1853-193O
Superintendent of Schools Plainfield. New Jersey

Theory into Practice.

Dr. Henry Martin Maxson was born in Stonington, Connecticut, and graduated from Amherst College in 1877. After receiving his M.A. from Amherst, Maxson taught at and served as the principal of the North Attleboro High School in Massachusetts. In later years, after receiving his Ph.D., he served as superintendent of the Plainfield, New Jersey, school system from 1892 until his retirement in 1926. When Maxson was honored by his colleagues in 1917 at the National Superintendents' Association dinner in Kansas City, his twenty-five-year career exemplified the dramatic progress of education in the United States during these years. With a record that was increasingly emulated by his colleagues, Maxson effectively translated the theories of progressive education into the facts of daily school practice. His accomplishments were even more startling, his champions said, when one realized that "not...