycurgus White and Angeline Eva Noble White.[1] She graduated from the University of Illinois in 1906, with a degree in home economics.[2][3]

Career

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White was a teacher as a young woman. She was a home economics professor at Ohio State College from 1908 to 1919. She co-wrote a textbook, A Study of Foods (1914). During World War I, she was active in leading food conservation programs in Ohio; "It has been a strange and rather trying experience to find ourselves grown fashionable over night," she wrote in 1918, about home economists in the war effort.[4] From 1918 to 1920, she was president of the American Home Economics Association.[2][5]

Beginning in 1919, White was founding director of the Merrill-Palmer Institute in Detroit,[5] a position she held for 27 years, until her retirement in 1947. She created the Visiting Housekeepers program, and the Detroit Council for Youth Service. In 1921 she went to study early childhood programs in the United Kingdom with Margaret McMillan.[6][7] In 1922 she founded Detroit's first laboratory nursery school.[8][9]

From 1925 to 1937, White chaired the National Council of Parent Education.[6] In 1929, she was a speaker at the Fifth World Conference of the New Education Fellowship, in Denmark.[1][10] She was a voting delegate representing the United States at the founding of the Pan-Pacific Women's Association in Honolulu in 1930. [11]

During the 1930s, she chaired the National Advisory Committee on Emergency Nursery Schools, a federal relief program to quickly expand access to early childhood education. She was also involved as an advisor with the Child Study Association of America, International Federation of Home and School, the Agricultural Missions Foundation, and the National Conference on Family Relations.[2] She was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution.[12]

In retirement, White went to Greece to organize programs in family studies and early childhood education at Greek universities, and she worked to establish a gerontology program in Detroit.[2]

Publications

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  • "Meat" (1910)[13]
  • A Study of Foods (1914, with Ruth Aimee Wardall)[14]
  • "Meat and Meat Substitutes" (1914)[15]
  • "The Work of Women in the War" (1918)[4]
  • "The Merrill-Palmer School" (1922, with Mabel Rogers)[16]
  • "The Nursery School: A Teacher of Parents" (1926)[17]
  • "Preschool Health Problems" (1928)[18]
  • "The Objectives of the American Nursery School" (1928)[19]
  • "Parent Education in the Emergency" (1931)[20]
  • "Experiments in Family Consultation Centers" (1934)[21]

Personal life and legacy

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White lived with her older sister Leila for most of her life, and helped to raise her brother's sons.[7] She died in 1954, at the age of 74, in Highland Park, Michigan.[22][23] Her papers are in the Merrill-Palmer Institute papers, in the Walter Reuther Archives at Wayne State University.[2] In 1993, she was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame.[8] In 2013, she was named alongside Henry Ford, George W. Romney, and five other notable people, as one of the "Eight great, late state leaders we'd like to have back", an opinion feature in the Detroit Free Press, with the comment "who better to revamp the system than the woman who developed much of it?"[24]

References

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  1. ^ a b Ohles, Shirley; Ohles, Frederik; Ramsay, John (1997-10-28). Biographical Dictionary of Modern American Educators. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. pp. 330–331. ISBN 978-0-313-00500-8.
  2. ^ a b c d e Buchta, Robert E. (1999). "White, Edna Noble (1879-1954), home economics and child development educator". American National Biography. doi:10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.0900797. Retrieved 2023-09-01.
  3. ^ Kelley, James Herbert (1913). The Alumni Record of the University of Illinois. University of Illinois. p. 401.
  4. ^ a b White, Edna Noble (February 1918). "The Work of Women in the War". Ohio State University Monthly. 9 (5): 16–17.
  5. ^ a b Myers, Garry C. (1935-02-26). "She Teaches Newest Ideas in Child Care". Times Union. p. 18. Retrieved 2023-09-01 – via Newspapers.com.
  6. ^ a b Beatty, Barbara (1995). Preschool Education in America: The Culture of Young Children from the Colonial Era to the Present. Yale University Press. p. 152. ISBN 978-0-300-07273-0.
  7. ^ a b Bower, Helen (1941-10-26). "Woman of the Week". Detroit Free Press. p. 115. Retrieved 2023-09-01 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. ^ a b "Edna Noble White". Michigan Women Forward. Retrieved 2023-09-01.
  9. ^ Smuts, Alice (2008-10-01). Science in the Service of Children, 1893-1935. Yale University Press. p. 10. ISBN 978-0-300-12847-5.
  10. ^ Whitehead, Kay (2014-11-02). "Women Educators and Transnational Networking in the Twentieth-Century Nursery School Movement". Women's History Review. 23 (6): 957–975. doi:10.1080/09612025.2014.945796. ISSN 0961-2025.
  11. ^ Goodykoontz, Bess (December 1930). "Pan-Pacific Women's Association Formed at Hawaii Conference". School Life. 16 (4): 77.
  12. ^ Daughters of the American Revolution (1922). Lineage Book of the Charter Members of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Daughters of the American Revolution. p. 95.
  13. ^ White, Edna Noble (June 1910). "Meat". Agricultural College Extension Bulletin. 5 (10): 1–16.
  14. ^ Wardall, Ruth Aimee; White, Edna Noble (1914). A Study of Foods. Ginn.
  15. ^ White, Edna Noble (December 1914). "Meat and Meat Substitutes". The Agricultural College Extension Bulletin. 10 (4): 1–16.
  16. ^ White, Edna Noble; Rogers, Mabel (June 1922). "The Merrill-Palmer School". M.S.T.A. Quarterly Review. 4 (3): 10–12.
  17. ^ White, Edna Noble (October 1926). "The Nursery School: A Teacher of Parents". Child Study. 4 (1): 8–9.
  18. ^ White, Edna Noble (February 1928). "Preschool Health Problems". Childhood Education. 4 (6): 279–282. doi:10.1080/00094056.1928.10723289. ISSN 0009-4056.
  19. ^ White, Edna Noble (April 1928). "The Objectives of the American Nursery School". The Family. 9 (2): 50–51. doi:10.1177/104438942800900204. ISSN 0887-400X.
  20. ^ White, Edna Noble. "Parent Education in the Emergency." School and Society 40 (1931): 379-81.
  21. ^ White, E. N. (1934-05-01). "Experiments in Family Consultation Centers". Social Forces. 12 (4): 557–562. doi:10.2307/2569716. ISSN 0037-7732. JSTOR 2569716.
  22. ^ Lascarides, V. Celia; Hinitz, Blythe F. (2013-05-13). History of Early Childhood Education. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-136-70553-3.
  23. ^ "Edna White, Educator, Dies at 73". Detroit Free Press. 1954-05-06. p. 15. Retrieved 2023-09-01 – via Newspapers.com.
  24. ^ "Encore: Eight great, late state leaders we'd like to have back". Detroit Free Press. 2013-02-17. pp. A22. Retrieved 2023-09-01 – via Newspapers.com.
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