Young, Ethel R. (Ethel Ruth)

Epithet: wife of H Young consul in Bilbao

Ethel Silver Young (1915-2005) is recognized as a pioneer in early childhood education. She developed preschool and K-level curricula for multicultural and mixed-income preschool environments, was a leader in the local cooperative nursery school movement, and helped develop award winning films for pre-school children. Ethel Young was born on May 3, 1915, in Wilkinsburgh, Pennsylvania. She married Bernard Young in 1937, after completing her undergraduate education, first at Hunter College (CUNY) and then at UC Berkeley, majoring in English and Education. She began her teaching career in 1943 after having children and completing the Nursery School Techniques and Procedures course, through the Department of Education Extension of UC Berkeley. Early teaching positions include the Jewish Educational Center Nursery School, in Montebello, California, and the Heights Cooperative Nursery School, in Los Angeles, Calif., where she took the responsibility as teacher-director of the school, which anticipated the model of Head Start programs. From 1963-1967, Ethel Young taught summer school and workshops at the Idyllwild School of Music and Arts, where she developed her program on the "Art in the Child's Life". As a teacher and administrator Ethel Young was most active in the Palo Alto Unified School District from 1966-1977. During which time as a supervising teacher, she developed the Multi-Cultural Pre-Kindergarten Project an experimental program, with Title I funding, that explored the nature of combining middle and lower-income students in kindergarten classes. In 1973 Ethel Young completed her Master's degree in Education at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vt., filing a thesis entitled "First of All There's Me", a study of child expression of self identity. She also took graduate courses in early childhood education at UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, and UC Santa Barbara on a wide range of topics, including early childhood development, parent involvement, self concept development, communication skills, play, integrate curriculum multicultural education and compensatory pre-school education. In 1967, she contributed to a series of educational films, using preschool age casts, as an advisor and the author of the teacher guidelines to the series produced by Sterling Educational Films. As a primary author for the Amazing Life Games Theatre, a series of films and games published in 1971 by Houghton Mifflin, Ethel Young completed what she considered her greatest published work. She would also contribute as an author to the text "Early Learning Activities", published by Houghton Mifflin in 1981. As a consultant and presenter she taught various workshops through universities in California and for professional nursery school teaching organizations throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Her involvement includes organizations such as National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and the Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI). As a teacher, consultant, and administrator Ethel Young's work focused on a broad range of topics and areas but was always based on the need for early childhood education and addressed the best manner in which to educate preschool age children. Ethel Young died at the age of 90 on March 13, 2005.