Charles Dorn

“Treason in the textbooks”: reinterpreting the Harold Rugg textbook controversy in the context of wartime schooling

For most educational historians, the Harold Rugg textbook controversy serves as an example of the mid‐twentieth‐century “assault” on progressive education. By restricting their analyses of the textbook controversy to the “rise and fall” of the progressivism paradigm, however, scholars have generally missed Americans’ more measured approach to the public school curriculum during World War II. That conservative opponents succeeded in having Rugg’s texts banned in some districts during a period of national crisis is hardly surprising; the United States has a rich history of politicized debate over public school textbooks. What is surprising, however, is the extent to which Rugg’s opponents failed to mount a broader textbook censorship movement during the war years. Although accurately representing the virulence with which right‐wing conservatives criticized Rugg, historians have understated the extent to which reactionaries’ charges against the author and his books were dismissed in towns and cities throughout the United States. Examining the Rugg textbook controversy within the context of wartime schooling, therefore, illuminates not so much the “decline” or “fall” of progressive education as the primarily moderate approach most Americans took towards the public school curriculum, even in the midst of a total war. Frequently characterized as defending the status quo during periods of peace and stability, such moderation was a virtue in a time of national crisis.

‘The World’s Schoolmaster’: Educational Reconstruction, Grayson Kefauver, and the Founding of UNESCO, 1942–46

The United States government sought to foster peaceful and stable democracies in Europe following the Second World War, especially in conquered enemy territories. This essay illuminates the tensions underlying that project by examining an important element of American foreign policy during the war era—the reconstruction of educational systems in war‐torn Axis and Allied nations. American educators during the war years, led by Stanford University School of Education Dean Grayson Kefauver, successfully convinced the US State Department that democratic educational systems in Europe were a prerequisite for postwar international security, an idea that led to the founding of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Conceiving of education as a cooperative enterprise, however, Kefauver and his colleagues encountered a significant dilemma while championing their proposals: how to advance educational reforms in foreign nations, particularly fallen totalitarian states, without violating the democratic principles they claimed to promote. It is the author’s contention that educational reconstruction was ultimately undermined by its proponents’ inability to identify and institutionalize an acceptable alternative to coercion, one that would serve the causes of both diplomacy and democratic education. This essay is dedicated to John McGeehan—teacher, mentor and friend.

Political Goals and Social Ideals: Dewey, Democracy, and the Emergence of the Turkish Republic

Most historical scholarship on John Dewey’s 1924 educational mission to Turkey has focused on the degree to which the educator and philosopher’s recommendations were actually implemented. By bringing the disciplinary lenses of history and philosophy to bear on Dewey’s mission, this collaborative study differs from previous work by illuminating the disjuncture between Dewey’s conception of democratic localism as essential to an educational system in a vibrant democracy (a social ideal) and Turkish officials’ view of centralized, formal education as a means to promulgate a homogeneous, modern, secular and democratic identity for their new nation-state (a political goal).

A Vital, Free, Independent, and Lay Republic

Only months following the 29 October 1923 declaration that established the Republic of Turkey, the country’s newly appointed minister of public instruction, Sefa Bey, invited U.S. philosopher and educator John Dewey to survey his fledgling country’s educational system. Having just emerged from a brutal war for independence, Turkey was beginning a process of rapid modernization under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatiirk, and government officials looked to Dewey for recommendations on how to make Turkish schools agencies of social reform that would advance their state’s identity as a democratic republic.

Evaluating Democracy The 1946 U.S. Education Mission to Germany

Following World War II, a group of American educators was assigned the task of evaluating the U.S. military government’s program for reconstructing Germany’s educational system. Although issuing a generally positive report, this education mission identified a number of persistent tensions that ultimately undermined America’s efforts to rehabilitate and reform German schooling. As with the American occupation of Germany during the postwar era, current U.S. foreign policy directives include establishing educational institutions in the “broader Middle East” as a primary mechanism for inculcating democratic values and ideals. Determining America’s success with these efforts, especially in ideologically conservative nations, poses a significant challenge to evaluators. Through an analysis of the 1946 Report of the United States Education Mission to Germany, this article presents a historical case study of the stumbling blocks, failings, and successes of one attempt to evaluate efforts in infusing democratic values into educational institutions in a fallen totalitarian state.