Hilda Taba

She then attended the Võru’s Girls’ Grammar School and earned her undergraduate degree in English and Philosophy at the University of Tartu.

When Taba was given the opportunity to attend Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, she earned her master's degree.

She applied for a job at the University of Tartu but was turned down because she was female, so she became curriculum director at the Dalton School in New York City.

Two other key ideas in her dissertation included how learning should involve dynamic, interrelated, and interdependent processes and how educators are accountable for the delivery and the evaluation of the curriculum.

She also believed educational curriculum should focus on teaching students to think rather than simply to regurgitate facts.

After working with John Dewey, Benjamin Bloom, Ralph W. Tyler, Deborah Elkins, and Robert Havighurst, she wrote a book entitled Curriculum Development: Theory and Practice (1962).

Taba wrote: One scarcely needs to emphasize the importance of critical thinking as a desirable ingredient in human beings in a democratic society.

In a society in which changes come fast, individuals cannot depend on routinized behavior or tradition in making decisions, whether on practical everyday or professional matters, moral values, or political issues.