Learning at Sea: Education Aboard the 1926–27 Floating University

In 1926 New York University’s Professor of Psychology, James Edwin Lough, led 500 American university students on an eight-month voyage around the world. Stopping at 47 ports and visiting foreign dignitaries including the King of Siam, the Sultan of Jodhpur, Mussolini, and the Pope, Lough’s ‘pedagogical experiment’ promised a ‘world education’ to its students. Influenced by progressive education and new developments in educational psychology, he believed that ‘Floating University’ students could learn from the shifting conditions around them. This chapter examines the attempt to put this educational philosophy into effect, exploring some of the reading, writing, performing, and drawing that took place during the eight-month cruise around the world. Using published curricula, newspaper reports, and the letters of students and staff, it considers the relationship between experience and education in Professor Lough’s 1926 floating educational experiment