ABSTRACT
The period of the Great Depression and its immediate aftermath, the World War II years, present a special challenge to those who would make sense of its educational developments. Political and ideological circumstances, especially at the national level, also delayed any quick responses to the depression by school boards and school administrators. For many Americans, the Great Depression only intensified their previous suffering, while for others it provided a bitter introduction to economic deprivation. The Personal Experience of the Depression It is hard to recreate the despair that pervaded the lives of many Americans in the 1930s. The Chicago situation was dangerous even before the onslaught of the Great Depression, with school and other tax revenues being gutted in the 1920s by poor collection procedures and skimming on the part of corrupt politicians. Depression-era conditions intensified these problems and thereby increased the gap between urban schools and their rural counterparts.
