R. Bruce Raup (1888–1976), a prolific writer, is credited with fostering the conception of practical judgment appropriate for a democratic society and its schools. His views received widespread attention in the 1930s when he criticized the entire public education system in the United States as being inadequate and futile.

Raup was born in Clark County, Ohio and attended public schools in Lagonda and Springfield, Ohio. He received his associate’s degree from Wittenberg College and a bachelor’s of divinity degree from McCormick Theological Seminary, after which he served as minister of the American Presbyterian Church in Havana, Cuba. He returned to the United States in 1916 to work as a college pastor and ethics instructor at Bellevue College in Nebraska. During World War I, Raup served as a 1st Lt. (chaplain) with the U.S. Army. Following the war, he worked at Blackburn College in Illinois, where he was an instructor of psychology and education and athletic coach.

As a graduate student at Teachers College, Raup was a student of John Dewey. Raup earned his Ph.D. from the school in 1926 and remained there until his retirement in 1953 as Professor Emeritus, Philosophy of Education.

In addition to his career at Teachers College, Raup lectured at the universities of California, Michigan, Illinois, and Puerto Rico, and at Indiana and Southern Illinois universities. In 1957, Columbia awarded him the Nicholas Murray Butler Medal in Silver for his contributions to educational theory. In 1975, he received the William Heard Kilpatrick Medal from Teachers College.

Raup was involved actively in professional associations, including the American Philosophical Association, the National Education Association, the Philosophy of Education Society (of which he was president from 1941–42), the National Society of College Teachers of Education, and the Progressive Education Association. In addition, he served on the Federal Council of Churches in America’s Committee on Education and Research.

Raup was one of the organizers of several foundation courses in the Teachers College curriculum: “Education in American Culture,” “Education as Personal Development, and “Character and Moral Judgment in Education.”

In his text The Improvement of Practical Intelligence: The Central Task of Education (1950), Raup and his coauthors, George Axtelle, Kenneth D. Benne, and B. Othanel Smith, wrote of decision making in terms of moral-ethical responsibility. They used pragmatic instrumentalism techniques in the educational arena and stressed rational intellectual approaches to educational difficulties and the need for teachers to think critically about teaching and administration.

Raup and his coauthors provided a rich schema in which value choices could be made that enrich and broaden, rather than limit and deny, human goals. For the pragmatist Raup, three levels dictated the manner in which practical judgment could be exercised: the making of decisions, the making of policies, and the construction of basic norms of conduct, such as moral principles and ideals.

Raup spent much of his leisure time at his country residence in Kent Cliffs, New York, but later moved to Palo Alto, where he lived for the remainder of his life.

Contributed by Vanessa M. Sikes, Marble Falls High School, Marble Falls, Texas

References
Obituary of Robert Raup, New York Times, April 15, 1976..
Ohles, F., Ohles, S. M., Ramsay, J. G. 1997. Biographical dictionary of modern American educators. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.