ABSTRACT
Aside from the home, the school was considered the optimum environment for children to learn the values that kept America strong and the skills that would enable Americans to rise to the task of meeting and matching the Soviet threat. The school was also a source of great anxiety. The primary anxiety centred on fears that the American system of education was inferior, in a variety of ways, to that of the Soviet Union. American anxieties regarding the Soviet educational system extended beyond the fear that Russian youngsters received superior instruction and were on the whole more knowledgeable than US children and that, as a result, the Soviet Union would quickly surpass the United States in science and technology. Drawing on the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, progressive education stressed the importance of child-centred education where students were expected to assume responsibility for educating themselves and teachers served as guides and coaches.
