Presentation Type
Oral Presentation
Category
Social Sciences/Humanities
Abstract/Artist Statement
The Religious Reaction to Progressive Education in the 1950s: An Intellectual History
Considered the foremost theorist of progressive education, John Dewey challenged traditional pedagogies of rote memorization and advocated child-centered learning methods via sensual observation. By the 1930s, progressive education was the leading pedagogy in education departments at American Universities. A notable opponent of Dewey’s ideas was Robert Hutchins, president of Chicago University from 1929 to 1945. Hutchins advocated re-emphasizing the canon, an approach he called “liberal education.” With the end of WWII and the beginning of the Cold War, many Americans also became concerned that U.S. education lagged behind the Soviet Union’s. Fiery rebukes of progressive education, in addition to Hutchins’s, sparked a number of incendiary titles such as Albert Lynd’s Quackery in the Public Schools (1950) and Arthur Bestor’s Educational Wastelands (1953). Hutchins, Lynd, and Bestor also argued progressive education favored the instruction of average students at the expense of the “gifted.” Anxieties reached fever-pitch in 1957 when the U.S.S.R. launched the first satellite into space: Sputnik I. The failure to beat the Soviets to space seemed to prove progressive education’s critics right, and many Americans blamed progressive education.
James Conant described the conflict in education as one between professors of education and their colleagues from other university departments whom Conant labeled “academic” professors. In The Education of American Teachers (1963), Conant admitted “automatically vot[ing] with those who looked with contempt on the school of education” as a chemistry professor at Harvard. However, after becoming president of Harvard in 1933, Conant encouraged the two hostile groups to “if possible, learn to cooperate in their endeavors.”1
The flagship Protestant magazine Christian Century, featuring numerous articles by Hutchins as well as his detractors, printed a balanced selection of articles from both sides of the education debate relative to other publications. In contrast, writers for Commentary, a Jewish publication, and Catholic World tended toward stauncher positions, the two most prolific of whom were Spencer Brown and John Sheerin, respectively. Even as concerns about the inadequacies of American education and progressive education’s influence upon it climaxed after the launch of Sputnik, Brown contended that the United States suffered “not an educational but a political failure.”2 Sheerin, contrarily, called Sputnik the “death blow to progressive education.”3
This project illuminates the responses of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews to progressive education in the United States during the 1950s. To discern how the three major American religious groups presented this debate to their congregants through some of their most popular magazines: Christian Century, Catholic World, and Commentary. In addition to other religious magazines, this study will also utilize secular periodicals, journals, books, and newspapers, to place this intellectual conflict in a broader national conversation. Furthermore, this work frames these debates around Will Herberg’s observation in Protestant, Catholic, Jew (1955): paradoxically, post-war America experienced “pervasive secularism amid mounting religiosity.”4 This essay attempts filling in Herberg’s finding with related developments in education in the context of the Cold War, and endeavors a historiographical contribution with a topic that has received little scholarly attention.
[1] James Conant, The Education of American Teachers (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), 2.
[2] Spencer Brown, “Have our Schools Failed?” Commentary (June 1958): 461.
[3] John Sheerin, “Eclipse of Progressive Education,” The Catholic World (May 1958): 84.
[4] Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew (1955; repr., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 2.
Bibliography
Brown, Spencer. “Have our Schools Failed?” Commentary. June 1958.
Conant, James. The American High School Today. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959.
Herberg, Will. Protestant, Catholic, Jew. Chicago, I.L.: University of Chicago Press, 1955.
Sheerin, John. “Eclipse of Progressive Education,” The Catholic World. May 1958.
Mentor Name
Anya Jabour
Presentation video
The Reaction to Progressive Education in the Early Cold War: 1945-1959
The Religious Reaction to Progressive Education in the 1950s: An Intellectual History
Considered the foremost theorist of progressive education, John Dewey challenged traditional pedagogies of rote memorization and advocated child-centered learning methods via sensual observation. By the 1930s, progressive education was the leading pedagogy in education departments at American Universities. A notable opponent of Dewey’s ideas was Robert Hutchins, president of Chicago University from 1929 to 1945. Hutchins advocated re-emphasizing the canon, an approach he called “liberal education.” With the end of WWII and the beginning of the Cold War, many Americans also became concerned that U.S. education lagged behind the Soviet Union’s. Fiery rebukes of progressive education, in addition to Hutchins’s, sparked a number of incendiary titles such as Albert Lynd’s Quackery in the Public Schools (1950) and Arthur Bestor’s Educational Wastelands (1953). Hutchins, Lynd, and Bestor also argued progressive education favored the instruction of average students at the expense of the “gifted.” Anxieties reached fever-pitch in 1957 when the U.S.S.R. launched the first satellite into space: Sputnik I. The failure to beat the Soviets to space seemed to prove progressive education’s critics right, and many Americans blamed progressive education.
James Conant described the conflict in education as one between professors of education and their colleagues from other university departments whom Conant labeled “academic” professors. In The Education of American Teachers (1963), Conant admitted “automatically vot[ing] with those who looked with contempt on the school of education” as a chemistry professor at Harvard. However, after becoming president of Harvard in 1933, Conant encouraged the two hostile groups to “if possible, learn to cooperate in their endeavors.”1
The flagship Protestant magazine Christian Century, featuring numerous articles by Hutchins as well as his detractors, printed a balanced selection of articles from both sides of the education debate relative to other publications. In contrast, writers for Commentary, a Jewish publication, and Catholic World tended toward stauncher positions, the two most prolific of whom were Spencer Brown and John Sheerin, respectively. Even as concerns about the inadequacies of American education and progressive education’s influence upon it climaxed after the launch of Sputnik, Brown contended that the United States suffered “not an educational but a political failure.”2 Sheerin, contrarily, called Sputnik the “death blow to progressive education.”3
This project illuminates the responses of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews to progressive education in the United States during the 1950s. To discern how the three major American religious groups presented this debate to their congregants through some of their most popular magazines: Christian Century, Catholic World, and Commentary. In addition to other religious magazines, this study will also utilize secular periodicals, journals, books, and newspapers, to place this intellectual conflict in a broader national conversation. Furthermore, this work frames these debates around Will Herberg’s observation in Protestant, Catholic, Jew (1955): paradoxically, post-war America experienced “pervasive secularism amid mounting religiosity.”4 This essay attempts filling in Herberg’s finding with related developments in education in the context of the Cold War, and endeavors a historiographical contribution with a topic that has received little scholarly attention.
[1] James Conant, The Education of American Teachers (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), 2.
[2] Spencer Brown, “Have our Schools Failed?” Commentary (June 1958): 461.
[3] John Sheerin, “Eclipse of Progressive Education,” The Catholic World (May 1958): 84.
[4] Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew (1955; repr., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 2.
Bibliography
Brown, Spencer. “Have our Schools Failed?” Commentary. June 1958.
Conant, James. The American High School Today. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959.
Herberg, Will. Protestant, Catholic, Jew. Chicago, I.L.: University of Chicago Press, 1955.
Sheerin, John. “Eclipse of Progressive Education,” The Catholic World. May 1958.