Thomas L. Hopkins

Thomas L. Hopkins was born in Truro, Massachusetts in 1889. Hopkins was a progressive education theorist, consultant, and curriculum leader. He completed all of his major writings while he was a professor and the laboratory school director at the Teachers College, Columbia University. He received his bachelors and masters degrees from Tuffs University in 1910 and 1911. In 1922 he completed the Ed. D degree at Harvard University under the mentorship of professors Alexander Inglis and Walter Dearborn. After he finished at Harvard, he accepted a tenured position at the University of Colorado, Boulder. In 1929 Hopkins was invited to join the faculty of Teachers College, Columbia University as a professor of education. He stayed at Teachers College, Columbia University for the next 25 years. He retired from Teachers College in 1954. He was also a Fulbright scholar in Egypt from 1956-1957. He surveyed Italian schools in 1957 and taught at Wheelock College in Boston and at the University of Maine in the 1960s. In 1960 he chaired the committee on Schools and Moral Values for the White house Conference on Education. In 1971 he retired yet again but this time with his wife, Hester Hopkins, to Truro on Cape Cod. There he continued to write and speak. He completed his memoirs and organized his papers until right before he passed in 1982. Until this day his papers are still located at the University of Colorado library in Boulder, Colorado.