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

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• Harold Rugg
• text books
• Second World War
• censorship
• progressive education

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Daniel Perlstein and Benjamin Justice for helpful conversations leading to the writing of this article. Support for the research comprising this study was provided by a Bowdoin College Faculty Leave Fellowship.

Notes

¹ Throughout the war era, conservative reactionaries used the term “ban” to describe their goal of completely eradicating Rugg’s books from school classrooms and libraries.

² Recent works by prominent US educational historians, including Jonathan Zimmerman and Diane Ravitch, suggest the importance of textbook censorship as an area of study in educational history. Indeed, Zimmerman and Ravitch both cite the Harold Rugg textbook controversy as central in understanding the historic role of politically motivated special interest groups in public education in the United States. See Jonathan Zimmerman, Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); Diane Ravitch, The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn (New York: Vintage Books, 2004). Although this study’s interpretation of the meaning of the Rugg textbook controversy differs from one recently put forth by Ronald W. Evans, Evans provides a reliable account of Rugg’s prewar and wartime experience. See Ronald W. Evans, This Happened in America: Harold Rugg and the Censure of Social Studies (Information Age Publishing, 2007).

³ See, for instance, Ronald W. Evans, The Social Studies Wars: What Should We Teach the Children? (New York: Teachers College Press, 2004); Diane Ravitch, Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reform (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000); Herbert M. Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893–1958, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1995); among others.

⁴ Arthur Zilversmit, for instance, writes, “While attacks on progressive education were already an important factor in public debates on education on the eve of World War II, now the assault on its ‘soft’ pedagogy escalated rapidly.” Arthur Zilversmit, Changing Schools: Progressive Education Theory and Practice, 1930–1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 106.

⁵ Patricia Albjerg Graham, Progressive Education: From Arcady to Academe (New York: Teachers College Press, 1967), 21.

⁶ Although American historians have demonstrated the importance of the Second World War to the history of the USA, educational historians have generally ignored this crisis in their examinations of public schooling. Curricular historian O.L. Davis has observed, “the nation’s wartime curriculum, even as a curiosity, has received more attention in American social histories than in histories of education. The obscurity of the American wartime curriculum illustrates the larger neglect of the war’s impact on schools by educational historians and other educators.” As Davis indicates, histories of public schooling tend to use the Second World War as a chronological marker indicating a study’s beginning or end (such as Diane Ravitch’s The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945–1980) or else they ignore the war entirely (Henry Perkinson, Joel Spring and Lawrence Cremin have all published well‐respected school histories without seriously considering the war’s importance). Remarking on this surprising lack of attention, Ronald Cohen has also observed how educational historians “have concentrated on the early decades of the century, and rightfully so, but in the process have generally ignored the last fifty years. The World War II years, in particular, have been glossed over.” Similarly, Alan Garrett has noted, “Reactions of the American educational community to the events and conditions precipitated by World War II remain largely unexplored….” O.L. Davis, “The American School Curriculum Goes to War, 1941–1945: Oversight, Neglect, and Discovery,” Journal of Curriculum and Supervision 8, no. 2 (1993): 126; Ronald D. Cohen, “World War II and the Travail of Progressive Schooling: Gary, Indiana, 1940–1946,” in Schools in Cities: Consensus and Conflict in American Educational History, ed. Ronald K. Goodenow and Diane Ravitch (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1983), 263; Alan W. Garrett, “Planning for Peace: Visions of Postwar American Education During World War II,” Journal of Curriculum & Supervision 11, no. 1 (1995): 6; Diane Ravitch, The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945–1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1983); Henry J. Perkinson, The Imperfect Panacea: American Faith in Education, 1865–1976, 2nd ed. (New York: Random House, 1977); Joel Spring, The American School, 1642–1985 (New York: Longman, 1986); Lawrence Cremin, American Education: The Metropolitan Experience, 1876–1980 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988).

⁷ See Gerard Giordano, Twentieth‐Century Textbook Wars: A History of Advocacy and Opposition, ed. Alan R. Sadovnik and Susan F. Semel, vol. 17, History of Schools and Schooling (New York: Peter Lang, 2003); Diane Ravitch, The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn (New York: Vintage Books, 2004); David Tyack, “Monuments between Covers: The Politics of Textbooks,” American Behavioral Scientist 42, no. 6 (1999): 922; Joan DelFattore, What Johnny Shouldn’t Read: Textbook Censorship in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); Philip G. Altbach et al., eds., Textbooks in American Society: Politics, Policy, and Pedagogy, Frontiers in Education (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991); Michael W. Apple and Linda K. Christian‐Smith, eds., The Politics of the Textbook (New York: Routledge, 1991); Lee Burress, Battle of the Books: Literary Censorship in the Public Schools (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1989); Michael Apple, Teachers and Texts: A Political Economy of Class and Gender Relations in Education (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986); Frances FitzGerald, America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979); Edward B. Jenkison, Censors in the Classroom (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1979); Jack Nelson and Gene Roberts, The Censors and the Schools (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1963). Also see Arthur Woodward, David L. Elliott, and Kathleen Carter Nagel, Textbooks in School and Society: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide to Research (New York: Garland Publishing, 1988).

⁸ Roger Lotchin, The Bad City in the Good War: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Diego (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003), 231.

⁹ Zimmerman, Whose America?, 79.

¹⁰ David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 783–6.

¹¹ George N. Shuster, “Dr. Harold Rugg Replies to His Critics,” New York Times, April 27, 1941, BR5.

¹² Harold Rugg, That Men May Understand: An American in the Long Armistice (New York: Double Day, Doran and Co., 1941), 177–80. “Industrial civilization is on trial…,” Rugg would write in 1932, “The world is on fire, and the youth of the world must be equipped to combat the conflagration. Nothing less than thoroughgoing social reconstruction is demanded, and there is no institution known to the mind of man that can compass that problem except education.” See Harold Rugg, “Social Reconstruction through Education,” Progressive Education 9–10, nos. 8 & 1 (1932/1933): 11.

¹³ Rugg, That Men May Understand, 181–93. On the development of Rugg’s worldview and curricular program, see Evans, This Happened in America, especially chapters two and three.

¹⁴ Quoted in Peter F. Carbone, The Social and Educational Thought of Harold Rugg (Durham: Duke University Press, 1977), 139. For Rugg’s proposal as it related to the development of social studies as a subject of study, see Harold Rugg, “How Shall We Reconstruct the Social Studies Curriculum?,” The Historical Outlook 12, no. 5 (1921): 184–89; Harold Rugg, “Problems of Contemporary Life as the Basis for Curriculum‐Making in the Social Studies,” in The Twenty‐Second Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part II, ed. Guy Montrose Whipple (Bloomington, IN: Public School Publishing Company, 1923).

¹⁵ On the development of social studies as a field of study, see David Jenness, Making Sense of Social Studies (New York: Macmillan, 1990); Michael B. Lybarger, “Origins of the Social Studies Curriculum, 1865–1916” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1981).

¹⁶ William J. Reese, America’s Public Schools: From the Common School to No Child Left Behind (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 180–200.

¹⁷ Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 17–25.

¹⁸ Herbert M. Kliebard, Changing Course: American Curriculum Reform in the 20th Century (New York: Teachers College Press, 2002), especially chapter 2. On redefining the principles of “citizenship” during this period, see Julie Reuben, “Beyond Politics: Community Civics and the Redefinition of Citizenship in the Progressive Era,” History of Education Quarterly 37, no. 4 (1997): 399–420.

¹⁹ Historian Diane Ravitch credits Jones with coining the term “social studies” and the Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education for creating “a new subject called social studies”. Ravitch, Left Back, 127.

²⁰ Christine Woyshner, Jospeh Watras, and Margaret Smith Crocco, eds., Social Education in the Twentieth Century: Curriculum and Context for Citizenship (New York: Peter Lang, 2004), xii–xiii.

²¹ Ravitch, Left Back, 127.

²² Although opposition to replacing history courses with “social studies” curricula existed throughout the first half of the twentieth century, it received widespread attention in 1943 when the New York Times published the results of a survey of 7000 college freshmen indicating that many were “ignorant” of their nation’s history. See Sam Wineburg, “Crazy for History,” Journal of American History 90, no. 4 (2004): 1401–14.

²³ Andra Makler, “‘Problems of Democracy’ and the Social Studies Curriculum During the Long Armistice,” in Woyshner, Watras, and Crocco, eds., Social Education in the Twentieth Century, 21.

²⁴ Rugg, That Men May Understand, 44–5; Carbone, The Social and Educational Thought of Harold Rugg, 28. On the series’ development, see Marian C. Schipper, “Textbook Controversy: Past and Present,” New York University Education Quarterly 14, no. 3 (1983): 31–2. On the incorporation of Rugg’s educational philosophy of education into the series, see Makler, “‘Problems of Democracy’ and the Social Studies Curriculum During the Long Armistice”; Elmer A. Winters, “Man and His Changing Society: The Textbooks of Harold Rugg,” History of Education Quarterly 7, no. 4 (1967): 493–514. On Rugg’s treatment of the First World War as a case study of this approach, see Kliebard, Changing Course, chapter five.

²⁵ Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 175.

²⁶ Carbone, The Social and Educational Thought of Harold Rugg, 28.

²⁷ “Board Clears 4 School Books of Red Charges,” Washington Post, December 19, 1935, 1.

²⁸ Carbone, The Social and Educational Thought of Harold Rugg, 26.

²⁹ Schipper, “Textbook Controversy,” 32. In 1941, Falk helped found “The Guardians of American Education, Inc.”, a reactionary group that claimed it was “a completely independent, non‐profit, non‐political, non‐sectarian organization … alarmed by propaganda in school books designed to undermine patriotism and faith in American institutions and bring about radical changes in our form of society.” The group dissolved in 1952. The organisation’s archives are located at Yale University, Divinity Library Special Collections, Social Ethics Pamphlet Collection, Record Group No. 73, Series I: G, Box 16, Folder 16, “Guardians of American Education, Inc.”

³¹ Ibid.

³⁰ Bertie C. Forbes, “Treacherous Teachings,” Forbes, August 15, 1939, 8.

³² Alonzo F. Myers, “The Attacks on the Rugg Books,” Frontiers of Democracy 7, no. 55 (1940): 17–18; David Tyack, Robert Lowe, and Elisabeth Hansot, Public Schools in Hard Times: The Great Depression and Recent Years (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 64–66.

³³ Hart was an insurance executive who, in addition to establishing the New York State Economic Council in an effort to limit government spending, associated with and supported a number of conservative reactionaries, including Martin Dies, chairman of the House Special Committee to Investigate Un‐American Activities (later renamed the House Un‐American Activities Committee). Critics eventually uncovered Hart’s connections to the Christian Front and other fascist groups and exposed his anti‐Semitic behaviour, including instances in which he compared Jews to Nazis and denied the Holocaust. C.A. Bowers, “Social Reconstructionism: Views from the Left and the Right, 1932–1942,” History of Education Quarterly 10, no. 1 (1970): 45; Zimmerman, Whose America?, 91–2.

³⁴ “Academic Freedom Abused, Says Lawyer,” New York Times, May 24, 1940, 21.

³⁵ Mary Hornaday, “Teachers’ Assembly Outlines International Education Board,” Christian Science Monitor, September 20, 1943, 2. Partly in response to Stevenson’s urging, DAR members passed a resolution “favoring a review of all school textbooks and the elimination of any that were found to be ‘un‐American’ in content”. On the efforts of conservative women’s groups, such as the DAR, to censor textbooks throughout the 1930s, see Christine K. Erickson, “‘We Want No Teachers Who Say There Are Two Sides to Every Question’: Conservative Women and Education in the 1930s,” History of Education Quarterly 46, no. 4 (2006): 487–502.

³⁶ “Fifth Column” is a term used to describe citizens who secretly sympathise with their nation’s enemy.

³⁷ “Academic Freedom Abused, Says Lawyer,” 21.

³⁸ O.K. Armstrong, “Treason in the Textbooks,” American Legion Magazine, September 1940, 8.

³⁹ Bowers, “Social Reconstructionism,” 39.

⁴⁰ Armstrong, “Treason in the Textbooks,” 8.

⁴¹ Zimmerman, Whose America?, 65–6.

⁴² Robert B. Westbrook, “Fighting for the American Family: Private Interests and Political Obligation in World War II,” in The Power of Culture: Critical Essays in American History, ed. Richard Wightman Fox and T.J. Jackson Lears (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 202.

⁴³ Also see Maureen Honey, Creating Rosie the Riveter: Class, Gender, and Propaganda During World War II (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984), 130–7.

⁴⁴ Rugg, That Men May Understand, 241–2.

⁴⁵ Harold Rugg, A History of American Government and Culture: America’s March toward Democracy (New York: Ginn and Company, 1931), 130.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 130–1.

⁴⁷ Harold Rugg, An Introduction to American Civilization: A Study of Economic Life in the United States (New York: Ginn and Company, 1929), 135.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 136.

⁴⁹ Ibid., 137.

⁵⁰ Harold Rugg and James E. Mendenhall, Teacher’s Guide for an Introduction to American Civilization (New York: Ginn and Company, 1929), 101.

⁵¹ Lotchin, The Bad City in the Good War, 231.

⁵² “Jersey Town Bans Rugg’s Textbooks,” New York Times, August 23, 1940, 14.

⁵³ In his wartime autobiography, Rugg described these events as a “case study in democracy.” See Rugg, That Men May Understand, especially chapter two.

⁵⁴ “Schoolbook ‘Trial’ Staged in New Jersey,” New York Times, November 21, 1939, 25.

⁵⁵ Ibid., 25.

⁵⁶ Bowers, “Social Reconstructionism,” 46–7.

⁵⁷ Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 177.

⁵⁸ “Educators in Row over Rugg Books,” Philadelphia Inquirer, February 23, 1941, B1, 9.

⁵⁹ Ibid., B9; Millicent Taylor, “Education Held Democracy Bulwark,” Christian Science Monitor, February 24, 1941, 3; William A. Macdonald, “Dr. Rugg Defends Modern Histories,” New York Times, February 23, 1941, 47.

⁶⁰ “School Board Abandons Nine Textbooks by Rugg,” Philadelphia Inquirer, March 6, 1941, 25.

⁶¹ Ibid.

⁶² “Legion May Push Textbook Probe,” Philadelphia Inquirer, March 8, 1941, 17.

⁶³ “Rugg Textbooks Upheld, Assailed,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 7, 1941, 21.

⁶⁴ Ibid.

⁶⁵ Ibid.

⁶⁶ “Board of Education: Six S.F. Textbooks Declared to Be ‘Subversive,’” San Francisco Chronicle, February 25, 1942. As with the Rugg textbook controversy in general, historians have typically interpreted the case of San Francisco’s wartime school debates as representative of a successful conservative attack on progressive education. I contend that the city’s textbook debate reveals residents’ opposition to the role of special interest groups in determining the public school curriculum. See, for instance, Zilversmit, Changing Schools, '86–’87; Bowers, “Social Reconstructionism,” 45.

⁶⁷ Ray Leavitt, “When the School Board Met…,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 3, 1942, 13.

⁶⁸ Ibid.; “Teachers Block Ban on Textbooks,” San Francisco Examiner, June 3, 1942, 24.

⁶⁹ Lotchin, The Bad City in the Good War, 230–1.

⁷⁰ Arline Eckles and Garrett Eckles, “Freedom,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 19, 1942, 14.

⁷¹ Henry C. Fenn, “Textbooks,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 19, 1942, 14.

⁷² Ynez Lynith, “Teachings,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 24, 1942, 14.

⁷³ J. Don Walsh, “Textbooks,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 24, 1942, 14.

⁷⁴ B.L. Heger, “Rugg,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 26, 1942, 14.

⁷⁵ Milton Silverman, “Education in S.F.,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 17, 1942, 1.

⁷⁶ Ibid., 1, 11.

⁷⁷ “School Board Delays Action on Rugg Texts,” San Francisco Examiner, June 17, 1942, 6.

⁷⁸ “School Dispute: Board Calls for a Recess, Waits Written Testimony,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 18, 1942, 6.

⁷⁹ Silverman, “Education in S.F.,” 11.

⁸⁰ Ibid.

⁸¹ Milton Silverman, “The Textbook Dispute,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 21, 1942, 6.

⁸² “Those Rugg Books,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 28, 1942, 7.

⁸³ “S.F. School Board Dodges Move to Ban Rugg Books,” San Francisco Examiner, July 29, 1942, B.

⁸⁴ “Board Passes the Buck on Rugg Books,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 29, 1942, 1, 6; “S.F. School Board Dodges Move to Ban Rugg Books,” B.

⁸⁵ “Text of Report on School Books,” San Francisco Examiner, April 7, 1943, 1.

⁸⁶ “Commerce for Children,” Time, November 15, 1943, 50.

⁸⁷ For a comprehensive biography, see Jared Stallones, Paul Robert Hanna: A Life of Expanding Communities (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2002).

⁸⁸ Ibid., 1–2.

⁸⁹ “Commerce for Children,” 50.

⁹⁰ “The Social Studies Mobilize for Victory: A Statement of Wartime Policy Adopted by the National Council for the Social Studies.” NCSS Report. (Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies, 1942); “The Social Studies Look Beyond the War: A Statement of Postwar Policy Prepared by an Advisory Commission of the National Council for the Social Studies,” (Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies, 1944). Quillen was also a leader in the movement to integrate intercultural education into the social studies curriculum. In the last year of the war, he directed a national workshop on intercultural education at Stanford University in conjunction with the Bureau of Intercultural Education, out of which developed a guiding document for the movement, Charting Intercultural Education, 1945–1955. Stewart G. Cole, I. James Quillen, and Mildred J. Wiese, Charting Intercultural Education, 1945–1955 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1945).

⁹¹ See, for instance, Allan Nevins, “American History for Americans,” New York Times, May 3, 1942; Benjamin Fine, “Ignorance of U.S. History Shown by College Freshman,” New York Times, April 4, 1943.

⁹² Stanford University Archives, Isaac James Quillen Papers, 1931–1967, Box 3, Folder 8, “Making the Goods We Need,” Letter to I.J. Quillen from H.W. Mitchell, dated August 11, 1941.

⁹³ Paul R. Hanna, I. James Quillen, and Paul B. Sears, Making the Goods We Need (Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1943).

⁹⁴ Stanford University Archives, Isaac James Quillen Papers, 1931–1967, Box 3, Folder 8, “Making the Goods We Need,” Letter to I.J. Quillen from H.W. Mitchell, dated February 10, 1943.

⁹⁵ Ibid.

⁹⁶ For a qualitative comparison of the Rugg and Hanna elementary course of study, see Beverly Milner Bisland, “The Hanna and Rugg Social Studies Textbooks for Elementary School: A Comparative Content Evaluation” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2004).

⁹⁷ Gladys L. Potter served as a third author on this text. Paul R. Hanna, I. James Quillen, and Gladys L. Potter, Ten Communities (Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1940); Paul R. Hanna, I. James Quillen, and Gladys L. Potter, Teacher’s Manual for Ten Communities (Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1940).

⁹⁸ Stanford University Archives, Isaac James Quillen Papers, 1931–1967, Box 3, Folder 7, Letter to I.J. Quillen from H.W. Mitchell, dated February 8, 1940.

⁹⁹ Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 623.

¹⁰⁰ Ibid., 783–4.

¹⁰¹ William O’Neill, A Democracy at War: America’s Fight at Home and Abroad in World War II (New York: Free Press, 1993), 101–2.

¹⁰² Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), especially chapter seven; John Morton Blum, V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture During World War II (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), especially chapter nine.

¹⁰³ Brinkley, The End of Reform, 143.

¹⁰⁴ Ibid., 140–6.

¹⁰⁵ Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 622, 785.

¹⁰⁶ Ibid., 786.

¹⁰⁷ John Bainbridge, “Danger’s Ahead in the Public Schools,” McCall’s, October 1952, 56. Also see Arthur D. Morse, “Who’s Trying to Ruin Our Schools?,” McCall’s, September 1951.

¹⁰⁸ Fred M. Hechinger, “A Summing Up,” The Saturday Review of Literature, April 19, 1952, 22, 53. Also see, Mary Anne Raywid, The Ax‐Grinders: Critics of Our Public Schools (New York: Macmillan, 1962).

¹⁰⁹ Ravitch, The Troubled Crusade, 109.