Vito Perrone

A teacher of teachers, the late Vito Perrone was firmly devoted to humanistic education that valued and sought to realize the individuality, strengths, and potential of all students. Director of the Teacher Education program at the Harvard University Graduate School on Education from 1988 to 2000, he previously taught at Northern Michigan University and the University of North Dakota. While at the latter, he founded the North Dakota Study Group, a national coalition of educators devoted to advancing and refining the principles of progressive education for maximum equity and effectiveness in every dimension of teaching and learning. He also served in the 80s as Vice-President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and in the 90s was a leader in the Annenberg Rural Challenge, designed to improve instruction and evaluation in rural settings. Prior to working in higher education he was high school social studies teacher and wrestling coach in Michigan. In the preface to his book A Letter to Teachers: Reflections on Schooling and the Art of Teaching, Dr. Perrone observed that he chose not to engage in the debates about structural reform and professional development that are ever-present and ever-shifting in the education. Instead, he placed his focus on the key questions teachers are always concerned with inside of their classrooms, where education actually takes place. Along those lines, he also insisted that only when teachers themselves “begin to speak more broadly and authoritatively on matters of education, will we see significant improvement.”