Curriculum 1920s-1940s

By CurriculumKane

  • Bagley

    Bagley
    Criticizing progress education including the project method. Concerned with the transfer potency of William Killpatrick's project. Progressive education was too soft and he wanted curriculum to have a "common culture".

  • Charters

    Feels project method is a fact and doesn't prepare students to the future. Prefers "drills".

  • Composite Statement - Rugg

    Composite Statement - Rugg
    Sympathetic broad views of the world.
    Origins of social meliorists.
    "Participation in social life by providing a present life of experiences which increasingly identifies the child with the aims and activities derived from the analysis of social life as a whole."

  • Social Meliorists

    Brought to the fore the issue of schooling in relation to social progress.

  • Counts & Rugg

    Counts & Rugg
    Social Meliorists
    Rugg authored textbook, "Man and his Changing Society" with liberal progressive views. 1929
    Counts published "The Senior High School Curriculum" - observed that traditional subjects were now being defended. 1926

  • Bode

    Bode
    Opposed scientific method.
    Said it ignored "ideal of progressively changing social order".

  • Social Efficiency

    Social Efficiency
    Educators reinforced on instinctive belief on part of Americans that education ought to be tied to tangible rewards.

  • Herbert Hoover

    Herbert Hoover
    Elected president.
    Social efficiency engineer

  • Great Depression

    Great Depression
    Highlights the inequity between the classes.
    Origins of social reconstruction.

  • Eugene Randolph Smith

    Progressive Education
    7 Principles (see page 160)

  • Bagley and Demiashkevich

    Bagley and Demiashkevich
    Essentialism
    Push back to Progressive Education.
    "Only those things that are vitally important should be taught"
    Chaos and Criticism "through discipline to freedom"

  • Eclecticism of Curriculum

    Safer than social reconstructionism.

  • Virginia Curriculum Program

    Headed by Caswell.
    Curriculum reform produced a scope and sequence chart.
    Steps in curriculum making: state objectives, preparing materials to carry out objectives, introduced on trial basis, then modifications were made.

  • "Dare Progressive Education be progressive"

    Counts speech

  • Eight year study

    Eight year study
    Free schools from their shackles of college domination and then to demonstrate that the graduates of these "unshackled schools" were at least the equal of students who completed a traditional college prep program.
    Tyler was the appointed researcher.
    Developments: school surveys, development of a core curriculum, and infusion of behaviorism into curriculum thinking.

    Outcome of study - the experimental group came our "a little bit ahead".

  • Change and Reform

    Change and Reform
    Curriculum change for the sake of change.
    The following plans from the 1920s gained momentum in the 30s.
    Denver project for curriculum revision. Elimination of waste and active teacher input. (Jessie Newlong)
    Dalton Plan - traditional curriculum, monthly cards with assignments
    Winnethlea Plan - social efficiency concepts - individualistic but not expressing their own individuality.

  • Dewey "How we think"

    Restatement of the 1920s phases of how to think becomes used as fixed steps of scientific method.
    Dewey said stages "not fixed".

  • Tyler

    Tyler
    The "Tyler Rationale" emerged from the 8 year study.

  • Bode

    Sought a democratic system of education.
    Laws and truths were constructed and discovered as we went along.
    Enemy was absolutism.

  • Orlen K. Armstrong

    "Treason in the textbooks".
    Rugg's textbooks were challenged and dropped before WWII

  • WWII

    WWII
    Criticism of American society slipped out of vogue in favor of a wave of patriotism occasioned by an external threat of aggression.
    High School enrollment drops.
    Curriculum changes to include things needed for war effort: gunnery, aeronautics, home economics, first aid and nursing.

  • Conclusion of 8-year study

    Results of 8-year study trickle into curriculum.

  • Redbook

    Redbook
    Harvard faculty author "General education in a free society".
    Supported by Bagley. Opposed by Bobbitt.
    Endorsed "differentiated curriculum".

  • Life Adjustment Education

    Life Adjustment Education
    Response to WWII.
    Emerged from social efficiency.
    HS low enrollment.
    Replaces traditional subjects with daily living subjects.
    Poorly defined outcomes. Objectives poorly measured.
    Daily living topics included: dating, marriage, vocations, leisure life, physical and mental health.

  • Hindrances to reforms in secondary education

    Hindrances to reforms in secondary education
    Higher Education dictates curriculum because they set the entrance exams.
    Secondary education can't reform too much until post-secondary education changes.
    "Crisis in Education" book published. Dealt with the theme of godlessness in schools.
    "And madly teach" book published. Concerned with anti-intellectualism.