SPUTNIK AND AMERICAN EDUCATION

Dissertation for the Degree of Ph. D.
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
JAMES WILLIAM VAN WORMER

1976

IIIIIIIII “II” II III II‘

31293 10569

 

 

ABSTRACT

SPUTNIK AND AMERICAN EDUCATION

By

James William Van Normer

The purpose of the writer was to examine the educational

impact in the United States of the Soviet space achievements in the

Tater 19505.

The writer believes that such an examination is rele-

vant and that with the advantage of hindsight it will be possible

to determine if the impact of the Soviet space achievements was

transitory or lasting. The writer posts the following assumptions:

1.

The philosophical disputes which vexed American
education in the years preceding World War II
continued to dominate educational discussions
in the post-war period.

The launching of Sputnik I and subsequent Soviet
space achievements both intensified and added new
dimensions to the lay and professional discussions
concerning the aims, substance, and methods of
education.

The Soviet space achievements resulted in imme-
diate educational legislation at national, state,
and local levels.

The Soviet space achievements and the subsequent
American reaction resulted in changes in American
educational theory and practice.

‘The assumptions were tested by:

‘1.

An examination of lay and professional literature
for the period l957-62, with an examination of
educational literature concerning the Soviet
Union for the period 1926-1962.

James William Van Warmer

2. An examination of the Congressional Record and
selected government documents.

3. An examination of selected records to gather
data for comparative purposes.

The data were examined to determine:

1. The nature of educational discussions in both
lay and professional literature for the pre-
and post-war periods.

2. The nature of educational discussions subse-
quent to the launching of Sputnik I on October 4,
l957.

3. The educational legislation which can meaning-
fully be related to the perceived Soviet
challenge.

4. The changes which came into being as a reaction
to the perceived Soviet challenge.

The data did not support the popular view that Sputnik fos-
tered a significant change in American educational theory and prac-
tice. The so-called "new" curricula were inaugurated prior to the
Soviet space achievements and, as measured by actual enrollment
figures, no direct influence by Sputnik can be demonstrated. Such is
also the case for statistical information on expenditures for educa-
tion as a percentage of gross national product and the results of
public school bonding elections.

On the other hand, Sputnik was not without some influence
upon American education. The Soviet space achievements aided the
passage of the National Defense Education Act of l958. The p0pular
furor influenced Representative Adam Clayton Powell to withdraw his
crippling "Powell Amendment." Informed commentators viewed the

inclusion of the "Powell Amendment" as fatal to aid to education

James William Van Warmer

bills. Certainly, Sputnik sparked an increased interest in Soviet
education. This interest can be demonstrated in the significant
increase in book and periodical literature on Russian education after
the launching of the Soviet satellite. Also, the character and
authorship of the literature changed. Prior to Sputnik educational
literature concerning the Soviet Union was descriptive in nature and
was the almost exclusive work of professional educators. After
Sputnik commentators used disclosures concerning Soviet education to
criticize American education. Many of the post-Sputnikauthors were
not professional educators. This new wave of Russian educational
literature was rather short-lived. It rose and fell with the rise
and fall of Russian space leadership.

Judged on the whole, no significant change in American educa-
tional theory and practice can be directly related to Sputnik and

subsequent Soviet space achievements.

SPUTNIK AND AMERICAN EDUCATION

By

James William Van Harmer

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
fOr the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Secondary Education and Curriculum

I976

® COpyright by
JAMES WILLIAM VAN WORMER

I976

To my wife, Susan,

and my children, Stephen and Sara

ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My thanks go out to Professor Carl H. Gross for having
helped and tutored me in countless ways over several years. His
ideas concerning the research and writing of this dissertation have
been of enormous help. I am also indebted to the other members of

my committee: Dr. Keith P. Anderson, Dr. Justin L. Kestenbaum, and

Dr: Louis 6. Romano.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES
INTRODUCTION .

Chapter
I.

II. AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT, 1947 to OCTOBER 4,
1957.. . . . . .
III. SPUTNIK: INITIAL AMERICAN LITERARY REACTIONS
IV. SPUTNIK: LATER AMERICAN LITERARY REACTIONS .
V. SPUTNIK AND AMERICAN EDUCATION
BIBLIOGRAPHY .

THE AMERICAN PERCEPTION 0F SOVIET EDUCATION,
1917-1957 . . . .

iv

Page

43
75
I36
I67
181

LIST OF TABLES

Table

l. The percentages of gross national product which went
for educational purposes over the past forty
years . . . . . . . . . .

2. The percentage of public school bonding elections
approved both on the number of issues and the
dollar value of issues . . . .

3. The percentage of enrollment in selected science and
mathematics courses compared with total enrollment
in grades 9-l2 . . .

Page

T74

T76

T77

INTRODUCTION

A cardinal belief of many Americans is that the fear and
turmoil in this country which resulted from the launching of Sputnik
marked a turning point in the history of American education. Since
the Soviet Union launched its first Sputnik in 1957, millions of
words have been printed in American newspapers, magazines, and books
about the Soviet system of education. Very few of these words drew
favorable comparisons with American education. Rather, the schools
were the object of an orgy of recrimination. Someone or something
had to be the culprit. Almost immediately, this painful role was
assigned to public education. Many times persons who knew little
about either Soviet or American education appeared on the platform
and wrote magazine articles and books. Some took advantage of the
situation to vent ancient grudges against certain educators and cer-
tain educational practices. Many of these critics suggested the
wholesale importation of either Soviet or European educational prac-
tices and philosophies. Most demanded crash programs for the train-
ing of engineers and scientists. One might say, "many people went
into Orbit and started beeping."

The accepted interpretation holds that the curriculum
reform movement was a response to Sputnik. This conventional wisdom

is enshrined in official publications of the United States Office of

Education. Patterns of Course Offerings and Enrollments in Public

Secondary,Schools, l970-7l, relates as follows:

 

In the late 1950's, in consequence of the Soviet Union's

launching of the first Sputnik, school authorities in the

United States began to place greater emphasis on improving

the mathematics and natural sciences curriculums of this

Nation's schools. 'Under the sponsorship of the National

Science Foundation, new methods of instruction such as

SMSG ESchool Mathematics Study Group) mathematics and

BSCS Biological Sciences Curriculum Study) biology were
developed.

This view had become entrenched as early as the Spring of 1958 in the

periodical press. In a five-part series (March 24 and 31, and April

7, l4, and 2l) Life magazine examined what it termed "Crisis in

Education." In the fourth installment entitled "Tryouts for Good

Ideas: The Nation Stirs with New Interest in Science, New Plans for

Schools," Life editors related that "in schools all over the country,

' science and math courses are being reassessed and tightened up."2

The following year similar views were advanced in the widely acclaimed

book The BiggRed Schoolhouse by Fred M. Heckinger. Paul Woodring who

authored the introduction to The Big Red Schoolhouse predicted that

"When the history of twentieth-century America eventually is written

it will be recorded that the date of October 4, l957, was a turning

_point in American education."3

 

1Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Patterns of
.qurse Offerings and Enrollments in Public Secondary Schools, l970-7l,
(OE) publication 73-l1400 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Print-
ing Office, 1973), p. 6.

2"Tryouts for Good Ideas: The Nation Stirs with New Interest
in Science, New Plans for Schools," Life, April l4, l958, p. ll7.

3Fred M. Heckinger, The BiggRed Schoolhouse (New York:
Doubleday, 1959), p. 9.

The purpose of the writer is to determine the validity of
the accepted interpretation. What follows, however, is not an
exercise in idle revisionism. It should be understood at the onset
that the accepted interpretation rests solely on the near unanimous
point of view of the periodical and book presses for the period l957-
62. No subsequent research has buttressed the accepted interpreta-
tion. The belief that Sputnik spawned the curriculum reform
movement uncritically passed into the history of twentieth-century
American education. With the advantage of distance from the event
and the availability of previously unused data on actual enrollments
in science and mathetmatics courses before, during, and after the
Sputnik period, it may be possible to write the history Paul Woodring
predicted in 1959.

The writer will proceed employing the accepted interpreta-
tion as'a point of departure. For purposes of analysis the accepted
interpretation will be divided into four component parts or

assumptions:

The philosophical disputes which vexed American edu-
cation in the years preceding World War II continued
into the post-war period.

The launching of Sputnik both intensified and added
new dimensions to the lay and professional discus-
sions concerning the aims, substance, and methods of
education.

The Soviet space achievements resulted in immediate
educational legislation at the national, state, and
local level.

Sputnik and the subsequent American reaction resulted
in changes in American educational theory and prac-
tice.

The writer employed the historical method examining three types of
sources. Each type of source bore an obvious relationship to one
or more of the assumptions which underlay the study. The periodical
and book literature for the period l957-62 received the most
extended treatment. For self-evident reasons, educational litera-
ture concerning the Soviet Union was examined for a more extended
period, primarily 1926-62. The examination of the educational litera-
ture yielded important data in three areas: -(1) the character of
educational discussions in both lay and professional literature for
the pre- and post-war periods; (2) the character of educational dis-
cussions after the launching of Sputnik on October 4, 1957; and
(3) how American educational literature pictured Soviet education
during three distinct eras--the Revolution period (1926-39), the Cold
War period (1945-1957), and the Sputnik period (since October 4,
' 1957). The Congressional Record was examined to identify educational
legislation which can meaningfully be related to Sputnik. And
lastly, but most importantly, selected government documents were
searched to gather enrollment statistics for comparative purposes.
In this section, particular attention was devoted to actual enroll-
ment statistics in science and mathematics courses.

The treatment of the subject by the writer will for the
most part be presented chrOnologically. The first section will give
an overview of educational literature concerning the Soviet Union
from the Bolshevik Revolution to 1957. The second section will give
an overview of American periodical and book literature concerning .

education for the period 1947 to 1957. The third and fourth sections

will treat the post-Sputnik educational literature for the period
1957 to 1962. The fifth and last section will deal with legislation
and actual course enrollments. In the final section statistics on
GNP (Gross National Product) devoted to education and the results
of public school bonding elections will also be examined.

The writer is keenly aware of the methodological problems
which limit any historical study. To begin with, a multitude of
doubts assail this enterprise. Our knowledge of the past--even the
recent past--is always incomplete, probably inaccurate, beclouded
by ambivalent evidence and biased historians. The historian himself
is most probably biased, viewing the past through culturally colored
lenses. The critical historian has to discover and correct these
and many other types of falsifications. .

The history of "Sputnik and American Education" is fraught
with such pitfalls, not the least of which is the ideological con-
flict which has rent American education in the twentieth century.
Granting the difficulties of isolating causative influences as well
as the importance of relating particular issues to broader iSSues in
the larger society, certainly, it is true that the ideological con-
flict within the educational community was related to a broader
social cleavage along conservative-liberal lines. Also, in assessing
Sputnik, the historian muSt consider the existence of the Cold War
and the economic recession during 1957-58. All of which contributed
to the sense of fear and turmoil in the wake of Sputnik. Certainly,

what follows is not the final word on the matter.

CHAPTER I

THE AMERICAN PERCEPTION 0F SOVIET
EDUCATION, 1917-1957

In this section the American perception of Soviet educa-
tional theory and practice in the period 1917 to 1957 shall be
examined. On the morning of November 7, 1917, the Russian Provi-
sional Government was overthrown by the most revolutionary elements
of the population under the leadership of about a quarter of a mil-
lion members of the Bolshevik (majority) faction of the Russian
Social Democratic Labor Party. A new government, dominated by the
Bolsheviks, was founded with the avowed intention of completely
smashing the old order and of installing entirely new ideas of
society and government. In a series of decrees in late 1917 and
early 1918, sweeping and fundamental changes were ordered in Russian
society. Not the least of these were sweeping and fundamental changes
in the Tsarist educational system.

Professor Scott Nearing, desiring information on the new
Soviet education, and finding that there was practically no litera-
ture on the subject in French, German, or English, went to Russia to

learn about it for himself.1 Professor Nearing spent two months

 

1Scott Nearing, Education in Soviet Russia (New York:
International Publishers, l926),p. 7.

visiting Soviet schools from kindergartens to universities, attend-
ing class sessions, and talking with teachers and students. Educa-

tion in Soviet Russia (1926) was the first book published on a

 

heretofore unknown subject. Nearing reported that "despite condi-
tions and equipment that were of the poorest condition, education in
the Soviet Union was important to the rest of the world because of
its experimental nature."2

The second book on Soviet education was the observations of
the principal of the South Philadelphia High School for Girls, Lucy
Langdon (Williams) Wilson. The book was largely a restatement of
articles she had published in the National Education Association
Journal: "New Education in New Russia" (January 1928) and "Russian
Pioneers" (November 1928). The book entitled New Schools of Russia
(1928) described Soviet Russia's attempt at a fundamental reorganiza-
tion of its educational system. Wilson's findings largely confirmed
those of Professor Nearing. Russian education was still largely
primitive, especially in equipment and trained teachers. She
described the centering of education about a new "practical-project
curriculum."3 And, notwithstanding primitive conditions, Russian

education was responsible for the gains made in literacy.

 

2113111., p. 3.

3Lucy Langdon Williams Wilson, "New Education in New Russia,
National Education Association Journal 17 (January 1928): 15-17.

4Lucy Langdon Williams Wilson, "Russian Pioneers, "National
Education Association Journal 17 (November 1928): 267-68.

The third Russian book, Impressions of Soviet Russia and the
Revolutionary World: Mexico, China, Turkgy_(l929), was the work of
John Dewey.. The Dewey book was a collection of letters from Russia,

Mexico, China, and Turkey which had appeared in the New Republic at

 

various times in the ten years prior to the book's publication. The
Russian letters filled half the volume. They had been composed
during Dewey's 1928 Russian trip. The letters were not a technical
analysis, but a collection of observations. The most striking fea-
ture of Soviet education was an emphasis on "socially useful labor."
Dewey's "learn by doing" seemed compatible with the Soviet "school
that does rather than a school that talks."

Two other books on Soviet education appeared in 1929:
Samuel Northrup Harper's Civil Training in Soviet Russia, and Ngw_
Education in the Soviet Republic by Albert Petrovich Pinkevitch. The
latter is especially interesting because Pinkevitch was a Soviet
educator writing for Soviet educators. It was the first time an
exposition on Soviet education by a Soviet educator appeared in
English. The book was published by Teachers College, Columbia Uni-
versity, with an introduction by George S. Counts. Counts noted that
the Soviets had drawn considerable inspiration from progressive edu-
cation in the United States. The book was a thorough exposition on
how the whole system of Soviet education was being made to serve the
interests of the Soviet Union's "new economic and social order." It

demonstrated how education could be used to establish a new social

system.

The idea that education could be used as a weapon between
the Communist and non-Communist worlds was first introduced in Ihg_
Soviet Challenge to America (1931) by George S. Counts. In the book
Counts related that the great goal of the Soviets was "to overtake
and surpass America." He outlined the economics of the Five-Year
Plan and the social, cultural, and educational programs that were
fundamental to it. This clear-cut and logical analysis of Soviet
economic and social planning was considered by reviewers to be the

5 In fact, the volume was valued by non-

book's main strength.
educators for its non-educational sections on governmental structure,
Bolshevik psychology, Russian temper, and economic planning. This
would not be George S. Counts' last clear warning that Soviet educa-
tion posed a threat to America. I

New Minds: New Men? The Emergence of the Soviet Citizen
by Dr. Thomas Woody appeared in 1932. The author had spent a year
traveling through Russia. He visited some five hundred schools,
observing the life in villages and towns. There was so much detail
in the Woody book that it served more as a book of reference rather
than as material for general reading. In the opinion of John Dewey,

Woody had over-documented for general reading and had too consci-

entiously abstained from generalization.6 The book was definitely

 

5Reviews of The Soviet Challenge to America by George S.
Counts: American Economic Review 21'(December 1931): 720; Karl
Scholtz, Annals of American Academy 156 (July 1931): 159; Louis
Fisher, Boston Transcript, May 7, 1931, p. 7, reprinted in the Book
Review Digest; and Harry Hansen, New York World, February 7,
1931, p. 11, reprinted in the Book Review Digest.

 

6John Dewey, Review of New Minds: New Men? by Thomas
Woody, Review of Reviews 71 (March 1932): 104.

10

for the earnest reader and was relegated to the reference shelf. Yet,
it did contain a vast amount of data on Soviet educational theory and
practice.

The year 1935 witnessed two additional works on Soviet educa-
tion: William Clark Trow (editor) and Paul D. Kalachov (translator)
combined to produce Character Education in Soviet Russia and Albert
Petrovich Pinkevich offered Science Education in the U.S.S.R. Sig-
nificantly, both volumes were translated from the Russian, and taken
as a unit they portray the product of the new Soviet education as a
scientifically trained and dedicated builder of the communist world
order. Character Education in Soviet Russia presented five articles,
edited and summarized by Professor Trow. The articles gave insight
into the ideas and aims for extra-curricular education because they
were translated from a series written for leaders of the Pioneer
youth movement in Russia. The Pioneer program was designed to
develop "fighters and builders of Soviet communism." Science and
Education in the U.S.S.R. stressed the role of science education in
the Soviet curriculum. The Soviet educational system was thoroughly
outlined: pre-school, primary, secondary, vocational, and higher
education. Pinkevich stressed the great weight and respect given
scientists and teachers in the Soviet system.

The only book on Soviet education published in the year
1936 was the joint endeavor of an American college professor and a
Russian worker at the Central Institute for the Protection of Mother-
hood and Infancy at Moscow--Nursery School and Parent Education in

Soviet Russia by Patty Smith Hill and Vera Mikhailovna Fediaevskia.

 

11

The volume was true to its title and broke away from the challenge
and scientific mold of its inmediate predecessor. The book'out-
lined theplan for the early care and education of infants and young
children in Soviet Russia, and the parent education necessitated by
the plan.

The following year saw the publication of Beatrice King's
Changing Man: The Educational System in the U.S.S.R. (1937). This
study of the Soviet educational system opened with an account of edu-
cation under the tsars and the earliest Bolshevik experiments. The
organizational structure of the Soviet school system was described.
She also outlined the work and significance of the Octoberist,
Pioneer, and Konsomol groups. Particularly interesting to reviewers
were sections on the working out of the unity between schoOl and
life.7 Miss King went on to describe the character of the educa-
tional reforms which began with the Central Committee decree on
September 5, 1931, which altered the character of the curriculum from
a concentration on "socially useful work" to "study language, history,
mathematics, and science." In the words of the Central Committee,

The basic defect of our school at the present moment is the
fact that school instruction fails to give a sufficient body
of general knowledge and thus fails to prepare for the tech-
nicums and higher schools fully literate people with a good

command of the basic sciences (physics, chemistr , mathe-
matics, native language, geography, and others).

 

7Thomas Woody, Review of Changing Man by Beatrice King in
Annals of the American Academy 194 (November 1937): 221.

8Quoted in George S. Counts, Khruschev and the Central Com-
mittee Speak on Education (Pittsburgh: The University Press, 1960),
p. 11.

12

The publication of Beatrice King's Changing Man: The Educa-
tional System in the U.S.S.R. marked a watershed. It was followed
by ten years of monographic silence. It provides a convenient
place to summarize American perceptions concerning Soviet education.
Going into the period of the Second World War, Americans had eleven
books on Soviet education available to them. A thoughtful review of
the literature would have yielded the following generalizations:

1. Initially, Soviet education suffered from primi-

tive condgtions, poor equipment, and untrained
teachers.

2. Education in the Soviet Union was important to

the rest of tbs world because so much of it was

experimental.

3. Russian education revolved around a new "practical-
project curriculum."

4. Soviet education served the interests of the Soviet
economic and social order. 2

5. Soviet education was the most important component
in Russia's goal to overtake and surpass the
United States. 3

 

9Nearing, Education in Soviet Russia; Lucy Langdon (Williams)
Wilson, New Schools of New RuSSia (New York: Vanguard Press, 1928);
and John Dewey, Impressions of Soviet Russia and the Revolutionary
World: Mexico,,China, Turkey (New York: New Republic, Inc., 1929).

10Ibid. Also, Albert Petrovich Pinkevitch, The New Education
in the Soviet Republic (New York: The John Day Company, 1929).

nIbid.

12Samuel Northrup Harper, Civic Traininggin Soviet Russia
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1929): and George S.
Counts, The Soviet Challenge to America (New York: The John Day
Companyfl 931) .

‘ '3Counts, Soviet Challenge.

13

6. Soviet education was designed to develop Commu-
nists, particularly at the higher levels, and in
teacher education, especially to develop Comnu-
nist leaders. It goes without saying that educa-
tion was used to indoctrinate the general
p0pulation.

7. Science held a central place in the Soviet cur-
riculum.

8. The Soviets were constructing a unified "educa-
tional ladder" from preschool to adult level. 5

9. Soviet education, as measured by increased lit-
eracy and increased enrollments, was making tre-
mendous gains.
lO. Soviet education was being redesigneg to emphasize,
the mastery of a body of knowledge. ,
(
The conclusion that one draws from the foregoing is that if\someone
wanted to know what was going on in Soviet education in the pre-
World War II period, American "educationists" had provided the

data.

 

14Thomas Woody, New Minds: New Men? The Emergence of the
Soviet Citizen (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1932), William
Clark Trow (ed. ) and Paul D.Ka1achov (trans. ), Character Education
in Soviet Russia (Ann Arbor: Ann Arbor Press, 1935); Counts, Soviet

Challenge; and Harper, Civic Training.

15Counts, Soviet Challenge; Albert Petrovich Pinkevitch,
Science Education in the U.S.S.R. (London: V. Gollancz, Ltd., 1935).

16Beatrice King, Changing Man: The Educational System in
the U. S. S. R. (New York: Viking Press, 1937); Patty Smith Hill and
Vera Mikhailovna Fediaeyskia, Nursery School and Parent Education in

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soviet Russia (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1936); Nearing, Education in
Soviet Russia; and Counts, Soviet Challenge. -

17Wilson, New Schools; Pinkevitch, New Education; Counts,
Soviet Challenge; and Woody, New Men: New Minds?

18

 

 

King, Changing Man.

14

What are the Soviet leaders up to? What are their
plans for the long future? Are they abandoning the origi-
nal Marxian doctrines? Are they changing their views of
capitalism in general and American capitalism in particu-
lar? Are they reviving the nationalism of the old empire?
Are they forsaking the ideas of leading the workers of the
world in the overthrow and reconstitution of human soci-
ety? Are they expecting a peaceful resolution of the dif-
ferences now dividing the pe0ples of the earth? Are they
interested in promoting mutual understanding and friend-
ship between East and West? Do they have confidence in
the United Nations? Are they preparing for war or peace?
Do they believe in democracy? Are they relaxing or plan-
ning to relax the rigors of the dictatorship? In a word,
what may we expect from the Soviet leaders in the years
ahead?

These questions broke ten years of monographic silence by the publi-
cation of I Want to Be Like Stalin (1947). The book was from the
Russian textbook on Pedagogy by B. P. Yesipov and N. K. Goncharov
and translated by George S. Counts and Nucia P. Lodge. "To find
wholly trustworthy answers to these questions, Counts wrote in his
introduction, "we would have to make our way into the so-called
Russian enigma." After pointing out the impossibility of free com-
munication between or within the Soviet Union, Counts indicated that
"an examination of what the Russians are teaching their children
should throw light on some of the questions . . . . It may be safely
assumed that they do not frame their educational programs or write

textbooks for the purpose of deceiving foreign governments and

peoples."20

 

19George S. Counts, I Want to Be Like Stalin (New York:
The John Day Company, 1947), p. 1.

201bid.. p. 2. Emphasis mine.

15

The materials in the volume were taken from the third edi-
tion of a textbook on Pedagogy written by two Soviet educators. It
was published in 1946 and was approved by the Ministry of Education
of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic for use in peda-
gogical schools. Pedagogy was more than two hundred thousand words
in length and was organized into twenty-one chapters. I Want to Be

Like Stalin included only Six sections of Chapter XI of the Pedagogy,

 

which is entitled "The Content and Method of Moral Education." The
Soviet titles of these sections are "Principles of Moral Education,"
"Education in Soviet Patriotism," "Education in the Spirit of Social-
iSt Humanism," "Education in Collectivism," "Education in Disci-
pline," and "Education in the Volitional Qualities of Character."

In his introduction, Counts defended his decision to translate and
present only this section of the Pedagogy on the grounds of the

"penetration of Soviet moral doctrine into every chapter of the

book."21

Counts indicated that I Want to Be Like Stalin "must be
taken far more seriously than any book ever published in the field
of education in the United States . . . . It must be taken seriously
because it represents concentrated power as no pedagogical work
written in America ever has or, let us hope, ever will."22 This

was the case, Counts believed, because of three distinctive features

of the Soviet educational system which must be understood if the

 

21
22

Ibid., p. 6.
Ibid., p. 13.

16

‘ full meaning of the Pedagogy were to be grasped. In the first place,
Counts stressed that education in the Soviet Union was "essentially
and profoundly gggjgl_in purpose." That is to say, the Soviet
authorities assume in their approach to educational questions that
throughout history organized education has been the handmaiden of
politics. This assumption was grounded in the historical materialism
of Marx and Engels. "The Schoolfi'therefore, "was regarded as a
powerful and indispensable organ of the Communist Party, of the same
order as the government, the economy, the army, or the political
police."23
In the second place, according to Counts, education in the
Soviet Union was "extremely brgag_in scope." In both theory and
practice Soviet education was by no means limited to the work of the
system of schools. In addition to a system of schools Which embraced
a vast network from the nursery school and kindergarten through the
university and scientific institutes, it included all organized
agencies capable of influencing minds of both young and old: the
the family, the factory, the collective farm, the coooperative,
organizations, labor unions, organs of government, the Red Army, the
book press, radio, the newspapers, the magazines, the theater, the
Inotion picture, works of art, and all other sources of information
and entertainment. Counts agreed with the statement of the Pedagogy

that "Stalin and the Soviet government watch over every Soviet

 

23Ibid., p. 14.

17

24 Thus, the Russian government and the Communist Party had

person."
forged an instrument of tremendous reach and power.
In the third place, Counts stressed, education in the Soviet

Union was "emphatically monolithic in control." Regardless of forms

 

of administration which recognize the political subdivisions and
federal nature of the country, all important matters in education

of this social and broad educational system rest in the hands of the
All-Union Communist Party and its central organs. The way in which
this monolithic control operated was illustrated by Counts with
reference to the preparation of a set of history textbooks. On

May 16, 1934, the Soviet of People's Commissars of the Union and the
Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party adopted a reso-
lution which called for the appointment of groups of scholars to
prepare outlines for thepreparation of an entirely new set of text-
books for the teaching of history in the schools. It also provided
a committee of three of the most powerful men in the Soviet Union,
Stalin, Kirov, and Zhdanov, to examine and recommend changes in the
outlines if they vary from state policy. This the committee did in
a series of documents under the common title of Remarks on the
Outlines. The Remarks have served as a guide to all who have
responsibility for the writing, criticism, or the approval of

history textbooks.25

 

24
25

Ibid., p. 16.
Ibid.s pp. 17-18.

18

Counts went on to set down "a few generalizations which are

"26 First, the Russian were build-

of profound concern to Americans.
ing in the minds of the young "two great myths, one about themselves’
and one about the rest of the world." Myth one describes the Soviet
Union as the "largest country in the world," "the richest country in
the world," and as the "most advanced country in the world." Myth
two describes the rest of the world through Marxian analysis. The
WeSt, particularly America, was cast in the role of Imperialist,

the highest and final stage of capitalism; therefore, the logical
enemy for the Soviet Union.“ Second, the Russians were creating a
synthesis of Soviet patriotism and Marxian doctrines. Third, the
Russians were building in the minds of the young a fantastic loyalty
to Stalin and the Communist Party. In the Pedagogy no possible rival
among living political and military leaders is even mentioned by
name; thus, the title, I Want to Be Like Stalin. Fourth, the
Russians seemed to be relying on their own strength to meet all
eventualities and overcome all hazards in the arena of international
relations. This was pointedtuaby their reliance on military prepa-
rations from the nursery school through the university and the lack
of any reference to the United Nations in the Pedagogy. Again and
again the deep love of the "Motherland" linked to the bitter hatred
of all enemies was stressed. Fifth, the Pedagogy had little to say
about democracy in the educational program. In fact, the term was

completely absent from the book. Sixth and in summary, George S.

 

ZGIbid , p. 20.

19

CoUnts related that the Russians seemed to be building a theocracy
on the philosophical foundations of materialism. He suggested that

if William James "were writing his The Varieties of Religious Experi-

 

enge_today, he undoubtedly would devote a long chapter to Soviet
communism." He ended by stating that the current Soviet emphasis on
patriotism in education had been equaled or exceeded only by the
Fascist totalitarian powers.27
Counts' enumeration of these disturbing tendencies in Soviet
education closed with an examination of the cultural ethos which
spawned Soviet education as well as a program for thoughtful action
to combat its disturbing nature. He related the impact of years of
isolation and war on the Russian mind. "The people of the Soviet
Union are still living in the fear of 'capitalist encirclement' and
in the shadow of the Great Patriotic War-~a war that came within a
hair's breadth of destroying their institutions and dragging them

28 Furthermore, "their apprehensions can be

down into slavery."
understood, particularly when projected on the background of the

long and unceasing struggle for survival on the unguarded plains of
eastern Europe, from the days of the incursions of the Huns and Avars

29 Counts looked to the

at the very beginning of Russian history."
stabilization of the world, if it could be done as the key to defus-

ing the Russian mind. He advanced the theory that "we should do

 

27Ihid.. pp. 20-30.

231m” p. 31.

29Ibid.

20

everything in our power to remove from the Russian mind every
legitimate reason for fearing a military attack from any source."30
He proposed to accomplish this through disarmament and the establish-
ment of an international police force. This should be done through
the United Nations. If the Soviets refused to cooperate, Counts
believed that a Third World War would take place.
Finally, Counts discussed the challenge of Soviet education

in what has come to be called the Third World.

If the issue of war is resolved the moral challenge will

remain . . . . It (the total Soviet social and educational

program) contains elements which make a universal appeal.

. . It proclaims that the way of dictatorship, a dicta-

torship of "our best people," is the only way of removing

gross inequities, injustices, and insecurities among the

men ang nations and of establishing a lasting peace on the
earth. I

This phase of the Soviet challenge, Counts, believed, must be met
by a ". . . new birth of freedom at home by endeavoring to order our
life and institutions so that all of our people . . . will Share
fully in the benefits and blessings of our country.32

Maurice Joseph Shore's Soviet Education: Its Psychology and

Philosophy (1947) was a deep philosophical work. Professor Shore

 

traced the growth of Marxian education for more than a century,
with documentation from primary sources in the original languages.

In the author's words:

 

3O
31
32

Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.

21

The following pages will aim to present the story and

nature of an educational process about a hundred years

old in development. It is remarkable that this education,

which had its beginnings on English soil, shifted later to

France and Germany, to be finally transplanted and take

deep roots in Russia.
Shore's account divided Marxian educational development into four
periods which also marked political and philosophical developments
in Marxism:

l. Doctrinaire Marxism, from 1844 to 1871, the
year of the Paris Commune.

2. Active Marxism, from 1871 to 1918, the Russian
October Revolution.

3. Unified or Synthetic Marxism, a unity of theory
and practice, or Leninist Marxism, from 1918 to
1936, the year of the Soviet Constitution.

4. Post Leninism or Leninism-Stalinism, from 1936
to the present.

Like Counts, Shore demonstrated that the Soviets fully appreciated
and utilized education to promote communism. During the thirty-year
period, 1917-1947, the Soviets pressed irresistibly toward the final
goal of a Communist classless state. Education was directed firmly
as an "educational, nurtural and ideological weapon, for the realiza-
tion of communism."34
Shore declared that "the landmarks of Marxian-Soviet educa-
tion can be seen better against the background of a panoramic dif-

ference on the conception of State structure and practice between the

Soviet and that of the West." Below is produced his "Figure IX":

 

33Maurice Joseph Shore, Soviet Education: Its Psychology
and Philosophy (New York: Philosophical Library, 1947), p. 10.

34

 

Ibid., p. 6.

22

Contradiction in State Bases Expressed in Educational Channels

SOVIET AMERICAN

BASE:

statist collectivist vs individualist, free-
enterprise and corporate
economy

EDUCATION:

statist communist vs private, group, county,
state, etc., sponsored
education

PRESS:

one party press vs indivggualist and chain
press

Shore demonstrated that criticism of capitalist educational

practice preceded the emergence of Marxist-Soviet educational prin-

ciples. This he demonstrated in two chapters which he summarized in

his "Figure X" and "Figure XI."

Marxist Criticism of Capitalist Education and Substitutes

Proclaimed
CAPITALIST NEGATIVE ASPECTS
Contradiction Educational Effects

Economic lack of provision, "two-
track" system; "inter-
vention" for status quo;
bourgeois ideology

 

 

City and lack of educational pro-

country vision; neglect of rural
education; urban concen-
tration, and factory in-
dustrialized family;
lack of leisure and edu-
cation under factory
conditions; self-enforced
rudiments of factory-
child education

 

351bid., p. 253.

MARXIAN CURATIVES

socialized economy;
"one-track" educa-
tion; "intervention"
for change: transi-
tory society educa-
tion.

educational provi-
sion and spread;
better and more edu-
cation; education-
labor combination. ‘

Intellectual
and

physical
labor

23

degradation of physical
as compared with intel-
lectual labor; one
class-bourgeois-intel-
lectualism and intellec-
tuals; divorce between
physical and intellec-
tual labor

education-labor com-
bination; communist
intellectualism;
intellectual and
physical labor con-
cilation in the
classless society.36

Pre-Soviet Criticism of Capitalist Education and Substitute

Proc1aimed

 

CAPITALIST NEGATIVE ASPECTS

 

 

 

Contradiction Educational Effects
Economic lack of provision; "two-
track" education; edu-
cational "intervention"
for status qgo
City and poor educational provi-
country sion; neglect of rural
education; thought-
police control; educa-
tional bureaucracy
Intellectual divorce between intel-
and physical lectual and physical
labor labor; one-class

Intergroup or
intercultural

bourgeois-intellec-
tualism and intellec-
tuals

discrimination in edu-
cational provision,
admission, and profes-
sional employment

MARXIAN CURATIVES

socialized economy;
socialized "one-track"
education; "interven-
tion" for change;
transitory, socialist,
communist education.

educational spread;
better and more edu-
cation; polytechnism;
full reconciliation
in classless society.

polytechism: labor,
the imperative cate-
gory; full reconcili-
ation in the classless
society.

group-culture educa-
tion with a common
denominator: educa-
tion for the classless
society.3

He went on to propose a reconciliation between what he termed the

"superimposed rigidity of Soviet education" and the "energized

laissez-faire in American education" through the auspices of UNESCO.

 

361bid., p. 254.
37Ibid., p. 255.

38

Ibid., p. 262.

38

24

It is worth noting the similarity between Shore and Counts on the
use of the United Nations to reconcile East-West educational prac-
tice.39

William E. Johnson's Russia's Educational Heritage (1950)
was a study of the educational policies and programs characterizing
the last three centuries of the tsarist regime. Johnson's work

up-dated Beatrice King's Changjng Man: The Educational System in

the U.S.S.R. (1937). Many important connections between Empire and

 

Soviet procedures were pointed out, indicating that instead of
"smashing the old order," the Russian Revolution "created a new state

40 The book revealed that the pro-

on the foundations of the old."
gressive educational theories and practices imported from abroad,
during the early years of the Soviet regime, had been replaced by
'concepts and methods which had been outlawed and despiSed in the
19205.

Johnson's approach, in the main, was chronological. Chapters
Two through Six cover the era from the fifteenth to the middle nine-
teenth centuries, and deal with the early church schools, the estab-
lishment of state institutions of higher learning, the creation of
secondary and elementary schools, the unification of many agencies
into a national system, and the period of reaction which character-

izesthe second quarter of the nineteenth century. At that point,

a digression from chronology was made to provide an overview of the

 

39Counts, I Want to Be Like Stalin, p. 33.

40William E. Johnson, Russia's Educational Heritage (New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1950), p. 250.

25

history of the St. Petersburg Main Pedagogical Institute. Return-
ing to chronological order, the author follows the story down to
1917 and the breakdown of the tsarist regime during the reign of
Nicholas II. A final chapter points out certain specific instances
of tsarist influence in the Soviet period in order to sustain the
views he expressed in Chapter One.

Johnson stressed that many students of the Soviet Union have
made the mistake of concentrating on the ideas of Karl Marx. He
uplifted such vision to Bolshevism and the teachings of Lenin which
were deeply rooted in Slavic history, the autocratic tradition, the
messianic vision, and in the revolutionary movements of imperial
Russia. Thus, "the Russian Revolutions of 1917, whatever their
intent, did not establish a complete break with the Russian past."41
Johnson noted that the Soviets consciously and deliberately emulated
many tsarist practices and laud many historical figures. He wrote:

Strangely enough, the eighteenth century concept of separate
higher schools for the upper and lower classes has also,

found acceptance in the Soviet Union, but on an ideological
rather than a socio-economic basis. The Communist Party of
the Soviet Union maintains its own system of higher educa-
tion, entirely separate from4§he networks operated by the

A various government agencies.
In addition to the above, a partial list of pre-Revolutionary prac-

tices in the Soviet Union includes:

1. Nationalism--the stress of the unique place and
contribution of the Great Russian Slavic Race.

2. Orthodoxy--Communist doctrine has replaced reli-
gious orthodoxy.

 

41
42

Ibid.
Ibid., PP. 253-54.

26

Autocracy--with Commissar replacing tsar.
Centralized educational administration.
Emphasis on moral education.

Education for women.

VOW-5w

Military education under the model established
by Catherine 11.

8. Complete acceptance of the mastery of a body
of knowledge, lecture method of instruction,
and the recitation.
George S. Counts, The Challenge of Soviet Education: The
Study of Education as a Weapon (1957) was the last pre-Sputnik pub-
lication on Russian education. The jacket of the Counts' bobk
greeted the reader with two questions and a statement:
Are you aware that the Soviet Union is graduating two
or three times as many engineers as is the United States?
Or that the 3 percent expenditure of national income for
education in this country compares, according to Soviet
statistics, with 10 percent in the Soviet Union? Experts
warn it is conceivable that, in the not too distant
future, the Russian system of education may surpass our
own. .
Thus, the reader was introduced to an analysis of the most compre-
hensive and sustained effort in history to reach distant social goals
by employing all the agencies and processes of twentieth century
society for molding and training the minds of all the elements com-
posing a vast population of many nations and peoples.
Counts' approach was topical. His chapters were entitled:
"Soviet Education and Soviet Power," "The Roots of Soviet Power,"
"The Goals of Soviet Education," "The General Education of the
Younger Generation," "The Political Education of the Younger Genera-

tion," "The Moral Education of the Younger Generation," "The

27

Transformation of the Intellectual Class," "The Training of Spe-
cialists," "The Political Education of the Pe0ple," "The Reeducation
of the Offender," "The Political Education of the Soldier," "The
Education of the Political Elite," and "In Retrospect and Prospect."
In many ways The Challenge of Soviet Education was an updated

restatement of Counts' Soviet Challenge to America (1931) and I_Want
to Be Like Stalin (1947). In Counts' opinion, the rise of the Soviet
state was perhaps the outstanding political fact of the first half of
the twentieth century. He pointed out that the Soviet Union had
moved very rapidly along the path of industrialization since the
launching of the First Five-Year Plan in the autumn of 1928. The
level of science and technology achieved success in the production
of atomic and hydrogen bombs, the perfection of airplanes, the mas-
tery of electronics, and the improvement of weapons of warfare gen-
erally. American scientists, Counts reported, believed that the
"Soviet Union had achieved a lead in high energy research physics
that the United States probably could not overcome within the next
ten years."43 Iflaquoted Khruschev in his opening address to the
Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party on February 14, 1956:

. . . not one capitalist country has such a quantity of

schools, technicums, higher education establishments, sci-

,entific research institutes, experimental stations and

laboratories, theatres, clubs, libraries, and other insti-
tutions of cultural enlightenment, as the Soviet Union.

Q

43George S. Counts, The Challenge of Soviet Education: The
Study of Education as a Weapon (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1957), p. 3.

44Ibid.. pp. 5-6.

28

Then Counts compared the percentage of total national income each
nation invested in education. This was three percent in the United
States as compared to ten percent in the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics.

In Chapter Two, Counts examined the "Roots of Soviet Educa-
tion" which he believed reached far back into the paSt of Western
man. They reached back at least to the invention of the school as a
special institution, and for certain to the Platonic dialogue known
as the Republic. Counts commented again and again how he was
reminded of the Republic in which the power of rule rested in the
hands of a small caste of philosophers. It will be recalled that
Plato drew the outlines of an ideal society in which the citizens
were divided into three classes: the philosophers who governed the
state; the warriors who defended it; and the farmers and craftsmen
who produced and distributed its material wealth. For the selection
and training of each of these classes, a special system of education
was provided. In the Soviet Union, Counts outlined at least three
systems or streams of education: the system of pe0ple's schools,
the system of military schools, and the system of party schools. »The
class nature of these special party schools had been discussed by
William E. Johnson in Russia's Educational Heritage (1950). Counts
listed the remaining "roots" as "Marxist philosophy as interpreted
by Lenin," "the heritage of the Tsarist autocracy," and "the revolu-
tionary tradition in Russia." He talks at length about each, but
not with the insight or the zeal of his analysis of the heritage of
Plato.

29

Counts began "In Retrospect and Prospect" with an updated

quotation from the Communist Manifesto: "Today it is no longer a

 

Specter that is haunting Europe. On the contrary it is a thing of

45 Counts noted that today the

flesh and blood, of bone and muscle.
Soviet Union undoubtedly stands among the literate nations of the
earth. The advance in the realm of science and technology, in the
training of specialists of lower, middle, and higher qualifcations,
had also been,to use Counts' phrase, "phenomenal." He pointed out
that no nation in history had ever committed itself so unreservedly
to the mastery and development of mathematics and science. The cul-
tivation of "Communist morality" had also been a basic and persist-
ent feature of the Soviet system of education. George S. Counts
ended by challenging the "Pandora's Box" thesis of Allen Dulles that
eventually the Soviet system may be changed by the very individuals
who are being trained to be the system's bulwark. He saw absolutely
no evidence to support such a contention.46 I
A As noted earlier, The Challenge of Soviet Education was the
last book published before the launching of Sputnik. Thus, it pro-
vided a convenient place to summarize the perception of informed‘
American educators and laypersons concerning Soviet education. A -

thoughtful review of the four post-World War II monographs on Soviet

education yields the following generalizations:

 

45Ibid., p. 286.

451bid., p. 293.

30

l. Soviet education served the interests of the Soviet
economic order.47
2. Soviet education was the most important component in
Russia's stated goal to overtake and surpass the United States.48
3. The Soviet Union possessed a vast quantity of schools,
technicums, higher education establishments, scientific research
institutes, experimental stations andlaboratories, theaters, clubs,
libraries, and other institutions of cultural enlightenment, all of
the highest order.49
4. Soviet education was designed to mold what Communists

called "The New Soviet Man," a dedicated fighter and builder of

communism.50

5. Science and mathematics held a central place in the

Soviet curriculum.51

6. Soviet education had made tremendous gains since the
First Five-Year Plan in 1928.52
' 7. Soviet education had abandoned progressive educational

theories and practices imported from abroad during the early years

 

47Counts, I Want to Be Like Stalin and Challenge of Soviet
Education; Shore, Soviet Education.

48
49
50
51
52

 

Ibid.

Counts, Challenge of Soviet Education.
Counts, I Want to Be Like Stalin.
Counts, Challenge of Soviet Education.

Ibid.

31

of the regime and replaced them with pre-Revolutionary concepts and
methods--emphasis on a body of knowledge taught by lecture and
recitation.53
8. Overall Soviet educational aims were ground in Marxian
and pre-Soviet philosophy.54
9. The Soviet Union invested a greater share of total
national income on education than the United States, ten percent as
compared to three percent.55
10. The Russian educational system might in the near future
surpass the American educational system; it already turned out two
or three times as many engineering specialists of several grades each
year as compared to the corresponding institutions in the United
States.56
The conclusion to be drawn from the foregoing list and the
list printed on pages 12 and 13, which summarized the pre-World War
II American perception of Soviet education, is that American "educa-
tionists" had systematically informed the educational and national
community concerning the theory and practice of Soviet education.
Significantly absent was any "attack" on American educational phi-
losophy and practice in the light of the disclosures concerning

Soviet education. It should be emphasized that the fifteen books

 

53
54
55
56

Johnson, Russia's Educational Heritage.
Shore, Soviet Education.
Counts, Challenge of Soviet Education.

Ibid.

32

reviewed above are all the titles listed under the heading "Educa-

tion: Russia" in the Book Review Digest from 1917 through 1957.

 

Of the authorities who wrote on Soviet Russia, not one attacked
American education in the light of disclosures concerning Soviet
education. It should be noted that the above statement only applies
to writers whose purpose was to describe Soviet education. The expo-
sition on Soviet educational thought and practice proceeded largely'
independently of the domestic debate over educational thought and
practice.

An overview of the periodical literature in the time frame
1917-1937 yields almost identical perceptions of Soviet education.
The primary reason for the close parallel with perceptions presented
in the book press is that the periodical writers were also the book
writers. Authors tended to first advance their views in periodicals.
This practice is evident as early as 1928 with Lucy Langdon (Williams)
Wilson's New Schools of New Russia, portions of which appeared in a

series of articles in the National Education Association Journal

 

(January and November, 1928). John Dewey's Impressions of Soviet

 

Russia and the Revolutionary World (1929) appeared first as a series

of "letters" over a ten-year period in the New Republic. George S.

 

Counts, Soviet Challenge to America (1931), and Dr. Thomas Woody,
New Minds: New Men? The Emergence of the Soviet Citizen (1932),
followed that same pattern. Such was even the case for Soviet

writers. A seCtion of Albert Petrovich Pinkevitch's New Education

 

in the Soviet Republic (1932) appeared in School and Society

33

magazine under the title ”Methods of Work in Higher Education Insti-
tutions in Soviet Russia" (September 27, 1930).

Similarly, post-World War II periodical literature contained
the same information as the book literature. George S. Counts pub-
lished "Recent Tendencies in Soviet Eduation" in the American
Teacher (November 1947). The article was a restatement of material

published in I Want to Be Like Stalin in the same year. Both sum-

 

marized the official Soviet Pedagogy. Counts related how every sub-
ject of the curriculum was used to develop patriotism and "sacred
love of the Motherland." It also emphasized the corollary of foster-
ing a burning hatred of all enemies of Stalin or the Communist Party.
He ended "Recent Tendencies" with a stark warning: "If the Russians
continue on their present course, we shall doubtless march down the
same road. We are already at the beginning of that road. We must
strive to persuade the Russians that this is the way of madness."57

A three article series on Sovet education appeared in Ipe_

Education Digest. W. A. Gatherer's "The Teaching of History in

 

Russian Schools: In All Ages--Class Struggle" (November 13, 1953)
described the secondary school syllabuses issued by the Russian Min-
istry of Education. His description revealed clearly a fundamental
difference between the teaching of history in Russia and the West.
In Britian, the author related, there was no clearcut, official
dictated policy for history teaching. "Directives may be issued to

guide teachers as to selection of topics, but aims and principles

 

57George S. Counts, "Recent Tendencies in Soviet Education,"
American Teacher 22 (November 1947): 19.

34

suggested are vague and often ambiguous." This practice he

believed was "characteristic of our democratic way of life." He
went on to note that "nothing was vague about the teaching of history
in Russia." Rather, "history is the main instrument of the

58 In the Sovet Union

ideological-political education of the pupils."
the teaching of history must conform to a definitive and comprehen-
sive scheme based on the theories of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. The
underlying principle of the Russian syllabus was the interpretation
of history in terms of class struggle. Thus, the study of history in
the Soviet Union involves the study of man's economic development,
and how in various periods the economic domination of one group has
led to the exploitation of the "prOpertyless." Gatherer related that
the theory of class struggle runs through the syllabus "like a strong
cord linking all the events and movements of history." He summarized
by stating: "History--as the best form of indoctrination--looms much

59 Gatherer's

larger in the Soviet school curriculum than ours."
findings substantiated the educational indoctrination outlined by
George S. Counts in I Want to Be Like Stalin (1947).

John L. Kinloch began his "Education in the U.S.S.R."
(June 10, 1955) by relating that during a three-week stay in the
Soviet Union as guests of the Soviet Society for Development of

Cultural Relations: "We were given every opportunity to investigate

 

58W. A. Gatherer, "The Teaching of History in Russian
Schools: In All Ages, Class Struggle,“ Education Digest 36 (Novem-
ber 13, 1953): 698-699.

59

 

Ibid.

35

60 He

all the social and cultural activities of the U.S.S.R."
reported that even though as late asl932 one-third of the adult
population was illiterate, illiteracy had almost disappeared. "The
Soviets," he wrote, "are getting on top of their educational prob-
lems."61 He stated that the status of teachers among the Soviets
was high, as was the teachers' remuneration. He described a vast
array of secondary schools, elementary and nursery schools, univer-

sities, and Palaces of Culture. Taken as a unit, the Gatherer and

Kinloch articles relate the same disclosures as Counts' I Want to Be

 

 

Like Stalin and Challenge of Soviet Education.

- Publisher of the Encyclopedia Britannica and former United

 

States Senator William Benton traveled to Russia in 1955, "specif-
ically to observe Russian education and politial indoctrination."62
He returned home with what to him was "astonishing information: that
the Russians were turning out more scientists and technicians than '
the United States; that they would Shortly pass America in total edu-
cational effort."63 Benton presented an address at the Eleventh

National Conference on Higher Education, sponsored by the Association

for Higher Education at Chicago, Illinois, in March 1956. His

 

60John L. Kinlock, "Education in the U.S.S.R.," Education
Digest 38 (June 10, 1955): 389.

6'Ipid., p. 390.

62Book jacket to William Benton, This is the Challenge: The
'Benton Reports of 1956-1958 on the Nature of the Soviet Threat (New
York: Associated College Press, 1958). Published after Sputnik,
but many sections appeared before Sputnik.

63Ibid.

36

remarks were reprinted in the Education Digest under the title,
"Soviet Education: More Ominous than the Hydrogen Bomb?"

He began by relating that education had become a main the-
ater of the Cold War. Russia's classrooms and libraries, her
laboratories and teaching methods, may threaten America more than
her hydrogen bomb or her guided missiles. For decades, he con-
tinued, the Soviet Union has had a long-range plan for ideological
and economic world conquest. At the heart of the Soviet design was
the schooling for export of thousands of indoctrinated and capable
engineers, scientists, school masters, and technicians of all kinds.
What impressed Benton most was that in "in less than forty years the
Soviets had created a first-rate school system and that they had .
already eclipsed the United States in the number and percentage of
students enrolled in institutions above the secondary level." He
feared that the Soviets had found an educational "formula for com-
bining on the one hand high quality in scientific and technological
training and research--inc1uding production of original and creative
work in the natural sciences--and on the other hand an acceptance
and obedience in political, economic, philosophical, and moral

matters."64

To counterbalance the amazing growth of the Soviet educa-
tional system, Benton presented a four-point program. Priority one
was the establishment of a scholarship fund and fellowship program

on a competitive basis. He felt the federal government should

 

64William Benton, "Soviet Education: More Ominous Than the
HydrOgen Bomb?" Education Digest 21, No. 9 (May 1956): 4-8.

37

undertake immediately a national scholarship program with 20,000
scholarships, each covering four years of college, awarded annually.
His second priority was to develop new incentives for teachers.
Turning again to the federal government for leadership, Benton out-
lined a plan to add several billion dollars annually to teachers'
salaries. Priority three was to upgrade the physical plant. He set
a goal of $3.8 billion a year to secure 950,000 classrooms in the
next ten years. Fourth and finally, Benton saw the need to re-examine
teaching methods and the instructional setup in order to bring tech-
nology into the schools.

In this fourth priority, Benton outlined a reliance on edu-
cational hardware and differentiated staffing arrangements. He
wrote that "we should expect more of teachers as we pay them bet-
ter." Further, he went on to propose elimination of what he termed
"many phony certification procedures after requring inferior courses
at second rate colleges." He outlined what he termed the need for
"subject matter trained specialists." He also spoke of the need to

65

"cut down in many areas the enormous waste." 'The reader familiar

with Admiral Hyman G. Rickover's Education and Freedom (1959) will

 

notice that Benton clearly anticipates Rickover's line of argument.
This is the case even down to the example of Yale and Princeton

graduates who are physics majors who are denied teaching positions

66

because of the so-called "phony certification procedures." In

 

65115111.. pp. 5-7.

65151a.

38

the flurry of publication which followed the launching of Sputnik I,
Benton reissued an expanded version of his remarks under the title
This Is the Challenge (1958). Interestingly, Benton seemed shocked
at educational conditions in the Soviet Union. His alarm is of a
different kind than, for example, George S. Counts' Challenge of

Soviet Education (1957). Benton does not give evidence of doing his

 

homework. Information concerning Soviet educational and scientific
achievements was not restricted to narrow education publications.

The Science News Letter (November 22, 1952) outlined the number of

 

highly trained technicians and scientists the Soviets were preparing
compared to the United States. The lay persons'_Eppular Science
Magazine (November 1954) had featured a seven-page Spread, complete
with diagrams of atomic powered airliners, rockets, space stations
and moonscapes, entitled "Russians Cram to Beat U.S. in Science."
The Popular Science Magazine story even featured a description of
the Soviet ten-year school curriculum, down to the hours per week of
required homework in science and mathematics. These articles were
not isolated examples.

"The Soviet Challenge and Secondary Education in the United
States" in The Educational Forum (November 1956) by I. L. Kandel
began by noting: "It is significant that in less than a year the
challenge of the U.S.S.R. has succeeded in directing attention to
deficiencies of American secondary education which critics at home

have been unable to arouse over a period of more than a quarter of a

39

"67 The awakening Kandel described was the American pub-

century.
lic's interest in what he believed to be poor standards of attainment
in science education. He went on to describe these standards in
science education as "symptomatic of conditions that prevail in most
other subjects--mathematics, foreign language, English, and his-

"68 This failure in attainment Kandel laid at the door mat of

tory.
the "educational frontier movement" which resulted in “education for
life adjustment" and deemphasis on the mastery of "cardinal princi-
ples."69
Kandel's "Soviet Challenge and Secondary Education in the
United States" fits the mold of William Benton's "Soviet Education:
More Ominous than the Hydrogen Bomb?" Both anticipate the argument

of Hyman Rickover's Education and Freedom. Both were written by

 

non-experts in the area of Soviet education. Both, as evidenced
by what they wrote, were largely ignorant of the extensive work in
the field of Soviet education in both the pre- and post-World War II
eras. More attention to this area will be presented in the next
section of this dissertation.

Education in the U.S.S.R. (Office of Education: Bulletin
1957, No. 14) declared that "Soviet policy precisely enunciates that
the function of education in the U.S.S.R. is to serve the interests

of the state." The state, the report continued, attempts to decide

 

671. L. Kandel, "The Soviet Challenge and Secondary Education
in the United States," The Educational Forum 21 (November 1956): 27.

 

68Ibid.

69Ibid.

40

through its planning mechanism what skills are needed and in what
proportion they are needed for the most efficient development of
the state. The state system of education covered all levels, from
preschool through university, and cultural education for adults.

The state plan for education was shown to be a function of the state
economic plan for the nation. The Office of Education report went
on to describe the technicums and scientific institutes which had

so inflamed ex-Senator William Benton. As evidenced by this docu-
ment, Washington policy makersirithe Office of Education were fully
informed as to the status of Soviet educational affairs. Education

in the U.S.S.R. obviously drew on the pool of information developed

 

over the period 1917 to 1957 by professional educators. It clearly
lacked the evangelical approach of William Benton and I. L. Kandel
and the wit of Hyman Rickover.

Fittingly, the last periodical literature to be examined in
the time frame 1947 to 1957 is George S. Counts' "Soviet Education

and Soviet Power" from Teachers College Record (March 1957). The

 

article was a reprint from The Challenge of Soviet Education pub-
lished by McGraw-Hill in the same year. Counts restated his recur-
ring thesis that "the growth of Soviet power would have been
impossible in the absence of the development of Soviet education.”0
Counts believed that the program of education was the key to under-

standing the Russian colossus. "For from the moment the Bolsheviks

consolidated their rule over the Russian Empire, they employed

 

70George S. Counts, "Soviet Education and Soviet Power,"
Teachers College Record 58 (March 1957): 293.

41

education to change the course of history and the nature of man."71

Counts had consistently reported this thesis beginning with Ih_e_
Soviet Challenge to America (1931). His understanding of the Pla-
tonic underpinning of Bolshevik educational philosophy placed him
above other mere catalogers of information. He openly faced this
issue in the Challenge of Soviet Education (1957). He was the only
writer in the period 1947 to 1957 to see Soviet education as a
challenge, not only in science and technology, but on a moral basis
in the Third World. Clearly, he painted a picture of the whole tree
of Soviet education: roots, trunk, and branches. He was not over-
come by scientific and technical education and the emphasis on sub-
ject matter as were to be so many authors in the post-Sputnik period.

The data would seem to indicate two generalizations concern-
ing the American perception of Soviet education in the time frame
1917-1957:

1. American writers on Soviet education presented a
detailed, clear account of the theory and practice of Soviet educa-
tion. The reader is directed to the twenty generalizations printed
on pages 12, 13, 30, and 31 for specific details of the theory and
practice.

2. With the exception of scattered reports in periodicals,
authors of the period did not attack American education in the light

of disclosures concerning American education.

 

7'Ipio.

42

These two conclusions shall serve as a point of departure in sec-
tion three of this dissertation. Section two of this dissertation
will concern itself with the character of education discussions

concerning American education for the period 1947 to October 4, 1957.

CHAPTER II

AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT,
1947 TO OCTOBER 4. 1957

As John Dewey had forecast in Experience and Education (1938)
progressivism had become the educational conventional wisdom in the
post-World War II period.1 Discussions of educational policy were
honeycombed with phrases like "recognizing individual differences,"
"educating the whole child," "social and emotional growth," "teach-
ing children, not subjects," and "adjusting the school to the child."
The sources that document this view are legion: professional jour-
nals, education textbooks, school board reports, and various publi-
cations of the United States Office of Education. A Roper survey
published in a special education issue of Life_magazine (October 16,
1960) indicated that 67 percent of those polled agreed with the
statements "School children are being taught more worthwhile and
useful things than children were twenty years ago," and "We are

getting better trained and more capable teachers in our public

schOols."2

 

1Lawrence A. Cremin, The Transformation of the School (New
York: Kn0pf, 1961), p. 328.
2"What U.S. Thinks About Its Schools," Life, October 29, 1950,

p. 11.

43

44

In July 1955, the Progressive Education Association was dis-
banded. The officers of the association announced that the organi-
zation's work had been accomplished and that there was no longer any
need for the separate existence of the organization.3 Perhaps the
zenith of the movement had been reached with a series of volumes
issued by the Educational Policies CommisSion of the National Educa-
tion Association entitled Education for All American Youth (1944),

Educational Services for Young Children (1945), and Education for

 

All American Children (1948), and the reports of the two U.S. Office
of Education Commissions on Life Adjustment Education for Youth:

Life Adjustment Education for Everngouth (no date), Vitalizing
Secondary Education: Report of the First Commission on Life Adjust-
ment Education for Youth (1951), and A Look Ahead in Secondary Edu-
cation: Report of the Second Commission on Life Adjustment Education
for Youth (1954).

The Commission's three volumes outline a blueprint of post-
war education in "Farmville" and "American City," both located in the
mythical state of "Columbia." The public schools in "Columbia” were
comprehensive and concerned with all young people from age three
through twenty, those in school as well as those outside school. All
schools were dedicated to the proposition that:

> Every youth in these United States, regardless of sex, eco-
- nomic status, geographic location, or race, should experi-
ence a broad and balanced education which will (1) equip him

to enter an occupation suited to his abilities and offering
= reasonable opportunity for personal growth and usefulness;

 

3Paul Woodring, A Fourth of a Nation (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1957). p. 15.

45

(2) prepare him to assume the full responsibilities of Ameri-
can citizenship; (3) give him a fair chance to exercise his
right to the pursuit of happiness; (4) stimulate intellec-
tual achievement, and cultivate an ability to think ration-
ally; and (5) help him to develop an appreciation of the
ethical values Xhich should undergird all life in a demo-
cratic society.

Lawrence A. Cremin's The Transformation of the School (1957) charac-

terized these reports as "patently progressive education."5

The life-adjustment movement originated in the activities of
the Vocational Education Division of the United States Office of Edu-
cation. Early in 1944 the division undertook a study of "Vocational
Education in the Years Ahead." As part of the study a conference
was organized for May 31 and June 1, 1945, at the Wardman Park Hotel
in Washington, D.C. The following resolution was unanimously adopted

by the conferees:

- It is the belief of this conference that, with the aid of
this report in final form ("Vocational Education in the

- Years Ahead"), the vocational school of a community will
be able better to prepare 20 percent of the youth of sec-
ondary school age for entrance upon desirable skilled occu-
pations; and that the high school will continue to prepare
another 20 percent for entrance to college. We do not
believe that the remaining 60 percent of our youth will
receive the life adjustment training they need and to which
they are entitled as American citizens, unless and until
the administrators of public education with the assistance
of vocational education leaders formulate a similar program
for this group.

We therefore request the U.S. Commissioner of Education
and the Assistant Commissioner for Vocational Education to
' call at some early date a conference or a series of regional

 

4Educational Policies Commission of the National Education
Association, Education for All American Youth (Washington, D.C.:
The Association, 1944), p. 21.

5Cremin, Transformation, p. 333.

 

46

conferences between an equal number of representatives of
general and of vocational education--to consider this prob-
lem and to take sgch initial steps as may be found advisable
or 1ts solut1on.

The Office of Education was agreeable and five regional gath-
erings were held between April and November, 1946. These conferences
brought together secondary school principals, school superintendents,
representatives of state departments of education, supervisors of
vocational education, administrators and professors of teacher edu-
cation institutions, and national professional associations.w No
science or arts professors from universities were included. A
national conference was held the following May, which recommended
that a Commission on Life Adjustment Education for Youth be created
and that a program be established to promote life-adjustment educa-’
tion at the state and local levels. The U.S. Commissioner of Educa-
tion was agreeable and asked various professional associations to
submit nominees for the proposed commission. Eventually, a nine
member body was formed under the chairmanship of Superintendent
Benjamin Willis of Yonkers, New York.7

The CommisSion viewed its task as one of translating the pre-
vailing progressive theory into contemporary educational practice.
The First Commission Report stated:

National committees have been developing and extending basic

theses for the past thirty years, and they have made prog-
ress in clarifying thought and securing consensus. It is

 

6United States Office of Education Commission on Life Adjust-
ment for Youth, Life Adjustment Education for Every Youth (Washing-
ton, D.C., n.d.), p. 15.

7

 

Cremin, Transformation, p. 335.

 

47

the conviction of the Commission that there is available
such a wealth of sound theory by which to achieve effective
educational programs that at this time thepgreat need is
for action which translates theory into school practice.

 

The Commission defined its goal as an education "designed to equip
all American youth to live democratically with satisfaction to them-
selves and a profit to society as home members, workers, and
'citizens."9
The First Commission on Life Adjustment for Youth worked
three years and turned out a report in 1951. A Second Commission
followed and issued its report in 1954. Both Commissions sponsored
a number of regional and national conferences and engaged the coop-
erative efforts of several influential organizations such as the
National Association of Secondary School Principals, the American
Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, The National Congress
of Parents and Teachers, and the National School Boards Association.
Despite this success, no new Commission was appointed in 1954, and
no new funds were approved. The life-adjustment movement had come
under bitter attack by the critics of progressive education, this

not withstanding the remarks and action taken in disbanding the

Progressive Education Association in 1955.

 

8u.s.o.1-:. Commission on Life Adjustment for Youth, Life
Adjustment, p. 3.

9United States Office of Education Commission on Life Adjust-
ment for Youth, Vitalizing_Secondary Education: Report of the First
Commission on Life-Adjpstment Education for Youth—(Washington, D.C.:
The Commission, 1951), p. l.

 

48

The bitter and corrosive attack on progressivism in the wake
of the life-adjustment movement; was a reaffirmation of the debate
which vexed American eduation in the pre-war era. Irving Adler in
What We Want of Our Schools: Plain Talk on Education, From Theory

to Budgets (1957) outlined four major schools of anti-progressivism

 

thought: "Criticism from the Extreme Right," "Criticism from the
Chambers of Commerce," "Traditionalist Criticism," and what he
termed "Constructive Critics" which represented the ideas of William
C.-Bagley, Robert M. Hutchins, Arthur Bestor, and Albert Lynd. Adler
distinguished between criticism which attacked progressivism in the
public schools and criticism which attacked the public schools in
general. Because progressivism had acquired semi-official status in
the public schools it was not always easy to make such a distinc-
tion.10
Education in a Divided World: The Function of the Public
Schools in Our Unique Society (1948) by James B. Conant was the out-
growth of a series of lectures given at Teachers College, Columbia
University, in the fall of 1945. Conant spoke for the need for
national planning in the the wake of the struggle between the Soviet
Union and the democracies.]] As a member of the Educational Policies

Commission of the National Education Association from 1940 through

1945, he indicated that the material in his three lectures was

 

10Irving Adler, What We Want of Our Schools (New York: John
Day Co., 1957), p. 195.

11James B. Conant, Education in a Divided World: The Func-
tion of the Schools in Our Uniqge Society (Cambridge: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1948), p. ix.

49

"though differing in many respects, in harmony in their basic recom-

mendations" with Education for All American Youth (1944) by the

12

Educational Policies Commission. This fact is worthy of note, for '

Conant would be listed by many commentators as one of the critics of

13

American education in the post-Sputnik period. In Education in a

 

Divided World, however, Conant does not take exception with progres-

 

sivism or life adjustment. To the contrary, Conant states that he
wrote the book to blunt hostility toward the schools by explaining
the goals of American eduation. The "national planning in the wake
of the struggle between the Soviet Union and the democracies" turns
out to be the education in "Farmville" and "American City" in the
mythical state of "Columbia." In other words, Conant called for
the conversion of progressive theory into educational practice.14
The post-war assault on the principles and practices of
modern education, the writings of John Dewey, the pronouncements of
the Educational Policies Commission, and the Teachers College catalog
began with Bernard Iddings Bell's Crisis in Education: A Challenge
to American Complaceney and Mortimer Smith's And Madly Teach, both
of them published in 1949. Canon Bell of the Protestant Episcopal

Church had long been critical of the contemporary trend toward rela-

tivism, secularism, and egalitarianism. Bell held that the public

 

12Ibid.

'3See Frank G. Jennings, "Educational Reform 1957-1967: It
Didn't Start with Sputnik," Saturday Review, September 16, 1967,
pp. 77-79, 95-97 for an analysis of Conant as critic of progressive
education.

14Conant, Education in a Divided WOrld, pp. 1-37.

50

school must accept much of the blame for these trends. His stated
intention was to "challenge American complacency" by asking and
answering the question, To what extent was American educational
theory and practice responsible for the unsatisfactory state of our
life and culture? From kindergarten to the uhiverSity, he believed
the schools suffered from misplaced emphasis. The elementary schools
failed to transmit the elemental wisdom of the race. The secondary
schools coddled young minds rather than strengthening them. The
colleges had deprived the nation of a humanely educated leadership.
The schools had usurped domestic functions that were properly
parental. Above all else, the schools had excluded religion, with-
out which education could have no ultimate purpose. Bell held that
the business of education is to minister to the common need and that
"the common need is for reverence toward That Which Is [sic] and

"'5 That

for discipline in the light of what such reverence reveals.
is to say, religion should have the central place in the curriculum
of publicly supported denominational schools, if necessary.
Bell's views on secondary education appeared in an article
in Life Magazine on October 16, 1950. He said:
Our school system seems to presuppose that, for educa-
tion to be democratic, every man's child must be treated as

the equal of every other's in kind of brains and in educa-
bility. The effect of this is to herd an increasing number

 

15Bernard Iddings Bell, Crisis in Education: A Challenge
to American Complacency (New York: Whittlesey House, 1949),
p. 178.

51

of unfit persons into colleges of liberal arts whose proper
business is to help students of exceptional intelligence to
understapd human affairs and develop sound judgments
therein.

He summed up his criticism as follows:

These four, then, are the grievous criticisms being lev-
eled today against American education. It neglects the
basic disciplines. It tends to turn out graduates who
expect the Cheap success of reward without labor. It denies
our society the training of leadership by madly mixing tech-
nology and liberal learning and trying to feed the indiges-
tible stew to thousands who choke on it. By treating
religion as a dispensable diversion, it deprives the young
of all allegianca to any spiritual compulsion greater than
love of country.

The same idea was expressed more briefly in the title of an

article in the New York Times Magazine, written by Douglas Brush of

 

Harvard University: "Education of All IS Education for None."
Here, clearly, is the "Traditionalist Criticism" of Irving Adler.

And Madly Teach, Mortimer Smith's little book of 107 pages,
attacked the philosophy and doctrines which underlie progressive
education. Even though Dr. Bell wrote the introduction to And Madly
leash, important differences separated the two men. Bell proposed '
to improve the teaching profession by better training, better pay,
and better organization. Smith directed an attack against the teach-
ing profession. Bell contended in his introduction that the "fault

lies not in our pedagogues but in ourselves." Smith urged parents

 

16Bernard Iddings Bell, ”Know How vs. Know Why: Canon Bell
Finds Our System Superficial and Undisciplined, " Life, October 16,
1950, p. 92.

"Ibid., p. 98.

52

"to rise up in righteous indignation against the pedagogues" and
insist on education's historic role as moral and intellectual leader.

Benjamin Fine was the education editor of the New York Times.

 

In Our Children Are Cheated: Crisis in American Education (1950),

 

he stated in his forward:

. what I found was shocking. Many schools have broken
down; education faces a serious crisis. Hundreds of commu-
nities cannot get adequate teachers. I have spoken to men
and women who have no more right to be in the classroom
than I have to pilot a superpassenger plane . . . . We will
suffer the consequences of our present neglect of education
for generations hence.

Fine's crisis was one of physical plants, teacher preparation, and
monetary support, not one of pedagogues, progressivism, and subver-
sion. The little volume was out of step with the times as evidenced
by its failure to be quoted in other monographs, and was quietly
relegated to taking up shelf space.

Earl Conrad's Public School Scandal: A Documented Expose

 

appeared in 1952. Conrad was an experienced newspaper man who con-
ducted a personal survey of educational conditions, practices, and
attitudes in the public schools. Unfortunately, he limited his
"personal survey" to the public schools of New York City. The book
contained a strong emotional undercurrent and appeared to many

19

reviewers more of a tract than an expose. The 270 page volume

 

18Benjamin Fine, Our Children Are Cheated: Crisis in Ameri-
can Eduation (New York: H. Holt, 1950), book jacket.

19Reviews of Public School Scandal by Earl Conrad: Kelsey
Guilford, Chicago Sunday Tribune, April 29, 1951, p. 8; Benjamin Fine,
New York Times, April 15, 1951, p. 26; Fred M. Heckinger, Saturday
Review of Literature, June 30, 1951, p. 15.

 

 

 

 

 

 

53

centered about a description of existing practices of teaching read-
ing and of testing for reading readiness and their effects on Chil-
dren. Conrad's remedy for the "public school scandal" was the
expenditure of more money to relieve congested classrooms and the
introduction of federal-aid legislation. Notwithstanding his icono-
clastic approach, Conrad's proposed remedy clearly placed him in the
gallery of Irving Adler's "constructive critics."

Despite its title, Charles Wilson Sanford et al. (eds.),
The Schools and National Security: Recommendations for Elementary
and Secondary Schools (1951) was cast in the mold of progressive
‘education. llwagrandiose report was produced by the Illinois Second-
ary School Curriculum Program. "In the social studies as in all
general education," the report states, "teachers have several major
tasks. They should reduce tensions and meet the peeg§_of children
and youth. They should illuminate the social realities. They should
develop understanding and practice of democratic values."20 This
non-structured approach is epitomized by the section headed "Per-
sonal Problems." Here history is applied to the personal problems
of youth. "Ask the students," the report suggests, "to make studies
of how the last war affected the dating patterns in our culture."21

Clearly, the social studies did not stand for the systematic study

of history, political science, and economics.

 

20Charles Wilson Sanford et al., eds., The Schools and-
National Security: Recommendations for Elementary and Secondary
Schools (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1945), p. 221.

2'Ipia., p. 230.

54

Like James B. Conant's Education in a Divided World (1948),
the Illinois Secondary School Curriculum Program was a self-
acknowledged product of the Cold War. Similarly, both were in har-
mony with Education for All American Youth (1944) by the Educational
Policies Commission of the National Education Association. Both saw
nothing incompatible with a rigorous educational race with the Soviet
Union and progressive and life-adjustment movements in American edu-
cation. The third of the three parts of The Schools and National
Security outlined the responsibilities of administrators, parent-
teacher groups, librarians and teachers in promoting the "educational
conventional wisdom." The criticisms of Bell, Smith, Fine, and Con-
rad had not shaken the confidence in the thought and practice of
progressivism.

This Happened in Pasadena (1951) written by David Hulburd
‘ burst upon the educational scene the same year as The Schools and

National Security. Its author, a professional journalist, described

 

the political demise of William Goslin, the progressive Superin-
tendent of Pasadena's schools. President of the American ASsoci-
ation of School Administrators, Goslin had been forced out of one of
the showcases of modern education by a combination of Citizens
opposed to school taxes, radicalism, and progressive education. It
was shades of John Dewey's The Authoritarian Attempt to Capture Edu-
gatjpp, Hurlburd warned, and James B. Conant who reviewed the book
warned: "Good education has been successfuly subverted in one
American community; it could happen in any American community; now

was the time for all interested citizens to come to the aid of the

55

22 "Fantastic? It can't happen here? Read this book. . . .

schools.
It has happened here," proclaimed the jacket to Hulburd's book.

As judged by the literature of pamphlets and articles, col-
lected and discussed by C. Winfield Scott and Clyde M. Hill in
Public Education Under Criticism (1954), it was happening in a lot
of places. The notion of a "calculated, far-reaching plot by ultra-
rightists" was taken up by defenders of the new education. This

progressive defense was epitomized by V. T. Thayer's Public Education

and Its Critics (1954). He wrote in his introduction:

 

It is hoped that this survey will help in a small way to
stimulate a better understanding of the basic issues under-
lying the controversy over the schools and to clarify pub-
lic policy regarding the kind of educagion the American
people wish their schools to provide.

He continued:

Throughout the years, criticism of the public schools has
been within the framework of their general acceptance as
distinctive and valued instruments of American democracy.

. . By way of contrast in recent years attacks upon the
public schools have taken a new and ominous character.
While seemingly directed at Specific conditions in schools
within specific localities, they give evidence of being
in§pired by organizations pperating_on a much.wider scale.
Similarly, Charges made and the techniques employed with
which to sustain these charges are, by and large, those of
skillful propagandists rather than of responsible and con-
scientious citizens seeking to reform an institution they

ove.

 

22James B. Conant, "The Superintendent Was the Target,"
The New York Times Book Review, April 29, 1951, p. 27.

23v. T. Thayer, Public Education and Its Critics (New York:
Macmillan, 1954), p. x.

24Ibid., pp. vii-viii. Emphasis mine.

56

Writing in the January 1952 issue of Progressive Education,

 

editor Archibald W. Anderson of the University of Illinois advanced

a theory concerning recent attacks on public education. Critics,

he believed, should be divided into two groups. One group he labeled
"honest and sincere critics." "Some of these critics, he wrote,
"take the trouble to keep themselves well informed about educational

matters, are willing to work with the schools, and generally favor

 

the same lines of_progress as the educators. Such critics are not
likely to join an organized attack." The second group Anderson
labeled as an assortment of "chronic tax conservationists," "con-
genital reactionaries," "witch hunters," "super-patriots," "dogma
haters,” and lastly, "academic conservatives."25
Hollis L. Caswell took exception to the thesis advanced by

Thayer and Anderson in an article entitled "The Great Reappraisal of

Public Education" published in Teachers College Record in October of

 

1953. Caswell laid the "plot theory" aside and advanced in its

place the idea that what was happening was not merely a subversive
attackcuithe schools but rather a "searching reappraisal of the whole
phi1050phy of progressive education." Anderson's thesis, he con-
tended, "ignored the growing number of citizens who took the trouble
to make themselves well informed about educational matters, but pm

did not generally favor the same lines of_progress astheeducators."26

 

25Archibaid w. Anderson, "The Cloak of Responsibility: The ‘
Attackers and Their Methods," Progressive Education 29, No. 3 (Janu-
ary 1952): 69-70. Emphasis mine.

26Hollis L. Caswell, "The Great Reappraisal of Education,"
Teachers College RecOrd 54, No. 1 (October 1953): 12-22. Emphasis
mine.

57

Writing five years later in A Fourth of a Nation (1957),

 

Paul Woodring shared the Caswell thesis. Since the Second World

War, he saw "two separate waves of attack." And the "failure to
distinguish between them," he believed "to be the source of much

of our current confusion." The first wave, which began right after
the war, Woodring asserted, grew out ofthe uncertainties of the
international situation and a fear the subversion was sweeping the
land. This wave of attack took the form of assaults on academic
freedom, critical examination of textbooks, and a search for subver-
sive teachers. It led to loyalty oaths and a reexamination of the
role of textbooks in teaching. During this wave of controversy,

"the classroom teachers were supported by scholars and other intel-
lectuals of the nation."27 The second wave started later and,
Woodring believed, reached its crest so far as published criticism
is concerned, in the fall of 1953 when four major critical books were
published within a month. This wave was completely unrelated to the
first. It stemmed from different causes and was articulated by a
very different group of people. "In this debate the great majority
of scholars and other intellectuals stand in opposition to the

"28 This attack, Woodring Said,

spokesmen for professional education.
was not an attack upon the schools as alleged by Thayer and Anderson.
Rather, "it is an attack along a broad front upon a set of philoso-

phies and practices which the critics believe to have come to dominate

 

27
28

Woodring, A Fourth, pp. 6-7.
Ibid.

58

our schools and which they are convinced are false and dangerous."29

Woodring legitimized such attacks by declaring them pro-public educa-
tion, but anti-progressive education in philosophy.

Among the best known of the critics of Woodring's "second
wave" were Arthur Bestor, Albert Lynd, and Mortimer Smith. The titles
of their books, Educational Wastelands, Quackery in the Public Schools,-

and The Diminished Mind, tell something of their approach. To them

 

Woodring added Dr. Rudolf Flesh's Whprohnny Can't Read. One could
also add Paul Woodring's own Let's Talk Sense About Our Schools, all
published in the same year, 1953. Despite the sound of their titles,
it should not be overlooked that many of the criticisms contained in
them may also be found in the more moderate writings of men such as
Presidents Griswold of Yale, Dodds of Princeton, and Gordon Chalmers
of Kenyon, as well as the articles of many scholars and scientists.
Robert M. Hutchins presented a comprehensive restatement of his views
in The Conflict in Education, also published in the seminal year,
1953. Hutchins had for years been critical of the philosophies and
practices which alarmed the authors of the five monographs.

Hutchins believed that the philosophy of education was a sec-
ondary subject, dependent on our conception of man and society. He
found American society dominated by drives for money, power, and suc-
ceSs, instead of wisdom and goodness. He found the pressures tending
toward this low cultural level in the schools. However, the schools

were merely reflecting the pressures for a low cultural level which

 

29Ibid., p. 7.

59

originated in society. He rejected education for life adjustment

on the ground that it implied adapting people to the status quo. He
declared the progressive education doctrine of "felt needs" of Chil-
dren to be simply another version of life adjustment. The "felt
needs" were molded by low level social influences. These influences
were money, power, and success, which Hutchins found wanting.

Hutchins offers an alternative program of education based on
his conviction that the schools should restore a program of liberal
education, which he defined as training in the liberal arts and under-
standing the leading ideas that have animated mankind. It aims to
help the human being to learn to think for himself, to develop his
highest human powers. To realize this program of cultivating criti-
cal thinking, Hutchins advocated that secondary and higher schools
make greater use of the classics. For if the object of the educa-
tional system is to help young people learn to think for themselves,
it should help them to think about the most important subjects, and
these are discussed in the greatest works of the greatest writers of
the past and present.

Hutchins' emphasis on the "great books"—as the core of a
liberal education grows out of his own conception of human nature.
AS he put it in his book, The Higher Learnings in America:

- One purpose of education is to draw out the elements of our
common human nature. These elements are the same in any

~ time or place. The notion of educating a man to live in any
particular time or place, to adjust him to any particular

environmeng0 is therefore foreign to a true conception of
education.

 

30Robert M. Hutchins, The Higher Learnings in America (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1936), p. 66.

60

Thus the human problems discussed in the classics or great books are
identical with the problems of today, so that the study of the clas-
sics is a direct value for contemporary life. In the classics one
finds the accumulated experience of the human race. The rising gen-
eration must build upon this accumulated experience in order to carry
human experience to wisdom and goodness and the rejection of wealth,
power, and success. He attacked John Dewey's philosophy at its core,
a faith in the scentific method. The questions that science can
answer, he believed, are questions about the physical world. They
deal with the material conditions of existence. "What is called
social science cannot tell us what kind of society we ought to aim
at. It is doubtful whether it can even tell us what the conse-
quences of a given social policy will be."31
Arthur Bestor was an American historian who taught for a
number of years at Teachers College, Columbia University, before
going on to professorships at Stanford and then to the University of
Illinois. Educational Wastelands (1953) was a savage attack on the
life-adjustment movement. The book was widely reviewed and com-
mented on, and a revised and enlarged edition was published in 1955
under the title The Restoration of Learning. His criticism dated
from 1952 and the book incorporated passages from articles published
in the William and Mary Quarterly (January 1952), the American
Scholar (Spring 1952), the Scientific Monthly (August 1952), the

American Association of University Professors Bulletin (Autumn 1952),

 

3'Ipid., p. 65.

61

the New Republic (January 19, 1953), School and Society (January 31,

 

1953, and September 19, 1953), the Christian Register (March 1953),
the Phi Delta Kappan (June 1954), Vital Speeches of the Day (Aug-
ust 15, 1954), the Teachers College Record (October 1954), and the
National Parent-Teacher (October 1954). Clearly, both within and
without the profession, these writings constituted a serious and
influential attack on progressive education.

The great subversion of American education, Bestor contended,
had been the divorce of the schools from scholarship and of teacher
education from the academic disciplines. Bestor attacked an inter-
locking directorate composed of professors of education, the school
administrators they trained, and the state departments of education
that require their courses for teacher certification.

Bestor proposed a three-fold program for reform: The orga-
nization of a coalition of parents and liberal arts professors who
would remove the schools from the control of the "inter-locking
directorate"; the redrawing of certification requirements to
strengthen academic learning and deemphasize professional education
courses; and the return of teacher education to the control of the
uniVersity in the place of the professional school. The return of
teacher education to the control of the total university was the
crux of the Bestor reform. This "Restoration" was, to Bestor,
essential, for the total university, not the department of pedagogy,

was concerned with education. A statement of Bestor's reforms is

62

found in Part III, sub-titled "Roads to Educational Reform," in 129.
Restoration of Learning.32
Albert Lynd, a member of the school board in a Massachusetts
town near Boston, assailed "professional educators who comprise the
faculties of teachers colleges, as well as their colleagues who con-
trol public education policies on the state and federal level." It
was his contention that these groups, "constituting a tight bureau-
cracy unrivaled since the priesthood of ancient Egypt," actually do
harm to education. He concentrated his denunciations on the programs
in teacher training institutions, quoting the multiplicity of
courses offered, and decrying the avoidance of basic subject matter.
Quackery in the Public Schools (1953) and "Who Wants Progressive
Education: The Influence of John Dewey on the Public Schools,“ the
Atlantic Monthly (April 1953), traced how "one philosophy acquired in
lower education a dominance quite out of proportion to its standing--
considerable as it is--among professional philosophers? And fan-
tastically out of proportion to popular agreement with its basic
principles?"33
After tracing the development of the "New Education" from the

Romanticism of Rousseau and Pestalozzi to the scientific pragmatism

of John Dewey, Lynd wrote:

 

32Arthur Bestor, The Restoration of Learning (New York:
Knapf, 1955), pp. 221-408.

33Albert Lynd, "Who Wants Progressive Education: The Influ-
ence of John Dewey on Public Schools," Atlantic Monthly, April 1953,
reprinted in Reginald D. Archambault, ed., Dewey on Education:
Appraisals (New York, Random House, 1966), p. 193.

 

 

63

Dewey's great influence upon American education is usually
explained by his disciples on the ground that his philoso-
phy is peculiarly congenial to the Spirit of American
democracy. That is not wholly Convincing: the argument
is circular, because it includes conceptions of democracy
which are themselves a part of Mr. Dewey's philosophy.

His authority is more probably explainable as an histori-
cal accident; he was the only first-rate American philBSo-
pher to take an intense evangelical interest in the lower
schools. For our graduates in Education who are uneduca-
ted in anything but their own trade, Deweyyis to the
Americap:§chool what Aristgtle was to the medieval school:
Simply "the Philosopher."54

 

 

Lynd went on to state that Dewey's educational theories were
consistently related to his basic philosophical views. He then
sketched out his own interpretation of Dewey's philosophy which he

noted was usually called instrumentalism. The following points Lynd
35

 

judged to be prominent: "There are no eternal truths.“ The only

test for truth in an idea is in its consequences in the life activi-

ties to which it leads. “There is no mind or soul in the traditional

36

sense." Since there is no mind or thought apart from environmental

interaction, it follows there is no such thing as a soul or even a

self which can exist and be educated apart from its own experiences.

II 37

"There are no fixed moral laws. This follows from the foregoing-

The scientific method was to Dewey the only proper way for establiSh-

ing moral codes, as it was for establishing any kind of knowledge.

n38

I"Democracy is a moral value. This is the case because of the

 

34
35
36
37
38

Ibid., pp. 193-94. Emphasis mine.
Ibid., p. 195.
Ibid., p. 197.
Ibid., . 199.

. 200.

'0

Ibid.,

‘0

64

social order it encourages; or in the scientific view, according to
Dewey, democracy was the most successful relationship of the organism
to its environment. And lastly, "Pragmatism justifies Progressive

39 This followed from Dewey's rejection of the tradi-

Education."
tional distinction between mind and body. In other words, progres-
sive education, like democracy, was the most successful accommodation
between organism and environment. Acknowledging "Dewey's own unques-
tioned intellectual stature and integrity," Lynd ended with the
question many other writers were offering up answers to: "You know
your neighbors. How many of them would vote for Deweyism if they
understood the philosophical ballot?"40
Diminished Mind: A Studyrof Planned Mediocrity in Our Public
Schools (1953) by Mortimer Brewster Smith, like its predecessor Apg_

Madly Teach (1949), attacked progressive education, root and branch.

 

In his prologue Mortimer Smith wrote:

I have attempted to write a book which aims to present evi-
dence in support of the thesis that learning, in the tradi-
tional sense of disciplined knowledge, is rapidly declining
in our public schools, not through fortuitous circumstances

' but by deliberate, and almost invariably well intentioned,
design of those risponsible for setting the direction of
public education.

The little book's 150 pages were an uncompromising attack on the prin-
ciples of modern education, especially the report of the Commission on

Life Adjustment Education for Youth and the writings of John Dewey.

 

39Ibid., p. 202.

4°Ibid., p. 208.

- 41Mortimer Smith, The Diminished Mind: A Study of Planned
Mediocrity in Our Public Schools (Chicago: H. Regnery Co., 1953),

p. l.

65

Rudolf Flesch's Why Johnny Can't Read (1953) differed from

 

the other criticisms published in that year in that it does not dis-
cuss the aims and purposes of education and in no sense is a philo-
sophical work. The book was a discussion on some alleged shortcomings
of the "look-say" method of reading instruction. Flesch believed the
"look-say" method, by completely ignoring phonetic analysis, had made
English as hard to learn as Chinese ideograms or Egyptian hierogly-
phics. Far from being critical of the phi10S0phy and practices of
progressivism, Flesch announced his agreement with that point of view.
In fact, his doctorate is from Teachers College, Columbia University.
Before turning to the final volumes to be considered in this

section, Paul Woodring's Let's Talk Sense About Our Schools (1953)
and A Fourth of a Nation (1957), a summary of two descriptions of
the American high school is in order. The first description appeared
in a special eduational edition of Life_magazine (October 16, 1950).
It was entitled "A Good High School: New Trier Illustrates a U.S.
Speciality." "A Good High School" described the New Trier Township
High School, which served a suburban area near Chicago. New Trier,
in the author's words,»

. . exemplifies the U.S. high school at its best. Most

high schools cannot match New Trier. The dull curricula,

uninspiring surroundings and over worked teachers in many

of them rebuff so many high schoolers that 48 out of every

100 dr0p out before graduation. At New Trier only two out
of every 100 drop out.42

 

42"A Good School: New Trier Illustrates a U.S. Speciality,"
Life, October 16, 1950, p. 101.

66

The pictures which accompanied the spread Showed a relaxed
atmosphere which the author declared to be "somewhat deceptive." He
announced that New Trier does not want or insist on stiff collar
pedantry, but it "firmly sees to it that its scholars are scholarly."
It gives them the equipment they need in the form of a big library,
sunny classrooms, and plenty of teachers. It took pains to recognize
"individual differences": offering five freshman English classes,
for example, gauged to varying degrees of aptitude, and a special V
(for velocity) group for students of extraordinary ability who take
an additional course each year. The result was that New Trier rated
scholastically among the top U.S. high schools. But New Trier did
not believe scholarship made a complete man or woman. It developed
an athletic and extra-curricular program that "it was almost impos-
sible for a willing student not to be vice president of something."43

New Trier had 2,300 students, which made it a big high
school. And a $1.4 million budget which in 1950 made New Trier a
wealthy high school. The article related, however, that the board
of education concentrated not on swank but on good teachers. It had
good teachers because it paid as much as $6,000 and $7,000 a year,
at a time when the estimated national average teacher salary was
$3,400. Similarly, while its 145 courses leaned toward college pre-
paratory, New Trier Spent heavily to give non-college-goers the
technical training that was "unique and traditional with U.S. high

schools." "To the superficial the lesson New Trier teaches is that

 

43Ibid.

67

it is well to be rich. New Trier's real lesson is that it is well

44 The

 

to‘pay adequate school taxes and to use them intelligently."
photographs which accompanied the article featured an outdoor scene
of~a junior-English class Great Books course in which one instructor
led the discussion while another stimulated by heckling. New Trier
was an educational enterprise that raised a standard to which a
great number of both progressives and traditionalists could point
with pride. And despite the talk of finances, anyone reading the
article could not help but come away with the impression that such
an education was within the grasp of his community. It is also
worthy of note that no post-Sputnik critic made any proposal that
was not substantially operative at New Trier in October 1950.

James B. Conant's Education and Liberty (1953) followed the
general lines of his Education in a Divided World (1948). He clearly
relates education to the Cold War:

If the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of

Eton, it may well be that the ideological struggle with

communism in the next fifty years will be won on the play-

1ng f1e1ds of the publ1c schools of the Un1ted States.
The book was a comparative study of education in the Anglo-Saxon
World: England, Scotland, Australia, New Zealand, and the United
States. The book was based on a series of lectures delivered at the

University of Virginia under the sponsorship of the Page-Barbour

Foundation on February 12-14, 1952.

 

44

45James B. Conant, Education and Liberty (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1953), p. 62.

Ibid. Emphasis mine.

68

In a section entitled "Program for the Future," Conant made
ten specific recommendations for the American secondary school.
The recommendations were designed to aid in the Cold War. In
light of his observations of secondary education in England, Scot-
land, Australia, and New Zealand, Conant suggests that:

(1) We do not expand our four-year colleges either as
to number or as to size.

(2) We do not expand the four-year programs in our uni-
versities; rather, we contract them.

(3) We attempt to make a two-year College course (fol-
lowing the regular high school course) fashionable; to this
end we might award a bachelor's degree of general studies

‘ to graduates of such colleges.

(4) We endeavor to create a climate of opinion in which
the length of education beyond eighteen is ppt_considered
the hallmark of respectability.

(5) We continue the expansion of our junior and senior
high schools to meet the new bulge in the enrollments, but
in doing so, recognize the need for remaking the curriculum
in man schools.

(6) We adhere to the principle of a comprehensive high
school with a common core of studies and differentiated
special programs, but in so doing we make far more effort
to identify the gifted youth and give him or her more
rigorous academic training in languages and mathematics.

(7) We explore the success of some high schools in
recent years with "work experience programs" and expand
these programs, including particularly the thirteenth and
fourteenth grades (the two-year college).

(8) We provide by private and public action for more
scholarships for high school graduates, but only for those
who are potential professional men and women (advanced
education for others should be offered locally by two-year
terminal colleges).

(9) We endeavor to transform all the present four-year
colleges into institutions with high academic standards
and arrange the curricula with the thought that a majority
of students in these colleges will go on to professional
training after two, three, or four years, depending on the
ability and drive of the individual.

(10) We continue to experiment with general education
at every level for the future manual worker, the future
salesman 2r executive, and the most highly specialized
graduate. 5

 

46Conant, Education and Liberty, pp. 57-59.

69

Conant characterized his ten suggestions as follows:

There is little that is novel in these suggestions. They
imply a continuation of that drive for general education
which is so characteristic of the United States. . . . 122.
type of secondary school I have been discussing_pes been
described in a_publication by the Educational Policies Com-
mission of the National Education Association. It takes
somewhat different forms, depending on whether the community
to be served is an urban or rural area. The description is
admittedly a blueprint of an ideal, but close approximations
to it cangbe found in many towns and cities in the United
States.qr

 

The document to which Conant makes reference is, of course, Education
for All American Youth (1944). The "close approximation" to the
blueprint might well have been the high school of New Trier Township,
Illinois, described in the Lije_magazine article of October 16, 1950.
There Should be no confusion over Conant's fundamental agreement with
Education for All American Youth. In a section of Education and
Liberty dealing with New Zealand, he spoke in glowing terms about the
report, even to the point of stating that FNew Zealand schools have

48 Clearly, in Conant's view, education for life

been Americanized."
adjustment was not inconsistent with a highly academic education for
some, even though this highly academic education would be received
in a comprehensive high school.

Let's Talk Sense About Our Schools (1953) and A Fourth of a
Natipn (1957) by Paul Woodring, former professor at Western Washing-

ton College of Education, were eclectic and synthetic. Woodring was

a full-time consultant for the Fund for the Advancement of Education

 

47
48

Ibid., pp. 59-61.
Ibid., p. 21.

70

of the Ford Foundation. He went into the debate between proponents

of progressive and classical education, and concluded that "what

the nation really needs is a new philosophy of education. This

philosophy should be based on a logical synthesis of what is best in

Classicism and progressivism."49
Portions of both books had appeared as articles in numerous

periodicals. Harper's Magazine in July 1952 published "An Open Let-

 

ter to Teachers" which was adapted to form Chapter 1 of Let's Talk
Sepse, Other writings appeared in Ug§pgp_(0Ctober 1952), Education
Qigest (December 1952), School and Society and the Journal of Teacher
Education. Some sections were adapted from Woodring's contributions

to The Carleton Faculty Study of Teacher Education and New Directions

 

in Teacher Education, a publication of the Fund for the Advancement
of Education. Several chapters of A Fourth of a Nation were used
prior to publication as addresses at major universities.

Woodring's association with the Ford Foundation is signifi-
- cant, for it underscores two developments which had their beginnings
in the 1940s and came to operational readiness in the early to middle
19505. One was the emergence of the Ford Foundation as a national
philanthropy with resources greater than many governments. The
Foundation announced that as a result of its reorganization, educa-
tion "emerged as the major strand that ties together the purposes of
almost our entire activity." The second development was the estab-

lishment of the National Science Foundation as an independent agency

 

49Paul Woodring, Let's Talk Sense About Our Schools (New
York: McGraw Hill, 1953), p. 7.

71

of the executive branch of the federal government, with a broad man-
date to strengthen basic research and education in the sciences.50
The National Science Foundation budget has grown from $1.5
million in 1952 to more than $121 million in 1967. This money was
used to provide support for fellowship aid to graduate students and
post-doctoral students in the sciences; for supplemental training of
teachers of science, mathematics, and engineering; for the improve-
ment of subject matter of science and mathematics instruction,
especially at the secondary level; and for the identification of
talented high school and college students through a variety of
special programs. In 1951 the Ford Foundation's Fund for the Advance-
ment of Education set in motion a variety of experimental programs in
teacher education. This program included the Master of Arts in Teach-
ing, as well as classroom television, teacher aides, and similar
departures from past practice.51
The Carnegie Corporation established the National Citizens
Committee for the Public Schools in 1948. Paul Woodring also served
as a part-time consultant to this group. Along with other founda-
tions, Carnegie joined Ford in supporting the National Merit Scholar-
ships. Grants were made to the Educational Testing Service to

improve the quality of information about student performance. At_

the beginning of 1957, Carnegie persuaded Dr. James B. Conant to

 

50
51

Jennings, "Educational Reform," pp. 77-97.

Ibid.

72

conduct a series of studies of American public education. These

studies became the famous "Conant Reports" of post-Sputnik fame.52

Other curriculum reform began in this early period. The

University of Illinois Committee on School Mathematics began its

53

revisions of the secondary curriculum in 1952. The Physical Sci-

ences Study Committee's development of a new high school physics

54 And in the year of the suspension of pub-

course began in 1956.
lication of the journal of the Progressive Eduation Association,
1957, Jerrold Zacharias of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

55

organized some fellow scientists for curriculum reform. These

efforts had been preceded by a near decade of philosophical
wrangling.

At this point it is appropriate to summarize. The data
would seem to indicate the following generalizations:

1. Progressive education had become the educational prac-
tice in the period following the Second World War.56

2. The early portion of the time period marked the zenith

of the progressive theory of education.57

 

52

53John L. Goodlad, "Curriculum: A Janus Look," Teachers
College Record 70, No. 2 (November 1968): 95.

54Charles E. Silberman, Crisis in the Classroom: The Remak-
ing of American Education (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 169.

55
56

Ibid., p. 96.

Goodlad, "A Janus Look," p. 96.
The sources which document this are legion.

57The reports of the Educational Policies Commission of the
NEA and the U.S. Office of Education's Commissions on Life Adjustment
Education for Youth.

73

3. A bitter and corrosive attack on the life-adjustment

movement marked the reaffirmation of the pre-war progressive-

traditionalist debate.58

4. Educators such as James B. Conant saw nothing incompatible

between education for the Cold War and progressive education.59

5. Progressive educators such as Willard Goslin, the dis-
missed superintendent of Pasadena, California, became subject to
political pressure from groups of tax conservatives, "witch hunters,"
and educational traditionalists.60

6. In response to pressures such as those which brought
down Willard Goslin, progressive educators advanced the idea of a
"plot by ultra-rightists" aimed at the capture of the schools.61

7. Most educators came to recognize the inadequacies of
the "plot theory" and discovered a searching academic and public
reappraisal of progressive educational theory and practice.62

8. A series of philosophical assaults by scholars who were

pro-public education, but anti-progressive in philosophy took place.63

 

58

59Educational Policies Commission, Education for All American
Youth; Conant, Education in a Divided World and Education and Liberty.

60David Hulburd, This Happened in Pasadena (New York: Mac-
millan, 1951).

61Conant, "The Superintendent"; Anderson,"Cloak of Respect-
ability," pp. 69-70; and Thayer, Public Education.

62

63Arthur Bestor, Educational Wastelands (Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 1953); Albert Lynd, Quackery in the Public Schools
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1953); Woodring, Let's Talk Sense; Robert M.
Hutchins, The Conflict in Education in a Democratic Society (New
York: Harper, 1953); Smith, Diminished Mind.

Adler, What We Want, and Cremin, Transformation.

Caswell, "Reappraisal."

74

9. These assaults anticipated the specific post-Sputnik
attacks on soft pedagogy, lack of academic preparation in gradu-
ates of teacher training institutions, and poor pupil achievement
in subject matter, especially science and mathematics.64

10. The National Science Foundation and the Ford and other
national foundations inaugurated programs which continued into the
post-Sputnik period.65

11. Subject matter groups which resulted in the "new math,"
"new physics," and the "new social studies" were established prior
to the launChing of Sputnik.66

12. Significantly, however, not one critic suggested the
Soviet curriculum as an educational model. In fact, the discussion
of Soviet education proceeded independently of the domestic wrangle.

The effect of the launching of Sputnik I and subsequent
Soviet space achievements on both discussions will be the subject

of the next section of this paper.

 

64
65
66

Ibid.
Jennings, "Educational Reform."

Gooolad, "A Janus Look," Silberman, Crisis in the Class-
room.

CHAPTER III

SPUTNIK: INITIAL AMERICAN LITERARY REACTIONS

Essentially, the immediate effect of the launching of Sput-
nik was to bring together two streams of educational literature in
order to form a torrent. As related previously, the treatment of
Soviet education in American literature and the treatment of Ameri-
can education in American literature had heretofore proceeded inde-
pendently of one another. Significantly missing was any attack upon
American theory and practice in the light of disclosures concerning
Soviet theory and practice. This situation cannot be overstressed
considering the heated exchanges between the "traditionalist"
minority and the "progressive" majority during the period of 1947-
1957. Despite the fifteen books and even more numerous periodical
literature, Americans apparently were only dimly aware of the "chal-
lenge of Soviet education." Only George S. Counts appeared to grasp
the entire picture. Also, there was ex-Senator William Benton who
wrote a midnight disclosure titled "Soviet Education: More Ominous
Than the Hydrogen Bomb?"

Representative selections of periodicalliterature will be
reviewed in the first part of this section. The selections will
for the most part speak for themselves. They will approach the

reactions to the Sputnik launch from a variety of points of view.

75

76

Some will reflect the pre-Sputnik debate, others will not. The first
selection ably describes the initial U.S. public reaction to the
Soviet space achievement.

"Soviet Satellite Sends U.S. Into a Tizzy," tjfe_(0ctober 14,
1957) described the furor which accompanied the launching of Sputnik
I. The 23-inch, 184-pound sphere emitted an eerie croak which Life.
writers likened to "a cricket with a cold." The Life_writers viewed
Sputnik as a military and propaganda triumph. The launching seemed
to prove that Russia's intercontinental ballistic missile is a per-
fected machine, since it would take such a rocket to launch the
satellite. In addition, the satellite's 184 pounds were eight times
the weight of the Vanguard satellite the U.S. was still struggling to
launch. In a follow-up article, "The Feat That Shook the Earth,"
Life (October 21, 1957) summed up by stating that Sputnik "had
crippled the U.S. Chance to be first in space as well as the devel-
opment of its military missiles."1 Furthermore, tife_related that
the Russians were about to launch a second satellite twice as large
as the first.

Lije_presented an analysis of "Why Did U.S. Lose the Race?
Critics Speak Up" (October 21, 1957). The article was by Dr. C. C.
Furnas, an expert on guided missiles and former Assistant Secretary
of Defense for Research and Development. It was the Furnas thesis
that "the U.S. should have been and could have been the first

nation to launch a satellite." He asserted that the United States

 

1"The Feat That Shook the Earth," Life, October 21. 1957,
p. 19.

77

could have launched an artificial moon as early as 1955. The reason
we had not done so was that the Defense Department lacked the
interest. The reason for the downgrading of effort in this area was
that senior defense planners saw little direct military use for
artificial satellites. Also, rivalries and jealousies among the
[military services prevented the most efficient use of money, talent,
and facilities. More than anything else, Furnas attributed the
Russian success to a massive bureaucratic foul-up.

In order to go back and win the race for scientific
supremacy, there are some things we must do-

--We must revise our naive attitude towards basic
research. The armed forces must understand that money
Spent on background research is not money thrown away.

And Congress, now that it has created the National Science
Foundation, should have the courage to vote it the funds
it needs to carry out its many important programs.

--We must give much more aid and encouragement to our
educational institutions in turning out more engineers and
scientiSts, especially at the graduate level.

--We must change our public attitude toward science
and scientists. At a time when Russia was building a sci-
entific elite, we were treating our patriotic scientists
with hostility and suspicion. No one can accurately esti-
mate the amount of damage that was done.

--Finally, we must somehow reorganize the obsolete
administrative structure of the armed services. There is
no reason why a civilized nation should not be able to use
all the money and all the talent and all the facilities of
all its branches of military service on those programs
which it decides are consistent with the best national
interests.

Conspicuously missing is any general or specific charge against pro-
gressive education, life adjustment, or the "educationists." The

Soviet space achievement was viewed primarily in terms of

 

2C. C. Furnas, "Why Did U.S. Lose the Race? Critics Speak
Up," Life, October 21, 1957, p. 23.

78

institutional arrangements and commitment to basic research. The
'U.S. could have and should have won the race to space.
- It was not that our Defense Department lacked money. It
lacked only interest. The Pentagon seemed unable to see
the obvious military advantages of a satellite, even though
some scientists and officers in the military forces were
most vocal in pointing them out more than a decade ago.
In the same issue Life presented an editorial entitled "Com-
mon Sense and Sputnik." Life boldly asserted that "the Russians are

4 It had taken the Soviets

not a technologically backward people."
only four years to break our A-bomb monopoly. It took them only nine
months to overtake our H-bomb. "Now," Life continued, "they are

5 The

apparently ahead of us in intercontinental ballistic missiles."
tife_editorial and the three articles which preceded it are note-
worthy in that Sputnik was viewed exclusively in military not educa-
tional terms. The Russian feat was compared to our own Manhattan
Project--"a great human accomplishment reached by hard effort."6
"The Truth About Russia's Weakness," U.S. News and World
Repprt_(April 11, 1958), noted that the great Russian success came
at a time of economic recession, thus intensifying the view that
Soviet Russia holds all the answers.7 But the facts, the author

believed, revealed another picture of Soviet Russia--the picture of

 

Ibid., p. 22.
Ibid., p. 35.
Ibid.

GUI-hm

Ibid.

p 7"The Truth About Russia's Weakness," U.S. News and World
Report, April 11, 1958, p. 46.

79

a troubled nation, neither as secure in her position nor as confi-
dent of the future as Communist propaganda would suggest. U.S. News
outlined many limitations on Soviet power: "Government by Fear,"
"Weakness in Numbers," "Transportation Troubles," "Problems of the
Farmer," and, finally, "City Living: Over-Crowded, Education: Limi-

8 True, Soviet schools were graduating

peg, Productivity: Poor."
more scientists and engineers than American schools.

But a closer look at the figures reveals that the United

States, with a smaller population, has more pupils in ele-

mentary and secondary schools and a million more in univer-

sities. We have more college-trained people in the fields

of health, agriculture and biological sciences than Russia.

Soviet education, like so many other aspects of Soviet

life, is pointed toward military and heavy-industrial uses.9
In total productivity the Soviet Union was way behind the United
States: 150 billion dollars as compared to 434 billion dollars. The
U.S. News article sunmed up with a quotation from an Italian econo-
mist to the effect that it was true that the Soviet Union does not
have economic crises like those in non-Communist nations. The Soviet
Union was in a state of permanent economic crisis.

This comforting view of the Soviet Union was attacked by

Harold J. Berman in an article which appeared in The American
Scholar (Spring 1958). The article was titled "The Devil and Soviet
Russia." Berman began by noting that in both Russian and American
thinking there was a strong strain of puritanism which tended to
turn opponents into enemies, enemies into devils, and devils into

ugly monsters.

 

8Ibid., pp. 46-54. Emphasis mine.

9Ibid., p. 54.

80

An American reading what is printed in Soviet literature

about life in the United States can only laugh at the fan-

tastic caricatures that are presented to the Russian peo-

ple as sober realities. It is a bitter truth that Russians

who get a chance to read what is written about life in the

Soviet Union in American newspapers, magazines, and books

. also find, often not reality but a ridiculous distor-

tion of reality.10
Berman asserted that American writers had exaggerated the violence,
injustice, bureaucracy, and poverty of life under the Soviet regime.
Furthermore, the Soviets had made sensational technological progress.

The AmeriCan Scholar article resembled the earlier Life
articles and editorial in that education was not factored out from a
general Soviet technological achievement. Similarly, the view of
Russia as a scientifically backward country was shown false; the
Devil was given his due.

Clifton Fadiman's "The Mess in Education--Who Is Responsi-
ble?" obviously took a different tone. The article appeared in the
August 1958 issue of Holiday. Fadiman openly attacked what he
believed to be a "soft pedagogy." This soft pedagogy was not, in
his view, all the responsibility of progressive education or a spe-
cific individual such as John Dewey. Rather, "we met the enemy and
he is us." Soft pedagogy was at bottom, in Fadiman's view, merely
the educational phase of the "Good Time" theory of happiness which
pervaded all phases of American life. The schools had evolved into

"gigantic supermarkets masquerading as educational institutions."

And how did we reach this sorry state of affairs? It happened

gradually:

 

10Harold J. Berman, "The Devil and Soviet Russia,"‘1pe.
American Scholar 27 (Spring 1958): 147.

81

We voted for a school bond issue to provide our children with

a swimming pool instead of an acquaintance with the multipli-

cation tables; each time that we taxed ourselves to guarantee

hot lunches for kiddies and a continuance of starvation sala-

ries for the teachers; each time we failed to cry murder when

a report card system was abolished or compulsory promotion

introduced; at each of these moments we were making sure that

our children would turn out to be--what they are.

"What opened our eyes? A flying box containing a dying dog.
We were going to reform American education not because we are eager
to produce finer citizens but because we are scared stiff."12 And
make no mistake about it, Fadiman continued, "we are engaging not in
an educational task, but in a paramilitary one." Here is a thesis
clearly requiring close examination. A thesis popular in the lay
mind: Sputnik resulted in a reordering of American educational
theory and practice.
Oscar Handlin penned a defense of progressivism and John

Dewey entitled "Rejoinder to Critics of John Dewey" in the June 15,
1958, New York Times Magazine. Handlin related that in the past
fifteen years there had grown up a tendency to blame the faults of
American education at the doorstep of John Dewey. Johnny's inability
to read, juvenile delinquency, the high divorce rate, and the presumed
failure of American scientists to keep pace with the Russians had
been ascribed to the corrupting influence of progressive education.

13

Handlin labeled such a view "simple minded." Furthermore, he saw

 

nClifton Fadiman, "The Mess in Education--Who Is Responsi-
ble?" Holiday, August 1958, p. 8.

12

13Oscar Handlin, "Rejoinder to the Critics of John Dewey,"
New York Times Magazine, June 15, 1958, p. 19.

Ibid., p. 10. Emphasis mine.

82

such ideas as dangerous. They were dangerous for two reasons:
(1) they blinded us to the genuine deficiencies of our schools, and
(2) they threatened to destroy what was vital and promising in the
schools. _
He continued by outlining a sympathic view of Dewey and an
equally sympathic view of progressive education. In part, he wrote:
Our schools are more adequate now than they were 60 years
ago. The task of making them fully adequate is nevertheless
far from complete. But it is more likely to be pushed for-
Iii-22.13% 35124225331225.1135Iié'ii'EfiaDIXSIJ-i 113.5131”?
Concerning Sputnik, Handlin pointed out that as early as
1928 John Dewey alerted the world to the significance of Russia's
educational achievements. This was far sooner than any of his cur-
rent detractors. Handlin ended by noting that Dewey "did not take
nor would he now have taken technological proficiency or advances
in rocketry as a test of the excellence of an educational system."15
In a five-part series (March 24 and 31, and April 7, l4,
and 21), tije_examined what it termed "Crisis In Education." The
pictorial essays were limited to the elementary and secondary
schools on the premise that ”if things go wrong then there isn't

‘6 The reader should note Life's commit-

much the colleges can do."
ment toward the premise that elementary and secondary education

exiSted solely as feeders to the higher education system.

 

14
15

Ibid., p. 20.
Ibid.
16"Crisis In Education," Life, March 24. 1953: P- 25'

83

The first installment, "Schoolboys Point Up a U.S. Weak-
ness," examined the story of two schoolboys, an “easygoing American"

‘7 Sixteen-year-olds Stephen Lapekas

and a "hard-striving Russian."
of Chicago and Alexei Kutzkow of Moscow were receiving what their
respective countries considered a good education. Stephen was an
eleventh grader at Austin High, "one of the city's finest schools."
Alexei was in his tenth and final year at Moscow School 49. Accord-
ing to Life, "the differences in what they learn and the atmosphere in
which they learn it measures the frightening scale of the problems the
U.S. now faces in its public schools."18
Life_stressed the heavy standardized non-elective curriculum
of the U.S.S.R. Proudly, the tife_writer declared, "the laggards
are forced out by tough periodic examinations and shunted to less
demanding trade schools and apprenticeships. Only a third--l.4 mil-

19 Three

lion in l957--survive all ten years and finish the course."
main headings sum up the author's philosophical commitment: "School-
boys Point Up a U.S. Weakness," "In the U.S.S.R.: Rough Haul All the
Way," and "In the U.S.: Relaxed Studies."

The Life_author never defined education as such. However,

his underlying philosophical commitment can be illustrated in the

following excerpt from the first article:

 

17
18
19

Ibid., p. 27.
Ibid.
Ibid.

84

For all its laxness, the system under which Stephen studies
does develop flexibility and in Stephen qualities of '
leadership. For all its stern virtues, the system under
which Alexei studies develops rigidity and subservience to
an undemocratic state. But there is no blinking at the edu-
cational results. Academically Alexei is two years ahead

of Stephen. As one example, he has read Shakespeare and
Shaw in literature class while StephEB has only just fin-
ished reading Stevenson's Kidnapped.

 

Among other things, this excerpt illustrates the authOr's fixation
on what the modern jargon would term "cognitive learning." He sees
the function of the school narrowly; that of imparting traditional
learning in the areas of reading, writing, mathematics and science.
In the same issue (March 24, 1958), Life_presented what the
editor termed "a cogent article" by novelist Sloan Wilson. Wilson
was best known for his novel The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. From
1949 to 1953, Wilson had been assistant director of the National
Citizens Commission for the Public Schools. He was also a former edu-
cation editor for the New York Herald Tribune. His "It's Time to
Close Our Carnival" was self-evidently an attack on American educa-
tional theory and practice. After a series of horror statistics
sUch as ''only 12 1/2% are taking any mathematics more advanced than
algebra,"2] Wilson answered his own question: Why was America fall-
ing behind Russia in the field of educaton? He began by asserting
that "as recently as 50 years ago our high schools were almost carbon

copies of their European counterparts. They offered a narrow selec-

 

tion of strictly academic subjects."22 Where did we go wrong?
20 . .
Ibid., p. 27. Emphas1s m1ne.
2‘Ipid., p. 36.
22

Ibid.

85

"Instead of trying to find students to fit a rigid curriculum, the .
schools decided to try to hand-tailor a course of instruction for

23

each child." To run the new schools a whole new breed of educator

appeared. They were men such as John Dewey who, according to Wilson,

24 ~Wilson

"invented some of the silliest 1ahguage ever heard."
accused progressive education of "degenerating into a system for
coddling and entertaining the mediocre" and "doing almost nothing

wen."25

He also attacked Columbia University Teachers College
which he described as the "fountainhead of the new education." He
accused Columbia University Teachers College of "exaggerating the
bad aspects of progressive education." His program of reform, not
explained in detail, was simply "it is time to close the carnival
and go to work."

Clearly, the Life_five-part series was a traditionalist
attack upon progressivism coupled with an attack upon progressivism
in the light of disclosures concerning Soviet theory and practice.
tjfefs corrosive assault continued with a second installment entitled
"An Underdog Profession Imperils the Schools" and a second editorial
called "The Deeper Problem in Education: It Is Time to Dig Out Edu-
cationist Debris and Rediscover Learning's True Nature." The legacy
of forty years of progressive education was Characterized as a legacy

of distorted play facilities, substandard curricula and principals

whose intellectual confusion can no longer be disguised by the

 

23
24
25

Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.

86

"compulsory smiles on their faces." John Dewey and the Deweyites were
taken to task. Much of the editorial was a scaled-down version of John
Keat's Schools Without Scholars (1958). Schools Without Scholars was
strongly endorsed in the editorial. John Dewey was quoted in suchaway
as to cast doubt on his intellect: "We agree that we are uncertain as
to where we are going and where we want to go, and why we are doing what

"26 "Dewey and his boys" were sketched as villains who contended

we do.
that because the endSnyeducation were debatable they were not worth
debating. In the place of the traditional ends of education, "Dewey
and his boys," the editorial contended, "had substituted life-
adjustment in order to bring the individual by a process of condi-
tioning to a realization of his functional role in society."27
If that didn't sound Sinister enough, tije_explained that it meant
replacing Latin with home economics and driver education.

The teachers college and the taking of compulsory education
courses in the place of the liberal arts college and subject matter
courses were likewise attacked. Similarly, accreditation agencies
such as the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary
Schools were denounced because they were oriented toward a progres-
sive point of view. Also, "entrenched public school administrators"
and their "gobbledygook cannons" were given a verbal lashing.

The Life editorial summed up with a statement on the role of

education. Life believed:

 

26Ibid., p. 34.

27Ibid.

87

, American education exists first of all to educate the indi-
vidual in a body of learning, with a tradition and a pur-
pose behind it. A man so educated is far better equipped
as a democratic citizen than the merely "well adjusted."
For he will have not only the social ease to make his
civilization comfortable, but the intellectual discipline
to save it.

Among the many problems which Life listed, the editor con-
sidered the weakness in teaching the most crucial. Teachers held in
their hands the malleable minds of the nation's children.

But despite the importance of the work they do--or should
do--they are wretchedly overworked, underpaid and disre-
garded. And a discouraging number of them are incompetents.
The shortage of teachers, which now amounts to a staggering
227,000, is partigglarly felt in the important fields of
math and science.

The third installment of the Life series was called "The
Waste of Fine Minds." A mini-article on the table of contents page
was titled "Life and the Experts with Similar Thoughts." Life
related that in Washington, D.C., three distinguished Americans
spelled out what they deemed wrong with the schools. The men were
the President's science advisor Dr. James Killian; a director of the
Carnegie Institution, Dr. Merle Tave; and the Navy's nuclear expert,
Admiral Hyman Rickover. Their opinions matched the previous two
Life issues almost point for point:

We must raise the low standards of our secondary schools

and eliminate their trivial classes.
We must shore upgthe sagging quality of our science

teaching, cut down on the teacher's extra jobs, give him
‘time to become approfessional scholar again.

 

 

 

28Ibid.

29"Crisis In Education," Life, March 31, 1948, p. 93.

88

.We must provide b0th opportunity and incentive for
our gifted children. There must be an unremitting search
for talent and intellectual giftedness.

‘ We must not slam the door in the faces of qpalified peo-
ple who want to teachg merely because they have not taken
superfluous courses in teacher education.

We must fight the pose that it is smart to be anti-
intellectual and cultivate in our education a taste for what
is excellent in intellect and spirit.30

"The Waste of Fine Minds" was primarily a case history of
Barry Wichmann. Barry's 1.0. of 162 marked him superior to the
sixth-graders he attended class with. Yet, largely because of his
growing indifference to unstimulating work, Barry was doing poorly in
school. Life made a major point of the disproportionate amount of
time the teacher, Mrs. Nita Berg Carlson, gave to the five children
with reading difficulties as compared to Barry who read at the
eleventh grade level. Barry and youngsters like him, Life maintained,

. should be getting the best education that the nation

can provide. But because of ignorance, prejudice, and a
paralyzing inflexibility in the whole public school system,
tragically little is being done to help him. . . . Many
communities oppose special programs as being too expensive.
Yet the same communities will often spend gegsrously on
much more costly schooling for the retarded.

In "Tryouts for Good Ideas: The Nation Stirs with New Inter-
est in Science, New Plans for Schools," Life described how "in schools
all over the country, science and math courses are being reassessed
and tightened up. A wholly new way of teaching math and physics is

at."32

being worked out and use Thousands of students, in Life's view,

 

30"Crisis In Education," Life, April 7. 1958. p. 2.

3'Ipid.. p. 93.

32"Crisis In Education," Life, April 14. 1958, P- 117-

89

were getting advanced subjects, expertly taught via TV in small
rural high schools which hitherto were unable to offer them. And,

finally, to raise the quality of the schools in general, Life

 

offered "a famous educator's far-reaching plan for an entire model

33 The famous educator was James Bryan Conant. An ani-

high school."
mated two-page chart which he and Life collaborated on was the first

publication of Conant's to be famous, American High School Today

 

(1959). That work will be examined in entirety at an appropriate
time. At this time, the examination of Conant's ideas will be
restricted to the two-page extrapolation in Life, Life_described the
Chart as "his concept of an ideal high school." The plan's pedigree
was described as a "first hand survey of 50 high schools in 16 states
under the sponsorship of the Carnegie Corporation."34

The "ideal high school" offered three general levels of
courses: (1) a stiff pre-college academic curriCulum for the higher
education bound twenty percent of the student body; (2) an elementary
level curriculum for the bottom twenty percent; and (3) a diversified
vocational program for the remaining Sixty percent. Students would
move from one level to another to take certain courses. Every student
must take four years of English, f0ur years of social studies, two years
of mathematics and two years of science. The classes would be sepa-

‘rated into different sections according to academic ability. In addi-

tion, bright students should take three years of a foreign language.

 

33
34

Ibid.
Ibid., p. 120.

90

All students would mix daily in heterogenously grouped homerooms,
physical education and certain classrooms such as music, typing, and
senior social studies. Conant emphasized that the success or failure
ofthe model depended on the school guidance counselors, who must help
every student choose the right curriculum. Conant stressed that
counselors must "pressure bright students to take tough courses."35

The "great merit of the plan," _I_._i_f_e stated, was that all its
elements were being currently practiced in one school or another."36
Conant had detailed only practices he had seen working successfu11y
in schools he had visited. The schools best suited to the Life;
Conant recommendations were so-called "comprehensive high schools."
Only such schools were physically and financially able to offer such
a wide range of academic and vocational subjects to their students,
I who in turn represented a cross section of the population in ability
and background. According to Life, there were about 2,000 comprehen-
sive high schools in the U.S. which fit Or. Conant's definition.
There will be many times more as soon as thousands of small, inade-
quate rural high schools consolidate into larger units--a policy he
strongly recommends.

Life_concludediflwefive-part series with an article entitled
"Parents and Learning" and an editorial called "Painful Crisis, The

Long Hard Cure" (April 21, 1958). Life summarized the series by

stating:

 

35
36

Ibid., p. 121.
Ibid.

91

We can hardly congratulate ourselves on the spectacle of
the ill used teacher, the dwarfed school plant, the wasted
talents of our brighter students, or the brutal fact that
a spartan Soviet system is producing many students better
equipped than ours to cope with the technicalities of the
Space Age.3

Life reacted harshly to the criticism of its March 31st editorial.
It attributed the criticism to "certain professional educators."
And termed the criticism "cadenced howls of protest" and leveled a

38 Life spoke

charge of "intellectual confusion" at the "howlers."
approvingly about "a great many people, both educators and private
educators who have been doing their best to improve the schools."

And "many of them," Life declared, "were at it longryears before

Sputnik."39

such as Newton, Massachusetts, and New Trier Township, Illinois,

 

School systems highlighted in the April 7th installment,

were billed as "a Showcase for learning." tiie_chose these schools
because they currently practiced most of the Conant plan's recom-
mendations. The National Merit Scholarship Plan and the Ford Foun-
dation's Fund for the Advancement of Education were termed "encour-
aging." Finally, tife_called the work of a citizens group in New
Canaan, Connecticut, "a shining example" of what could be accomplished
by reformers.40

A shift in Life's attitude toward both Sputnik and American

educational theory and practice had taken place after October 1957.

 

37"Crisis In Education." Life, APFII 21. 1958, P- 34-
38Ibid.
Ibid.

Ibid.

39
4o

92

In October Sputnik had to be viewed in only military and propa-
ganda terms. "Common Sense and Sputnik" had been the title of

a major editorial. The Soviet effort in space had been put on a
par with the American Atomic Project during the Second World War.
Both were viewed as great human accomplishments reached by hard
effort. In no way was Sputnik seen as an indictment of American
soCiety or American education. In fact, education was not even men-
tioned. Similarly, New Trier Township, Illinois, High School was
transformed from "a good high school: a U.S. speciality" to an
indictment of progressive education. Life_in October of 1950 had
spotlighted New Trier as illustrative of the best in American edu-
cation. And make no mistake about it, New Trier as featured in
October of 1950 was progressive education. A living functioning
example of education in "American City" as described by the Educa-
tional Policies Commission. In April of 1957, New Trier was trans-
formed from being illustrative of "a U.S. speciality" to only an
isolated instance of the Life-Conant model high school.

It is worth noting that all of the tifeyConant recommenda-
tions were incorporated and functioning at New Trier High School and
described in Life_magazine on October 16, 1950. The importance of
the shift in Life_editorial policy cannot be over stressed. For Life
in March and April 1958 popularized and gave respectability to an
assault on American educational philosophy and the American public
school system.

Perhaps the best evidence for giving a precise date to the

Life editorial switch is an opinion poll printed and evaluated in the

93

March 3, 1958, issue of Life, The name of the article was "Change of
Mind: New Survey Shows Surprisingly Fast Switches in Public Ideas
About Space, Schools, Spending." The article was written by Paul
O'Neil. O'Neil declared in his introduction that "the shining legend
of American technological superiority began to tarnish in the eyes of

the world."41

That "despite the subsequent success of the U.S. Army's
Explorer, Russia's conquest of Space has dominated the national
attention." Interestingly, far from blaming the Eisenhower adminis-
tration, Opinion Research found that the American people seemed to
feel a "curious sort of personal guilt."42

Just before Sputnik I public opinion felt the nation's two
most important problems were inflation and keeping out of war. After
Sputnik I both of these important concerns were replaced in the pUb-
lic mind with catching up with the Russians in the defense race and
training_more and better scientists. The subsequent succesful launch-
ing of Explorer I by the U.S. Army had reduced from thirteen percent
to five percent those who felt we were "dangerously behind Russia in
the development of weapons."

O'Neil declared that "millions of Americans who had taken

education for granted all their lives have now turned a sudden and

dissatisfied eye upon U.S. schools and the children who inhabit

 

41Paul O'Neil, "Changes of Mind: New Survey Shows Surpris-
ingly Fast Switches in Public Ideas About Space, Schools, Spending,"
Life, March 3, 1958, p. 91.

42Ibid.

94

."43 The dissatisfaction centered around the training of

them
scientists. A central question in the Opinion Research Poll was:

"Do you think Russia or the U.S. has the best school training in
mathematics and science?" The answer was Russia, 39 percent; United
States, 28 percent; both the same, 4 percent; and don't know, 29 per-
cent. If the advent of earth satellites had done nothing else,
O'Neil believed they had "jolted the U.S. loose from one stubbornly
cherished concept: that it is perfectly all right to have special
schools for backward children but undemocratic to have them for

44 Unfortunately, in his view, "not all people have

bright ones."
abandoned that idea by any means." Of all citizens, 62 percent now
felt that schools should have special classes for bright students.
This plight of the bright student was to become a major focus of the
five-part Life_series in March-April 1958.

But despite the concurrence of views on the need to provide
Special classes for bright Students, the O'Neil article differed from
the five-part series in Several ways: (1) no attack was made on
John Dewey, (2) no reference was made to progressive education, and
(3) no use was made of loaded terms such as YeducationiSt" or "life-
adjustmentism." Nonetheless, the O'Neil article did reflect a sig-
nificant change in tone between initial Life_reactions to Sputnik I
and the five-part series of March-April 1958.

In Life_(April 21, 1958) the editor reported that "since

Sputnik the reform effort has gathered speed and breath. According

 

43
44

Ibid.
Ibid. , p. 97.

95

to a recent Gallup poll, one high school out of four has made some
concrete curriculum changes; another 25% is at least discussing

improvements. And the changes," Life continued, "are almost uni-

 

versally in the direction of stiffer academic standards. Fully 79%
of the principals interviewed felt that their schools demanded too
little work from students."45

The editor concluded with an attack on the "educationists"
and their "ut0pian life-adjustment of the pupil." These two enemies
--the "educationiSt" and "life-adjustment"--stood athwart the path I
of what Life_called the "new trailblazers in education.“ The editor
called for a "two front war." "Whatever the educationists say, the
schools cannot educate the whole child. That our job. . . . For
education is a continuing responsibility of the home." Life_ended
with a call to arms: "A national effort at this new learning must
begin in every school, app in every home. If there is a democratic
road to learning--and we firmly believe so--it is only as straight
and as firm as each individual makes it."

An article by Robert M. Hutchins, long a critic of progres-
sive education, appeared in Esguire (June 1958). Hutchins began by
quoting Admiral Hynan G. Rickover's November 22, 1957, speech in
Detroit, Michigan, that "Rightly Sputnik has from the first been seen

46

as a triumph of Russian education." Hutchins went on to state that

in every other country inthe world there was a serious approach to

 

45Life, April 21, 1958, p. 34.

46Robert M. Hutchins, "The LesSons of Khruschev's Little Red
Schoolhouse," sguire, June 1958, p. 84.

96

learning. In the United States, however, serious study was

deferred until the professional school. Americans in his view had
confused schooling with education. American schooling was a vast
waste of money, time, and talent. Hutchins went on to urge Americans
to forget about Sputnik and the Russians. "If they did not exist,
conditions in American education still would be shameful."47

The article was simply a restatement of his views published
in The Higher Learnings in America (1932) and elsewhere. Hutchins
urged Americans to also forget about the production of scientists and
engineers. Even if America out-produced the Soviets in scientists
and engineers, American education still would be shameful. It would
be shameful because the ultimate ends toward which education was
directed in this country were shameful. Hutchins believed that edu-
cation should center around the search for wisdom and goodness, not
success, wealth, and power. He considered that despite surface dif-
ferences, the quest of success, wealth, and power to be the goals of
both Dewey-type progressive education and the scientific-mathematics
popularizers. Hutchins arguments were based upon his conception of
human nature and his definition of the good life.

Dr. Paul E. Elicker authored a rejoinder to the critics of
American education in "Let's Speak the Truth About Our Schools,"
Bulletin of the National Association of Secondary School Principals
(October 1958). Dr. Elicker was the Executive Director of the
National Association of Secondary School Principals (NEA). Declaring

it to be a fad to sound off on our American high school, Elicker

 

47Ibid., p. 86.

97

announced his purpose to consider only a few of the issues that were
most prevalent among criticisms of education. The five issues he
considered were: '"(1) The Academically Talented are Neglected;

(2) Too Little Mathematics and Science Available in our Schools;

(3) We Are Less Educated Than Fifty Years Ago; (4) Foreign Country
Systems of Education Are Superior to Ours; and (5) Too Much 'Gobbledy
Gook' in the School Curriculum Such as Homemaking, Vocational Train- -
ing of Many Kinds, Drivers' Eduation, etc." He tested them all and
found them all to be wanting.

He paid particular attention to what he termed "misstated
statistics."48 Critics alleged "only 12 1/2% of the students are
taking mathematics more advanced than elementary algebra (9th grade
algebra." The actual United States Office of Education figure Dr.
Elicker found to be 35.2%. Similarly, critics stated that "53% of
our high schools do not teach physics and half do not teach chem-
istry." To the contrary, Elicker declared that "95.2% of all stu-
dents who reach the twelfth grade in our schools are in schools that
offer both chemistry and physics." One reason for the difference in
statistics on this point was the failure of critics to allow for
schools offering physics and Chemistry on alternate years. Further-
more, Elicker related that reports in recent years from the National
SCience Teachers Association (NEA) revealed that there had been a

steady growth in the numbers of students taking science in the

 

48Paul E. Elicker, "Let's Speak the Truth About Our Schools,"

‘ Bulletin of the NatiOnal Association of SeCondary School Principals
42, No. 20 (October 1958): l.

98

secondary schools. Lastly, Elicker Challenged Charges that foreign
systems of education were academically superior to the American sys-
tem. He reported that American students enrolled for one year in
academic boarding schools in England either matched or excelled the
academic standards of British students. Far from being overburdened
with "gobbledy gook," Elicker believed the American secondary school
provided "basic training for all youth"--the scholar, the profes-
sional, the homemaker, the mechanic, and the artisan.

"What Are Our Goals? European Education and American Educa-
tion" by Harry 0. Gideonse, The Educational Record (July 1958),
agreed with Dr. Elicker's point of view. Noting the vast literature
dealing with comparisons of the educational achievements in the United
States with those in Western Europe and the Soviet Union initiated
after the launching of Sputnik, Gideonse stated that only Chaos would
result in discussing educational programs apart from the cultures of
which they were a characteristic expression. We pointedcnnzthat edu-
cational standards of the European and Soviet variety were directly
related to the administrative and legal sanctions that were vested
in the central government in all continental nations. By contrast,
the political and legal philosophy of the United States had resulted
in forty-eight state systems in which varying mixtures of private and
public control compete with one another in rigor and laxity. It fol-
lowed, he stated, "that a concern for standards can only be imple-

mented if we are prepared to challenge the principle of local control."49

 

49Harry 0. Gideonse, "What Are Our Goals? European Education
and American Education," The Educational Record 39 (July 1958): 214.

99

Furthermore, Gideonse pointed out, there was no Eur0pean equivalent
of the American high school. The American high schoOl was the product
of American social and ideological democracy. It followed that aver-
age standards of academic performance were going to be different and
inevitably lower in a country where ninety percent of the age group
was expected to attend secondary school from those in a system where
only seven to fifteen percent of the age group was expected to attend
secondary school. Average standards should not be viewed as a valid
basis of comparison. Rather, he asserted, the top ten or fifteen
percent of the graduates of the American secondary school should be
compared to the graduates of the various European systems.

"Interestingly," he continued, "both in the Russian and Euro-
pean systems there was a wealth of data to suggest all was not

50 In both systems literature was produced which idealized the

well."
American comprehensive or multi-track secondary school. Also, there
was wide interest in the elective features of the American curriculum.
This is worthy of special note because the Life_five-part series
neglected to report any self-criticism within the Soviet system. In
fact, Lije_had written approvingly of the Soviet practice of forcing
two-thirds of the age group to drop out of the non-elective ten-year
school curriculum.

Gideonse concluded by asserting that some of the current
criticism of American education was merely a contemporary version of

the old attack on the democratic assumption that all children should

have the benefit of an education designed to maximize each individual's

 

50Ipid.

lDO

achievement with his potential ability. He concluded this because
"if the criticism is really based on a desire for comparative 'Stan-
dards,‘ it should be directed at the deep-rooted political tradition

5] He ended by reminding his readers that the

of local control."
European educational system was an expression of a social organization
and philosophy that was rapidly fading away and that the Russian
experience was not a valid guide for the education of citizens who
are to be made fit for the responsibilities of a free society.

There were five books worthy of note published in 1958: flip
Is the Challenge: The Benton Reports of 1956-1958 on the Nature of

the Soviet Threat by William Benton; Schools Without Scholars by

 

John Keats; Soviet Education edited by George Louis Kline and intro-

 

duced by George S. Counts; Soviet Education for Science and Tech-

52

nology by Alexander Korol ; and The Pursuit of Excellence: Education

and the Future of America by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

 

Former U.S. Senator William Benton's book, This Is the Chal-
lepge, consisted for the most part of articles and speeches that had
been published and there was a great deal of repetition within the
book itself. The great bulk of the material was based on a 1955 trip
to the Soviet Union which Benton made as publisher of the Encyclo-

_pedia Britannica. As indicated in a review in the New Republic

 

(August 18, 1958), four of the fourteen chapters are the same as the

1956 Britannica Yearbook. Most of the remainder were either

 

 

51

52The book's first printing actually was in 1957, but after
the launching of Sputnik I. It went through several printings after
the widespread public reaction to the Soviet satellite.

Ibid.

101

restatements of testimony Benton had given to Congressional com-
mittees or were part of his public speeches, the most important of '
the latter being an address at the Eleventh National Conference on
Higher Education in March 1956. These remarks had been reprinted in

Education Digest (May 1956) entitled "Soviet Education: More Ominous

 

Than the Hydrogen Bomb?"

It was the Benton thesis that Soviet classrooms may threaten
America more than Soviet hydrogen bombs, and that Soviet scientific
progress was certainly not to be overestimated. In fact, the Russians
were currently graduating more scientists and high grade technicians
than the United States. He feared they would surpass the United
States in the number and percentage of students enrolled in institu-
tions above the secondary level. Benton believed that American sec-
ondary and post-secondary schools could profitably learn from Russian
and European models in terms of discipline, concentrated hard work,
emphasis on basic intellectual subjects, and the absence of "frill"
subjects. The book also contained material on Soviet propaganda
methods, the use of the arts in propaganda, the partisan use of the
Soviet Great Enpyclppedia, and on the Soviet newspaper and book press.

This IS the Challenge was given both positive and negative
reviews. The following commments are indicative of the book's posi-
Itive reviews. "A firsthand comparison of U.S. and Soviet education,"
Booklist (September 1, 1958). "The book contains interesting mate-

rial," Chicagp Tribune (June 15, 1958). "It is a revealing book and

 

deserves thoughtful reading by all aware citizens," Kirkus (June 1,

1958). Negative reviews included the following: "Benton in his zeal

102

to point up the Soviet challenge, somewhat exaggerates the Soviet

educational achievement," Foreign Affairs (October 1958). "After all

 

the fanfare that attended this book's publication and the promises of
the dust jacket . . . it is something of a disappointment to find
that Mr. Benton's book consists for the most part of articles and

speeches that have been published," New Republic (August 18, 1958).

 

And, "a book that is not really a book," Saturday Review (June 21,
1958).

By far the most revealing review--that is to say, revealing
about the American state of mind--was by Terry Ferrer and appeared
in the New York Herald Tribgne (June 22, 1958). Ferrer noted that
Benton's book was curiously both too late and too soon. "It was too
late because the great bulk of the material in the book was dated.

This IS the Challenge_is published too soon because many of the warn-

 

ings about Soviet supremacy which Mr. Benton has been reiterating
for almost three years have failed to move Americans to the action
he has urged." The two receptions of Benton's views--the one pre-
and the second post-Sputnik--illustrate a shift in public opinion
over roughly the same period as the previously noted shift in the
editorial policy of Lifé: Sputnik I had been the catalyst.

Soviet Educatipn, edited by George Louis Kline, was published

 

by Columbia University Press. It contained nine reports by former
Soviet teachers and students concerning educational methods and
objectives in Russia during the 1920s and 19305. Soviet Education
was not a coherent account of Soviet education and had little to say

about Russian education in the 19405 and 19505. It missed the thrust

103

of the Soviet ten-year school as molded by Stalin. Rather, it was a
series of personal observations on various aspects of education in
widely separated areas of the Soviet Union. The authors had all left
the Soviet Union before or during the Second World War. Hilda Neatby

in the Canadian Forum (June 1958) wrote that Soviet Education was

 

"inevitably scrappy" and rather "tendentious." She relegated the
volume to a source of "curious and useful sidelights on the history
of education in Soviet Russia."

Notwithstanding the publication date of 1958, Soviet Educa-
tipn_neatly fits into the pre-Sputnik descriptive literature by
professional educators. It was clearly outside the stream of Sputnik-
spawned tracts such as This Is the Challenge.

Alexander Korol's Soviet Education for Science and Technology
published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology likewise fits
into the pre-Sputnik descriptive mold. In the opinion of most
reviewers, it was "unquestionably the best book on Soviet education
that has yet appeared in the West."53 Of the twelve excerpted
reviews in the 1958 Bopk Review Digest, eleven were positive. Korol
had been born in Russia where he received his secondary education
before leaving in 1920. Although Korol emphasized science and tech-
nology, his book gave a broad view of Soviet education. Korol had

begun his study in 1953. In time frame and content, Soviet Education

 

53D. B. Shimkin, Review of Soviet Education for Science and
Technology by Alexander Korol in American Journal'of Sociplogy_64
(November 1958): 332.

 

 

104

for Sciencerand Technology parallels George S. Counts' Challenge of
Soviet Education (1957).

In "Comments and Reflections," Korol summed up and placed in
context what he believed to be the significance of the Soviet edu-
cational system and the threat it posed to all democratic societies.
"The choice of terms, incongruously linking the word 'threat' with
'education,' is unfortunate for its implication is false. The locus

|| 54

of the threat is not Soviet education but Soviet communism. For

he believed that communism long ago declared war against the free
democratic societies, a war that "was still not taken seriously enough

"55 Korol believed that the communist

by many of its intended victims.
threat would only be removed if free peoples vigorously continue to
pursue their highest social goals and to maintain their combined sci-
entific, technological, and moral superiority. But these goals and
superiorities cannot be achieved if these nations continue their
educational efforts and other pursuits of life as usual. Rather, "we
free peoples must find a way to release a larger share of our aggre-
gate resources and energy from nonessential material uses and devote

"56 That is to say, the

them to the services of indispensable goals.
free societies must aggressively pursue laudable social, educational,

and moral goals.

 

54Alexander Korol, Soviet Education for Science and Tech-
nology (Cambridge: Technology Press of Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, 1957), p. 415. ,

55Ibid.. p. 410.
56Ibid., p. 416.

105

Like the previous two books, Schools Without Scholars, by

 

John Keats, could easily play the role of a pre-Sputnik publication.
The Keats book makes no reference to Soviet education. Rather, it
was a traditionalist attack upon the life-adjustment wing of progres-
sive education. The book centers around a description of the tech-
niques used in a traditionalist takeover of the New Canaan, Connecti-
cut, public schools. The book was recommended as a guide to
corrective action by Lifé magazine's five-part series (March 31, 1958).

Schools Without §Cholars began with an indictment of teachers

 

colleges. Keats referred to them as "mentally rumpsprung." At the
same time he lauded the liberal arts colleges. He proposed that in
each of the nation's more than 60,000 school districts concerned

"57 The

citizens organize what he termed a "citizens' grand jury.
citizens' grand jury, he believed, should represent every point of
view, social class, and occupation in the school district. "Most
important, it Should not come charging into the schoolhouse ready to
skewer the school board members or the superintendent to the black-
board, no matter what the apparent provocation." Rather, "it
should be formed with the idea of helping the school to become

n58

whatever the public thinks it should be. An individual or com-

munity contemplating such a step was referred to the National Citi-

59

zens Council for Better Schools with headquarters at 9 East 40th

 

57John Keats, Schools Without Scholars (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1958), pp. 9-10.

58Ibid.

59Formerly known as the National Citizens' Commission for
the Public Schools.

 

106

Street, New York 16, New York. The NCCBS was described as'tikind of
clearing house of helpful hints." It is worthy of notation that

Sloan Wilson, the author of the scathing tije_magazine article, "It's
Time to Close the Carnival" (March 24, 1958), was a former Assistant
Director of NCCBS. Wilson was also a former education editor for the

New York Heralngribune. The Herald Tribune consistently gave good

 

 

reviews to anti-progressive education books. Thus, tife_magazine
and authors associated with the National Citizens Council for Better
Schools cross-fertilized one another.60

The operations of Keats proposed citizens' grand jury were
outlined at length. First, the grand jury must compile facts rela-
tive to the school district's physical geography, trade patterns,
tax base, sociology and cultural anthropology. Next, working with
the school board and superintendent, Keats suggested that the grand
jury discover the intelligence range of the student body and ascer-
tain how well the children were living up to their mental ability.
After these steps, the grand jury must study the current educa-
tional philosophies and spend hundreds of man-hours visiting class-
rooms in the home and other school districts to see the various
educational philosophies in action. "We will discover at first hand
whether it is true that Johnny can't read and if it is we will see
Ia practical demonstration of why he can't."61

Keats illustrated the operation of the New Canaan Citizens'

Council on the Public Schools. The Council had sought data on why

 

6°Liie. March 24, 1958, p. 36.

61Keats, Schools Without Scholars, p. 12.

 

107

New Canaan's "superior children failed to live up to their tested
abilities." They confined their investigation to the Saxe Junior
High School. Working through the administration as outlined in the
master plan "several hundred classroom visits were made to Saxe
Junior High." With some exceptions, the Council Report was in
Keats' view "a devastating indictment of an educational theory and

"62 This was particularly true concerning the Report of

practice.
the English Subcommittee. The Subcommittee report quoted the Yale
president as saying "courses in effective living and auto-driving
were being substituted in some high schools for Shakespeare." This
was a particularly interesting quotation since the Subcommitee was
supposed to be investigating a junior high school. The Subcommittee
report in two sentences disposed of all educational theory since
Comenius. The "citizens' grand jury" declared: "A Child needs to
flex his mental muscles. Just as his physical muscles grow flabby
without exercise, 50 does his mental capacity to learn and use his
own language--which is to say his capacity to think--shrink if not
used."63 Singled out for detailed attack was the widespread use of
multiple-choice and true-false tests. The essay was lauded. "The
only way to learn to write good English is to write and write more
sand write more, and to have each piece of writing checked carefully
for content, order, care in choice of words, the interest of the

"64

subject, the uses of a sentence and a paragraph, etc. The

 

62
63
64

Ibid., p. 178.
Ibid., p. 181.
Ibid., p. 183.

.‘

 

 

, . —-_- ,T ,_—_—_h,

108

schools, in short, were making a botch of the teaching of English.
"The failure," the report declared, "was as national as it was

"65 Over and over again other Subcommittee reports echoed

obvious.
the English report. Over and over again the Citizens of New Canaan
satisfied themselves that there was such a thing as "mental disci-
pline" no matter what John Dewey and the teachers colleges said, a
conclusion in substantial agreement with the five-part Lije_magazine
series.

The Pursuit of Excellence: Education a1d the Future of
America was billed as "The Rockefeller Report on Education." The
The report was for the most part based on two earlier studies. One
was the recent and still unpublished study of James B. Conant.66
The other was the recommendations of a conference sponsored by the
National Education Association on "Education of the Academically

d."67

Talente The Pursuit of Excellence prescribed "a general edu-

 

cation for all in grades 1-8." It recommended the continuation of
general education in grades 9-12. All students were to take the
following: four years of English, three or four years of social

studies, one year of mathematics, and one year of science. For the

L

65Ibid.. p. 201.

66Published in 1959 as The American High School Today (New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1959). A mini-version of the Conant proposals
had appeared in Life (April 14, 1958). Dr. Conant had also given
numerous talks at various national conferences.

67Rockefeller Brothers Fund for Education, The Pursuit of
Excellence: Education and the Future of America (Garden City:
Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1958), p. 27.

109

academically talented, the Rockefeller Commission called for two to
three additional years of science, three additional years of mathe-
matics, and at least three years of a foreign language. For certain
students, the study of a second foreign language, for at least three
years, might replace the fourth year of mathematics and the third
year of science.68
For students of all ability levels, virtually every subject
in the curriculum could profit by a lively reform. For the top two
percent of the student p0pulation, the Rockefeller Commission called
for expanding the number of secondary schools offering college-level
courses to juniors and seniors. "From this highly selected group
will come many of the young men and women who will reach the pinna-

cles of intellectual achievement in the years ahead. No effort

should be spared to provide them with opportunities for challenging

studies." The Commission also identified "highest priority subjects.

They were science and mathematics. The Commissioners called for
their modernization and improved quality. It laid the blame for the
backward teaching of these subjects squarely at the door of "the
leading authorities in these fields.“ These leaders had neglected
to concern themselves over how their subject was being taught in the

69

elementary and secondary schools. Thus, even the "Rockefeller

Report" could easily fit into a pre-Sputnik groove.

Problems of Secondary Education in International Perspective:

A Comparison of American, Soviet, and European Educational Systems was

 

68
69

Ibid.
Ibid.

110

published by the Research Division of New York (State) University.
Its authors were Theodore Bienenstok and William Sayers, both associ-
ates in Educational Research. The report began by noting that for
some time now American education had been the focus of critical
scrutiny.. "The launching of the first Soviet space satellite has
merely added a sense of urgency to the vigorous reappraisal of

70

schools and curricula already underway." They also noted that in

the current controversy, American education was often compared with
European and Soviet education. These foreign systems were used to
gauge the quality of American performance. They declared:

This approach is gouged with more pitfalls than is often
realized. National systems of education in their organiza-
tion, methods and results inevitably reflect the cultural

‘ aims, aspirations, and traditions of the societies they
serve . . . . Even purely numerical comparisons of enroll-
ments, number of degrees issued or percentages of pupils
completing various phases of education are not really ade-
quate measures of relative quality, except in a very super-
ficial way, since they are influenced by prevailing social
expectations and demands for professional manpoyar which
vary substantially from one country to another.

Keeping these reservations in mind, they proceeded to analyze and
describe characteristics about the European, Soviet, and American
educational systems. They hoped that "the triangular comparison

attempted in this paper will help clarify some of the current

 

70Theodore Bienienstok and William Sayers, Problems of Sec-
ondary Education in International Perspective: A Comparison of
American, Soviet, and European Educational Systems (The University
of the State of New York, The State Education Department of Research,
February 1959), p. l.

71

 

Ibid.

111

criticisms of American education and perhaps suggest Clues for pro-
posed improvements."72
The three systems explicitly recognized the need for sec-
ondary education; however, they differed in their interpretations
of the need and the assignment of priorities. The mainspring of
European education was a respect for scholarship and intellectual
attainment. In the educational system intellectual objectives took
precedence over all others. Attention was focused on appreciation
and treatment of ideas, on comprehension of an esteem for the cultural
values springing from language, history, literature and art, and on
developing habits of acquiring and enjoying knowledge. For those to
whom both the content and method of rigorous academic training was
difficult or unattractive, other types of schooling was provided.
The American educational system, though emergent from the European
system, was sharply diverged from it. On the organizational level,
all children were educated within the framework of a single compre-
hensive institution. Also, in contrast to the Eur0pean system which
served primarily as a Channel for transmitting academic learning, the
American system was an educational service agency for all youth in
its jurisdictional area.) Reflecting the pragmatic and practical
temper of American life, American educational goals tended to reflect_
immediately useful and applicable knowledge. Whereas European edu-
cation stressed skills associated with intellectual refinement,
those of American education stress skills useful in solving current

problems, getting along with others, making a living, and regulating

 

721bid., p. 2.

112

one's civic and personal life. The most striking feature of the
Soviet system was the monolithic control of the Communist Party and
philoSOphy. The core of the Soviet approach was that education was
,EEEEEEIEIIX a pplitical matter. Consequently, the entire educational
establishment was focused on the goals of the Communist Party. This
commitment resulted.in an attempt at mass education on the American
model and the exacting academic standards of the European model.

As to the place allotted to mathematics and science in the
curriculum of the various systems, Bienenstok and Sayers viewed them
as reflecting the respective social and cultural orientations.(:In
America, mathematics and science were two of many sometimes competing
products in an educational supermarket. In the Soviet Union, science
and mathematics were esteemed as technologically and politically
I: functional instruments in the reconstruction of the nation and the
promoting of Soviet supremacy. In thegUnjted States, which had
been for a long time a technologically advanced country,_thewstggy
of science and mathematics wereconsidered only part of a liberal

.__,‘

education, to be weighed according to the interests and aptitudes of

A 4W._uru'r

individual students. Also, it was noted that in the United States
a considerably higher proportion of the appropriate age group was
enrolled in secondary grades than in the Soviet Union: about 75
percent as compared to only about 33 percent.
'Hence, in observing that all Soviet students in the ten-year
system receive the prescribed training in science and mathe-
matics, it should be kept in mind that Soviet students

represent a much smaller proportion of their contemporaries
than American students represent of theirs.73

 

73Ipid., p. 24.

113

And, "The deceptive character of similarities under such conditions
is particularly important to keep in mind when ongoing changes are
considered."74

Problems of Secondary Education in International Perspective

 

was essentially an expanded, well-documented version of Dr. Harry 0.
Gideonse's "What Are Our Goals? European Education and American

Education," in The Educational Record (July 1958).

 

In the March 1959 Educational Forum, George S. Counts
offered his analysis of "The Real Challenge of Soviet Education."
Counts wrote that the launching of Sputnik in October of 1957 had
caught the American pe0ple off balance. "Our comforting illusions
have been shattered." Counts reminded readers that in his The Chal-

lenge of Soviet Education, written about a year and a half before

 

Sputnik, he had referred to Soviet education as "one of the great
and inescapable realities of the contemporary epoch, and one which

1."75 He charged that

free peoples can ignore only at their peri
“any informed person" should have known about the threat before
59929.n-

//— For several pages, Counts related the history of American
education since October 4, 1957. "The first responses were for the
most part emotional and uninformed." Persons who knew little about
Ieither Soviet or American education appeared on the platform or in
the press. Some, Counts contended, had taken advantage of the

situation to give expression to ancient grudges against certain

 

74
75

Ibid., p. 39.

Counts, Challenge of Soviet Education, p. 261.

 

114

educators and certain educational practices.76 Many suggested we
import Soviet practices and philosophy. Ironically, Counts related
that the SOviets were moving away from the very practices and phi-
lOSphies many in America sought to emulate.

Counts also outlined briefly the history of Soviet education.
He identified three periods of Soviet theory and practice. The first
he labeled "the experimental period" lasting from 1917 to 1936. The
second period began in 1936 and apparently ended in 1958. It was
typified by a return to a structured curriculum of the pre-
Revolutionary Russian model and was Closely identified with the
regime of Joseph Stalin. The third period got off to a start in 1956
at the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party. At the Congress,
Khruschev attacked the standard academic education for all as a
factor making for social stratification contrary to the Marxist
vision of growing equalitarianism. Education had become a means of
individual advancement and severe competition had developed for the
Opportunity to continue one's schooling to the highest level. In this
way a new class, "a new Soviet Intelligentsia," had come into being.
The 1958 reform sought to make socially useful work equal to academic
proficiency in the Soviet curriculum.

Counts also attacked the thesis that the Soviet ten-year
school was responsible for Sputnik. He called the idea nonsense. A
child of seven who entered the ten-year school the first year of its

operation would have been twenty-seven in 1957. The idea that he or

 

76John Dewey and progressive education, particularly the
life-adjustment wing of progressive education.

115

any of his classmates played a significant role in Sputnik was
impossible. Of the three Soviet physicists awarded the Nobel Prize,
the youngest was born in 1905 and finished secondary school during
the "progressive" or "experimental" years prior to the creation of
the ten-year school with its rigid curriculum. And if physics from
the sixth grade did not produce Sputnik, what did? Two answers were
commonly given. First, it was the captured German scientists who
did the job. Second, it was the secrets gained through espionage
that enabled the Soviets to achieve their great success. Counts
rejected both. First, America, not the Soviet Union, skimmed the
cream of captured German scientists. Second, if the Soviet success
was due to espionage, how did they come to hold secrets we never
possessed? This rejection led back to the question: What produced
Sputnik? The answer, Counts related, had already been hinted at.
Pre-Revolutionary Russian education produced the scientists and
mathematicians who produced the space satellite. True, Russia as a
whole had been backward. Yet this backward land could boast an
intellectual class equal to any Western country. Most informed
people were familiar with nineteenth century Russian writers, com-
posers, and artists. Not so many were aware of the fact that there
.were also great Russian minds in the field of science and mathematics.
Moreover, it had been in the area of basic and theoretical science
that the Russian tradition had flourished. A second factor of great
importance had been the place occupied by science in Soviet ideology.
Science was placed in direct opposition to religion as the means for

achievement of the communist heaven on earth. Science was virtually

116

worshiped in the Soviet world. Another basic factor accounting for
Sputnik had been the centralized Soviet political system with all
power concentrated in the Communist Party and its Central Committee.
The Soviet economy, all of the time, was as centralized as Western
economies were only in wartime.

Counts dismissed the question "Is the Soviet system of educa-
tion better than the American system of education?" as a question
making very little sense. He agreed with the position of Gideonse,
Beininstok, and Sayers that comparisons between different systems of
education were extremely difficult and hazardous. Counts opinioned
that the political system required inculcation of loyalty even more
than science and mathematics. The desire to produce the "New Soviet
Man" was central to Khruschev's assault on the academic orientation
of the ten-year school. At this point, Counts rephrased the original
question into what he termed a more intelligent form: "Does the
Soviet system of education serve the purposes of the Soviet political
and social system better than our system of education serves the pur-

s?"77 Counts believed the

poses of our political and social system
answer might be yes. Here was the real challenge 0f Soviet education.
The most acclaimed book published in 1959 was James B.
Conant's The American High School Today. The report's twenty-one
recommendations inaugurated a fierce periodical literature over a

period of three years. As indicated on two previous occasions, the

study began prior to the launching of Sputnik. Dr. Conant made

 

77George S. Counts, "The Real Challenge of Soviet Education,"
jjye Educational Forum 23 (March 1959): 269.-

117

little use of comparisons of Russian and American schools. In fact,
he believed that such comparisons were unsound and misleading and
resulted in false impressions and foolish conclusions.78 Interest-
ingly, Conant, who was in basic agreement with American educational
theory and practice, was perceived by many--Lije_magazine being the
most prominent--as hostile to American education and desiring the
wholesale importation of Soviet educational theory and practice.79
In 1957, on a $350,000 grant from the Carnegie Corporation,
Conant set out to find the "best" comprehensive high schools in the
country. His divining rod was a list of standards of his own choos-
ing.80 Conant believed that every student should Spend half his
regular English course learning to write; he should write at least
one theme a week. All should have at least one year of science,
mathematics, American history, and a course in U.S. problems. To
keep the school cohesive yet challenging, all should be grouped'
according to ability. The academically talented "should never get
a chance to loaf." They should take a minimum of eighteen courses
with homework, including four years of English, four years of mathe-

matics, three years of science, four years of one foreign language,

and three years of social studies. Taking one year to personally

 

, 78Conant, American High School Todey, p. xi. Also see James
B. Conant, "A Comparison of Six Talents: Development of Talent in
Europe and the United States," The North Central Association Quar-
terly 34 (April 1960): 265.

79

80Frank E. Henzlek, “The Conant Report: A Critique," 122.
School Executive 79 (October 1959): 19-21; Conant, American High
School Today, p. xi; "Education for All the Children of AlT)the
People,“)Time, September 14, 1959, pp. 70-79.

 

"Tryouts," pp. 117-121.

 

 

118

inspect fifty-five top schools in eighteen states, Conant found only
eight that came close to being exactly right. The most common
shortcomings were (1) only two years of a foreign language, (2) able
girls avoided mathematics and science, (3) able boys neglected
foreign language and English, and (4) academically talented students

81

were not being sufficiently Challenged. "Yet," Conant opinioned,

"all of the schools could be made as good as the best or even

n82

better. In The Education Digest, he wrote, "I am convinced

American secondary education can be made satisfactory without any

"83 This was the same program

radical Change in the basic pattern.
he had outlined for'Liie_magazine (April 14, 1958). Life_did not
choose to emphasize Conant's basic agreement and lack of a call to
arms against American education.

The major reform Conant advocated was the elimination of the
small high school and the forming of large comprehensive high schools.
Only the comprehensive high school could reasonably attain the three
main objectives he set for the secondary school. Those objectives
were: First, to provide a general education for all future citizens.
Second, to provide good elective programs for those who wish to use

their acquired skills immediately upon graduation. Third, to provide

satisfactory academic programs for those who will continue their

 

~81cOnant, American High School Today, pp. 41-75.

82

 

Ibid., p. 41.

83James B. Conant, "Twenty-One Recommendations for Improving
Public Secondary Education," The Education Digest 24, No. 8 (April
1959): 6; and Conant, American High School Today, p. 76.

119

education at a college or university. His observations convinced him
that the small high school could be maintained only at an exorbitant
monetary and social expense.

The American High School Today was in substantial agreement

 

with Conant's Education in a Divided World (1948). At that time,

 

.Conant agreed with the program of the Educational Policies Commis-

sion's Education for All American Youth (1944). Conant had served

 

as a member of the Commission from 1940 to 1945. The American High

 

School Today was a description of education in "Farmville" and

 

"American City" as outlined by the United States Office of Education
Commissions on Life-Adjustment Education. Despite Liiefs character-
ization of Conant as being critical of current educational theories
and practices, Conant himself was of the opinion that "American sec-
ondary education can be made satisfactory without any radical change
in the basic pattern."84
Stephen Corey took the "Conant Report" to task on its implied

85

principles. The first principle underlying The American High School

 

ngay, Corey Opinioned, was that foundations and their officers have
an obligation to decide what is good for the American people and then
to use their resources to get accepted whatever they deem desirable.
A second principle was that what is good for the American people and
I what is good for boys.and girls is best determined by the subjective

judgments of a distinguished citizen. The third principle was that

 

84

85Stephen Corey, "The Conant Report on the American High
School," The Educational Forum 24 (November 1959): 7-9.

Conant, American High School Today, p. 76.

 

 

120

curricular problems can be solved largely through quantitative
arrangements. The fourth principle was that the prime purpose of
the serious part of the secondary school curriculum is to teach boys
and girls subject matter. The fifth principle was that in the
development of high school curriculum the learners' wishes are
irrelevant. The sixth and final principle was that for school work
to be meaningful and important it must be hard. Using difficulty of
comprehension as an important criterion of curriculum inclusion seemed
to Corey to be coming close to "representing educational bankruptcy."86
In due course, Corey hoped it would be recognized that "the
major purpose of secondary education is not to give boys and girls an
opportunity to learn vast amounts of subject matter, but rather to
improve their behavior in many respects." He believed that "the
most important single fact to be considered in curriculum deveTOpment
is probably the perception by the learner of the importance of what
he is learning." We further wrote, "what is learned is meaningful
in the degree that it is relevant to the learners' problems and not
to the degree that it is hard."87

Second only to the "Conant Report" in 1959 was Vice Admiral

Hyman G. Rickover's Education and Freedom. A readable yet redundant

 

book, Education and Freedom was a collection of speeches made during

 

the previous four years. Some had been shortened, others expanded,

and some new material had been added in an attempt to produce an

 

86
87

Ibid.
Ibid., p. 9.

121

orderly sequence. In many respects it resembled the "Benton Report"
of the previous year. It was the Admiral's thesis that we must raise
the academic level of our curriculum which had been watered down by
John Dewey, progressive education and life adjustment. Rickover con-
sidered all three to be cut from the same tree and labeled their
proponents as "educationists"--a term not meant as a compliment.

Life-Adjustment Education for American Youth was singled out for a
88

 

spirited attack. Rickover endorsed what he termed "John Keats'

revealing book Schools Without Scholars. And he termed "excellent"
n89

 

the five-part Life magazine series on the "Crisis In Education.
Rickover noted that Sputnik had widened the appeal of such views.

It was difficult, before Sputnik, to present the full pic-
ture of Russian successes in the realm of the intellect.
There was little patience in this country with anyone who
told of areas where we were no longer supreme. Unpleasant
facts were so unwelcome that it was actually risky to men-
tion them.

Rickover certainly had no trouble gaining wide acceptance

for Education and Freedom. He would restate his thesis in Swiss

 

Schools and Ours: Why Theirs Are Better (1962) and American Educa-

 

 

tion, a National Failure: The Problem of Our Schools and What We Can

Learn from England (1963). To many persons, Rickover's credentials

 

were unimpeachable: Annapolis graduate (1922) and pioneer work on

.nuclear power plants for the Navy. "No one is better qualified than

 

88Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, Education and Freedom (New York:
E. P.[)utton Co., Inc., 1959), p. 23.

89
90

 

Ibid., p. 24.
Ibid., PP. 35-36.

122

Admiral Rickover to assess the intellectual demands the future is

certain to make,“ reported the New York Times (February 1, 1959).

 

Life_magazine (April 7, 1958) used superlatives like "nuclear
expert" and "distinguished American" in evaluating Rickover. Cer-
tainly these Charismatic titles added much to the success of Rick-
over's attack on American education.

A third widely acclaimed book appeared in 1959: The Big Red

Schoolhouse by Fred M. Heckinger. Heckinger was education editor for

 

~the New York Times. He had served as secretary to the Rockefeller

 

Brothers Fund Panel on Education, the authors of The Pursuit of
Excellence: Education and the Future of America (1958). Heckinger
had been educated in Europe. He came to America in 1937 and was
graduated Phi Beta Kapa from the College of the City of New York.
After wartime service in the United States Army Intelligence, he
became education editor for the Washington Post and later for the

New York Herald Tribune. The Herald Tribune, as related earlier,

 

held a common educational view with the National Citizens Council for
Better Schools and tiie_magazine. These, in turn, shared a common
interest with John Keats and Admiral Hyman Rickover. Interestingly,
Paul Woodring, who also had served in the U.S. Army Intelligence
and was associated with both the Ford and Carnegie Foundations,
wrote the introduction to The Big Red Schoolhouse. The ties and
associations between these groups and individuals are outside the
scope of this paper.

In his introduction, Woodring presented an abbreviated his-

tory of both American and Soviet education. The fact that Russia

123

launched the first satellite was described as a "blow to our

n91

national ego and an implied threat to our security. Many people

"92 They demanded

"immediately went into orbit and started beeping.
crash programs for the training of engineers and scientists. Some
wanted a national system of education with national standards set by
a group of scholars. Many demanded a selective system as compared

to a universal system of education. In turning to the Soviet Union,
Woodring noted that even before the 1917 Revolution there had been
some excellent schools in Russia. "The half million who went through
the secondary schools provided a considerable nucleus of educated
manpower."93 After the Revolution, during the 19205, the U.S.S.R.
went through a period similar to progressive education in the United
States. "Permissiveness," Woodring wrote, "was carried to its 'ulti-

"94 In the

mate absurdity'--much further than in the United States.
19305 the Soviets did an about-face in the direction of a highly
disciplined, subject-centered curriculum.‘ "It is this new education

1195 wood-

that is now seen by some as a threat to the United States.
ring's mini-history stopped at this point. He made no mention of the

1958 Reforms and seemed unaware of their existence.

 

 

9lHeckinger, Big Red Schoolhouse, p. 10.
92Ibid.

93Ibid., p. 11.

94

Ibid., p. 12.

95Ibid.

124

Woodring's philosophical agreement with Life magazine and
Admiral Hyman G. Rickover can be illustrated with the following

excerpt from the introduction:

When the history of twentieth-century America eventually
is written it will be recorded that the date of October 4,
1957, was a turning point in American education. Sputnik
didn't do it alone--the times were ripe for change. For ten
years and more the schools had been undergoing a vigorous
reassessment at the hands of the American people and their
intellectual leaders. Writers on education had divided
themselves into two opposing camps; those who viewed the i,

lbs-w

 

schools with complacency and defended the status guo, and
Iflisiaiflitilfiiidtilfiflsali'2a$"3e‘.l§$§t122i‘8e‘sy "““a‘ °f

Interestingly, Woodring questioned his own "turning point"
statement only five pages later. Rarely was such a decisive state-
ment so quickly abandoned. "The great danger," he wrote, "is that
now the first period of panic is_past, we shall again lapse into
complacenpy before the necessary reforms in our schools have been
achieved."97 Was Sputnik a flash in the pan, or a shot heard 'round
the world?

Fred Heckinger entered the foray by first acknowledging his
intellectual debts. He gave special thanks to Nicholas DeWitt,
author of Soviet Professional Manpower (1955); Alexander G. Korol,
author of Soviet Education for Science and Technology (1957); and
the the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare for its
Education in the U.S.S.R. (1957). Although listed in his bibli-

ography, he gave no special recognition to George S. Counts' Chal-

lenge of Soviet Education (1957). The lack of special recognition

 

96
97

Ibid., p. 9. Emphasis mine.

Ibid., p. 14.

125

for Counts is of interest for two reasons. First, Alexander Korol,
who Heckinger did recognize, had high praise for the Counts' book.
Second, Heckinger complained of the difficulty of obtaining informa-
tion on Soviet education.98 Counts was a fountainhead of such
information. Perhaps Heckinger had never forgiven Counts for being
a progressive and authoring Dare the Schools Build a New Social
Qrger.

The most readable and effective portion of The Big Red

Schoolhouse was the first Chapter, "Ivan or Johnny" (pp. 23-29).

 

Heckinger made use of long quotations from a CBS special on American
and Russian education broadcast after the launching of Sputnik. He
described how CBS had outlined the education of Ivan, "a typical
teenager in Moscow." A CBS interviewer next had talked to a group
of American high school students in Tennessee. "The consensus was

"99 American

that too much work had undoubtedly made Ivan a dull boy.
teenage girls, Heckinger related, indicated they would not enjoy a

date with Ivan because they would have little to talk about. Worse,
from Heckinger's viewpoint, the teenagers considered the rigid aca-

demic training described from Moscow as a waste of time and boring.

When asked what they thought was the important ingredient of good

high school education, they indicated the most valuable lesson they

were learning was how to get along with other people.

 

98Ibid., p. 11.

99Ibid., p. 23.

126

Heckinger described the comparison as "nothing short of

"100

devastating. He went on to label the American teenagers'

answers as "semi-literate ramblings" and "parroting of semi-digested

‘01 He veritably erupted with indignation as

social philosophies."
he related how CBS had interviewed a group of West Coast teenage
boys taking a course in coed cooking, instead of mathematics.

Now Heckinger was described on the dust cover of The Big Red _

 

Schoolhouse as "one of America's leading educational authorities."

 

Certainly, no one could fault his credentials. Yet, such a leading
authority identifies his own political and social philosophies when
he uses epithets such as "semi-literate ramblings" and "parroting
semi-digested social philosophies." Certainly, learning to get along
with other people is no mean accomplishment. Also, the American
teenage girls were depreciating the educational tradition of which
Heckinger was a product.

Recognizing that a nation's schools are not created in a
vacuum, Heckinger cautioned against thoughtless importation and
imitation. Specifically, he described the inappropriateness of the
highly centralized French or the regimented Soviet systems. However,
he had serious doubts whether a school system without some national
standards could assure survival in a world of all-out technological
competition. He proposed that given America's long established,

deep-rooted tradition of local control of education, that some

 

100
101

Ibid.
Ibid., pp. 23-24.

127

national board of educational advisors be created. This board would
write suggested standards.

Two exclusively descriptive accounts of Soviet education
appeared in 1959. Gaylord P. Harnwell's Russian Diary_was a simply
written travel diary. Harnwell was the President of the University
of Pennsylvania. He had visited the Soviet Union for a two-week
period in the spring of 1958. He described various educational
institutions in Moscow, Leningrad, and Asiatic Russia. The book
contained Harnwell's observations on food, hotels, stores, and enter-
tainment. It offered no new educational information.]02

Deana Levin's Soviet Education Todpy_was the personal obser-
vations of a British educator who had taught elementary school in
Moscow. It was presented without any reference to social, political,
or philosophical implications. It centered about a description of
teaching methods used at the kindergarten and elementary level. More
than anything else, Soviet Education Today_was a wealth of personal
experiences. It, like the Harnwell book, was out of step with the
times; They were largely ignored.103

Irving R. Levine's "Trouble in Red Schoolhouses," The New
.LEEQEI.(JU"9 8, 1959), was a refreshing change of pace from most

104

Soviet descriptive literature. Levine was a former NBC

 

102Gaylord P. Harnwell, Russian Diary (Pittsburgh: Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania Press, 1959).

103Deana Levin, Soviet Education Today_(New York: J. DeGraff,

 

1959).

104Reprinted in Reader's Digest (July 1959), thus giving the
information to a widespread audience.

 

128

correspOndent in Moscow and the author of Mainstreet U.S.S.R.105

"Trouble in Red Schoolhouse" described the furor in Russia which

had given impetus to the 1958 Reforms. Levine quoted Khruschev to
the effect "there is a serious dissatisfaction with the present state
of affairs in secondary and higher schools . . . . Most young people
who have attended school for teenagers turn out to be unprepared for

"106 Levine reported that the Soviet leader had

life upon graduation.
recently made "drastic changes in the Soviet educational system."
Ten years of compulsory schooling had been reduced to eight. Fur-
thermore, the curriculum had been revised to stress socially useful
work and deemphasize academics. "If the test of an educational sys-
tem," Levine opinioned," is how well it prepares Citizens to live in
their society, Russian schools were far from successful. The Soviet
educational system had failed to produce the atheistic, production-
conscious, Marxist-minded citizens the Kremlin ordered."107 Though
atheism was taught from early grades, some village schools are forced
to Close on Saints' Days and other religious holidays because so many
youngsters stay home.

Worst of all, in Khruschev's view, a scornful attitude toward

physical labor existed among the population. Physical labor had

become something to scare children with. This was incompatible with

 

105Irving R. Levine, Mainstreet U.S.S.R. (Garden City:
Doubleday, 1959).

106Irving R. Levine, "Trouble in Red Schoolhouses," The New
Leader, June 8, 1959; reprinted in Reader's Digest, July 1959, p. 55.

107Ibid.

129

with a socialist world view. Further, Khruschev exposed many fraudu-
lent academic practices, admission rackets, and widespread cheating
on the much vaunted examination system. If this were not enough,
there also existed many low standard facilities, underpaid teachers,
academically ill-prepared graduates, discipline problems and wide-
spread juvenile delinquency. The latter was so rampant that Levine
quoted Erayga's description of 8 workers' militia organized to subdue
juvenile crime as a "struggle against drunkenness, hooliganism,
robbery and murder."108
The last book printed in 1959 to be examined here is Ihe,
Great Debate: Our Schools in Crisis, edited by C. Winfield Scott,
Clyde M. Hill, and Hobert W. Burns. It will be compared and con-
trasted with another readings book by the first two editors, Egpiig
Education Under Criticism (1954). In the earlier book Scott and Hill
noted that criticisms "have mushroomed to alarming proportions."109

A chart documenting this trend was presented. The chart illustrated

by year the number of entries in the Education Index under the

heading "Public Schools--Criticism."no
1942 -- 3 1948 -- 7
1943 -- 5 1949 -- 13
1944 -- 8 1950 -- 12
1945 -- 7 1951 -- 35
1946 -- 6 1952 -- 49
1947 -- lO

 

108Levine, "Trouble," p. 58.

'090. Winfield Scott and Clyde M. Hill, eds., Public Education
Undgr Criticism (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1954),
p. .

noIbid.

130

These figures tend to confirm the almost universal view that the
years immediately preceding Sputnik witnessed a growth in the criti-
cism of the public schools.

Scott and Hill divided critics into four groups: scholars,
professional educators, professional writers, and outright enemies of
education. A large portion of the book was directed to techniques
for blunting criticism--"Handling Criticism" (pp. 305-382), and
"Concluding StatementS" (pp. 391-406).

Superficially the same, the 1959 book markedly differed from
the 1954 book. Scott and Hill noted that "since Soviet Russia
launched its first globe-circling satellite in the fall of 1957,
shrill criticism of public education has reached a new cresCendoJJl]
In fact, thepost-l957 criticism was a new synthesis. It was not a

function of the pre-l957 criticism. Scott and Hill did not offer it,

but the number of entries in the Education Index under the heading

 

"Public Schools--Criticism" for 1953-1957 were as follows:

1953 -- 25
1954 -- 30
1955 -- 14
1956 -- 9
1957 -- 6

By 1955 the number of entries had returned to their 1949 level. And
in 1957, the number of entries had fallen to the pre-1946 level. In
other words, as reflected by the number of entries in Education Index,

criticism of American education was on the decline at the time of the

 

mC. Winfield Scott, Clyde M. Hill, and Hobert W. Burns,
eds., The Great Debate: Our Schools in Crisis (Englewood Cliffs,
N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1959), p. l.

131

launching of the Soviet space satellite. Sputnik inaugurated a new
wave of criticism.

Scott and Hill now divided critics into five, not four,
groups. The five groups were: scholars, professional educators,
public figures, professional writers, and outright enemies of public
education. No section of the 1959 book was devoted to techniques
for blunting criticism. A comparison of the main headings in the
tables of contents of the two books will further illustrate the sub-

stantial differences between the two volumes:

 

 

Public Education Under The Great Debate: Our Schools
Criticism (1954) in Crisis (1959)
l. The Situation and How It 1. Bird's-Eye View of the Great
Will Be Presented Debate
2. General and Philosophical 2. General Pros and Cons
3. Progressive Education 3. Neglect of Fundamental Sub-
jects
4. The Fundamentals .
.. 4. The Challenge of Soviet Edu-
5. Religion cation
6. The Social Studies 5. Do We Do Enough for the Gifted
Child?
7. Teacher Education and
Teachers 6. Are Schools Too Fancy?
8. General Defenses 7. Can Teacher Training and Cer-

tification Be Justified?
9. Evaluation of Critics and
Criticism 8. Decision of the Judges
10. How to Handle Criticisms 9. Some Proposals for Action
11. Concluding Statements
Immediately, the reader notices that things have moved from

criticism to crisis, at least as far as the titles are concerned.

Very significant is the absence of any section in the 1959 book on

132

defending education from its critics. Twenty-five percent of the
1954 book had been devoted to handling criticism. The topic of
religion had been dropped. And clearly, "The Challenge of Soviet
Education" was the focus of the 1959 book. The reader should also
notice the clearer statements and eye-catching questions in the 1959
book. Most important, notice where the authors left the reader in
the two volumes. In 1954, the reader was led down a path and given
basic training in handling critics. In 1959, the reader was also
led down a path--this time the path of educational reform.

At this point, it is appropriate to summarize the perceptions
of informed Americans concerning the discussion of American educa-
tional theory and practice in the light of disclosures concerning
Soviet education in the period from October 1957 to December 1958.
The data would seem to indicate the following generalizations:

l. Sputnik was initially perceived as a Soviet mili-

tary and propaganda triumph. It was not viewed
in educational terms.1

2. The U.S. may have lost the race into space due to 13
a bureaucratic foul-up and inter-service rivalry.1

3. The Russian space success came at a time of eco-
nomic recession in the United States, thus inten-
sifying the impact on the American peOple.”4

 

112"Soviet Satellite Sends U.S. Into a Tizzy," Life,
October 14, 1957; "The Feat"; and "Common Sense and Sputnik," ife,
October 21, 1957, p. 35.

113Furnas, "Why Did the U.S. Lose."

114"Truth About Russia's Weakness."

133

4. Sputnik acted as a catalyst in bringing together
the pre- Sputnik literature on Soviet education
and the pre- Sputnik progressive- -traditionalist
literature. I

5. LLfe magazine in March and April of 1958 was a
vehicle through which the merger was consummated
and popularized.

6. Initially, the merger was restricted to periodi-
cal literature.

7. Several authors argued that the reason for Ameri-
ca's loss of the space race was the "soft pedagogy
of John Dewey."117

8. Numerous authors wrote rejoinders to the cgitics
of John Dewey and progressive education.

9. The danger of superficial comparisons between edu-
cational systems was described. This igterature
was limited to professional journals.1

10. The Conant recommendations for the curriculum in
secondary schools made their initial appearance

 

115This fact is self-evident with a reading of the periodical
literature of the period. Perhaps its best and clearest statement
was Fadiman's "The Mess in Education." Fadiman wrote, "What opened
our eyes? A flying box containing a dying dpg,"

116"The Crisis In Education," Life (March 24 and 31, and
April 7, l4, and 21, 1958); Sloan Wilson, "It' s Time to Close Our
Carnival," LLfe, March 24, 1958, pp. 36- 37, "The Deeper Problem in
Education: It Is Time to Dig Out Educationist Debris and Rediscover
Learning's True Nature," Life, April 21,1958,p.112.

117The sources which document this are legion, including, of
course, the five-part Life series. Other important statements of the
view were Hutchins, "Khruschev's Little Red Schoolhouse," and public
addresses by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover,

118Again, the sources are legion. Two of the best defenses
of'Dewey and the progressive cause were Handlin, "Rejoinder," and
Elicker, "Let's Speak the Truth."

119

 

Gideonse, "What Are Our Goals?"

134

in March, 1958. Their full impact would come
in 1959 with the publication of The American
High School Today.120

11. A blueprint for a "citizens' grand jury" takeover
of the pubiis schools was presented and skilfully
advocated.

12. A connection existed between Life magazine and
the National Citizens Council for Better Schools,
a conservative-oriented group.

 

13. By 1959 the merger of the pre-Sputnik literature
on Soviet education and the pre-Sputnik
progressive-traditionalist literature reached
the book press.

14. The existence of a pre-Revolutionary Russian
"intelligentsia" was noted.”3

15. By 1959 the pitfalls of superficially comparing
educational systems was stressed by some pr?-
fessional educators in the book literature. 24

 

 

 

120"Tryouts for Good Ideas"; Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Ihe
Pursuit of Excellence.

12IKeats, Schools Without Scholars; "Deeper Problem in Edu-
cation."

122

The argument for a connection between Life and the
National Citizens Council for Better schools is self-evident. Life
presented a scathing anti-progressive editorial authored by Sloan
Wilson, former Associate Director of the NCCBS. In the editorial
Wilson ur ed readers to obtain and study John Keats' Schools Without
Scholars 1958). Keats, in turn, suggested that his readers contact
the NCCBS in order to obtain help in setting up their "citizens'
grand jury" and suggests they in turn "takeover" their local public
school. Life, in turn, called for a crusade to wipe out the two
enemies of school reform, "educationists" and their "ut0pian life-
adjustment of the pupil." If it looks like a duck, if it walks like
a duck, if it quacks like a duck, it's a duck!

123Counts, "The Real Challenge," Heckinger, Big Red School-
house.

124Bienienstok and Sayers, Problems of Secondary Education;
(Counts, "The Real Challenge"; Heckinger, Big Red Schoolhouse.

 

16.

17.

18.

19.

135

James B. Conant's American High School Today was
published in 1959. It rapidly became both descrip-
tive and prescriptive, as well as the center of a
periodical literature.125

Admiral Hyman G. Rickover published Education and
Freedom and became a public figure.

The Soviet Union began the reordering of its own edu-
cational system. Ironically, they were abandoningthe
rigid academic secondary school and were moving in the
direction of a form of schooling which stressed labor
education and moral education.I 5

A close analysis of The Great Debate: Our Schools in
Crisis (1959) and Public Education Under Criticism

, (1954) revealed that the criticism of American educa-

tion was on the decline prior to the launching of
Sputnik.

 

125Corey, "The Conant Report."

126Counts, "The Real Challenge"; Levine, "Trouble in Red
School houses . "

CHAPTER IV

SPUTNIK: LATER AMERICAN LITERARY REACTIONS

In this section of the dissertation, the writer will examine
the later American literary reactions to Sputnik (1960-62). The
initial period of literary reaction (1957-59) had been a time of
near-hysteria in some quarters of this country. On the whole, this
hysteria wore down during the period under consideration (1960-62).
The writer shall, for the most part, proceed chronologically.

What shall the curriculum include? Mortimer Smith posed the
question and an answer in "Basic Education: What Is It?" The Edu-

cation Digest (March 1960). The articlewas a reprint from A Citi-

 

zehS Manual for Public Schools, a publication of the Council for
Basic Education. Smith opinioned that the purpose of education were
four-fold: "(1) to teach the young how to read, write, and figure;
(2) to transmit the facts about the heritage and culture of the
Imation; (3) in the process of (l) and (2), to train the intelligence
Tend to stimulate the pleasures of thought; and (4) to provide that
atmosphere of moral affirmation without which education is merely
animal training."1 In other words, Smith sought to make the child

literate-in the essential fields Of human knowledge. In the

 

1Mortimer Smith, "Basic Education: What Is It?" The Educa-
igion Digest, March 1960, p. l.

136

137

"agonizing reappraisal since Sputnik," Smith believed that the
American people were coming more and more to accept a more rigorous
academic program.

James Conant presented a thoughtful article in the April
1960 issue of The North Central Association Quarterly. The title of
the article was "A Comparison of Six Talents: Development of Talent
in Europe and the United States." In it, Conant limited his analysis
to the free nations of Europe, purposely avoiding the Soviet Union.
"I will tell yOu frankly that I think we have heard too much about
Russian education."2 He stressed that in Europe many families and
children make a tremendously important Choice at approximately eleven
years of age. Twenty percent of that age group are selected and
enrolled in pre-university schools. Those not selected go to work
at age fourteen. Meanwhile, they attend a "continuation school."

Conant went on to describe how six different talents were
developed in each education system. The talents were leadership,
athletic, musical, artistic, manipulative, and academic. The Euro-
peans, he related, devoted almost no time to developing the first
four talents. They concentrated their educational efforts on only
the manipulative and academic talents. As already hinted, European
education proceeded on a two-track system. The manipulative or
craftSman talent was developed in continuation schools and appren-
ticeship programs. The academic talent was developed in the

rigorous pre-university schools. "It was these schools that people

 

2Conant, "Comparison of Six Talents," p. 265.

\138

,2

were thinking about when they praised European schools. The people .
do not realize that only 20% of their children would be enrolled in

3 It went without saying, Conant con-

Such academhc institutions."
tinued, that in the United States we attempt to develop all six
talents for those individuals who desire under our elective system
to develop such talents.- With these facts known, he doubted Ameri-
cans would opt for the European systems.

The publication of the "Conant Report" during the previous
year had signaled the beginning of a lively periodical literature
and the book itself quickly reached the best seller list. The pub-
licity given The American High School Today_was thought by some to
be Unequaled in the history of American education.4 For months
before its publication, Dr. Conant had presented its major recom-
mendations at educational forums and conventions. Its famous
twenty-one recommendations had been popularized in Liie_magazine.
(April 14, 1958). Conant's credentials and the reassuring report
that "no radical change was required to make all American schools
as good as the best" he had visited guaranteed wide acceptance for
The American High School Today. Initially, reviews were highly
favorable. Professional educators performed mental gymnastics and
reported that their particular school districts had long practiced

Inost of the policies Conant recommended. This was not difficult

because Conant's recommendations were strictly in line with

 

3Ipid.

4Francis Griffith, "Another Look at the Conant Report," Ihe
Bulletin of the National Association of SecondaryrSchool Principals
44 (October 1960): 59.

139

progressive education which had become the near national practice
(see pages 45 and 68). After the initial acceptance, four schools
of criticism developed. The first to appear was an attack on the
underlying principles of the report. This attack was typified by
Stephen Corey's "The Conant Report on the American High School,"

The Educational Forum (November 1959), as reported in the previous

 

Chapter.

-A second line of attack can be illustrated by examination of
Francis Griffith's "Another Look at the Conant Report" in The Bulle-
tin of the National Association of Secondary School Principals
(October 1960). Griffith asserted that the Conant Report suffered
from serious heretofore unrecognized limitations. The first limita-
tion, he asserted, was the limitation of Conant himself. Conant
had attended a private preparatory school before he matriculated at
Harvard. After graduation he was appointed assistant professor of
chemistry and rapidly rose the the presidency of Harvard. "He
never spent even a single day as a pupil, teacher, or administrator
of a public elementary school, high school, or tax-supported col-

5 He lacked an intimate association with the institution for

lege."
which he was widely regarded as an expert. Given this background,
Griffith thought he found a bias in favor of science and language
instruction, and only a superficial knowledge of high school cur-
riculum and organization in the Report.

The second limitation according to Griffith was a limitation

of purpose. The declared purpose was to discover whether the

 

51bid.

140

comprehensive high school protects the interests of its academically
talented pupils. This was a restricted aim. The American High
School Today thus was not, as its title implied, a study of the
strengths and shortcomings of secondary education in this country.
"Readers should keep Dr. Conant's restricted purpOse in mind when
reading his recommendations."6

Next Griffith argued with Conant's definition of the compre-
hensive high school. Griffith believed that a true comprehensive
school should prepare pupils to enter employment as skilled workers.
According to this definition, he found only three comprehensive
schools in the entire United States.

Griffith also questioned Conant's sampleI Conant had per-
sonally visited only 55 of the nation's 21,000 high schools. Further,
the sample was limited to schools in which less than one-half the
population was college-bound and in which the median 1.0. was
between 100 and 105. Even more limiting, the sample included no
high school with a graduating Class of less than 100. Such schools
had been recommended to be terminated without even being studied.
"Obviously, the sample on which the survey is based is neither
Ineaningful nor representative.“7

Finally, Griffith attacked Conant on the limited content of
the Report. There was no mention of Classroom instruction. There

was no discussion of the extra-curriculum. Further, The American

High School Today ignored significant research findings such as the

 

 

6Ibid., p. 60.

7Ibid., p. 62.

141

Eight-Year Study and the possibilities of educational television and

 

large group instruction. Acknowledging the Report's many merits,
Griffith recommended that superintendents and school boards should
consider its many shortcomings before they attempted to carry out its
recommendations.

James D. Koerner labeled the Conant Report "a national
disaster." Koerner was a former Executive Secretary of the Council
for Basic Education. He made his remarks in "The Tragedy of the
Conant Report," Phi Delta Kappan (December 1960). Koerner saw the
Report as tragic for two reasons: (1) its findings and recommenda-
tions; and (2) the unquestioning credence given the book by school
boards, parents, administrators, and teachers. "The tragedy lies
in the destiny to which Mr. Conant has consigned as much as 85 per-
cent of American youth."8 Thus Koerner questioned Conant's education
for the non-college-bound. This attack was grounded both in educational
philosophy and personal experience.

The fact that struck me in the face, that horrified me, as

I read the Report was that I had had, almost perfectly, the

kind of education Mr. Conant says I--perhaps 85 percent

should have had. . . . Only what I had was not education.

NETtFEr was it training. Nor was it even "adjustment." It

was an abomination.
Korner had received his schooling in a large comprehensive high
schoOl of the type Conant endorsed. Coming from a lower class home,

heIhad been "counseled" over his objections into a "marketable skill

program." After separation from the armed forces and development of

 

8James D. Korner, "The Tragedy of the Conant Report," Phi_
Delta Kappan 42 (December 1960): 121.

9Ibid.

142

what he described as "a true intellectual hunger," he completed a

doctorate and began a career in teaching. He described his second-
ary education as "a minus factor of formidable dimension." It was
this minus factor that outraged him in The American High School Today,
"If ever there was a way to create an intellectual elite, this

‘0 Koerner advocated an academic education for all. "I

was it."
would suggest to Mr. Conant that nobody has the right to assume that
ahy_student will not go to college. Nobody has the right to assume
that because a student may think he will not go to college, he

should not be educated. . . . That is the real tragedy of the Conant

Report."]]

Theodore Brameld questioned Conant's underlying educational
philosophy in "The Proposals of Dr. Conant," Teachers College Record
(December 1960). He began by noting "the task is not easy, if only

because Dr. Conant has never in his several books come to grips with

n12

the philosophic underpinnings of education. Brameld asserted

‘that under close scrutiny the largest share of Dr. Conant's recom-
Inendations were centered in the doctrine that the main purpose of
education was to reinforce and perpetuate the social heritage. As
:such, he rejected them as unsuitable to a democratic, continually

reconstructing society. Inevitably, the Conant reconmendations

 

10
11

Ibid., p. 124.
Ibid.

, lzThedore Brameld, "The Proposals of Dr. Conant," Teachers
ggillege Record 42 (December 1960): 232.

143

13

. "become a roadblock in the path of imperative reconstruction." A

second defect stemmed from the first; Conant supported a curriculum
divorced from recent psychological and sociological research.

Brameld was horrified that such philosophically based recommendations
had been so uncritically received by the great majority of teachers
and administrators. And he noted that the appearance of Conant's
upcoming report on the junior high schools seemed likely to receive
the same uncritical acceptance.

Five books on Soviet education were published in 1960:
Engineering Education in Russia by Steven Timoshenko, Diary of a
Russian Schoolteacher by F. Vigdorova; The Changing Soviet School,
edited by George Z. F. Bereday, William Brickman, and Gerald Read;
The Politics of Soviet Education, edited by George Z. F. Bereday and
Joan Pennar; and Khruschev and the Central Committee §peak on Educa-
‘tipp_by George S. Counts.

The Counts book was divided into two parts: (1) an introduc-
tory essay called "The Reconstruction of Soviet Education" (pp. 1-
23); and (2) a translation of the section on moral education from
the "48 Theses" approved by the Council of Ministers as well as the
Central Committee of the Communist Party in 1958. "The Reconstruc-
tion of Soviet Education" for the most part was an expanded version
of Counts' "The Real Challenge of Soviet Education" which had
appeared in the Educational Forum (March 1959). Counts viewed the
"Theses" as the Soviet version of the "Conant Report." The "Theses"

also illustrated for Counts how a totalitarian state changes its

 

'3Ibid.

144

educational system. The "Theses" Counts related were a basic and
essential part of the Seven-Year Plan which was designed to shape
the development of the Soviet economy and culture from January 1,
1959, to December 31, 1965. The Seven-Year Plan had two ambitious
goals: "(1) to overtake and surpass America," and (2) to "hasten

"14 Stripped to the bone, the "Theses"

the transition to communism.
called for the radical reconstruction of the educational system in
light of the goals of communism and the contemporary world
situation.15
They expressed many sharp criticisms of the existing ten-
year school. The central criticism was that the school was separated
from life and tended toward abstraction and verbalism. The curricu-
lum was too bookish and tended to prepare students almost exclusively
for admission to higher education and membership in a privileged
intelligentsia. In a word, it failed to produce the "New Soviet
Man." It failed to achieve the vaunted union of theory and practice,
knowledge and socially useful labor. Worst of all, it nourished an
aversion to physical labor, social snobbishness, and "petit
bourgeois" traits in both pupils and parents. One had to understand
the ten-year school as an obstacle in the path of the Communist
millennium in order to grasp the significance of the "Theses." For

the central object of the "Theses" was the cultivation in the young

of the elements of Communist morality.

 

14Counts, Khruschev and the Central Committee, p. 3.

15Ihid.

145

Counts opinioned that “the total educational system which will
emerge from the 'Theses' may be far more challenging than the system
which has excited so many Americans."16 The real challenge of
Soviet education was not to be found in the realm of science and
technology; rather;it was to be centered in the hearts and minds of
the youth of the respective nations. The Russians had a considerable
advantage in this struggle. They had only to prepare their Children
and youth to love the Party and serve the State in accordance with
their gifts and talents. America's task was infinitely more diffi-
cult and complicated. We must prepare the members of the younger
generation to discharge intelligently and conscientiously all of the
duties of citizens of a free society in an industrial age.

A. C. Eurich took exception to Counts' explanation for the
reason the Soviets won the space race. Eurich wrote a review of
Khruschev and the Central Committee in the Saturdy Review (Decem-
ber-12, 1959). Eurich wrote that "Counts underestimates some of the
forces currently operating in Russia. . . . The basis for Soviet
scientific success which Counts offers . . . is weak."17 Counts had
explained Sputnik by drawing attention to the scientists and mathe-
maticians who had been developed in pre-l9l7 Russian schools, an
irrtellectual cadre he rated as equal to anything existing in the
West. Eurich granted that the scientists who literally produced

Stnrtnik had been trained in pre-Revolutionary Russia. Nevertheless,

 

'GIoid., p. 12.

17A. C. Eurich, Review of Khruschev and the Central Committee
by George S. Counts in the Saturday Review, December 12, 1959, p. 17.

146

he believed that Counts had underestimated the importance of the
ten-year school curriculum. Eurich asserted that both the accom-
plishments of Soviet scientists and the ten-year school's emphasis on
physics from the sixth grade had grown out of the same cultural and
educational priorities.

Diary of a Russian Schoolteacher by F. Vigdorova and trans-
lated from the Russian by Rose Prokofieva was a piece of fiction in
diary form. Vigdorova had written extensively on education in the
Soviet Union. During the first five years of her teaching experience
she kept a diary in which she set down her successes and disappoint-
ments. Out of this diary and observations she made later, Mrs.
Vigdorova created the character Marina Nikolayevna, the teacher who
speaks in the Qiary, Through the experiences related in the Qiary,
the reader gained insight into Soviet classroom methods. Robert M.
Hutchins who authored the introduction to the My was fascinated
‘with Vigdorova's work. "The great lesson of the book,“ he wrote,
"is that children, and by consequence education, are much the same
everywhere."18 An American reader familiar only with the writings
of Admiral Rickover, Fred Heckinger, and Life_magazine might have

had trouble recognizing the Soviet ten-year school. "The schooling

"19 And, "the social and moral

1120

it portrays was humane and democratic.

Igoals of Mrs. Vigdorova were strikingly Similar to our own.

 

————

18F. Vigdorova, Diary of a Russian Schoolteacher (New York:
Grove Press, Inc., 1960), p. 10.

19E. T. Ladd, "Review of Diary of a Russian Schoolteacher,"
gigcial Education 25 (May 1961): 260.

20Mirian Goldberg, "Review of Diary of a Russian School-
teacher," Saturday Review, November 19, 1960, p. 72.

 

147

Stephen Timoshensko's Engineering Education in Russia was
strikingly different from Diary of a Russian Schoolteacher. It was
another of the books illustrating the "Soviet Superman Thesis." Only
forty-seven pages, it was a brief description of the content and method
of engineering education in the Soviet Union. Timoshensko had been
educated at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute before the Russian Revolu-
tion of 1917. In 1958, after an absence of forty years and a teaching
career in the United States, he returned to Russia and paid visits to
leading engineering schools and collected curriculum guides. Inci-
dentally, Timoshensko was living proof of the George Counts thesis
concerning pre-Revolutionary Russian education. Timoshensko's evalu-
ation of American education agreed with writers such as Rickover and
Heckinger. Timoshensko wrote: “. . . with our poor secondary school
preparation and our four year engineering school curricula, we can
not possibly accomplish as much as the schools of Russia are doing

today."21

This analysis of the year 1960 shall conclude with two read-
ings books edited by George Z. F. Bereday and others. The Politics
of Soviet Education was a collection of papers delivered at the
Institute for the study of the U.S.S.R. in Munich, Germany, during a
three-week seminar.22 Among the contributors were educators, econo-
Inists, linguists, sociologists, historians, and political scientists.

A theme which received repeated attention was the tension which

 

2‘Stephen Timoshensko, Engineering_Education in Soviet Russia
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960), p. 31.

22Co-editor was Jann Pennar.

148

existed between the ideological content of Soviet education and the
increasing industrialization and bureaucratization of the Soviet
economy. This tension was recognized by Soviet leaders who drew up
plans for educational reform in 1957. This plan was the "48 Theses"
George S. Counts described in Khruschev and the Central Committee
Speak On Education. Ramazan Karca (pp. 3-27) outlined a plan devel-
oped by the R.S.F.S.R. Academy of Pedagogical Sciences for the
development of public education in the U.S.S.R. for the next fifteen
to twenty years. He noted Khruschev's speech at the Thirteenth
Congress of the All-Union Komsomol calling for educational reform.
Briefly described, the measures were as follows: (1) reorganization
of the secondary school so that all pupils receive both trade and
general education; (2) organization (Hi factory-VTUZS (a combination
industrial plant and higher technical education institution);

(3) transfer of higher and intermediate agricultural education
Schools from urban to rural districts; (4) the expansion of the sys-
tem of intermediate and higher schools operating as evening and
correspondence schools. Secondary schools were thus to become
something like apprenticeship-training shops with graduates receiving
a certification of labor skills in addition to a matriculation certi-
‘ficate. Such a plan was a near reversion to the "experimental
period" Of the 19205. During the 19205 innovators had called for

the "withering away of the school."

149

The Changing Soviet School was a companion volume to Ihg_
Politics of Soviet Education.23 It was the combined observations of
seventy-one American educators who spent August and September l958
in the Soviet Union. The book emphasized the "practical courses"
which were simultaneously being criticized in the American school and
introduced in the Soviet school. In a second parallel, the creation
of an intellectual elite was being hotly debated. In their introduc-
tion, the editors termed 1958 "a significant watershed.“ During that
year the reform movement for the "polytechnicalization“ of Soviet
schools received national sanction in legislative form.24 The book
was written according to a three-part plan. Part one was a summary
of the philosophical, social, and historical antecedents of the
present Soviet system. Part two described the Soviet school in its
formal organization with emphasis on the secondary school. Part
three surveyed selected issues in Soviet education with emphasis on
character and moral education in a collectivist society.

Both of the Bereday edited volumes were readable, well docu-
Inented, and presented their material in objective fashion. The
\veakness of both volumes was inherent in the fact they were the
product of eighty-three authors and six editors.

Perhaps the most comprehensive book on Soviet education to

appear during the post-Sputnik period was Nicholas DeWitt's well

 

23Co-editors were William Brickman, Gerald Read, and Ina
Schlesinger.

24George Z. F. Bereday, William Brickman, and Gerald Read,
eds., The Changing Soviet School (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company,

1960) , p. ix.

150

documented Education and Professional Employment in the U.S.S.R.
(l96l). The book was prepared for the National Science Foundation.
DeWitt outlined the study as having two main objectives in mind.

The first aim was to present the most up-to-date information in
regard to the educational system of the Soviet Union. The second
objective was to describe the relationship between the Soviet Union's
educational system. Actually, Education and Professional Employment

in the U.S.S.R. was more comprehensive than these two objectives.

 

DeWitt noted that recent Soviet developments (l955-l958)
were unique in many respects. The second half of l955 marked the
beginning of a period in relations with the West known as the "thaw."
The Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party witnessed Khruschev's
denunciation of Stalin. A considerable number of economic and
administrative reforms had been introduced. The Hungarian revolt
and unrest in other European satellites marked the end of this period
of limited liberalization. The fall of 1957 witnessed the scrapping
of the Sixth Five-Year Plan and a torrential debate on the reordering
of the economy and the educational system. The successful launching
of Sputnik I and subsequent Soviet space achievements submerged these
developments.

. A major portion of Education and Professional Employment
described the Soviet periodical literature surrounding the l958 edu-
cational reforms. The crux of the Soviet debate was the existence
of a "new class" or "new Soviet intelligentsia." Reformers declared
that contrary to the Marxist vision of growing equalitarianism,

Soviet education was responsible for the existence of the "new

151

class." The reforms sought to remedy this condition by sharply
increasing the labor content of education. They sought to make the
capacity to perform productive tasks, instead of academic profi-
ciency alone, the criterion of advancement. Some Soviet writers had
hailed the reforms as a move to return Soviet schools to the only
correct path--the path of the labor education of youth. The memory
and theories of Lenin had been invoked to legitimatize the reforms.
Some reformers went so far as to suggest that secondary education had
outlived its usefulness, and that the primary objective of educa-
tional reform should be to abandon traditional schools and to train
youth in vocational schools, correspondence schools, and on the

25

job. The Government organ Izvestia remarked on July 28, l958,

that "there has not been a more exciting discussion in many years
than is now going on about our schools."26
According to DeWitt's analysis, the reforms were in part

designed to correct the imbalance caused because of the over-
production of ten-year school graduates. What was needed was more
people to support the already more than adequate supply of highly
trained specialists. In a Western economy the solution would have
been found in the price mechanism. This was impossible under Soviet

conditions. In Russia the educational system had to be adjusted by

administrative action. Academic schooling would have to be curtailed

 

25Nicholas DeWitt, Education and Professional Employment in
the U.S.S.R., the National Science Foundation, Office of Scientific
Personnel, National Academy of Sciences—National Research Council,
1961, p. 9.

26Ibid.

 

152

in order to accelerate the preparation of Soviet youth to fill the
productive jobs required by the first Soviet Seven-Year Plan (1959-
l965). The Seven-Year Plan and its education corollaries were
related to demographic trends set in motion by the staggering human
losses suffered by the Soviets during World War II. The size of the
l8—25 year-old age group during the period of the plan would be one-
third smaller than it normally would have been. Severe labor short-
ages were envisioned unless there was a shift in the output of the
educational system.27 The demographic trend and the corresponding
shift in the secondary school curriculum illustrated DeWitt's con-
tention that "Soviet educational policy, however, strong its ide-
ological orientation, has also responded to exceedinglyypragmatic

cansiderations."28 As V. N. Stoleton, R.S.F.S.R. Minister of Higher

 

and Secondary Specialized Education, stated in August 1959: "The
system of education should provide the national economy with cadres
in requisite numbers and with the necessary qualification to
enable the economy to develop in full accordance with the Seven-Year
Plan."29

In addition to the place of labor education in the secondary
curriculum, there were significant secondary issues raised in Soviet

publications. The issues DeWitt reported were (l) the education of

gifted children; (2) the language of instruction; (3) multi-track

 

27
28
29

Ibid., pp. l4-l6.
Ibid., p. 6. Emphasis mine.
Ibid., p. l5.

153

education and electives; (4) school entrance age; (5) the length of
compulsory schooling; and (6) methods for combining study and work
training.

The idea of establishing special school facilities for gifted
students was among the most revolutionary proposals advanced by
Khruschev. Such a concept was heretical to the social and educa-
tional philOSOphy professed since the Revolution. It was even more
surprising considering Khruschev's attack on the ten-year school as
' fostering a "new class." At the December 1958 session of the Supreme
Soviet it was announced that special education for the gifted would
receive further study. DeWitt indicated that experiments were being
conducted in Moscow and other sections of the Soviet Union. Because
of the multi-national character of the U.S.S.R., discussions over
the language of instruction inevitably became embroiled in educa-
tional discussions. DeWitt noted a pronounced tendency on the part
of parents to accept Russification as a stepping stone to social
advancement. The most commonly advanced plan for a multi-track
system in the secondary school had three streams: (l) mathematics-
physical sciences-industrial skills; (2) chemistry—biology-agricultural
skills; (3) social sciences-humanities-clerical and business. This
three-track system, DeWitt cautioned, should not be confused with
the American free elective system. It was a choice of three required
programs.30 A modification of lowering the school entry age from

seven to six years was not accepted. Under the reform plan the

 

301bid.. pp. 19-20.

 

154

number of compulsory attendance years was dropped from ten to eight.
However, a new eleven-year school was to be made available in all
areas. The Reform also called for students in the upper grades to
spend two days per week during the school year and several weeks
during the summer “hi on-the-job training. "Uchenie i trud vmeste
jggt," the Soviets termed it ("Study and work go hand in hand").31
An excellent two-page diagram illustrated the pre- and post-Reform
education systems. As an example of the heavy documentation in the
book, the Appendix ran from page 535 to page 8l3. It contained many
excellent charts, graphs, and tables.

In his "Postscript," DeWitt reminded the reader that Soviet
education was but a means to an end, "to maximize the economic and
political power of the Soviet regime and to strengthen thereby its '
international position in the struggle to establish communism
throughout the world." He wrote on to place Soviet education in a
philosophical perSpective. He noted that in the Soviet Union the
development of professional competence and technical rationality was
deliberately divorced from the acquisition of broad humanistic values.
Thus, their education was both a failure and a success.

If the aim of education is to develop a creative intellect
critical of society and its values, then Soviet education
is an obvious failure. If its aim is to develop applied
professional skills enabling the individual to perform
specialized, functional tasks, then Soviet higher education
is unquestioningly a success, posing not only a temporary

challenge, but a major threat in the lng-run struggle
between democracy and totalitarianism.

 

3)
32

Ibid., p. 20. A slogan coined by Khruschev.
Ibid., pp. 547-48.

155

Many of these same points appeared in journal form in
Nicholas DeWitt, "Soviet Science Education and the School Reform,"

School and Society(Summer l960).

 

Raymond P. Harris defended American education against the

Sputnik-inspired charge of a "soft curriculum" in American Education:

 

Facts, Fancies, and Folklore. He noted that the launching of Sputnik

 

had spawned "an orgy of recrimination." He outlined the scenario as
follows. Within hours after the launching of Sputnik I the schools
were the object of an orgy of recrimination. Somebody had to be the
culprit. And, almost immediately, even among prominent people, this
painfulrole was assigned to public education.33 The recriminating

34 Inter-

barrage of words was quickly taken up by the mass media.
estingly, the largest part of the much publicized quotations and
paraphrases came from a rather small number of persons-~a handful of

35

college professors, novelists, and an admiral. This vociferous

group had gained wider credence across the nation than 1,300,000
certified professionals who staffed the public schools.36

” Harris criticized the critics on two points. For several
years, he asserted, a trend toward science and mathematics in the

curriculum was evidenced in the schools. Impetus for the awakening

 

33This substantially agrees with the views of Admiral Rick-
over and Robert M. Hutchins.

h .34Life magazine, CBS "Special," and numerous television
5 ows.

35Paul Woodring, Fred Heckinger, Sloan Wilson. Admiral
Hyman Rickover.

36Harris was an administrator for the Mount Vernon, New
York, Public Schools.

156

of interest in science and mathematics came from the demands of modern
warfare and the need for scientists, engineers, and technicians in
the expanding post-war economy. These facts had been ignored by the
critics of American education. Clear evidence, Harris maintained,
that none of them were very well acquainted with the schools they
were attacking. Harris's second point was that the real test for
concern about the quality of American education was much larger
budgets. Uncertain of such budgets, he concluded, "Perhaps the
national excitement generated by the news of Sputnik I is to be
dissipated in scapegoating rather than translated into serious efforts
to raise the material standards of education."37
The year 1962 witnessed the publication of several interesting
books either on Soviet education or American education in the light of
disclosures concerning Soviet education. One of the more interesting
was Soviet Education: Anton Makarenko and the Years of Experiment
by James Bowen. Unknown in the West, "Anton Makarenko was to Soviet

"38 Each was

education what John Dewey was to education in America.
"The Philosopher" to his respective disciples. Each believed educa-
tion to be a group process, but each placed a different interpretation
upon the individual's role in society.

Dewey emphasized the importance of the diversity of the

individual's interests as necessary to strengthening soci-
ety's growth. Makarenko felt that the individual's role

 

37Raymond P. Harris, American Education: Facts, Fancies,
and Folklore (New York: Random House, l96l), p. 274.

38James Bowen, Soviet Education: Anton Makarenko and the
Years of Experiment (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press,
1962), book jacket.

 

 

157

should be subordinate to the collective needs of the group.

He sought to educate the child according to environmental

psychology in which social conditioning and habituation

play a prominent part.3
Professor Bowen's book was separated into three sections: (1) Anton
Makarenko's career seeking to rehabilitate Russia's post-War and -
post-Revolutionary waifs and delinquents; (2) synoptic and analytic
accounts of Anton Makarenko's chief writings; and (3) an assessment
of Anton Makarenko as an educational philosopher and practitioner.

Immediately after the First World War and the Bolshevik

_Revolution, one of Russia's many grave problems was the situation of
displaced and orphaned children. Leading lives marked by crime,
vice and depravity, they roamed the streets of the major Russian
cities in such hordes that they were called the "wild boys."
‘Makarenko was an obscure Ukranian school teacher who took up the
challenge to redeem these lost youth. During his work with the "wild
boys," he came to question and then to oppose the then current Soviet
educational policy which was patterned on American progressive educa-
tion. His theories were published in three books: The Road to Life,
Learning to Live, and A Book for Parents. They earned for him the
Order of the Red Banner of Labor for literary achievement in 1939.
His ideas, summarized in a key passage below, became under Stalin
the orthodoxies of Soviet educational theory and practice.

I had ventured to question the correctness of the generally

accepted theory of those days, that punishment of any sort

is degrading, that it is essential to give the fullest pos-

sible scope to the sacred creative impulses of the child

and that the great thing is to rely solely upon self-
organization and self-discipline. I had also ventured to

 

39Ibid.

158

advance the theory, to me incontrovertible, that, so long
as the collective, and the organs of the collective, had not
been created, so long as no traditions existed, and no ele-
mentary labor and cultural habits had been formed, the
teacher was entitled--nay, was bound!--to use compulsion.
I also maintained that it was impossible to base the whole
of education on the child's interests, that the cultivation
of a sense of duty frequently runs counter to them, espe-
cially as these present themselves to the child himself. I
called for the education of a strong, toughened individual,
capable of performing work that may be both unpleasant and40
tedious should the interests of the collective require'it.
So much for anarchy and nihilism. So much for the withering away of
the school. So much for progressive education. Enter the rigid cur-
riculum and discipline of the ten-year school.

Helen B. Redl translated and edited contributions from vari-
ous Soviet writers to produce Soviet Educators on Soviet Education.
The volume was primarily a source book on the theory and practice of
child rearing in the Soviet Union. It was the outcome of a Ford
Foundation-sponsored visit to Soviet Russia by Mrs. Redl and her hus-
band Fritz. The editor-translator brought together a representative
selection of old and new materials dealing with both education and
child rearing. "Soviet educators," she wrote, "make a clear distinc-
tion between the two processes."41 Soviet Educators on Soviet Educa-
tion was divided into two sections. One group of selections dealt
with the philosophy underlying Soviet child rearing and the other
group of selections focused on literature describing actual Soviet

practice. The table of contents included selections entitled:

 

4O

41He1en B. Redl, Soviet Educators on Soviet Education (New
York: Free Press, 1962), p. vii.

Ibid.

159

"Heredity and Upbringing; Self-Discipline in Adolescents; Sex
Education; The Family in Soviet Society; Reward and Punishment of
Children in the Family; Fathers and Children: Decree Regarding School
Internats; School Internats After Five Years"; and "Young Pioneers."
The volume neatly fits the category of descriptive literature. It
outlined no Soviet challenge, no educational crisis, and no Sputnik.
Two other books published in 1962 clearly were Soviet chal-
lenge literature. They were What Ivan Knows That Johnny Doesn't by
Arthur Trace and Swiss Schools and Ours: Why Theirs Are Better by

Admiral Hyman Rickover. What Ivan Knows attacked American education

 

on a heretofore quiet front. Trace charged that not only were Ameri-
can schools woefully inferior to Soviet schools in the teaching of
mathematics and science, but also in the humanities. And this
inferiority was not true only according to Soviet standards. Ameri-
can schools were inferior by any standard.42
In his first ten pages Trace disposed of all but his own

technique for comparison between school systems. He introduced the
idea of basing comparison solely upon an examination of textbooks
used in the two school systems. He stated:

If a student's textbooks are excellent he may be able to get

an excellent education indeed if he has good teachers and

'studies hard; but if his textbooks are poor, his education

is bound to be correspondingly poor no matXSr how excellent
his teacher may be or how hard he studies.

 

, 42Arthur Trace, What Ivan Knows That Johnny Doesn't (New
York: Random House, l962), pp. l-3.

43Ibid., p. 7.

160

In comparing Soviet and American basal readers, Trace con-
sidered the most salient fact to be the far larger vocabulary of the
Russian readers. "Whereas the fourth—grade Rodnaya Rech reader has
a vocabulary approaching 10,000 words, most American fourth-grade

"44 Trace was of

readers have a vocabulary of well under 1,800 words.
the view that no elementary school child's reading vocabulary could
exceed the vocabulary of his basal reader. It was this superiority
in basal readers that was the underpinning of the Soviet thrust into
humanities--chiefly, literature, history, and foreign languages.

Trace went into considerable detail to compare the contents
of Russian readers with those of American readers and found the con-
tents of the Russian far superior. He found that Soviet readers con-
tained four main types of selections: (1) There were many selections
which are obviously designed to indoctrinate Communist ideas and
ideals. (2) There were also many selections with moralistic or
character-building intent. (3) There was a great deal of informa-
tional material, especially in the areas of science and social
studies.) (4) There were a great many poems and literary selections,
both from Russian and other national literatures. Trace pointed out
that most American readers simply do not contain this type of material
and are passing up opportunities in this area.

In his final chapter, Trace made some recommendations for
improving reading instruction in this country. He wanted the vocabu-
lary of basal readers greatly increased, the sheer amount of content

enlarged, and the literary quality greatly improved. To teach

 

44Ibid., p. 11.

161

American students to read at a higher rate he assumed to be neither
impossible nor even difficult. Trace pointed out that British stu-
dents learn at the same rate as the Soviets. And, "The McGuffey
readers of the last century assumed that students read at least as
quickly as I have suggested, and the fifth and sixth grade McGuffey

45 As a

readers assumed that they can learn to read much faster."
corollary he recommended increased dosages of required literature,
history, and foreign language courses at both the junior and senior
high school levels.

Trace's charges were challenged by Albert J. Harris in "Ivan
and Johnny--A Critical Review," The Reading Teacher (December 1962).
Harris found What Ivan Knows That Johnny Doesn't "so unreliable that
even those of Trace's criticisms that may have a sound basis become

t."46 To begin with, Harris questioned Trace's method of com-

. suspec
paring school systems with reference only to textbooks. He endorses
some of the methods Trace had rejected. Also, he questioned why
Trace had not compared the outcomes of the Soviet and American edu-
cational systems with reference to reading achievement tests. Or why
not use the percentage of graduates of the secondary schools capable
of entering higher education institutions. He questioned most of
Trace's underlying thesis. He said: "Actually, Dr. Trace's main

contention seems to be the more one exposes a child to, the better

the outcome must be. He does not carry this to the logical extreme

 

451bid., p. 190.

46Albert J. Harris, "Ivan and Johnny--A Critical Review,"
The Reading Teacher 16, No. 3 (December 1962): 151.

 

162

of advocating the use of adult encyclopedias in the first grade, but
his general point of view is clear."47
Furthermore, Harris questioned Trace's estimates of vocabu-
laries in Russian and American readers. The Groff (5) third-grade
reader contained 1,469 words. This was fifty percent higher than
Trace's estimate. The Scott-Foresman series fourth-grade reader
contained a vocabulary of 2,742 words, not the 1,500 estimate of
Trace. Similarly, embedded in the comparison of the basal readers
was a comparison of the American and Russian languages. Russian is
a highly inflected language in which a word takes many shades of
meaning as one or another of many endings are attached to it. If
these inflected or derived forms were counted as separate words the
vocabulary count would rise considerably. Thus, if one counted
American inflected or derived forms our vocabulary count would simi-
larly rise. The endings in g, 9, ed, in , gr, est, Q, g2} posses-
ives; words beginning with prefixes dig, in, pg, or numerals; words
ending in eleven common suffixes; contractions; compounds made of
known words; homographs; etc., would raise the American fourth-grade
reader vocabulary count to 4,000 words. This total is comparable to

the Soviet Rodnaya Rech reader used by Dr. Trace.

 

It was a shock to Harris that Trace never examined how read-

ing was actually taught in either the Russian or the American

48

schools. Trace nowhere mentioned the fact of the less exact cor-

respondence between sound and printed symbols in English than in

47
48

Ibid., p. 153.
Ibid., p. 152.

163

Russian. Also, Trace seemed to lack the information that American
(schools employed separate textbooks for science and social studies
instruction. Or the fact that American reading teachers employ a
highly individualized approach to reading instruction, making little
or no use of basal readers.‘ Most depressing of all to Harris was
Trace's total disregard of the principles of child development and
individual differences in both his descriptions and prescriptions.
Harris summarized the book as "depressing."

Swiss Schools and Ours: Why Theirs Are Better by Admiral
Hyman Rickover was a retelling of Education and Freedom (1959). The
book was billed as a I'no-holds barred study of education in a Euro-
pean democratic country, Switzerland, and of how the lessons learned

49 The Admiral described how the SWISS’

there can be applied here."
in his view, had achieved the integration of both mass and academic
education. Rickover stressed the Swiss school was a place of work:
both a longer school day and a longer school year (240 days compared
with 180 days in the United States). Using charts listing units of
credit in academic subjects and reproducing academic examinations,
he argued that American educational standards were both quantita-
tively and qualitatively inferior to European systems and were thus
totally out of step with the needs of modern society.

After giving his analysis of the Swiss system, the Admiral

gave suggestions for America in the light of Swiss experience. We

should begin by improving the training of teachers and administrative

 

49Admiral Hyman C. Rickover, Swiss Schools and Ours: Why_
Theirs Are Better (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 1962), book
jacket.

 

164

personnel. The greatest need, he felt, was the lack of a nationally
determined standard of course programs, so that there will be greater
uniformity of requirements for secondary diplomas and college degrees.
The Admiral greatly longed for the Swiss Maturity Diploma. Rickover
outlined in more detail how to achieve national standards in American
Education--A National Failure:' The Problem of Our Schools and What
We Can Learn From England (1963). Rickover was fascinated with the
European national examination system, particularly the English. He
recommended the establishment of a National Standards Committee whose
function would be to draw up examinations for high school students
who desire to enter various post-secondary training institutions.
No one would be required to take such examinations, but those who
passed them successfully would obtain a national certificate with the
notation N.S.--National Scholar--stamped on regular diplomas or
degrees. Everyone, the Admiral believed, would benefit from such a
system. "At one stroke it does away with misleading educational
labels so that any layman has the means to judge whether a school or
college is doing its job properly."50

A review of the literature during the period under considera-
tion appears to yield the following generalizations:

1. The periodical literature surrounding the publication of

James B. Conant's American High School Today continued.5]

 

50Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, Americgn Education--A National
Failure: The Problems of Our Schools and What We Can Learn From
England (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1963), p. 317.

51Griffith, "Another Look"; Koerner, “The Tragedy"; Brameld,
"Proposals of Dr. Conant."

 

165

2. The European educationalsystems'concentrated develop-
ment of academic and manipulative talents to the exclusion of
other talents was well documented.52

3. A widespread literature described the reconstruction of
Soviet secondary education and pointed to the introduction of "prac-
tical" courses and a deemphasis of academics.53

4. The human aspects of Soviet education were examined and
revealed a school radically at odds with the stern academic regime
outlined by some commentators over the previous three years.54

5. The "real challenge of Soviet education," in the opinion
of some writers, did not lie in the area of science and mathematics,
but rather in the area of character and morals.55

6. American readers had detailed descriptions of Soviet
education.

7. American readers had a well ordered counter argument to
"Rickover-type" critics.

8. American readers should have been aware that demands for
science and mathematics education were the outgrowth of trends within

the larger American culture, not the least of which was the price

 

52Conant, "A Comparison of Six Talents."

53Counts, Khruschev and the Central Committee; Bereday et al.,
The Changing Soviet School; and George Z. F. Bereday and Joan Pennar,
eds., The Politics of Soviet Education (New York: Frederick A.
Praeger, Publishers, 1960).

54
55

 

 

Vigdorova, Diary.

Counts, Khruschev and the Central Committee.

166

mechanism demanding technicians, engineers, and scientists for the
post-war economic expansion. Sputnik accelerated the already exist-
ing demand.

9. Both the American and the Soviet educational systems
were undergoing changes demanded by their respective demographic and
economic bases.

10. Americans were introduced to the author of the Soviet
educational orthodoxies of the Stalinist period, Anton Makarenko.56

11. Americans received an updating on Soviet child rearing
‘ practices.57

12. A controversy over methods of reading instruction began
\Nlth the Soviets alleged to have not only bigger rockets and bigger
bombs, but also bigger vocabularies.58

l3. Admiral Hyman Rickover restated many of his points from

Education and Freedom (1959) in a new book, Swiss Schools and Ours:

 

Why Theirs Are Better.
14. The number of articles and books on Soviet education or
.American education in the light of disclosures concerning Soviet

practice had been falling off for two years.

56
57
58

Bowen, Soviet Education.

 

Redl, Soviet Educators.

 

Trace, What Ivan Knows; Harris, "Ivan and Johnny."

 

CHAPTER V

SPUTNIK AND AMERICAN EDUCATION

To be sure, the launching of Sputnik I and subsequent Soviet

space achievements were a shock to the American ego, producing much
. wringing of the hands over the state of the American school system
and lending apparent support to school critics. The popular view
holds that the curriculum reform movement was a response to Sputnik.1
Among other places, this conventional wisdom is enshrined in Patterns
of Course Offerings and Enrollments in Public Secondary Schools,
1970-71, Department of Health, Education, and Welare Publication (0E)
73-11400. The publication says, in part:

In the late 19505, in consequence of the Soviet Union's

launching of the first Sputnik, school authorities in the

United States began to place greater emphasis on improving

the mathematics and natural science curriculums of this

Nation's schools. Under the sponsorship of the National

Science Foundation, new methods of instruction such as

SMSG (School Mathematics Study Group) mathematics and BSCS

(Biological Sciences Curriculum Study) biology were

developed.
This interpretation, so deeply rooted as to be almost unextinguish-
able, does not set with the actual unfolding of events. At the
beginning of 1957, the Carnegie Foundation had persuaded Dr. James B.

Conant to conduct a series of studies of American public education.

 

1Silberman, Crisis in the Classroom, p. 169.

2U.S.D.H.E.W., Patterns of Course Offerings, p. 6.

 

167

168

These studies became the famous "Conant Reports" of the post-Sputnik
period.3 The University of Illinois Committee on School Mathematics

had begun its revision of the secondary mathematics curriculum as

4 The Physical Sciences Study Committee's development

5

early as 1952.
of a new high school physics course began in 1956. These beginnings
of curriculum reform had been preceded by a decade of philosophical
wrangling. Sputnik accelerated an ongoing development, generated
widespread public support, and as we shall see, fostered federal
funding for science and mathematics education.

Certainly, Sputnik sparked increased interest in Soviet edu-
cation. The immediate effect was to bring together two divergent
streams of educational literature. For despite the publication of
fifteen books on Russian education since the Bolshevik Revolution,
Americans apparently were only dimly aware of what was to be termed
"the challenge of Soviet education." Sputnik would launch a fierce
periodical and book literature. Whereas the period from 1917 to
1957 had produced fifteen books, the period from 1958 to 1962 pro-
duced at least twenty books on Soviet education, an output of three-
tenths of a book per year as compared to four books per year. The
figures below demonstrate the direct relationship between the height

of Soviet space achievements and American interest in Soviet educa-

tion. The numbers given are the number of articles per volume

 

3Jennings, "Educational Reform," p. 96.

4Goodlad, "A Janus Look," p. 169.

 

5Silberman, Crisis in the Classroom, p. 169.

169

of Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature under the heading, "Edu-

 

cation--Russia."

May 1945 to April 1947 -- 9
May 1947 to April 1949 -- 10
May 1949 to March 1951 -- 5
April 1951 to March 1953 -- 6

April 1953 to February 1955 -- 8
March 1955 to February 1957 -- 41
March 1957 to February 1958 -- 76
March 1959 to February 1961 -- 50
March 1961 to February 1963 -- 27
March 1963 to February 1965 -- 12
March 1965 to February 1966 -- 4
March 1966 to February 1967 -- 6
March 1967 to February 1968 -- 8
March 1968 to February 1969 -- 4
March 1969 to February 1970 -- l

The average number of entries for the years 1945 to 1955 and 1965 to
1970 was six. The average number of entries for the years 1955 to
1965 was forty-three. American interest in Soviet education waxed
and waned in direct relationship with the waxing and waning of Soviet
space successes.

Several commentators have opinioned that American education

6 They stated that for ten

was ripe for change in October of 1957.
years and more the schools had been undergoing a vigorous reassess-
ment at the hands of the American people and their intellectual

leaders. In fact, educational criticism had peaked and subsided in
the years prior to Sputnik. As measured by the number of entries in

the Education Index under the heading of "Public Schools--Criticism,"

 

times were not ripe for change.

 

6Heckinger, Big Red Schoolhouse; Rickover, Education and
Freedom; Fadiman, “The Mess in Education."

 

 

170

1942 -- 3 1950 -- 12
1943 -- 5 1951 -- 35
1944 -- 8 1952 -- 49
1945 -- 7 1953 -- 25
1946 -- 6 1954 -- 30
1947 -- 10 1955 -- 14
1948 -- 7 1956 -- 9
1949 -- 13 1957 -- 6

Clearly, pre-Sputnik criticism had peaked in the 1951-1952 period.
Criticism was actually on the decline at the time of the Soviet space
launching. Sputnik inaugurated a whole new wave of criticism. This
new wave was not only in terms of number but also in terms of sub-
stance. During the pre-Sputnik period criticism did not reflect
comparisons with Soviet education. As indicated earlier, critics
were largely unaware of educational developments in the Soviet Union.
Also, much of the 1950 to 1954 criticism reflected a widespread
popular concern with subversion and subversives in the public
schools.

. A case can be made that the launching of Sputnik was respon-
sible for the passage of the National Defense Education Act of 1958.
Swiftly following the launching, various remedial proposals promptly
appeared in Congress. Following extensive hearings on the various
bills, a compromise measure (H.R; 13247), to improve and strengthen
U.S. education, especially instruction in science, mathematics, and
modern foreign languages, was finally passed. It was approved by
the President on September 2, 1958. 'The main provisions of the law

authorized loans to college students, fellowships and financial

171

assistance to state educational agencies for strengthening instruc-
tion in science, mathematics, and modern foreign languages.7
A good measure of the influence of Sputnik on the success of
the bill is an analysis of the House debate surrounding the inclusion
or deletion of the so-called "Powell Amendment" in education bills.
The "Powell Amendment," named for Representative Adam Clayton Powell,
was a frequently attached rider to school aid bills. The amendment
provided that "there shall be no federal funds allocated or trans-
ferred to any state which ‘faihs to comply with the decisions of the

8 The amendment was inspired by Southern resistance

Supreme Court."
to the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954. The inclusion
of the "Powell Amendment" was generally credited with being fatal to
school aid bills because it cost proponents of the legislation sup-

9

port from Southern Congressmen. Such was the fate of school con-

struction bills in both 1956 and 1957. The amendment was not

attached to the Library Services Act in 1956 and that bill passed.10
On April 14, 1958, Congressman Powell, who was Chairman of the House
General Sub-Committee on Education, agreed to withhold his amendment
denying federal aid to racially segregated schools. This move guar-

anteed passage of what became the National Defense Education Act of

 

7Congressional Digest, Vol. 37, Nos. 8 and 9 (August-
September 1958), p. 194.

 

8Congressional Digest, Vol. 38, Nos. 6 and 7 (June-July
1959). p. 165.

9

 

Ibid.

1OIbid.

172

1958. At a news conference, Powell stated: "The Russian challenge
to the United States in space is how so great that no one can afford
to do anything that would slow up Federal aid to education of all
levels."]]
Sputnik also spawned a new type of educational literature.
Prior to October 4, 1957, literature focusing on Soviet education was
descriptive in nature. Its authorship was narrowly restricted to
professional educators. None of the authorities criticized American
educational theory and practice based on information gained about
Soviet education. The most competent authority was George S. Counts
’who wrote several comprehensive accounts of Russian education prior

to Sputnik: The Soviet Challenge to America (1931); I Want to Be
Like Stalin (1947); and The Challenge of Soviet Education: The

 

Study of Education As a Weppon (1957). Americans, however, were

only dimly aware about Soviet education prior to 1957. America's
educational energies were absorbed in controversies over life adjust-
ment and charges of subversion in the schools. The subversion
charges were largely laid to rest in the period following the Korean
War. But the launching of Sputnik and subsequent Soviet space
achievements acted as a catalyst to picture an idealized version of
a tough academic Soviet curriculum and a correspondingly soft Ameri-
can curriculum. As one author styled it: What Ivan Knows That

12

Johny Doesn't. Another phrased it thus: "What opened our eyes?

 

 

HCongressional Digest, Vol. 40, Nos. 8 and 9 (August-
September 1961), p. 200.

12Arthur Trace (1962).

 

173

A flying box containing a dying dog. We were going to reform
American education . . . because we were scared stiff."13
While the new literature was rather short lived (1958-1962),
its proponents engaged in an orgy of recrimination. Many writers
possessed only the sketchiest information about either Soviet or
American schools. Many suggested the importation of Soviet or Euro-
pean educational practices. Some rekindled ancient grudges against
John Dewey and progressive eduation. Ljfg_magazine played a key

14 The

role in the dissemination and legitimatization of such ideas.
barrage of words was taken up by the mass media, yet a large part of
the much publicized charges came from a rather small number of per-
sons--a handful of college professors, professional writers, and an

15 These critics were apparently unaware that the 50V19t5

admiral.
were abandoning the very educational practices they sought to emulate.
As early as 1959, professional educators wrote descriptions of the

‘6 Certainly, by 1961 knowledgeable

1958 Soviet educational reforms.
readers were aware of the Soviet reforms. The new literature col-
lapsed along with the failure of the Soviet space program to keep
pace with the American space program. And with two or three notable
exceptions, book literature by 1960 tended to return to the descrip-

tive mode of the pre-l958 period.

 

13Fadiman, "The Mess in Education."

14"Crisis In Education," Lifg_(March 24. 31, and April 7. l4.
and 21, 1958).

15Harris, American Education.

 

16Counts, "The Real Challenge."

174

As measured by educational expenditures compared with gross
national product (GNP), no discernible relationship can be established
with Sputnik. Table 1 measures American efforts to support educa-
tion since 1929-30 by comparing expenditures with the gross national
product. The GNP, which is calculated by the Office of Business Eco-
nomics, U.S. Department of Commerce, represents the total national
output of goods and services at market prices. It measures this

output in terms of the actual expenditures by which the goods and

TABLE l.--The percentages of gross national product which went for
educational purposes over the past forty years.

 

Expenditures for
Calendar Year School Year Education As a
Percentate of GNP

 

1929 1929-30 3.1
1931 1931-32 3.9
1933 1933-34 4.1
1935 1935-36 3.7
1937 1937-38 3.3
.1939 1939-40 3.5
1941 1941-42 2.6
1943 1943-44 1.8
1945 1945-46 2.0

- 1947 ‘ 1947-48 2.8
1949 1949-50 3.4
1951 1951-52 3.4
1953 1953-54 3.8

, 1955 1955-56 4.2
.-.1957 1957-58 4.8
*1959 1959-60 5.1
1961 1961-62 5.6
1963 1963-64 6.1
1965 1965-66 6.6
1967 1967-68 7.2
1969 . 1969-70 7.6
1970 1970-71 8.0

 

175

services are acquired. Thus GNP constitutes a convenient means by
which to appraise the level of educational expenditures.17
The percentage of gross national product which went for edu-
cational purposes has varied widely over the past forty years. Edu-
cational expenditures were relatively high in the mid-19305,
exceeding four percent of the gross national product in 1933-34.
They then declined to a low point of one and eight-tenths percent
during the height of the Second World War in 1943-44. Except for a
brief decline during the Korean conflict, when annual investment in
education tended to remain stable, there has been a steady increase
in the proportion of gross national product spent for education.
When viewed against this background, the rise in educational expendi-
tures during the years 1957-1962 takes on no special significance.
Rather than being attributable to Sputnik, the rise in educational
expenditures during 1957-62 was part of a long established trend
(since the Depression and the Second World War.
An analysis of the results of public school bond elections
in the period 1957-1970 yields similar results to the gross national
product analysis. Table 2 illustrates the percentage of public
school bond elections approved both on the number of issues and the

dollar value of issues.18

Close observation of the figures yields
mixed results. In 1958-59, the first year to measure the impact of

Sputnik on the electorate, an approval rate based on dollar value

 

17014511 Publication No. (05) 72-45, Digest of Educational
Statistics, 1971 Edition, p. 21.

181bid., p. 54.

 

176

TABLE 2.--The percentage of public school bonding elections approved
both on the number of issues and the dollar value of
issues.

 

Percent Approved

Percent ApprOVEd Based on Dollar

F15C31 Year Based on Number

 

Value
1957-58 Data not available 72.8
1958-59 Data not available 79.6
1959-60 Data not available 67.1
1960-61 Data not available 75.9
1961-62 72.2 68.9
1962-63 72.4 . 69.6
1963-64 72.5 71.1
1964-65 74.7 79.4
1965-66 72.5 74.5
1966-57 66.6 69.2
1967-68 67.6 62.5
1968-69 56.8 43.6
1969-70 52.3 49.5

 

of 79.6 percent was witnessed. This represents an inCrease of 7.2
percent over the previous year. But in 1959-60 the percentage
approved, based on dollar value, was only 67.1 percent. This repre-
sents a decrease of 5.7 percent from 1957-58 and a 12.5 decrease
from 1958-59. The average percent approved, based on dollar value
during the first five-year period, was 72.8. The average for 1958-
59 and 1959-60 was 73.3 percent. The significance of a deviation
from the average of .5 percent is unclear, especially when 1959-60
was 5.7 percent below the five-year average of 72.8 percent. On the
other hand, a marked decrease both in number and dollar value per-
centages took place in 1968-69 and 1969-70. Both of these were
unrelated to Sputnik. Thus, as measured by public school bonding

elections, no influence upon education by Sputnik can be established.

177

An analysis of actual enrollment in science and mathematics
courses in public high schools from 1948-49 to 1962-63 also illus-
trates no discernible relationship with Sputnik. Table 3 illustrates
the percentage of enrollment in selected science and mathematics

courses compared with total enrollment in grades 9-12.

TABLE 3.--The percentage of enrollment in selected science and mathe-
matics courses compared with total enrollment in grades

 

 

 

9-12.
Enrollment by Year
Item
1948-49 1954-55 1958-59 1962-63

Data not
All science courses 55 available. 59 60
. , Data not
All math courses 54 available. 65 7O
Biology ' 18.6 19.6 21.3 24.7
Physics 5.4 4.6 4.8 3.9
Chemistry 7.6 7.3 8.3 8.5
Plane Geometry 11 10 12.4 14.4
Solid Gemoetry 1.7 2.2 1.3 .7
Trigonometry 2 2.5 2.8 2.0

 

Source: Department of Health, Education, and Welfare Publi-
cation OE-10024-69, Digest of Educational Statistics, 1969 Edition,
p. 32. The percentage figures were obtained by dividing actual
enrollment statistics by total enrollment statistics given in Table
39 of the DHEW publication.

Again, close observation of the data yields mixed results. In all
but one category, Solid Geometry, the 1958-59 figures illustrate an
increase in percentage of enrollment over 1954-55. However, on
close observation a pattern of increase in all science courses and

all mathematics courses is evident since 1948-49. Also, in Physics,

178

Solid Geometry, and Trigonometry, significant decreases in enrollment
exist in 1962-63 as compared to 1958-59. These higher science and
mathematics courses were a major focus of the curriculum reform advo-
cates of the post-Sputnik period. The figures do not indicate a
lasting effect in increased enrollment over 1954-55. When viewed
against this background, the rise in percentage of enrollment fig-
ures during 1958-59 take on no special significance. Rather than
being a function of Sputnik, the rise in enrollments in science and
mathematics courses during 1958-59 and 1962-63 were part of an
established trend.

That these enrollment increases were not a function of Sput-
nik is also evident when one examines actual enrollment in the new
science and mathematics curriculums. A U.S. Office of Education
survey of enrollments in public high school science courses in the
1964-65 school year revealed that only twenty percent of the students
taking introductory physics were using the PSSC course. Only twenty-
five percent of those taking the College Board achievement test in
biology in the 1965-66 school year had used any of the three courses
prepared by the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study. And less than
twenty percent of those taking the chemistry achievement test that
year had followed either of the available chemistry curriculum revi-
sions. Certainly the new curriculums were used far less frequently
than the scholars who developed them and the commentators who favored

them had hoped.19

 

19Raymond G. Thompson, A Survey of the Teachingof Physics
in Secondary Schools; William Kastrinos, A’Survey of the Teaching_
of Biology in Secondary Schools; Frank J. Fornoff, A Survey of the

 

 

 

179

The data would seem to indicate that the popular view that
Sputnik fostered a significant change in American educational theory
and practice is not warranted. The so-called "new" curriculums
were inaugurated prior to the Soviet space achievements and, as
measured by actual enrollment figures, no direct influence by Sputnik
can be demonstrated. Such is also the case for statistical informa-
tion on expenditures for education as a percentage of gross national
product and the results of public school bonding elections.

0n the other hand, Sputnik was not without some influence
upon American education. The Soviet space achievements aided the
passage of the National Defense Education Act of 1958. The popular
furor influenced Representative Adam Clayton Powell to withdraw his
crippling "Powell Amendment." Informed commentators viewed the
inclusion of the "Powell Amendment" as fatal to aid to education
bills. And certainly Sputnik sparked an increased interest in Soviet
education. This interest can be demonstrated in the significant
increase in book and periodical literature on Russian education after
the launching of the Soviet satellite. Also, the character and
authorship of the literature changed. Prior to Sputnik educational
literature concerning the Soviet Union was descriptive in nature and
was the almost exclusive work of professional educators. After
Sputnik commentators used disclosures concerning Soviet education

to criticize American education. Many of the post-Sputnik authors

 

Teaching of Chemistry in Secondary,Schools; all published in
Princeton, New Jersey, by the Educational Testing Service in
1969.

180

were not professional educators. This new wave of Russian educa-
tional literature was rather short lived. It rose and fell with the
rise and fall of Russian space leadership.

Judged on the whole, no significant change in American edu-
cational theory and practice can be directly related to Sputnik and

subsequent Soviet space achievements.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

181

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources*

 

Books

Benton, William. This Is the Challenge: The Benton Reports of
1956-1958 on the Nature of the Soviet Threat. New York:
Associated College Presses, l958.

 

 

Counts, George S. I Want to Be Like Stalin. [From Pedagogy by
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Pinkevitch, Albert Petrovich. The New Education in the Soviet
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. Science and Education in the U.S.S.R. London: V. Gollancz
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Redl, Helen B. Soviet Educators on Soviet Education. New York:
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U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare Publication (0E)
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*In historiography, a primary source is distinguished from a
secondary source by the fact that the former gives the words of the
witnesses or first recorders of an event. The historian, using a
number of such sources, produces a secondary source. In "Sputnik and
American Education," the major focus was an examination of educational
literature during the period 1957-1962. Normally, such literature
would be considered secondary. In what follows, however, a number of
such sources are classified as primary inasmuch as they illustrate the
literary reactions to the launching of Sputnik I.

182

183

U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Digest of Educa-
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D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1969.

 

Digest 0f EduCational Statistics, 1971 Edition (OE 72-45).
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U.S. Office of Education. Education in the U.S.S.R., Bulletin 1957,

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Benton, William. ”Soviet Education: More Ominous Than the Hydrogen
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Berman, Harold J. "The Devil and Soviet Russia." The American
Scholar 27 (Spring 1958): 147-52.

 

"Common Sense and Sputnik: Let Us Remind Us That Goals Are Reached
by Hard Effort." Life, October 21, 1957, p. 35.

Congressional Digest, Vol. 37, Nos. 8 and 9 (August-September 1958),
pp. 193-224; Vol. 38, Nos. 6 and 7 (June-July 1959), pp.
161-92; V01. 40, Nos. 8 and 9 (August-September 1961),
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"Crisis In Education." Life, March 24, 1958, pp. 25-37; March 31,
1948. PP. 93-101; April 7, 1958. pp. 89-97; April 14, 1958,
pp. 117-25; April 21, 1958, pp. 103-111.

 

"The Deeper Problem in Education: It's Time to Dig Out Educationist
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Fadiman, Clifton. "The Mess in Education--Who Is Responsible?"
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"The Feat That Shook the Earth." Life, October 219 1957: PP- 19'30-

Furnas, C. C. "Why Did U.S. Lose the Race? Critics Speak Up."
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O'Neil, Paul. "Changes of Mind: New Survey Shows Surprisingly Fast
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Pinkevitch, Albert Petrovich. "Methods of Work in Higher Education
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No. 822 (September 27, 1930): 425-27.

184
"Soviet Satellite Sends U.S. Into a Tizzy." Life, October 14, 1957,
pp. 34-37.

"The Truth About Russia's Weakness." U.S. News and World Report.
April 11, 1958. pp. 46-54.

"What U.S. Thinks About Its Schools." Life, October 16, 1950,
pp. 11-18.

Wilson, Sloan. "It's Time to Close Our Carnival." Life, March 24,
1958. pp. 36-37.
Secondary Sources

Books

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Bell, Bernard Iddings. Crisis in Education: A Challenge to Ameri-
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Bereday, Geroge 2. F.; Brickman, William; and Read, Gerald, eds.
The Changing Soviet School. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.,
1960.

Bereday, George Z. F., and Pennar, Joan, eds. The Politics of Soviet
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Bestor, Arthur. Educational Wastelands. Urbana: University of
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The Restoration of Learning, New York: Knopf, 1955.

Bienienstok, Theodore, and Sayers, William. Problems of Secondary
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Bowen, James. Soviet Education: Anton Makarenko and the Years of
Experiment. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press,
1962.

 

Conant, James B. The American High School Today. New York: McGraw-
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. Education and Liberty. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1953.

 

185

Conant, James B. Education in a Divided World: The Function of the
Schools in Our Unique Society. Cambridge: Harvard Univer-
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Conrad, Earl. Public School Scandal: A Documented Expose. New York:
J. Day Co., 1951.

Counts, George S. The Challenge of Soviet Education: The Study of
Education As a Weapon. New York? McGraw-Hill, 1957.

 

 

. The Soviet Challenge to America. New York: The John Day
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Cremin, Lawrence. The Transformation of the School. New York:
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Dewey, John. The Authoritarian Attempt to Capture Education. Con-
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1944.

 

Experience and Education. New York: Collier, 1938.

 

 

Impressions of Soviet Russia and the Revolutionary World:
Mexico, China, Turkey. New York: New Republic, Inc., 1929.

 

 

 

DeWitt, Nicholas. Education and Professional Employment in the
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Research Council, 1961.

 

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Educational Policies Commission of the National Education Association.
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Educational Services for Young Children. 1945.

 

 

Education for All American Youth. 1944.

 

 

Fine, Benjamin. Our Children Are Cheated: Crisis in American Educa-
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Flesh, Rudolf. Why Johnny Can't Read. New York: Harpers, 1953.

 

Fornoff, Frank J. A Surveyyof the Teaching of Chemistry_in Second-
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Harnwell, Gaylord P. Russian Diary. Pittsburgh: University of
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186

Harper, Samuel Northrup. Civic Training_in Soviet Russia. Chicago:
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Harris, Raymond. American Education: Facts, Fancies, and Folk-
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Heckinger, Fred M. The Big Red Schoolhouse. New York: Doubleday
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Hill, Patty Smith, and Fedeaevskia, Vera Mikhailovna. Nurser
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Hulburd, David. This Happened in Pasadena. New York: Macmillan,
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Hutchins, Robert M. The Conflict in Education in a Democratic
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Keats, John. Schools Without Scholars. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
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King, Beatrice. Changing Man: The Educational System in the U.S.S.R.

 

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Korol, Alexander. Soviet Education for Science and Technology.
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Levin, Deana. Soviet Education Today. New York: J. DeGraff, 1959.

 

Levine, Irving R. Mainstreet U.S.S.R. Garden City: Doubleday,
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Lynd, Albert. Quackery in the Public Schools. Boston: Little
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187

Nearing, Scott. Education in Soviet Russia. New York: Inter-
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Sanford, Charles Wilson, ed. The Schools and National Security:
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Shore, Maurice Joseph. Soviet Education: Its Psycholggyand Phi-
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Timoshenko, Stephen. Engineering Education in Russia. New York:
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188

Trow, Clark, ed., and Kalachov, Paul D., trans. Character Education
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Wilson, Lucy Langdon Williams. The New Schools of New Russia. New
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Griffith, Francis. "Another Look at the Conant Report." Ihe_
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Book Reviews

 

Chamberlin, W. H. Review of This Is the Challenge by William Benton
in Chicago Sunday Tribune, June 15, 1958, p. 2.

 

. Review of This Is the Challenge by William Benton in
Foreign Affairs 374(October 1958): 175.

 

 

Dewey, John. Review of New Minds: New Men? by Thomas Woody in
Review of Reviews 71 (March 1932): 104.

 

Eurich, A. C. Review of Khruschev and the Central Committee Speak
on Education by George S. Counts, in Saturday Review,
December 22, 1959, p. 17.

 

Ferrer, Terry. Review of This Is the Challenge by William Benton
in New York Herald Tribune, June 22, 1958, p. 9.

 

 

Fine, Benjamin. Review of Public School Scandal by Earl Conrad in
New York Times, April 15, 1951, p. 26.

 

 

Fisher, Louis. Review of The Soviet Challenge to America by George -
S. Counts in the Boston Transcript, May 7, 1931, p. 7.
(Reprinted hiBook Review Digest.)

Goldberg, Miriam. Review of Diaryyof a Russian Schoolteacher by
E. Vigdorova in the Saturday Review, November 1960, p. 72.

 

Guilford, Kelsey. Review of Public School Scandal by Earl Conrad
in the Chicago Sunday_Iribune, April 29, 1951, p. 8.

 

Hansen, Harry. Review of the Soviet Challenge to America by George
S. Counts in New York World, February 7, 1931, p. 11.
(Reprinted in Book Review Digest.)

 

 

Heckinger, Fred M. Review of Public School Scandal by Earl Conrad
in The Saturday_Review of Literature, June 30, 1951, p. 15.

 

192

Ladd, E. T. Review of Diary of a Russian Schoolteacher by F.
Vigdorova.ir1 Social Education 25 (May 1961): 260.

 

 

Neatby, Helda. Review of Soviet Education by George Louis Kline in
Canadian Forum 38 (June 1958): 68. (Reprinted in the Book
Review Digest.)

 

 

 

Rogger, Hans. Review of This Is the Challenge by William Benton in
the New Republic, August 18, 1958, p. 28.

 

 

Scholtz, Karl. Review of The Soviet Challenge to Education by
George S. Counts in Annals of the American Academy 156
(July 1931): 159.

 

 

Shimkin, D. B. Review of Soviet Education for Science and Technology
by Alexander Korol in the American Journal of Sociology 64
(November 1958): 332.

 

 

Shorre, Daniel. Review of This Is the Challenge by William Benton in
the Saturdanyeview, June 21, 1958, p. 19.

 

 

Woody, Thomas. Review of Changing Man by Beatrice King in Annals of
the American Academy 194 (November 1937): 221.

 

 

Review of The Soviet Challenge to America by George S. Counts in
American Economic Review 21 (December 1931): 720.

 

 

Review of This Is the Challenge by William Benton in Booklist,
September 1, 1958, p. 10.

 

Review of This Is the Challenge by William Benton in Kirkus 26 (June l,
1958): 397. (Reprinted in Book Review Digest.)

 

 

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