Nellie Dick
{{Short description|Anarchist educator (1893–1995)}}
{{Use British English|date=October 2022}}{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2022}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Nellie Dick
| birth_name = Naomi Ploschansky
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1893|05|15|df=y}}
| birth_place = Nr. Kyiv, Russian Empire
| death_date = {{Death date and age|1995|10|31|1893|05|15|df=y}}
| death_place = Oyster Bay, New York, US
| occupation = Educator
| movement = {{Plainlist|
}}
| spouse = {{Marriage|James Hugh Dick|1915|1965|end=d}}
}}
Nellie Dick (born Naomi Ploschansky; 15 May 1893 – 31 October 1995) was an anarchist educator and for 40 years was at the forefront of the Modern Schools movement. Alongside her husband, Jim Dick, she worked at the American Modern Schools in Stelton, Mohegan and Lakewood.
Biography
Dick was born Naomi Ploschansky to a Jewish family near Kyiv on 15 May 1893, she was one of eight children.{{Cite journal |last=Whitehead |first=Andrew |date=14 May 1993 |title=A real anarchist |url=https://www.andrewwhitehead.net/uploads/3/5/0/5/3505647/published/ns-dick.jpg |journal=New Statesman & Society |language= |volume=6 |issue=252 |pages=22–23 |access-date=17 October 2022 |archive-date=19 May 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220519004534/https://www.andrewwhitehead.net/uploads/3/5/0/5/3505647/published/ns-dick.jpg |url-status=live }} While an infant her family moved to Whitechapel in the East End of London, then Leeds, Glasgow, and finally Stepney Green in London. Her father was active in the Jewish trade union and anarchist movements and worked as a baker and a capmaker.{{Cite news |others=Internet Archive |date=29 May 1993 |title=Nellie Dick 100! |pages=7 |work=Freedom |location=London |url=https://archive.org/details/freedom_54.11/page/n17/mode/2up?q=%22nellie+dick%22}}{{Cite book |last=Avrich |first=Paul |url=https://archive.org/details/modernschoolmove0000avri |title=The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the United States |publisher=Princeton University Press |others=Internet Archive |year=1980 |isbn=0-691-04669-7 |location=Princeton, N.J. |language=en |oclc=5726404 |author-link=Paul Avrich}}{{Rp|page=240}}
From 1907 until 1911 Dick organised a Sunday school at the Jubilee Street Anarchist Club, and in 1912 opened the Ferrer Sunday School in Whitechapel.{{Citation |last=Gidley |first=Ben |title=Spaces of Informal Learning and Cultures of Translation and Marginality in London's Jewish East End |date=2018 |url=https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8100-2_11 |work=Learning Cities: Multimodal Explorations and Placed Pedagogies |series=Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education |volume=8 |pages=169–182 |editor-last=Nichols |editor-first=Sue |place=Singapore |publisher=Springer |language=en |doi=10.1007/978-981-10-8100-2_11 |isbn=978-981-10-8100-2 |access-date=2022-05-19 |editor2-last=Dobson |editor2-first=Stephen |archive-date=17 October 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221017231617/https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-10-8100-2_11 |url-status=live }} In 1913 on a May Day march she met Jim Dick, an educator who had started a Ferrer school in Liverpool, and he subsequently joined her school as a co-director of the Sunday school.{{Rp|page=242}} They married in 1915 so he could avoid conscription and then moved to the United States in 1917.{{Cite book |last=Avrich |first=Paul |url=http://archive.org/details/anarchistvoiceso0000avri |title=Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America |publisher=Princeton University Press |others=Internet Archive |year=1995 |isbn=978-0-691-03412-6 |pages=282–290 |language=en |author-link=Paul Avrich}}{{Cite web |title=Index entry |url=https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?cite=ftfszpxSxBdPrDoILlzvbg&scan=1 |work=FreeBMD |publisher=ONS |access-date=19 May 2022 |archive-date=19 May 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220519013452/https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?cite=ftfszpxSxBdPrDoILlzvbg&scan=1 |url-status=live }}{{Rp|page=242}} Her family moved to Russia after the revolution, with her sister Bertha later spending 15 years in a prison camp.
From 1917 until 1924 Nellie and Jim Dick both worked at the modern school in Stelton, New Jersey. From 1924 until 1928 Nellie and Jim Dick directed the Mohegan Modern School in Mohegan, New York.{{Rp|page=|pages=293–296}} From 1928 until 1933 they were co-principals at Stelton.{{Rp|page=312}} In 1933 they founded their own school in Lakewood, New Jersey, which they ran until it closed in 1958 – the last of the American Modern Schools to close.
She retired with Jim to Miami, Florida, with Jim dying in 1965. In her retirement she was active in the senior citizens movement. In 1990 Dick moved to Oyster Bay, New York where she died on the 31st of October 1995, aged 102.{{Cite web |last=Leeds |first=Barbara |date=12 May 2021 |title=Pioneers in alternative education: Nellie Dick |url=https://www.libed.org.uk/index.php/articles/588-pioneers-in-alternative-education-nellie-dick |access-date=29 June 2022 |website=Libertarian Education |archive-date=17 October 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221017231617/https://www.libed.org.uk/index.php/articles/588-pioneers-in-alternative-education-nellie-dick |url-status=live }}
Bibliography
- {{Cite book |last=Avrich |first=Paul |url=http://archive.org/details/modernschoolmove0000avri |title=The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the United States |publisher=Princeton University Press |others=Internet Archive |year=1980 |isbn=978-0-691-04669-3 |location=Princeton, N.J. |language=en |author-link=Paul Avrich}}
References
{{Reflist}}
Interviews
- {{Cite book |last=Avrich |first=Paul |url=http://archive.org/details/anarchistvoiceso0000avri |title=Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America |publisher=Princeton University Press |others=Internet Archive |year=1995 |isbn=978-0-691-03412-6 |pages=282–290 |language=en |author-link=Paul Avrich}}
- {{Cite web |last=Halvorson |first=Christine |date=27 February 1993 |title=Nellie Dick |url=https://digitaltamiment.hosting.nyu.edu/s/lesoh/item/592 |access-date= |website= |publisher=Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archive}}
- {{Cite video |title=Nellie Dick and the Modern School Movement |date=1990 |last=Mintz |first=Jerry |type=VHS |language=en |publisher=Alternative Education Resource Organization |place=Roslyn Heights, NY |oclc=77680760}}
- {{Cite journal |last=Pether |first=John |date=October 1988 |title=Conversation with Nellie Dick |url=https://archive.org/details/raven_anarchist_06_1988/page/154/mode/2up?q=%22nellie+dick%22 |journal=The Raven |publisher=Freedom Press |issue=6 |pages=155–166 |via=Internet Archive}}
- {{Cite web |last=Whitehead |first=Andrew |date=6 January 1993 |title=Political Voices: Nellie Dick |url=https://www.andrewwhitehead.net/political-voices-nellie-dick.html}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dick, Nellie}}
Category:Ferrer Center and Colony
Category:People from Kyiv Oblast
Category:British women centenarians
Category:20th-century British educators
Category:20th-century British women educators
Category:Founders of American schools and colleges
Category:20th-century American educators
Category:20th-century American women educators
Category:American women centenarians
Category:Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United Kingdom