DOUGLASS, Malcolm P(aul) 1923-2002

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born August 18, 1923, in Pullman, WA; died of cancer December 29, 2002, in Claremont, CA. Educator and author. Douglass was a noted reading teacher and theorist who was director of the Claremont Reading Conference. After fighting in Europe as a U.S. infantryman during World War II, he earned his B.A. from Pomona College in 1947, followed by an M.A. from Columbia University in 1948 and an Ed.D. from Stanford University in 1954. His teaching career began at public schools in Sacramento and San Lorenzo, California during the late 1940s and early 1950s. From 1950 to 1954 he was also an elementary school principal in San Lorenzo. Douglass began his long career at what is now Claremont Graduate University in 1954 as an assistant professor. He moved up to professor of education from 1963 until his retirement in 1994, and founded the Center for Developmental Studies in Education in 1971, serving as director until 1989. Douglass was also the director the Claremont Reading Conference from 1959 to 1989. As a reading teacher who had researched methods of reading instruction around the world, Douglass was an advocate of the "whole language" approach that says that children learn to read better through exposure to good books rather than by focusing only on grammar and spelling. He wrote about his theories in such books as The History, Psychology, and Pedagogy of Reading (1998) and through editing the "Claremont Reading Conference" series for four decades.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

periodicals

Los Angeles Times, January 5, 2003, p. B14.