ABSTRACT
Harold Ordway Rugg was a leader of the progressive education movement in the United States. Progressive educators shared, in John Dewey's words, belief in 'the school as the primary and most effective interest of social progress'. Although Rugg's educational thought fails to fit readily into any one strain of progressivism, he is chiefly remembered for his social reconstruction perspective and the controversy it engendered. Rugg's early life gave scant indication that he would become a world-renowned educator. Born in Massachusetts, Rugg studied civil engineering in college and briefly practised and taught it. Teaching awakened his curiosity about how people learn and he enrolled in the University of Illinois doctoral programme in education. Rugg agreed that the school should be an agency of social reform, Dewey had reservations about social reconstruction. Even in the early 1930s some of Rugg's books were altered because elements of them were considered too radical.
