ABSTRACT
This chapter adopts Hampel’s notion of the ‘casual school’ as a useful construct for examining American secondary education in the decades immediately following World War II. It will describe how this educational movement toward informality and comfort and a cultural fascination with child raising manifested itself in school buildings, and interpret some of the educational, cultural and architectural influences that shaped these schools. Although casual schools appeared at both primary and secondary levels of education, the chapter focuses on public high schools and adolescents. And while educators constructed hundreds of casual school buildings in urban, suburban and rural settings throughout all regions of the United States, the chapter will provide examples from Chicago’s public schools in an effort to localise this national phenomenon.
