author
Thomas Woody
1891–1960
Known for a landmark history of women's education in the United States, this early-20th-century scholar wrote with a wide view of schools, society, and civic life. His books range from Quaker education to political education, showing a lifelong interest in how learning shapes public life.
1 Audiobook
Early Quaker education in Pennsylvania
by Thomas Woody
About the author
Thomas Woody was an American educator and historian of education, born in Thorntown, Indiana, on November 3, 1891. Guggenheim records list his studies at Indiana University and Columbia University, and archival material at the University of California describes him as a scholar of the history of education who taught for many years at the University of Pennsylvania.
His best-known work is A History of Women's Education in the United States (1929), a major two-volume study that helped establish the subject as a serious field of research. Library and archive listings also connect him with works on Quaker education and with broader writing on educational history, social conditions, and civic education.
Woody received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1929 for a study of political education in the Soviet Republic and its wider international meaning. His surviving papers, which cover 1917 to 1959, suggest a career shaped by wide reading, travel, and a lasting interest in how education connects to social and political change.