Claude L. Kulp

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Claude Livingston Kulp (1894 – 1969) was a noted educator in Upstate New York.

Kulp was raised in Rochester, New York, and attended the Rochester Mechanics Institute, the University of Rochester, and Cornell University. He was Superintendent of Schools of the Ithaca Public Schools (now the Ithaca City School District) from 1930 to 1951, and the Claude L. Kulp Auditorium at Ithaca High School is named after him. He left the district to become Associate Commissioner of the New York State Education Department, and then became a professor of education at Cornell University, directing a Ford Foundation-sponsored teacher training program.

Kulp had a progressive educational philosophy. At the dedication of Ithaca High School in 1960, he said, "There is a doctrine that is fundamental in American education. That is: every child born or adopted by this republic has by virtue of that fact the right to have developed whatever of talent he may possess, without reference to the quality, quantity, or type of that talent, under conditions favorable to such development, and that he shall have assured to him the opportunity to go as far as his ability and ambition will permit in order that he may live his life more abundantly than he otherwise could."^[1]