Helen Parkhurst

Helen Parkhurst was an American educator who developed the Dalton Plan, an educational method that organizes learning around individual student contracts, self-paced subject assignments, and cross-age collaboration rather than fixed-schedule whole-class instruction. She first implemented the plan fully at a high school in Dalton, Massachusetts, in the early 1920s, and her 1922 book Education on the Dalton Plan spread the method internationally, leading to Dalton schools being founded across the United States, Europe, and Asia, with a particularly lasting network in the Netherlands and Japan. Parkhurst's approach emphasized freedom balanced with responsibility, encouraging students to manage their own time while working toward defined academic goals, and it remains in active use in Dalton-affiliated schools today.