Nancy Devlin, educational psychologist, author, and newspaper columnist, dies at 92
She traveled around the world in the 1950s, and was popular with readers later for her progressive views and advice on education and parenting.
Nancy Devlin, 92, of Philadelphia, a prominent educational psychologist, author, and former newspaper columnist for the Star-Ledger in Newark, died Wednesday, Jan. 19, at Atria Center City retirement community after a stroke.
Dr. Devlin wrote nearly 700 weekly newspaper columns called ”Today’s Parents” in the Star-Ledger over 12 years in the 1980s and ’90s. Using her experience as a school psychologist and family therapist, she addressed education and family issues, focusing often on relationships between parents and children.
She also wrote three books on parenting and the family and weekly columns called “Essays on Education” for the Princeton Packet newspaper. She earned a doctorate in educational psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, worked 22 years as a psychologist in the Princeton public schools, and lectured at Rutgers University and elsewhere around the country on ways to improve education.
She was adamant that family life was a key to success.
“Think of ways to bring fun and joy to your life and to your family’s life,” she wrote in her 2015 book, Read to Me. Talk to Me. Listen to Me. Your Child’s First Three Years. “There has to be someplace where people can be renewed and accepted completely. The best possibility is in the family.”
Dr. Devlin also published Arrows Swift and Far. Guiding Your Child Through School and Cassandra’s Classroom. Innovative Solutions for Education Reform in 2012. Her newspaper columns, written in a conversational tone and supported with research as well as commonsense logic, were reprinted by papers and magazines across the country, and she appeared on radio and TV talk shows to discuss her views.
“I believe I know the answers to the problems in education today or at least the right questions to ask,” she wrote on her website. “I believe many teachers and parents know the answers and the questions, but only outside experts, mainly nonteaching men, are believed.”
“Nancy was a brilliant woman who was well ahead of her time,” her family wrote in a tribute. She also wrote the 2019 children’s book Uh-Oh, You Have a Goose on Your Roof!
Born in Jenkintown on Feb. 21, 1929, Dr. Devlin was the sixth of nine children, and the family moved from Pennsylvania to Brooklyn during the Great Depression in the 1930s. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in guidance and school counseling from Hunter College in Manhattan, and her summer jobs included a stint as assistant to Dorothy Draper, a well-known interior decorator, radio host, and author.
She traveled to Switzerland for summer classes after she got her bachelor’s degree and met inspiring teachers at the U.S. government’s Department of Defense Dependents Schools. She returned to New York and taught there for a few years in the 1950s, then spent three years overseas instructing students of U.S. military families in Germany, Denmark, and Japan.
In Tokyo, she met up with college friend and fellow teacher Marguerite Gardner, and, instead of heading east to return to the United States, they went west for four months and hiked, biked, and made their way through Hong Kong, Thailand, Burma, India, and Nepal. They hopped a cargo ship to Kenya and went through South Africa, Brazil, and other countries before landing in Miami.
“She was a character until the end,” her family wrote.
Later, while in California to get her doctorate, she met physicist Tom Devlin. They got married, lived in North Brunswick while she worked at the Princeton schools, and had sons Paul, Tom, and Mark.
In the 1970s, she studied with founder Jean Piaget at Geneva’s International Centre for Genetic Epistemology while her husband worked at a nearby high-energy accelerator. Dr. Devlin and her husband moved to a Center City high-rise about 15 years ago so they could be close to the area’s cultural and historical centers.
Generous and easygoing, she was known for holding court in her building’s lobby, handing out supportive guardian angel pins, passing time at Fado’s Irish pub, and hanging out with her daughter-in-law Jennifer.
“She would help anyone,” said her son Mark. “Whether it meant money or resources or her time, she was an advocate for people. I’m glad she was there as an example.”
In addition to her husband, sons, and daughter-in-law, Dr. Devlin is survived by five grandchildren and other relatives. Six sisters and two brothers died earlier.
A memorial celebration is to be held later.