This 1943 article by the noted American sociologist, Willard Waller (1899 – 1945), reported on the impact that W.W. II was having on the American educational system. Waller pointed out that during the course of 1942-43 school year, as many as 189,000 teachers had left their classrooms in order to work in defense plants. The author argued four distinct points that would halt the mass exodus - among them was the cry that "salaries of teachers must be raised to the point where they match favorably with industry."
A 1944 photo-essay on this topic can be read here... "'The public school system will become a vast political machine.' And this machine, it is charged, 'will give a Federal Administration the opportunity of creating an educational autocracy, really endangering the liberty of thought and information, which is a basic right of the people.'"
This article pertains to a bill that was before the Congress one hundred years ago that proposed the creation of a "Department of Education". The bill was defeated. The proposed legislation was enthusiastically supported by the National Education Association.
The concept of a free college education paid for by the Federal Government was not the brain child of the Vermont Marxist Bernie Sanders, but an idea that was briefly pursued by the education advisers of U.S. President Harry S Truman:
"Today the average American of 20 - 24 years of age has completed 12.1 years of schooling, an all-time high...Last week the President's Commission on Higher Education issued a report aimed at pushing the average still higher. It urged that free public education be extended through the first two years of college."
Even as early as 1894 socialism was recognized as wishful thinking.
This article charts the decline of Latin as an academic study in American schools. The disappearance of Latin began in the Thirties and steadily snowballed to such a point that by 1952 its absence was finally noticed.
"Is Latin on its way out in high schools? The answer is a confident 'NO.'
It's hard to see how it can go any lower,' declares Dr. John F. Latimer, head of Latin studies
at George Washington University." Although the author of this article, educator Cedric Fowler, does not offer a name for the subject he is proposing, it will not take you very long to recognize it as "social studies". Fowler argued that the text books available at that time were more suited to the Nineteenth Century than the tumultuous Thirties, ignoring all the various hot topics of the day that would have made subjects such as history, geography and civics come alive for those students who were enrolled at the time of the Great Depression.
"Life has become more complex for young Americans since the time of their fathers and grandfathers, and educational method has become more complex and more comprehensive with it... The work of Dewey, Thorndike and a score of other authorities has liberated the schoolroom from its stuffy atmosphere, has made it possible for it to become an ante-room to adult life." A minor dust-up between Florida and New York as to which of the two had the oldest schoolhouse. | 
