Fannie Shaftel, a professor emerita of education who promoted innovative social studies curricula at the secondary school level, died March 21 at Sharon Heights Nursing Home. She was 89.
Shaftel was born in Los Angeles and received her teaching credential from UCLA in 1928. She was an elementary school teacher for six years before pursuing a master's degree at Columbia University.
She returned to California, where she served as elementary curriculum coordinator for Pasadena city schools. Later, with her husband, George, she moved to Northern California, where she pursued a doctorate in education at Stanford, which she received in 1948.
Shaftel was immediately offered a position on the faculty of the School of Education. She retired as a full professor in 1974, after teaching at the Farm for 27 years.
Shaftel dedicated herself to social studies as a core curriculum for elementary schools and as a vehicle for exploring social values and understanding diverse cultures. In Pasadena, she and her students built an adobe house at a local arroyo as part of their study of Mexican culture.
She wrote her dissertation on the use of role-playing in teaching. Later, with her husband, she authored Role-Playing for Social Values (Prentice-Hall, 1967). She trained many future teachers in the use of role-playing in secondary education.
"I believe role-playing is a transactional process by which students confront situations and learn to solve problems in a supportive group," Shaftel said in 1994, adding that role-playing gives children a chance to look at themselves through others' eyes.
In 1969, Shaftel received the School of Education's first teacher excellence award. In 1976, she received UCLA's Corinne A. Seeds Award, given "for significant contributions to young people in the field of education."
She is survived by her husband, of Portola Valley; her son, David Shaftel, and daughter-in-law, Harriet Shaftel, of Anchorage, Alaska; her sister, Dorothy Nadaner, and brother-in-law, Hugo Nadaner, of Portola Valley; and three grandchildren.
Services have not yet been
scheduled. SR