The
National Press Attack On Academic Schooling
In May of 191 1, the first salvo of a sustained national press
attack on the academic ambitions
of public schooling was fired. For the previous ten years the idea of school
as an oasis of mental development
built around a common,
high-level curriculum had been steadily undermined by the rise of educational psychology
and its empty-child/elastic- child
hypotheses. Psychology was a business from the first, an aggressive
business lobbying for jobs and
school contracts. But resistance of parents, community groups, and students themselves to the new
psychologized schooling was formidable.
As the summer of 191 1 approached, the
influential Educational Review gave educators something grim to muse upon as they prepared to clean out
their desks: "Must definite
reforms with measurable results be foresworn," it asked, "that
an antiquated school system may
grind out useless produce?" The magazine demanded quantifiable proof
of school's contributions to
society — or education should have its budget cut. The article, titled "An Economic Measure of
School Efficiency," charged that "The advocate of pure water or clean streets shows by how
much the death rate will be altered with each proposed addition to his share of the budget — only a
teacher is without such figures." An
editorial in Ladies Home Journal reported that dissatisfaction with
schools was
increasing, claiming "On every hand signs are evident of a widely
growing distrust of the
effectiveness of the present educational system..." In Providence,
the school board was criticized by
the local press for declaring a holiday on the Monday preceding Decoration Day to allow a four-day vacation.
"This cost the public $5,000 in loss of possible returns on the money invested," readers
were informed.
Suddenly school
critics were everywhere. A major assault was mounted in two popular journals, Saturday Evening Post and
Ladies Home Journal, with millions each in circulation, both read by leaders of the middle classes. The
Post sounded the anti-
intellectual theme this way:
"Miltonized, Chaucerized, Vergilized, Shillered, physicked and
chemicaled, the high school....
should be of no use in the world — particularly the business world."
Three heavy punches
in succession came from Ladies Home Journal: "The case of Seventeen Million Children — Is Our
Public-School System Providing an Utter Failure?" This declaration would seem difficult
to top, but the second article did just that: "Is the Public School a Failure? It Is: The
Most Momentous Failure in Our American Life Today." And a third, written by the principal of a New
York City high school, went even
further. Entitled "The Danger of Running a Fool Factory," it
made this point: that education is
"permeated with errors and hypocrisy," while the Dean of
Columbia Teachers College, James
E. Russell added that "If school cannot be made to drop its mental development obsession the whole
system should be abolished." [emphasis mine]
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