Burr Wendell Phillips was a leading authority on the teaching of social studies during the 1940s and 1950s. Born in Rock River, Wisconsin, June 14, 1892, he interspersed his own education with periods of teaching in Wisconsin elementary and secondary schools. He attended Oshkosh State Normal School in 1912 and then taught at Bear Creek and at Ripon, Wisconsin. In 1921, he received his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin and in 1922, his M.A. He taught at Wisconsin as an assistant in history and then as a professor of the teaching of history. He was appointed professor of education and history in 1946.
Mr. Phillips became particularly knowledgeable on the subject of education in Germany by serving as a consultant to the U.S. Office of Military Government there. He spent several months in Germany in 1947, 1948, 1949, 1951, and 1954.
A participant in the activities of several educational associations, he was a member of the American Historical Association, the National Education Association, Phi Beta Kappa, and Phi Delta Kappa; a director of the Wisconsin Council of Social Studies; president and director of the National Council for the Social Studies and editor of their Tenth Yearbook, “In Service Growth of Social Studies Teachers,” 1939; and editor of the “Teacher's Section” of the Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 1939-1942.
Mr. Phillips was an active member of the Episcopal Church in both Milwaukee and Madison. He never married. He retired from the University of Wisconsin in May, 1960, and died in Honolulu, Hawaii, on December 1 of that year.
