ABSTRACT
During the first two decades following World War II, as the United States led a successful redevelopment of Western economic and social principles abroad, two social movements challenged a return to a pre-war homeostasis at home. Civil rights advocates demanded universal recognition that Black Americans were citizens and were long overdue equal treatment under the law. Many found their contemporary model of progressivism in the British infant school movement. Beginning in the late 1950s, psycholinguists validated empirically many progressives' understandings of reading and learning to read. The Teachers/Writers Collaborative brought professional writers into public school classrooms in order to join with teachers and students to create a more stimulating and relevant writing curriculum. Whole language teaching is a grassroots movement among teachers. One of Rethinking Schools' first acts in Milwaukee was to support Riverwest community members who were proposing to fill an empty school building with a "two-way bilingual, whole language, site-based managed neighborhood specialty school".
