1920s
Events include: Television invented, Charles Lindbergh flies solo
non-stop across the Atlantic, women obtain full voting
rights, American Indians granted citizenship and the
right to vote, penicillin and insulin discovered, Harlem
Renaissance, the Jazz Age, Prohibition, many one-room
schools consolidated into multiple classroom facilities,
stock market crash and the beginning of the Great
Depression
Suffragists protest in front of the White House
U.S. presidents:
Herbert Hoover (1929–1933)
Calvin Coolidge (1923–1929)
Warren G. Harding (1921–1923)
Woodrow Wilson (1913–1921)
1929 | Jean Piaget’s The Child’s Conception of the World
is published. Northrop Memorial Auditorium, made
possible by contributions from alumni
and friends, was dedicated to Dr. Cyrus
Northrop in a three-phase, public
celebration that included a Minneapolis
Symphony concert. 1926
| The SAT
is administered to high school students for the first
time.
1925 |
Tennessee vs. John Scopes (
“the Monkey Trial”)
debated the teaching of evolution. Two years after the
trial, a Minneapolis minister named Dr. W. B. Riley lead
efforts to enact similar legislation in Minnesota.
1922 |
The first Newbery Medal is presented to Hendrik
Willem van Loon for The Story of
Mankind.
1921 | WLB, the first Minnesota radio station, formed at the
University of Minnesota and continues today as Radio K.
The Fight For Academic Freedom
The alumni association defended
the teaching of evolution in the 1920s.
“... a test loses its value and becomes a dangerous
weapon in the hand of the untrained.” —Harlan C. Hines,
American School
Board Journal, 1922
Burton Hall in the 1920s |
Timeline
1929
Minnesota law for the first
time establishes teaching certification that
requires professional training coursework. The
college modifies its course offerings to satisfy the
state requirements.
1928
The Institute of Child
Welfare publishes its first research on memory
development in children, followed by other important
reports on language development in 1930 and on
social competence in 1934. These topics remain
strong interests of the institute’s faculty to
the present day.
1926
The college outgrows its
quarters in the old Education Building and makes a
new home in Burton Hall. The building is named after
Marion Leroy Burton, the University’s president from
1917 to 1920.
 1925
With the establishment of
an experimental nursery school—today called the
Shirley G. Moore Laboratory School—the
groundbreaking Institute of Child Development takes
its first steps. Originally conceived to research
child development and share its findings with
parents and teachers, the institute has grown into
the nation’s leading center focusing on the
cognitive, emotional, and psychological
processes that underlie the development of infants,
children, and youth.
Katherine Miles Durst
is one of the first students to receive a doctoral
degree from what is now the Institute of Child
Development. After her graduation, Dr. Durst has a
distinguished career in child psychology at the
University of Maine until her retirement in 1969.
Upon her death in 2002, she bequeaths a large
portion of her estate to the institute to establish
a research endowment in her name.
1923
In an important
restructuring of its curriculum, the college
strengthens its training programs for school
psychologists, physical education instructors,
superintendents, and school librarians.
1922
A longtime tradition, the
annual homecoming breakfast for women alumni of the
School of Physical Education, begins. It continues
to the present day.
1920
When the Board of Regents
appoints Lotus Coffman the new president of the
University, Melvin Haggerty succeeds him as dean of
the College of Education. During Haggerty’s
17-year-long tenure, he emphasizes the training of
school administrators and the development of new
research on secondary and higher education.
 With a gathering of faculty
members, students, and their families around a
fireplace on Christmas Day, the college begins its
Carol Sing tradition. Within ten years, the communal
caroling becomes so popular that it supports the
publication and sale of a book of carols, with the
profits going into an emergency loan fund. The Carol
Sing persists until 1971, when it grows silent for
three years before reviving briefly in 1974.
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