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His artist in residence position
at Pickering College was only for the one year, so in the
fall of 1934, Haydon began as an art instructor at George
Williams College in Chicago. George Williams College was
a 2-year junior college, located at 5315 South Drexel Avenue,
just east of Washington Park. It was founded in 1890 by
the YMCA and was devoted largely to training men and women
for leadership positions within social service agencies
that focused on recreation and informal education. Training
included courses in sociology, group dynamics, education
and religious studies in addition to activities oriented
instruction. As part of the trend for organized leisure
time activities, the College also maintained a professional
school where students could receive a Master of Science
degree in either Group Work or Physical Education.
Structured leisure time activities had been growing out of various recreational
and character building agencies such as the YMCA, organized summer camp groups,
Boys' Clubs, Scouting, 4-H Clubs, etc., in addition to the settlement house movement,
and were tied into the contemporary sociological thought which saw the need for
structured, creative and educational management of leisure time for children,
youths and adults. Group Work became a field of study to provide leadership training,
counseling and guidance skills for community organizations providing group activities.
Clearly, many links had been forged over the years between the Statten Camps,
Pickering College, George Williams College, the YMCA and the Haydon family. Harold
had grown up in the embrace of liberal Protestant values promoted first by his
parents and then broadening to those of institutions like these which were actively
pursuing means of integrating both religious and modern sociological thinking
into general educational and everyday life experiences. It is not at all surprising
that his first professional teaching positions were within this network of family
friends, like-minded professionals and socially active institutions. An emphasis
on progressive educational experiences and contemporary sociological theories
are clearly among Haydon's interests during his 1934-1944 period at George Williams
College and show in his published articles of the time.
His first article, "Art and Its Place
in U.S.," appeared in the February 1937 issue
of Concord, a Chicago based publication with the goal of promoting "universal
brotherhood for the achievement of an international Concord." There, Haydon
wrote about expanding the artistic experience to improve the quality of life
for all individuals. His premise was that the deepening and enrichment of everyday
life should be our goal, not only in our education, but in life itself. He calls
for education to prepare people for more than counting sales receipts, that it
should also heighten their aesthetic sensitivity, enable people to enrich their
lives with beauty and allow them to become more in tune with their emotional
experiences. Indeed, it is one of the uniquely human experiences that give our
lives substance:
"...because art can speak of feelings that
words fumble and figures balk at... To be literate in art is to be more aware,
more alive, to sense more keenly, feel more deeply, to communicate more completely
with other persons and with all environments in the present world and the past."
His most heartfelt theme of the time was working with others in the organized
camping establishment to promote artistic opportunities in summer camp. Also
published in 1937, his article "Arts and Crafts
in the Summer Camp," appeared
first in the May issue of Boys' Work Journal, then later the same year in the
September issue of Physical Education Digest, and then as "Creative
Art in Every Camp Activity," in the October
1937 issue of The Camping Magazine. While highlighting similar points made in
his first published article, this essay concentrates on drawing out and building
upon a child's natural aesthetic impulses before they are stifled in the traditional
educational forum. Summer camp can be both an educational and aesthetic extension.
It "...is a total environment for a time long or short, (it) can integrate
all phases of the camper's life, fusing physical with intellectual and esthetic
experience, establishing interrelations, constructing a continuum of experience
in which art and sport and reflective thought co-exist in every act." He
makes the case that to segregate art instruction into individual classes, where
one technique is learned by all, forces the activity into too rigid a framework.
A better method is to maintain an open studio format.
When Haydon began teaching at George Williams College it was as a part time instructor
teaching two arts and crafts courses a quarter, and as he reported in a letter
to his mother, the job would earn him $1,000 in the period between September
and June. He also told her that he had the responsibility for setting up a studio
where students could work when they wished. That concept was obviously being
transplanted from the summer camp and Pickering College experiences, where it
had proved so successful, and was now to be applied to an older, more sophisticated
group of students. But the need here was different, as Haydon describes: "At
first it was all arts and crafts until I decided that the students needed more
art and less craft." This included developing some graduate courses in
art education which would be part of the masters degree program in group work
to provide students with the skills needed to lead group arts activities.
Beyond his teaching responsibilities, Haydon regularly graced the George Williams
College Bulletin with linoleum block prints of initial letters or decorative
drawings during the period from 1936-44. He also did layout and design work for
the college's promotional and special events brochures as well as for its College
Camp summer program at Lake Geneva, WI. Haydon's next major project was to provide
pictographs for Hedley S. Dimock's 1937 book, Rediscovering
the Adolescent. Another major project came from
a friend, Elizabeth Kent Tarshis, who asked him to illustrate two of her books
for children. The first was The Village That Learned to Read in 1941 and then
Look at America in 1942. After that, two other smaller projects came in 1943
and gave him an opportunity to make a modest contribution to the war effort.
Haydon was exempted from military service during World War II as a result of
a knee injury, and the subsequent surgery, suffered during his college track
and field career. His contribution, therefore, came in the form of illustrating
two booklets: Informal Games for Soldiers and Soldier
Games for Athletics and
Recreation.
Along with illustration and design work during his years at George Williams College,
Haydon continued publishing articles on art education. In 1939 "Education
in Art" was included in The University of
Chicago Magazine and described the Max Epstein Art Reference Library, a recently
donated collection of 160,000 reproductions of some of the world's greatest works
of art. "Stimulating Creative Experience in
Campers" appeared in a
1942 issue of Character Education in the Summer Camp as a report on a seminar
session which explored different requirements for encouraging older and younger
campers to engage in creative activities. Then, "Teachers
Can Be Leaders," found in The Journal of
Educational Sociology from March of 1944, contains an interesting account of
when "300 Navy V-12 students (moved) into George Williams College...to study
engineering, a subject foreign to the college, and to change the campus to a
ship, floors to decks, stairways to ladders, and 4:00 p.m. to 1600." The
awkward adjustments described here, which were brought on by wartime necessities,
demonstrates how skilled teachers can help guide diverse groups to common ground
and new understanding.
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