Kappa Delta Pi: The view at 25

In 1936, when Kappa Delta Pi paused to recognize another historic milestone—its 25th or Silver Anniversary—Alfred Lawrence Hall-Quest, second vice president of KDP and editor of KDP publications, undertook a narrative history of the Society. Hall-Quest’s ambitious task resulted in a 500-page book published in 1938, two years after the Silver Anniversary celebrations. Dedicated to the “founding fathers” of Kappa Delta Pi, Hall-Quest considered the book a “memorial” honoring the founders and a rare opportunity for Kadelpians to get a glimpse into the Society’s past. Among the 20 chapters are reviews of the beginnings of the teaching profession, the founding of Kappa Delta Pi that followed, and a record of its many activities, challenges, and successes over a quarter century. Hall-Quest chose to end his “memorial” with a compelling essay he dubbed, “The Spirit of Kappa Delta Pi.” In it, he hoped to capture the spirit of “the men and women who were found worthy of membership” in the Society and those who held “an inspiring concept to an honor society which might offer strong bonds of fellowship and uphold challenging ideals of an educational profession” (Hall-Quest 1938, 468). The author believed that the success and longevity of Kappa Delta Pi were directly attributable to certain “intrinsic values in the general purpose of an honor society and in the specific purpose of this particular Society” (Hall-Quest 1938, 469, emphasis added). Those values were described broadly by Hall-Quest as:

•	Professional knowledge,
•	Professional duty,
•	Professional power, and
•	The liberal spirit

Not coincidentally, the word “professional” was featured prominently in any discussion of the spirit of KDP and the spirit of teaching. Professional Knowledge Kappa Delta Pi’s founders “sought to foster scholarship and achievement in educational work,” Hall-Quest reported, and “the aim was not scholarship for its own sake but as an instrument of professional standards and service” (Hall-Quest 1938, 470). KDP stood out, however, in its early and firm commitment to a “co-equal status” for teachers training at the university level and at normal schools. KDP founder Dr. William Chandler Bagley “became the champion of the normal schools as coequal with the university in the education of teachers. He has unswervingly promoted the interests of these institutions” (Hall-Quest 1938, 471). To Bagley, it was “early evident” that the profession of teaching must include both elementary and secondary teachers, and that professional knowledge must include the normal schools.  As a result, KDP “welcomed to its roster chapters in these institutions and thereby aid(ed) in promoting professional standards for elementary and secondary teachers alike” (Hall-Quest 1938, 471). Professional Duty KDP’s earliest commitments, however, were not limited to professional knowledge alone. In an era when women and men often entered teaching as “a steppingstone to what they deemed better things,” the Society sought to encourage loyalty to the teaching profession. To do so, KDP has consistently emphasized the empirical ideal that within the responsibility of any culture is the requirement that it “guide the young by means of the evidence accumulated by the ages” and that “the task of teaching must involve the transmission of the best of past as one source of direction for living in the present” (Hall-Quest 1938, 473). The mission of teachers, KDP believed, occupied the essential role to “explain (the) culture, to inspire the young to employ it for wholesome living, to convert it into data for independent and instrumental thinking and intelligently involved experience” (Hall-Quest 1938, 473).

•	“consecrated to social service,”
•	“high moral character among those who are making educational work their profession,”
•	“indication that there will be continued interest in the field of education,”
•	“the profession of education,”
•	“shall foster professional growth,” and,
•	“professional fellowship.”

Hall-Quest observed that “duty toward the profession of education has meant, no less, altruism and service—the will to serve, the serene satisfaction awarded those who have been intellectually honest and socially just” (Hall-Quest 1938, 474). In support of the ideal of “social justice,” Kappa Delta Pi “has welcomed into its membership men and women without any thought of their race, creed, or color, but solely because of their qualifications to contribute to a growing profession of education,” Hall-Quest wrote (1938, 475). Professional Power Hall-Quest wrote extensively about the democratic nature of Kappa Delta Pi and its commitment to sharing power and knowledge with all its members. As he put it, “Kappa Delta Pi has not interpreted power as the execution of its own avowed influence but rather as the capacity of its individual members increasingly to grow professionally and thereby attain worthy achievements in education” (Hall-Quest 1938, 475). The bottom line, it seems, was that professional power for teachers was only important in that it assisted in the development of teachers to serve. Liberal Spirit Not to be confused with contemporary political uses of this word, Hall-Quest noted the important role a liberal spirit could play in helping teachers and all educators in discerning important issues in a spirit of reason. The “liberal spirit” was necessary, he observed, because of the need of educators to “awake to the changes in educational theory and practice” ever before them (Hall-Quest 1938, 477). Noteworthy for the time period in which he wrote these words (as America moved ever closer to being drawn into the painful conflict represented in World War II), Hall-Quest said that the purpose of KDP has “never been defined in terms of a preferred philosophy of education” and that the Society has been “sufficiently elastic to admit varying interpretations of knowledge or scholarship and professional standards” (Hall-Quest 1938, 477). Looking to the Future In 1911 when Kappa Delta Pi was founded, modern nations stood on the edge of World War I. In 1936 when Kappa Delta Pi was 25 years old, America was just five years away from entering World War II. This context was not lost on Hall-Quest, and its correlation to what education could mean to a world plagued with violence was at the front of his mind. “Kappa Delta Pi’s first twenty-five years ends in the midst of portents of universal social upheaval. Change is the watchword of the nations—(but) change toward what?” Hall-Quest posed (1938, 479). His prayer on the 25th anniversary was that Kappa Delta Pi would help the world and its people “learn a little better the supreme art of living intelligently and in kindness with one another, within the circles of education and throughout the world” (Hall-Quest 1938, 479). SOURCE: Hall-Quest, A. L. 1938. Kappa Delta Pi: 1911–1936. Lafayette, IN: Kappa Delta Pi Publications.