- from Amazon:
 Eleanor Metheny (1908 - 1982) enjoyed a full life in academia, spanning over forty years. Mid-way through her career she wrote the attached article explaining to one and all why she found teaching such a fulfillment. "A religion-in-the-schools trial, held last week in the Champaign, Illinois Circuit Court, will probably make history. The plaintiff was Mrs. Vashti McCollum, 32, pert, wide-eyed wife of a University of Illinois professor, demanding that the Champaign School Board discontinue a five-year program of religious instruction in school buildings, on the ground that the constitutional separation of church and state is jeopardized."
Click here to read about Darwin in the schools. If you thought progressive education was a scourge that existed only in the digital age - you'd be wrong; the apostles of progressive education have simply been able to gain traction in our era where leftism has been enjoying greater momentum. Progressive education policies, intent on preserving the student's "sense of self" over their genuine education, have been around for decades - and the attached article seems no different from much of the criticism that is leveled at them today.
"Critics of progressive education insist teachers don't place enough emphasis on achievement in their fear of harming the child's personality."
 |
"Teachers, during the war period, have been undergoing unprecedented, exhausting struggle in the classroom. And in their ranks have been casualties that add up to a dangerous teacher shortage. According to the National Education Association, 'the economic status of teachers has been pushed back 20 years since Pearl Harbor'... The combination of overwork, underpay and the thanklessness of teaching has created an army of deserters from the profession."
More on the hard lot of teachers during the war can be read here.
The kids who are discussed in this article would be called "LD" today - you don't want to know how they were referred to in the early Twenties. Back then there were no Federally-funded commissions thronging with sympathetic PhD candidates to ramble on about "convergence issues", "processing concerns", "the-classroom-learning-environment" and the "Learning Disabled". There were only frustrated kids, frustrated teachers and broken-hearted parents. This 1937 news article reports on the pioneering teachers at Seward Park High School in New York City and the earliest attempts to address the needs of students who suffered from language processing disorders, dyscalculia, dyslexia, dysgraphia and America's favorite - good ol' ADHD. "The census-takers of 1920 to the people of America:
"Can you read and write?"
Five million men and women of America responded:
"We cannot!" | 
