By Billie Allee
Elisabeth Irwin was a feminist activist, non-traditional educator, and education reformer during the late 19th and mid-20th centuries. In 1921, she founded Little Red Schoolhouse and Elisabeth Irwin High School in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City.
Little Red Schoolhouse was established as a progressive school inside Public School 41 on West 11th Street. In 1941 it became a private institution and added the Elisabeth Irwin High School, together known as LREI.
At the school, what is taught about Irwin is somewhat limited. In the school lobby, there is a cutout of the founder and a quote of hers on the front door. In addition, all students watch a short play during the Founder’s Day Assembly convened before the yearly winter break focusing on the creation of Little Red School a common phrase used to describe her is the three words: “Lesbian, Mother, Educator”.
Annie Holden, an 11th grader who is part of the Greenwich Village class, said she had limited knowledge about Irwin before taking the class, “Before I was in the Greenwich Village class with Ann I didn’t know much about Elisabeth Irwin at all. I knew she created our school but I didn’t know anything about who she was as a person, her values, and what her life was like before she created LREI.”
Over the years, LREI History teacher, Ann Carroll accumulated information about Elisabeth Irwin through primary documents from people close to her, books, and student’s findings. Carroll was interviewed and had a lot to share. She remarked that if Elisabeth Irwin heard people at LREI labeling her as a “lesbian, mother, educator”, she would have flipped it and said “educator, lesbian, mother”.
Ann Carroll elaborates on Irwin’s image at LREI, “I think honestly we have created a little bit of a grandmother saint where I think she was a little bit more of a young rebel or iconoclast, who smashed tradition in many ways.” Additionally, Irwin’s upbringing laid the foundation for her critical view on societal convention.
Elisabeth Irwin was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1880. She was born into a middle-class family, they did have financial ups and downs and her father was a merchant. She went to Packer, a private school in Brooklyn Heights.
Irwin graduated from Smith College, a women’s private institution in 1903 where she studied journalism and sociology. Ann Carroll said, “We don’t know much about that period in her life. She left no diary and we don’t have any letters from these times.” Yet she elaborated by saying that Irwin worked at a settlement house in the Lower East Side, common to many middle-class, educated white women of that time.
Later, Irwin went to Columbia University for her master’s degree and graduated in 1923. She studied social work and became passionate about education. Irwin thought the education system at the time was horrible and created a generation of workers for a capitalist society and didn’t offer real learning for kids. She said it was a poor system of punishment and reward and was motivated to redefine what it meant to educate a child.
Annie Holden elaborated on Irwin’s values for the school environment, “At the time people believed that children should be seen and not heard, but Elisabeth believed the opposite and decided to center the education around the student.”
After graduating from Columbia University, Irwin was curious about the field of psychology and formed more radical beliefs. “She began to read Freud’s psychology and believed that there were solutions for social problems and if we just look at those social problems from a systematic, logical, scientific point of view, society can transform”, explained Ann Carroll.
Sammi Sapira, a 12th grader and another student in Ann’s Greenwich Village class explains the teaching approach at LREI today. She says, “(Elizabeth Irwin)… wanted LREI to represent a place where kids were educated in experimentation, not regurgitation. This is seen at LREI through discussion-based classes, our lack of an abundance of tests, and the focus a lot on critical thinking skills, versus repeating information.”
Additionally, Elisabeth Irwin believed that progressive and thoughtful social justice education shouldn’t be reserved for private schools or those who can afford tuition. As mentioned previously, for the first 10 years, Little Red was a classroom inside of a Public School 41 During the Great Depression, the New York City Board of Education cut funding and announced, “We are no longer funding, what they called an “experiment”. In 1931, she decided, “We will make a private school.” and of school parents wanted the LREI to continue. She vowed that she would maintain it for the same amount of money that New York City spent per child in public school, $150 per year (which is almost $2,500 today). (Interestingly, the current tuition at LREI is about $55,500 per year.) LREI became a private school, tuition-based school because there wasn’t any other option to keep it in existence.
In addition to writing the book about schools, Fit the School to the Child, Irwin was a believer in social justice education. She was a huge believer in the arts – singing, painting, and dancing were not just classes that students took – it was a part of the everyday life at the school.
Students were asked whether or not they thought there was sufficient Elisabeth Iriwn representation at LREI. Sammi Sapira said, “100% lack of true EI representation at our school. Everyone knows the phrase “lesbian, mother, educator” but they don’t know any of the backgrounds of that, they don’t understand what educational reformer or radical means.”
In addition, Verity Berthelsen, a 12th grader and member of the Greenwich Village class, expressed her opinion on Elisabeth Irwin’s representation at LREI, “We get those three words but that is the only thing people know, it is hard to carry on someone’s legacy without knowing what she intended or wanted.”
Ann Carroll agreed with Sammi Sapira and Verity Berthelsen about the space for improvement, but she had a differing opinion about what Elisabeth Irwin would have thought, “I think that creating the Founder’s Day story around that whole institution is cute. It doesn’t center on Elisabeth Irwin, it centers on the school. And I don’t think she would have a problem with that. That said, I think there is a place in the high school where students should get a (better) idea of who she was. Our school is LREI and I feel like sometimes we lop off the EI.”
According to all sources interviewed, Elisabeth Irwin was a groundbreaking woman, an innovator, and a radical in her time. She despised orthodoxy; the belief that everybody had to think similarly about issues; and a strong advocate of free thinking; and was fearless in pushing through the boundaries of what was socially, educationally, and politically accepted. Sources agreed that her life and accomplishments should be displayed more prominently within the school and for the LREI students.