Education – Old Magazine Articles

Teaching in the Forties
(Pageant Magazine, 1944)

“Teachers, during the war period, have been undergoing unprecedented, exhausting struggle in the classroom. And in their ranks have been casualties that add up to a dangerous teacher shortage. According to the National Education Association, ‘the economic status of teachers has been pushed back 20 years since Pearl Harbor’… The combination of overwork, underpay and the thanklessness of teaching has created an army of deserters from the profession.”

More on the hard lot of teachers during the war can be read here.

”I Like Being a Teacher”
(Pageant Magazine, 1952)

Eleanor Metheny (1908 – 1982) enjoyed a full life in academia, spanning over forty years. Mid-way through her career she wrote the attached article explaining to one and all why she found teaching such a fulfillment.

Problems with Progressive Education
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1952)

If you thought progressive education was a scourge that existed only in the digital age – you’d be wrong; the apostles of progressive education have simply been able to gain traction in our era where leftism has been enjoying greater momentum. Progressive education policies, intent on preserving the student’s “sense of self” over their genuine education, have been around for decades – and the attached article seems no different from much of the criticism that is leveled at them today.

“Critics of progressive education insist teachers don’t place enough emphasis on achievement in their fear of harming the child’s personality.”

”School for Monsters”
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

During the second week of February, 1945, the men of the U.S. Ninth Infantry Division ran across one of the six Leadership Academies run by Nazi King-Pin, Robert Ley (1890 – 1945; you can read about him here). Among the papers they liberated was a public relations pamphlet explaining what was required of each candidate and what would happen to them if they want out:

“These men must know and realize that from now on there is no road back for them. When the party takes the Brown Shirt away from anybody, the man involved will not only lose the office he holds, but he, personally, and his family, wife and children, will be destroyed.”

An eyewitness recalled Hitler as a boy…

The Fuehrer Schule at Vogelsang
(See Magazine, 1946)

“In 1934, Adolf Hitler boasted: ‘In my Ordensburgen a virile youth will be developed from whom the world will recoil in terror – a violent, dominating, intrepid, brutal youth indifferent to pain and knowing no tenderness or weakness.'”

Nice.

State Sponsored Ignorance
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)

The editors of Pathfinder Magazine were rightfully scandalized to report that the Mississippi State Senate voted in favor of purchasing two sets of civics books for the school children of their state:

[The] idea behind this, said the Senate Education Committee, was to eliminate instructions for voting from the books to be distributed to Negro pupils.

Kicking God Out of the Schools
(Newsweek Magazine & PM Tabloid, 1945)

A religion-in-the-schools trial, held last week in the Champaign, Illinois Circuit Court, will probably make history. The plaintiff was Mrs. Vashti McCollum, 32, pert, wide-eyed wife of a University of Illinois professor, demanding that the Champaign School Board discontinue a five-year program of religious instruction in school buildings, on the ground that the constitutional separation of church and state is jeopardized.

Posted herein was one of the first of many articles concerning what would come to known as the landmark Supreme Court case McCollum v. Board of Education (1948): the court decided in her favor.

Click here to read about Darwin in the schools.

The Battle Over History in the Twenties
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1926)

What do you know: the same arguments existed 100 years ago, too…

Should the Federal Government Fund Schools at All?
(Literary Digest, 1921)

‘The public school system will become a vast political machine.’ And this machine, it is charged, ‘will give a Federal Administration the opportunity of creating an educational autocracy, really endangering the liberty of thought and information, which is a basic right of the people.’

This article pertains to a bill that was before the Congress one hundred years ago that proposed the creation of a Department of Education. The bill was defeated. The proposed legislation was enthusiastically supported by the National Education Association.

Should the Federal Government Fund Schools at All?
(Literary Digest, 1921)

‘Revolt in the Classroom
(The Saturday Review, 1943)

This 1943 article by the noted American sociologist, Willard Waller (1899 – 1945), reported on the impact that W.W. II was having on the American educational system. Waller pointed out that during the course of 1942-43 school year, as many as 189,000 teachers had left their classrooms in order to work in defense plants. The author argued four distinct points that would halt the mass exodus – among them was the cry that salaries of teachers must be raised to the point where they match favorably with industry.

A 1944 photo-essay on this topic can be read here…

American Illiteracy in 1920
(Time Magazine, 1923)

The census-takers of 1920 to the people of America:

Can you read and write?

Five million men and women of America responded:

We cannot!

Trying to Understand Learning Disabilities
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

The kids who are discussed in this article would be called LD today – you don’t want to know how they were referred to in the early Twenties. Back then there were no Federally-funded commissions thronging with sympathetic PhD candidates to ramble on about convergence issues, processing concerns, the-classroom-learning-environment and the Learning Disabled. There were only frustrated kids, frustrated teachers and broken-hearted parents. This 1937 news article reports on the pioneering teachers at Seward Park High School in New York City and the earliest attempts to address the needs of students who suffered from language processing disorders, dyscalculia, dyslexia, dysgraphia and America’s favorite – good ol’ ADHD.

‘Our Schools Are A Scandal”
(Collier’s Magazine, 1946)

Ten million Americans can’t read and write, thousands of teachers are underpaid and, try as they may, our poorer states cannot afford to do anything about it. Every Congress since 1919 has refused to improve the situation… The truth seems to be that schools are no longer America’s sweetheart. When there is money to be divided in a state, roads come first, public health second and schools third.

Click here to read about an American woman who grew heartily sick of the socialists who loitered on every street corner during the Great Depression…

They Molded the American Mind
(’48 Magazine, 1948)

In 1948 the American history professor Henry Steele Commager (1902 – 1998) read this article that named the most powerful men in Cold War Washington – he then began to compose a list of his own, a list that he felt was far more permanent in nature. Commager wrote the names of the most influential thinkers of the past 100 years, leaders and writers who he credited for having supplied us with our symbols, our values, our ideas and ideals.

Schools Should Not Fly ”An Emblem Of War”
(Literary Digest, 1929)

Here is one from the everything old is new again collection. This 1929 article asks whether it was appropriate for schools to fly the American flag, believing as the this one cleric did, that the starry banner is an emblem of war.

Decline of Religiosity Among College Women
(Literary Digest, 1922)

The reporter who filed this 1922 article for Literary Digest was concerned with the secular world on college campuses that was damaging the well-balanced minds of American women:

Woman is learning the same things that are taught to her brother; scientific theories destructive of the faith she imbued at home…The women are not doing their duty – they are giving too much time to outside interests – they are degenerating! Women smoking! Women drinking! Women preferring adventures and amusement to caring for families! The flapper – the short skirt – the lack of corsets…

Click here to read the review of a novel that dealt the feminist discomfort with Christianity.

Decline of Religiosity Among College Women
(Literary Digest, 1922)

The reporter who filed this 1922 article for Literary Digest was concerned with the secular world on college campuses that was damaging the well-balanced minds of American women:

Click here to read the review of a novel that dealt the feminist discomfort with Christianity.