Frances Perkins - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Perkins was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Susan Bean Perkins and Frederick W. Perkins, the owner of a stationer's business (both of her parents originally were from Maine). She spent much of her childhood in Worcester, Massachusetts. She was christened Fannie Coralie Perkins, but later changed her name to Frances.

Perkins attended the Classical High School in Worcester. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in chemistry and physics in 1902. She obtained a master's degree in political science from Columbia University in 1910. In the interim, she held a variety of teaching positions including a position teaching chemistry from 1904 to 1906 at Ferry Hall School (now Lake Forest Academy). In Chicago, she volunteered at settlement houses, including Hull House. In 1918 she began her years of study in economics and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

Read more about this topic:  Frances Perkins

Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:

    We passed the Children’s Bureau bill calculated to prevent children from being employed too early in factories.
    William Howard Taft (1857–1930)

    I think that any woman who sets goals for herself and takes her own life seriously and moves to achieve the goals that she wants as a person in her own right is a feminist.
    Frances Kuehn (b. 1943)

    The proper aim of education is to promote significant learning. Significant learning entails development. Development means successively asking broader and deeper questions of the relationship between oneself and the world. This is as true for first graders as graduate students, for fledging artists as graying accountants.
    Laurent A. Daloz (20th century)