A new home for California education
In 1920, Hannah Haviland bequeathed $250,000—nearly $4 million today—to the University of California, specifying that the donation fund the construction of a campus building. Her only condition was that the building bear the Haviland name; the purpose of the building was otherwise to be at the discretion of the regents.
The regents soon dedicated the money to the construction of a new school of education. The gift itself was insufficient for a complete building, however, so the new hall was erected in stages as more funding was secured. In the summer of 1921, Governor W.D. Stephens signed a bill appropriating $100,000 for the education building, as well as additional money for a new physics building, and Haviland Hall was on its way.
A rocky start to California’s public education system
Nearly 70 years prior, California’s first constitution committed to a public school system and the state university that would become UC Berkeley. But, for its first 50 years, California’s educational system grew fitfully.
In its first several decades, the state focused on developing grammar schools and the university, virtually ignoring middle and high schools. This was due to the lack of an effective funding system for schools, to prevailing views on the lesser importance of secondary education at a time when the state wanted to ensure a basic level of education for its citizens, to a prejudice against high schools, and even to a widespread confusion about what secondary education was.
Ultimately, California’s 1879 constitution prohibited public funding of high schools. (To its credit, the 1879 constitution, still our constitution today, established the autonomy of the university and explicitly prohibited discrimination in admissions on the basis of sex.) Without an adequate secondary school system to feed students into UC Berkeley—then the sole public university in California—university enrollment plummeted 35% within four years.
University educators raised alarms. In 1888, Professor Edward Sill wrote: “The only hope of permanent prosperity for California is the establishment of free schools of a high grade in every populated region of the State . . . . Do the opponents of these schools wish to establish an aristocracy, wherein only the sons of the rich shall be permitted to receive a higher education? And is it only from the youth of two or three wealthy cities that the ranks of the professions are to be permitted to be filled?”
A turning point
Finally, in 1891, legislation gave local districts the power to levy taxes to fund high schools. Ten years later, a constitutional amendment granted additional taxing power. These breakthroughs dramatically expanded the number of high schools and enrolled students. In 1915, the Legislature made public high schools free throughout the state.
A surge in students drives demand for educated teachers
But, of course, high schools needed competent teachers to teach in them. “Normal schools,” established to train teachers, began in the late 1860s and had spread throughout the state in the 1880s and 1890s. (In the 20th century, California’s normal school system evolved into many Cal State and some UC campuses.) But the normal schools were meant to train primary school teachers. For high school, it was assumed that mastery of the subject matter was all that was needed to teach adequately.
As high schools proliferated, the fallacy of this belief was soon realized. In 1891, the university organized a department of pedagogy to train high school teachers. With pressure from the university, Sacramento established statewide, uniform standards for training and certification of teachers, and the university’s new department became the center for delivering that training.
The Department of Pedagogy grew quickly. In 1900, it was renamed the Department of Education. During that decade, the university created an “Examiner of Schools” position to advise high schools; established courses specifically on high school education, methods, and practice of teaching; began awarding masters and doctorate degrees in education; and started requiring a full year of graduate study to achieve secondary school credentials.
By the time California Hall was completed in 1906, the Department of Education had become the largest graduate department on campus, and the department immediately took up residence in the new building. In 1914, the department was transformed into the School of Education, which then continued to expand with new programs and services, now not just for high school teachers, but school administrators, principals, and elementary teachers.
By 1919, the School of Education had grown beyond capacity. The campus administration moved into California Hall and the School’s offices were scattered into makeshift quarters in Doe Library. It was an untenable situation begging for relief, so when Hannah Haviland’s unconditional bequest came to the university, the regents eagerly accepted it.
The new Haviland Hall, completed in 1924, became the home for the School of Education. The School would occupy Haviland until the completion of Tolman Hall in 1962. Despite its diminutive size, Haviland Hall became a critical piece of California’s educational landscape—so much so that a historian of the university, writing in the 1930s, said, “On the 25th of March, 1924, a building was dedicated on the University campus which was destined to play one of the most important parts in the on-going life of the University and of the State.”
Written by Craig Alderson