Francis Wayland Parker, who had risen to the rank of colonel in the Union army during the Civil War, began his influential career in education as a strict conformist to the schooling practices of the postwar era. He knew how to drill and discipline, and as principal of North Grammar School in Manchester, New Hampshire, he "had everything in good shape." As he relates in his autobiography, "I had battalion drill and marching, and everything went like clockwork. I ranked my scholars, changing their places from week to week." However, when he organized a normal school (a secondary school that provided for teacher training) in Dayton, Ohio, he ran into a wall of opposition from the teachers already in service. When an aunt died and left him $5,000, he left to study in Germany, determined to educate himself better in modern teaching methods...