Phyllis Goldblatt was a professor of education foundations at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago for 35 years who studied models of teaching from as far away as China to bolster her work in the classroom.
“She was interested in international education and comparative education, and that was a strong quality that would make her students think beyond the immediate and the city of Chicago public schools to look at education in broader terms,” said June Sochen, a retired history professor at Northeastern.
Goldblatt, 93, died of congestive heart failure Dec. 9 at her Evanston home, said her son, Howard.
Born Phyllis Kaufman in Chicago, Goldblatt grew up first on the West Side and then in South Haven, Michigan. She received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan.
Goldblatt taught elementary school in Glencoe for several years before applying to the Teachers College at Columbia University in New York, the university’s graduate school of education, and going on to receive a master’s degree in education.
She then pursued a Ph.D. in comparative and international education from the University of Chicago, commuting from her homes on the North Side and later Skokie while also raising children, her son said. She completed her doctorate in 1968, and her dissertation covered how economic conditions in Mexico affected children’s literacy rates.
A few years later, Goldblatt was hired by Northeastern Illinois as an assistant professor of education foundations. At Northeastern, the education foundations department was a bridge between the university’s college of arts of sciences and its college of education, teaching certain basic disciplines as they applied to the field of education.
“She was a very, very good teacher, and her classes were always in demand,” said Mitchell Vogel, former chair of the education foundations department, which later was renamed the education leadership department. “I was chairman of the department, and people would come and want to be in her class instead of someone else’s.”
Vogel noted how Goldblatt studied newer dynamics in education while also evaluating them through a classical training lens.
“She ventured to China to study the school system there, but evaluated it based on classical training, and she did the same thing with alternative education,” Vogel said. “She looked at those models of more progressive education, and she studied them and favored them in many ways, but she evaluated them through a classical framework of excellence and hard work.”
Goldblatt eventually was promoted to full professor at Northeastern.
“She was a much-beloved teacher and was one of the best, if not the best,” Vogel said. “She was a great colleague — everyone who worked with her enjoyed seeing her every day for her view on things.”
Goldblatt retired from Northeastern around 2006.
Goldblatt enjoyed attending chamber music events, traveling and her book club.
“Phyllis had one of the most interesting minds of anyone I know — she had a real depth of inquiry,” said friend and retired lawyer Nancy Kotler, a onetime English lecturer at Northeastern and a member of Goldblatt’s book club. “Her questioning was not just superficial but got deeper into an issue. For all those years in the book club, she raised serious questions and always had interesting views and always was prepared.”
Kotler, who is married to Goldblatt’s cousin, recalled Goldblatt leading a discussion one evening about Bob Dylan after he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016.
“Everybody was blown away — she had done so much work,” Kotler said.
In addition to her son, Goldblatt is survived by her husband, Marvin; a daughter, Janice; and two grandchildren.
A service was held.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.