Composition: History & Theory: 1930 - 1939
Political Pressure
Description
Many of the major political shifts during the 1930s are predictable. In The American School From the Puritans to No Child Left Behind (2008), Joel Spring explains that as the economic crisis worsened, many local leaders called for drastic cuts in educational spending. The crisis also led many educators to advocate using schools to bring about a radical transformation of society. This created the image that radicals were taking over the schools which contributed to the right-wing arguments of the 1940s and 1950s that public schools had come under the influence of communism (345). Spring notes that the American Legion, which was founded in 1919 by WWI veterans who feared that U.S. military forces in Europe were being exposed to radical political ideas, was extremely active in education during this time period. As the legion grew, it focused its attention on schools, believing them to be a place where patriotism could be taught. “As part of the Americanism campaign,” Spring notes, “local American Legion members were urged to help weed out subversives from local school systems” (346). Subversives were pretty much defined as anyone with the audacity to think for themselves. Teachers became primary targets. This led to numerous firings, and even mass burnings of supposedly subversive textbooks.
Date of Upload
3/13/09