In the middle decades of the 20th century, Hilda Taba played a prominent role in efforts to help American schoolchildren develop the cognitive skills and values necessary to think democratically. Drawing on the principles of progressive education and on social psychological and cognitive developmental theory, Taba directed Intergroup Education in Cooperating Schools, an anti-prejudice project involving scores of cities in the United States. She then adapted the Cooperating Schools program for K-8 social studies. Throughout, Taba sought to inculcate shared democratic beliefs while encouraging the individual, autonomous thinking necessary for self-representation, and to foster empathy toward the perspectives of different cultures while developing critical intelligence and common, democratic values. In her simultaneous attentiveness to classroom social relations and to pedagogy and curriculum, Taba created a powerful theoretical and practical framework for democratic education.