FLEXNER, ABRAHAM

FLEXNER, ABRAHAM (1866–1959), U.S. scholar, and one of America's most creative educators. Flexner, who was born in Louisville, Kentucky, studied classics at Johns Hopkins University, and graduated in 1886. After teaching Latin and Greek at the Louisville High School (1886–90), he founded a unique college preparatory school which dispensed with rules, examinations, records, and reports. In 1905 he turned from the successful operation of his school to continue his studies at Harvard in psychology, philosophy, and science, with special reference to their bearing upon educational problems. During 1905–06, he studied the anatomy of the brain at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, New York. He spent 1906–07 studying psychology and philosophy at the University of Berlin, where he came under the influence of Friedrich Paulsen, philosopher, pedagogue, and historian of German higher education. His review of higher education, The American College, published in 1908, attracted the attention of President Henry S. Pritchett of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, who commissioned Flexner to survey medical schools in the United States. The subsequent report, published in 1910 as Medical Education in the United States and Canada, was a critical analysis of 154 medical schools, seven of them Canadian. Although not a physician, Flexner was able to bring about a fundamental reform in all aspects of medical education in the United States. This was followed by an analysis of European medical schools during 1910–11 and the publication of Medical Education in Europe (1912). Another important study was Prostitution in Europe (1914). As a staff member and secretary of the General Education Board, 1912–28, Flexner undertook various educational inquiries and published, with F.P. Bachman as collaborator, Public Education in Maryland (1916) and The Gary Schools (1918). His A Modern College (1923) contained influential educational ideas and suggestions for the reform of secondary and higher education. His Universities: American, English, German (1930) was a severe criticism of functionalism in American higher institutions. His last major achievement was the founding, organization, and direction (1930–39) of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. His other writings include: Do Americans Really Value Education? (1927); Henry S. Pritchett: A Biography (1943); Daniel Coit Gilman, Creator of the American Type of University (1946); and Funds and Foundations (1952). His autobiography, I Remember (1940), was revised, updated, and posthumously published as Abraham Flexner: An Autobiography (1960). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: F. Parker, in: Journal of Medical Education, 36 (1961), 709–14; idem, in: History of Education Quarterly, 2 (1962), 199–209; Strauss, in: Journal of the American Medical Association, 173 (1960), 1413–16; New York Times, Sept. 22, 1959. (William W. Brickman)