ABSTRACT

For schoolmen of all persuasions the 1930s had been a time of disappointment, and they resolved to do better in the 1940s. The mobilization for war raised their hopes for the disappearance of the Civilian Conservation Corps and the National Youth Administration and with it for an enlargement of their own professional authority over all facets of public educational activities. Other interested groups did not hesitate either to announce their views about the future of the high school. The American Youth Commission looked for ways in which the lessons of the two New Deal agencies could be incorporated into the schools. It suggested programs of work and general education for students who had been most neglected by the schools’ vocational and academic programs. The schoolmen in the National Education Association and its Educational Policy Commission, however, wanted general education for all American young people. Even Harvard’s faculty joined the cry for general education, though the professors naturally understood it as a program of studies designed for academically trained youths. There was, then, no agreement as to just what general education might be, how general or specific it should be, and for whom it was meant to be the proper academic fare. But whatever it was or might be, general education became the desired goal.