Benjamin Bloom

PERSONAL BACKGROUND

Benjamin Bloom

Benjamin S. Bloom was born on February 21, 1913, in Lansford, Pennsylvania. As a youth, Bloom had an insatiable curiosity about the world. He was a voracious reader and a thorough researcher. He read everything and remembered well what he read. As a child in Lansford, Pennsylvania, the librarian would not allow him to return books that he had checked out earlier that same day until he was able to convince her that he had, indeed, read them completely.

Bloom was especially devoted to his family (his wife, Sophie, and two sons), and his nieces and nephews. He had been a handball champion in college and taught his sons both handball and Ping-Pong, chess, how to compose and type stories, as well as to invent.

He received a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Pennsylvania State University in 1935, and a PhD. in Education from the University of Chicago in March 1942. He became a staff member of the Board of Examinations at the University of Chicago in 1940 and served in that capacity until 1943, at which time he became university examiner, a position he held until 1959.

He served as educational adviser to the governments of Israel, India, and numerous other nations.

What Bloom had to offer his students was a model of an inquiring scholar, someone who embraced the idea that education as a process was an effort to realize human potential, and even more, it was an effort designed to make potential possible. Education was an exercise in optimism. Bloom’s commitment to the possibilities of education provided inspiration for many who studied with him.^[1]

Benjamin Bloom died Monday, Sept. 13, 1999 in his home in Chicago. He was 86.