The Failure of Progressivism's Plans to Reform American K-12 Education
Remnant Review
Some of you know about this website: www.AmericanDeception.com. It is a compilation of over 400 long-forgotten documents, mostly published by the Left. The collection goes back a century. A nameless conservative has collected these documents.
Late last week, a libertarian public high school teacher sent me a link to a document that I had never heard of. It is in the American Deception collection. It was published in 1934: Report of the Commission on the Social Studies: Conclusions and Recommendations of the Commission. It sounds boring. It is boring. But this is the heart of the matter.
The document, while written by an academic for academics, was not intended to be boring. It was intended to be a manifesto that would reconstruct the American educational system, kindergarten through 12th grade. I have never seen in one document a clearer statement of what the goals were of the the Progressives' educational reform.
The progressive education movement was broader than the Progressive political movement. The best analysis of the philosophical background of progressive education is R. J. Rushdoony's book, The Messianic Character American Education (1963). Its origin goes back to the late 1830's in Massachusetts: Horace Mann and the rise of tax-funded schools. The best analysis of how it was implemented institutionally is the book by a retired public-school master teacher, John Taylor Gatto, The Underground History of American Education (2000). You can read it for free here. You can buy a Kindle edition for under eight dollars. Otherwise, it's expensive.
What most Americans are unaware of is the fact that, prior to 1890, American history was not taught in the public schools. It began to be taught only in the decade that saw the rise of the Progressive movement. Yet the battle for the minds of modern Americans has been fought in the textbooks on American history. The best book on this was written a generation ago by Francis FitzGerald: America Revised (1979). Because textbooks, especially high school textbooks, are not put on the shelves of the libraries of research universities, it was almost impossible for anybody to write a book like hers. If she had not had access to the resources of Columbia University's Teachers College, she could not have written it. Someday, it will be much easier. There will be PDFs of the major American textbooks in every field easily available on the web. Scholars will be able to see the shift in American public opinion by means of a close examination of the textbooks, especially the history textbooks. But that day is not yet.
THE COMMISSION'S OUTLOOK
The Commission on the Social Sciences was sponsored by the American Historical Association. The Commission began operations in late 1928. The research went on for five years. Finally, the Commission issued its report. It was published by a major New York publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons.
The report was signed by a dozen scholars. I recognized five of them: Charles A. Beard, George S. Counts, Avery Craven, Guy Stanton Ford, and Carlton J. H. Hayes. Beard was the most famous of them. He was the most respected historian in the nation. He was the only person elected to the presidency of the AHA and the American Political Science Association. He lost his reputation in 1948, when his book appeared on how President Roosevelt manipulated Japan's government into attacking the United States: President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War. Overnight, he became a pariah. He died in September 1948.
Beard and Counts were the main scholars associated with the Commission. Their collection of correspondence indicates this.
The George S. Counts and the Charles A. Beard Correspondence (1929-1947), which contains about 235 letters and a number of manuscripts and reprinted materials, documents the professional and personal relationship of the two men. Much of the early correspondence deals with the work of the Commission on the Social Studies, and there are a large number of letters which discuss revisions of volumes Counts and Beard were working on for the Commission, including the final report. There are also outlines of several of the volumes at various stages of composition.
Rushdoony devoted Chapter 22 to Counts: "Who Shall Control Education?" He wrote: "Counts is well-known for his insistence that a new social order, a planned economy, must be built, and that the schools must help build it" (p. 238). He cited Counts' view of public education as an agency of evolution. Counts wrote this in 1932: Dare the Schools Build a New Social Order? His conclusion was simple: they must do this. "I am prepared to defend the thesis that all education contains a large element of imposition, that in the very nature of the case this is inevitable, that the existence and education of society depend upon it, that it is consequently eminently desirable, and that the frank acceptance of this fact by the educator is a major professional obligation (Dare, p. 12).
This outlook governed the report of the Commission. We do not know who wrote the report, but as a professional writer, I say in confidence that the report was written by one person. The rest of the committee had influence in altering it, but the leaden style of the entire report is clearly the work of a single pedantic academic.
This was a well-funded operation. It went on for five years in the early years of depression, when money was exceedingly scarce. Appendix B contains a long list of participants, beginning in January 1929 and ending in December 1933. We read that the Commission "recognizes its indebtedness to the Trustees of the Carnegie Corporation, whose financial aid made possible the whole five year investigation of social science instruction in the schools, eventuated in the following conclusions and recommendations" (p. xi).
Beard recruited historian Merle Curti into the project.
Beard admired Curti's scholarship and enlisted him to participate in the Commission on the Social Sciences created by the American Historical Association. The purpose of this commission was to improve the teaching of history at the high school and college levels. Curti was asked to write volume ten of the Report of the American Historical Association's Committee on the Social Studies in the School. This book, The Social Ideas of American Educators (1935), analyzed the educational philosophy of a group of men from the colonial period onward, concluding with John Dewey. Curti focused on whether the educational ideas of these men encouraged or discouraged the development of democracy. Like his mentors, Charles Beard and John Dewey, Curti argued that capitalism, with its emphasis on competition and with its hierarchical organization, was a threat to democracy. He shared Dewey's hope that schools could provide an alternative environment of cooperation and equality that would strengthen democracy in the United States.
On page 1, the report makes clear its presuppositions.
2. . . . the Commission could not limit itself to a survey of textbooks, curricula, methods of instruction, and schemes of examination, but was impelled to consider the condition and prospects of the American people as a part of Western civilization now merging into a world order.3. The Commission was also driven to this broader concept of its task by the obvious fact that American civilization, in common with Western civilization, is passing through one of the great critical ages of history, is modifying its traditional faith in economic individualism, and is embarking upon vast experiments in social planning and control which call for large-scale cooperation on the part of the people. It is likewise obvious that in corresponding measure the responsibilities and opportunities of organized education, particularly in the social sciences, are being increased (pp. 1-2).
The Commission made its point even more clear in these paragraphs.
8. Under the moulding influence of socialized processes of living, drives of technology and science, pressures of changing foreign policy, and disrupting impacts of economic disaster, there is a notable waning of the once widespread popular faith in economic individualism; and leaders in public affairs, supported by a growing mass of the population, are demanding the introduction into economy of ever-wider measures of planning and control.9. Cumulative evidence supports the conclusion that, in the United States as in other countries, the age of individualism and laissez-faire in economy and government is closing and that a new age of collectivism is emerging (p. 16).
How will this be implemented? Paragraph 10 informs us:
Almost certainly it will involve a larger measure of compulsory as well as voluntary cooperation of citizens in the conduct of the complex national economy, a corresponding enlargement of the functions of government, and an increasing state intervention in fundamental branches of economy previously left to individual discretion and initiative--a state intervention that in some instances may be direct and mandatory and in others indirect and facilitative. In any event the Commission is convinced by its interpretation of available empirical data that the actually integrating economy of the present day is the forerunner of a consciously integrated society in which individual economic actions and individual property rights will be altered and abridged (p. 17).
On what philosophical premises is all this based? None in particular. "Although the commission has discovered no all-embracing system of social laws which, imposed upon the educator, fixes the objectives and practices of the school, it believes its frame of reference to be into entirely consistent with the findings and thought of contemporary social science" (pp. 27-28). Put more specifically: "We are making this up as we go along."
Being a form of social action, education always has a geographical and cultural locations; it is therefore specific, local, and dynamic, not general, universal, and unchanging; it is a function of a particular society at a particular time and place in history; it is rooted in some actual culture and expresses the philosophy and recognized needs of that culture. Contemporary American society of course is of vast proportions and manifests wide reaching economic and cultural ramifications extending to the most distant parts of the world (p. 31).
TAX-FUNDED CHANGE AGENTS
The Commission understood that education is necessarily about hierarchy and power. "Education always expresses some social philosophy, either large or small, involves some choices with respect to social and individual action and well-being, and rests upon some moral conception" (p. 30). In short, there is no such thing as neutrality.
The public should trust public school educators. "Conceived in a large and clarified frame of reference, education is one of the highest forms of statesmanship: a positive and creative attack upon the problems generated by the movement of ideas and interests in society" (p. 30).
Educators have their work ahead of them. Consider the following sentence.
The implications for education are clear and imperative: (a) the efficient functioning of the emerging economy and of the full utilization of its potentialities require profound change once in the attitudes and outlook of the American people, especially the rising generation--a complete and frank recognition that the old order is passing, that the new order is emerging, and the knowledge of realities and capacity to cooperate are indispensable to the development and even the preponderance of American society; and (b) the rational use of the new leisure requires a cultural equipment which will give strength and harmony to society in stead of weakness and discord (pp. 34-35).
Educators have the responsibility of preparing Americans for this new world order, and not only preparing them for it--shaping their attitudes towards it. The people must become favorable to it.
1. Organized public education in the United States, much more than ever before, is now compelled, if it is to fulfill its social obligations, to adjust its objectives, its curriculum, its methods of instruction, and its administrative procedures to the requirements of the emerging integrated order.2. If the school is to justify its maintenance and assume its responsibilities, it must recognize the new order and proceed to equip the rising generation to cooperate effectively in the increasingly interdependent society and to live rationally and well within its limitations and possibilities.
3. It thus follows that educators are called upon to examine critically the frame of reference under which they have been operating, and to proceed deliberately to the clarification and affirmation of purpose in the light of the changed and changing social situation and in the light of those facts and trends which remain compelling, irrespective of individual preferences.
4. Educators stand today between two great philosophies of social economy: the one representing the immediate past and fading out in actuality, an individualism in economic theory which has become a hostile and practice to the development of individuality for the great masses of the people and threatens the survival of American society; the other representing and anticipating the future on the basis of actual trends--the future already coming into reality, a collectivism which may permit the widest development of personality or lead to a bureaucratic tyranny destructive of ideals of popular democracy and cultural freedom (pp. 36-37).
A new world order is coming. "In the integrated society now emerging the ideal of individual, institutional, and local advancement will of necessity giveaway increasingly to considerations of general, national, and world welfare" (p. 39).
All of this raises the question of money. In the context of public education, it raises the question of money collected from the public through taxation.
10. For this reason it will be necessary to provide funds, equipment, materials, and training in the social sciences fully adequate to the services they are required to render. Unless the social knowledge and skill required for the operation of the emerging society are forthcoming, the foundations for the support of all cultural interests will crumble away with the disintegration of society itself (p. 42).
Taxpayers will fork over the money or else society will disintegrate. This is why taxpayers must be compelled by law to support the educators who will work towards the creation of this new world order.
What if local people don't want this agenda forced on them and their children? What if they pressure local school board to fire teachers who pursue this agenda? The Commission had the answer:
12. In order that the individual teacher, out of loyalty to this supreme ideal of social science instruction, may be protected against the assaults of ignorant majorities, heresy-hunting minorities, and all self constituted guardians of public morals and thought, the profession as a whole must make provision for the review of controversies, thus arising, by trained specialists competent to pass judgment upon the scholarship, subject matter, and manner of presentation in question.13. In the case of unfair or unwise dismissal the profession must be prepared to conduct energetic and appropriate inquiries and, by resort to the courts if necessary, see that justice is done, damages assessed, and reinstatement achieved. The tradition must be established in American schools that the teacher will be protected in the efficient performance of his professional duty. It is particularly imperative that isolated teachers in small communities and districts shall not be left virtually defenseless. Otherwise, as experience has already indicated, the teaching of the social sciences will become a pure mockery and in the course of time may be expected to increase the terror and bitterness of social conflict.
14. Through similar instrumentalities the courageous and farsighted administrator, standing at the storm center of the educational system must be protected against the First, the ignorance, and the animosity of special groups, organizations, and classes (pp. 133-35).
This rhetoric of confrontation between professional educators who have been certified by other professional educators versus the general public that is going to be compelled to pay for the schools makes it clear that teachers must be autonomous. They must be allowed to teach whatever social science supposedly teaches,, irrespective of the desires of parents in the community who decide to organize politically to take over the school boards.
The question then arises: exactly what program did the Commission recommend? The answer is amazing, given the highflying rhetoric.
NO RECOMMENDATIONS
At the very beginning, the author of the report thanked the Carnegie trustees for their support of the project, which would involve "Conclusions and Recommendations" (p. 9). The header on every even-numbered page announced Conclusions and Recommendations. The text is 143 pages. Yet I searched in vain for any recommendations.
Chapter IV, "Materials of Instruction," ended with this. "The commission refuses to endorse any detailed scheme of organization as best calculated to accomplish the purposes above stated and is suited in one precise form to the schools of the entire country" (p. 66). This had to do with the curriculum. There was no national curriculum in 1934.
Chapter V is "The Method of Teaching." On the one hand, the Commission wanted unification.
2. Method of teaching is conditioned by the fact of continuity in child growth. The Commission regards as fundamental the organization of social science instruction in a single unified and comprehensive program extending from the kindergarten to the junior-college and marked by steady progression from year to year. Only confusion can flow from the theory that instruction in any grade can be organized without reference to what has gone before or what is to come after (p. 74).
So, there has to be a systematic, unified, and comprehensive program from kindergarten through junior college.This declaration is followed by paragraph 3.
Method of teaching is conditioned by the organization of the materials of instruction. Indeed a decision concerning the general pattern of the organization of the course of study in the social sciences is at the same time a decision in method. The Commission, as already pointed out, places its stamp of approval on no particular plan of organization (p. 74)
So, the Commission had no recommendation regarding a unified curriculum, meaning the content of education. It also had no recommendation with respect to the method of teaching the content of education. Then what, exactly, had the Commission achieved in five years of heavily subsidized investigations? What was its program of reform? How would this program be implemented across the nation? The report answered these questions forthrightly: "We aren't saying."
Chapter VI is devoted to "Tests and Testing." Here, we learn that tests do not prove anything. This is especially true of intelligence tests. "At present there seems to be no general agreement among students as to what it is that the test actually measures" (p. 90).
Whatever may be the nature of intelligence, the social sciences, being unable to isolated from conduct and social manifestations, from social classes and their cultural apparatus, from the evolution of ideas as forces in history, from exercises of will, from ethical and aesthetic aspirations and valuations, cannot accept the theory that intelligence is a self-contained particularity which acts inexorably as an independent and original force in society (p. 91).
That is a long sentence. It is an announcement of pure agnosticism regarding intelligence. But how can you run the school, a classroom, or a civilization without some theory of intelligence? How can you evaluate the effects of intelligence on people's behavior and productivity if there are no numerical measures?
Did America's public schools abandon IQ tests? No. Eight decades later, the eternally liberal National Public Radio asked the question: "Is It Time To Get Rid of IQ Tests In Schools?"
Tests are positively evil.
Where the new-type tests are chiefly relied on two major evils are sure to emerge--the placing of a fictitious rating on the student who is clever at learning the "tricks of the trade," and the encouragement of students to go to college her into life without ever having to put forth continuous and constructive effort in thinking and writing in the fields of history, political science, economics, sociology, and human relations (p. p. 99).
What about grading in schools? It's bad. "In the application of these principles to the teaching of the social sciences suggests the unreality of a program composed of disparate units of study for the several grades of the public school, organize primarily in terms of academic testing and the accumulation of credits" ( p. 56).
What about testing in general?
The assumption that new type task and guide and measure the efficiency of instruction in the social sciences is based on misconceptions of social processes, and such test, except where used as occasional checks on other examining methods, do positive damage to the mines and powers of children in the ways already indicated (p. 100).
What have we seen since 1934? The triumph of national testing: SAT, ACT, AP, CLEP, DSST, GRE, LSAT. Scores determine who gets into what universities with how much financial aid. We still hear diatribes against testing, but these diatribes accomplish precisely nothing. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
AN EMPTY SHELL
What have we learned from the commission's report? First, the world is moving towards collectivism and internationalism. The entire teaching establishment of the country must be united in persuading students of this seemingly irreversible development.
Second, any local school boards that get in the way of teachers in their pursuit of this high-minded goal must be opposed in the courts.
Third, in order to facilitate this educational vision, there are certain things lacking. The commission had no recommendation with respect to a curriculum. It also had no recommendation with respect to the best teaching methodology.
This raises an obvious question. If there is no agreement among social scientists regarding the content of the national curriculum and the best teaching methodologies to impart the message of this national curriculum, how did the commission's members think that their agenda could be consolidated, extended, and accepted across the nation?
In page after page of platitudes, the author of the report praised the creativity of classroom teachers. They serve only the highest moral and philosophical purposes. They do this, not out of self-interest, but in terms of a vision of social transformation.
The Commission tantalized readers with these words: "Here is the keystone of the practical program which the commission proposes for the consideration of the American people" (p. 104).
4. Knowing that the competent teacher has no need of detailed prescriptions of method and subject matter, knowing that no set of mechanical and detailed outlines a procedure can render competent the incompetent teacher, and knowing further that emphasis on the value of mere pedagogical remedies gives a false sense of accomplishment and stands in the way of the real improvement of teaching, the commission refuses to place its seal of approval on any particular set of pedagogical formulae (p. 104).
Then what of the less competent teacher? He is on his own.
5. The commission therefore, fully aware of its choice, frankly and deliberately addresses its report primarily to teachers who are either competent already were desirous of becoming so; it makes no effort to reach those who seek relief, through reliance on particular methods, from the pain of acquiring knowledge, taking thought, and clarifying purpose; it makes no effort to reach those who have no desire to associate with the great spirits of all ages through the persistent study of the classics of social thought and no desire to become familiar with the great social trends, tensions, and philosophies of the age. (pp. 104-5).
Appendix A is titled "Next Steps." No steps are listed. But we get lots of platitudes.
This was the educator's worldview: leadership by bureaucratic committees. They really did believe that an annual weekend meeting of a bunch of powerless educators which resulted in an official statement was a substitute for a national curriculum and an agreed-upon system of teaching. There is no trace of any of these weekend proclamations. I doubt that there was any trace of them three weeks after the weekend meetings ended. It was 1934. Local teachers were paid little, but because they were paid by taxes, they were in better shape than most of their neighbors. They feared getting fired. The thought that these people would be vanguards of a consolidation of the Progressives' new world order was nothing short of ludicrous in 1934. The author of the report and the men who signed it were aware of the fact that they had not given any specific recommendations regarding American education. The report literally bragged about this. "In fine, the Commission has felt bound, by the terms of its instructions and the nature of the subject entrusted to its consideration, to provide a frame of reference for the orientation of philosophy and purpose in education rather than a bill of minute specifications for guidance" (p. 148). It was as if the Emperor had been caught in the parade with no clothes, and instead of running for cover, he insisted In confidence that parading stark naked was proof of his wisdom. This report was an empty shell. The teaching of history in America was not even slightly affected by this report. The report sank without a trace. The most influential teacher of American history in American history was a Progressive and a theological liberal: David Saville Muzzey. He wrote the most popular American history textbook from 1911 until the mid-1960s. He taught more Americans about American history than any other historian. He was a nationalist. He was liberal in his theological and political convictions, but there was no trace of internationalism in his books, and he was not an advocate of a theory of historical development that pointed to the collectivization of the American economy. In her unique and insightful history of American public high school history textbooks,America Revised, Francis FitzGerald made this observation: "In the days of Muzzey, American history had gentlemen, shysters, hotheads, statesmen, and fools; it now has only cypher people, who say very little and think nothing--who have no passions and no logic" (p. 154). This was not what the Commission's members had in mind, but that is what resulted from the tax funding of American high schools. The Commission's efforts did not secure masterful teaching, visionary teachers, or the extension of the internationalist new world order. The literary style of the history textbooks a generation later began to resemble the bland platitudes that filled the Commission's report. Once again, we see the law of unintended consequences in action. CONCLUSION We can look back 85 years to see what, if anything, this report produced. It produced no program. Educational standards have steadily fallen since 1934. The costs of running the schools as a percentage of national income have steadily increased. The United States spends a higher percent of its GDP on education than any other nation. Administrators extract the lion share of school budgets. There still is no national curriculum established by law. There are still no national requirements for certifying teachers. The free market continues to be the driving force in American life. This is being imitated around the world. The United Nations is a toothless organization, just as the League of Nations was in 1934. Meanwhile, Salman Khan and the Khan Academy teachers teach 18 million students around the world. Khan is a graduate of the Harvard Business School. He had no formal training in teaching social science. He has single-handedly revolutionized Internet-based education. He gives his program away for free. It does not cost the taxpayers a dime. No school board authorizes what he teaches. He has created his own curriculum materials. He has his own teaching methodology. The Ron Paul Curriculum exists for those parents who want a more self-consciously free market approach to teaching the social sciences, and Tom Woods and I teach them at the high school level. The money spent by the Carnegie Corporation on promoting this long-forgotten five-year project was money down the drain. This was exactly where it belonged.