Anna Y. Reed (1871-1946): Prison Reform and the School Vocational Guidance in Washington

Anna Yeomans Reed, progressive educator and social reformer, was born Anna Yeomans on a fall day in September of 1871 into a first family of Walworth, New York. Anna Yeomans’ introduction to progressive education came from her own schooling in Walworth. At the time, public education was provided through the eighth grade. The citizens of Walworth created Walworth Academy, a private institute, to provide schooling for students wishing to receive more than the standard eighth grade education. There were two programs, Classical for college-bound children and Academic for children intending to start work after school. This prescient program foreshadowed the development of public school educational theory at the beginning of the twentieth century and molded Anna’s perspective on education.

In 1902, at 31, Anna Y. Reed joined her husband, Joseph Ambrose Reed, in Seattle. In the prior five years, she completed her Bachelors degree Phi Beta Kappa and Masters at the University of Nebraska and, with her nine year old son in tow, her PhD in history at the University of Wisconsin under the tutelage of Frederick Jackson Turner. When Anna arrived in Seattle, Washington had been a state for only thirteen years and Seattle was a boomtown. Anna established a place for herself in this developmental era as a champion of children’s education and vocational guidance.

In Seattle, although surrounded by brilliant suffragists, she seemed not to have engaged in the movement. Perhaps, it was because her mother, Susan Cleveland Yeomans, and her uncle, Grover Cleveland, twice president of the United States, were opposed to the women’s vote. For whatever reason, she chose to focus on her area of expertise, history. She joined the DAR, claiming Eliab Youmen, a Quaker, as her Revolutionary War ancestor. For the 1905 centennial celebration of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, under the auspices of the Woman’s Century Club, Anna authored an eighth grade primer. She travelled to Portland to attend the Lewis & Clark Exposition where she met Henry Leipziger, the father of a movement in New York City to provide adult education to all regardless class or means.

In 1907, Anna travelled to New York City where she remained for the next two years, teaching in Henry Leipziger’s New York City Free Public Lecture Series. During this time, she met influential people in the Progressive movement for prison reform and social education, including Eli W. Weaver who would become a collaborator later in her life. Weaver was organizing teacher committees to help students plan their careers. He proposed an independently funded agency to collect industry data, match students to careers based on the data and help schools craft courses to prepare students for industry.

Anna returned to Seattle in 1909, no longer focused on history, but on social reform. She advocated probation in criminal sentencing, particularly for youthful offenders. She conducted a study of 1800 juvenile cases brought before the King County Juvenile Court and deduced that school failure was a significant contributor to juvenile delinquency. Subsequently, at the request of Governor Marion Hay, she reviewed and made recommendations for the improvement of the State Training School at Chehalis, the State Reformatory at Monroe, and other state institutions including the penitentiary at Walla Walla. Between 1911 and 1912, she became an operative in Governor Hay’s re-election campaign, leaving behind many letters to Hay marked “Please destroy”. The relationship ended badly, just before the election.

Anna’s study of the Juvenile Court cases also caught the attention of Frank Cooper, Superintendent of Seattle Public Schools. At Cooper’s request, Anna volunteered her time to conduct surveys of school-leaving children and their subsequent employment experiences. Relying on Progressive educational theories, she produced three reports which received national recognition. Working with Cooper, she established the Experimental Seattle School Guidance Bureau.

She went on to work for the U.S. Department of Labor after World War I where she was instrumental in the development of the National Junior Placement Service and served as its managing director for seventeen years while teaching at the University of Chicago and New York University. During her life, she published thirteen books. She ended her career lecturing at Cornell.

Contact Information: Darby Langdon, dlangdon@seanet.com