SOURCE: "Jane Addams: An Educational Biography," in Jane Addams on Education, edited by Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1985, pp. 1-43.

In the following introduction to her book on Addams's influence on education, Lagemann offers a review of Addams's own education and growth as a thinker.

In September of 1889, Jane Addams moved to an immigrant slum neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago. With Ellen Gates Starr, a close college friend, she had rented the top floor of the former Charles J. Hull mansion in order to live and work with the poor. The social settlement that was established in this way, which was called Hull House, quickly became a vital neighborhood center as well as a meeting place for men and women from all walks of life and from all over the world. It provided a variety of services to the people of its neighborhood, among...