Frank Morton McMurry
Born near Crawfordsville, Indiana, McMurry studied at the University of Michigan and at Halle and Jena in Europe, earning a Ph.D. in 1889. Before teaching in higher education, he served as the principal of Carter High School (Englewood). He taught at several colleges, first as professor of pedagogics at the University of Illinois and then at Columbia University where he was appointed professor in 1898. While at the University of Illinois he introduced the "practice-teaching" method, which is now commonly known as "student teaching" and is found in most teacher training programs across the country. With Ralph Stockman Tarr he published the Tarr and McMurry Common School Geographies (1900), and with his brother Charles, Method of the Recitation (1903).
“Never give more time to reading a book than to reflecting upon its contents.”
“Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up; a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again.”
“Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life.”
“Living, in the case of animals, thus means getting on, and any ability, whether physical or intellectual, is of importance to the extent that it makes such getting on successful.”
“Every person is bound to make many mistakes; but he will make far fewer when his ability to judge has been properly trained.”
“Many parents as well as teachers refuse to place this responsibility upon children for fear of the mistakes that they will make. On account of this fear they make it as nearly as possible unnecessary for children to judge freely, by giving them arbitrary rules to follow, or by directing them exactly what they shall do each moment. This cultivates poor judgment by depriving children of the very practice that will make their judgments reliable; it prevents the school requirements from corresponding to those in life outside.”
“There is one right thing for the student to do, that is, to develop the habit of weighing worths, of sensing the relative values of the facts that he meets.”