Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T18:50:16.209Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Establishing a Democratic Religion: Metaphysics and Democracy in the Debates Over the President's Commission on Higher Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Ethan Schrum
Ethan Schrum*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania Department of History: his email is [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

World War II stands as a defining moment for American higher education. During the crisis of international relations that existed by the late 1930s, American thinkers of various stripes felt compelled to mobilize the country's intellectual and educational resources in defense of democracy, thus creating “a great ideological revival of democracy that accompanied the war.” The war aims of the United States—as enunciated in the Atlantic Charter and popular portrayals of the “good war” in which the United States fought to free the world from the grips of evil dictatorships—gave tremendous legitimacy to these efforts, which built into a national discussion on the goals of higher education. Between 1943 and 1947, at least five major reports on general education or liberal education appeared, three of which explicitly treated the relation of such education to “democracy” or “free society.”

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 47 , Issue 3: Special Issue on the History of Access to American Higher Education Commemorating the Sixtieth Anniversary of Higher Education for American Democracy—The Report of the President's Commission on Higher Education , August 2007 , pp. 277 - 301
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 History of Education Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Gleason, Philip, Contending With Modernity: Catholic Higher Education in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 235.Google Scholar

2 “The Postwar Responsibilities of Liberal Education: Report of the Committee on the Re-Statement of the Nature and Aims of Liberal Education to the Commission on Liberal Education of the Association of American Colleges” [Hereafter AAC Report], Association of American Colleges Bulletin 29:2 (May 1943): 275-299; A Committee Appointed by the American Council of Learned Societies, Theodore M. Greene, chairman, Liberal Education Re-Examined: Its Role in a Democracy (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1943); Harvard University, Committee on the Objectives of a General Education in a Free Society, General Education in a Free Society: Report of the Harvard Committee. With an introduction by James Bryant Conant (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1945); The Cooperative Study in General Education, Cooperation in General Education: A Final Report of the Executive Committee of the Cooperative Study in General Education (Washington, DC: American Council on Education, 1947); President's Commission on Higher Education, Higher Education for American Democracy: A Report of The President's Commission on Higher Education, 6 vol. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1947-48); hereafter HEFAD, with the volume indicated by roman numeral. Gleason refers to “an avalanche of writings on the liberal arts and what came to be called ‘general education'”; Contending with Modernity, 247.Google Scholar

3 HEFAD I, 92, 7.Google Scholar

4 On the Commission's enduring impact, see Philo Hutcheson, “The 1947 President's Commission on Higher Education and the National Rhetoric on Higher Education Policy,” History of Higher Education Annual 22, (2002): 91-109.Google Scholar

5 HEFAD VI, 20.Google Scholar

6 Dewey, John, A Common Faith (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1934); cf. John Herman Randall, “The Religion of Shared Experience,” in Sidney Ratner, ed., The Philosopher of the Common Man: Essays in Honor of John Dewey to Celebrate His Eightieth Birthday (New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1940): 106-145.Google Scholar

7 Dewey, John, “Religion and Our Schools,” in Joseph Ratner, ed., Education Today (New York: G.P. Putnam and Sons, 1940), 78, 84.Google Scholar

8 Purcell, Edward A., The Crisis of Democratic Theory: Scientific Naturalism and the Problem of Value (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1973).Google Scholar

9 Kerr-Tener, Janet Cecile, “From Truman to Johnson: Ad-Hoc Policy Formation in Higher Education” (PhD diss., University of Virginia, 1985), 55, 57, 59. The OWMR consolidated two earlier agencies and existed from October 3, 1944, to December 12, 1946. http://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/250.html Google Scholar

10 Kerr-Tener, , “From Truman to Johnson,” 57, 69.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., 60.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., 66.Google Scholar

13 Ibid., 67.Google Scholar

14 Hutcheson, Philo A., “Zook, George Frederick,” American National Biography online; Kerr-Tener, “From Truman to Johnson,” 68. As Commissioner, Zook appeared on the cover of TIME, 9/18/1933.Google Scholar

15 Zook, George F., The Role of the Federal Government in Education (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1945), 34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Kerr-Tener, , “From Truman to Johnson,” 71-72. Kerr-Tener portrays Roosevelt as a champion of public higher education and mentions her “notorious battle with Cardinal Spellman over the 1949 aid to education bill,” in which Roosevelt opposed federal aid to Catholic schools and Spellman accused Roosevelt of anti-Catholic discrimination. See also Philip A. Grant Jr., “Catholic Congressmen, Cardinal Spellman, Eleanor Roosevelt and the 1949-1950 Federal Aid to Education Controversy,” American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia Records 90 (1979): 3-13.Google Scholar

17 HEFAD V, 5.Google Scholar

18 On McGuire, see “In Memoriam: Dr. Jan Willem Philip Borleffs and Professor Martin McGuire,” Vigiliae Christianae 24, no. 1 (1970): 1-3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Hochwalt, Frederick G. to Brother Emilian, F.S.C., Ammendale Normal Institute, Maryland, n.d.; National Catholic Education Association (NCEA) Records, American Catholic History Research Center, Folder: “Committee—To Analyze the Report of the President's Commission on Higher Education.” For the dissent see HEFAD V, 65-68.Google Scholar

20 HEFAD V, 66. Interestingly, Dewey had anticipated this criticism before the war. In recommending a “national” system of education for the United States, he distinguished it from a “nationalistic” system such as those found in Germany, Italy, Japan, and the U.S.S.R. “Toward a National System of Education,” Social Frontier 2 (June 1935).Google Scholar

21 Blanshard, Paul, American Freedom and Catholic Power (Boston: Beacon Press, 1949).Google Scholar

22 Wickey, Gould, “The President Studies Higher Education,” Christian Education 31, no. 1 (March 1948): 100.Google Scholar

23 Ibid., 102.Google Scholar

24 Hollinshead, Byron S., “The Report of the President's Commission on Higher Education,” American Association of University Professors Bulletin 34 (1948): 268. On Hollinshead see Anita Fay Kravitz, “The Harvard Report of 1945: An Historical Ethnography” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1994), 117, 142-144.Google Scholar

25 Reprinted in The Christian Century 65, no. 3 (January 21, 1948): 79-82.Google Scholar

26 The ACLS discerned “various forces in American culture, and trends in American education, which threaten[ed] the very basis of all scholarship”; these threats prompted it to call the committee. ACLS Committee, Liberal Education Re-examined, vii.Google Scholar

27 Ibid., 29.Google Scholar

28 HEFAD I, 49. On previous eras see Roberts, Jon B. and Turner, James, The Sacred and the Secular University (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000); George M. Marsden, The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Non-Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Mark A. Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 1768-1822: The Search for a Christian Enlightenment in the Era of Samuel Stanhope Smith (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989); Laurence R. Veysey, The Emergence of the American University (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965).Google Scholar

29 HEFAD I, 49.Google Scholar

30 Thomas, Russell, The Search for a Common Learning: General Education 1800-1960 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962); Gary E. Miller, The Meaning of General Education: The Emergence of a Curriculum Paradigm (New York: Teacher's College Press, 1988). The Commission briefly noted the movement, mentioning that “attempts to reach conclusions about the ends and means of general education have been a major part of debate and experimentation in higher education for at least two decades.” HEFAD I, 49.Google Scholar

31 Miller, , The Meaning of General Education, chapters 3 and 4; William P. Martin, “The Dewey-Hutchins Debate on General Education, 1929 to 1945: A Case of Progressive Historical Bias” (EdD diss., Temple University, 1991). For Hutchins’ approach see his The Higher Learning in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1936), esp. chap. III. On the intellectual lineage of the Hutchins camp, see Anne H. Stevens, “The Philosophy of General Education and Its Contradictions: The Influence of Hutchins,” Journal of General Education 50, no. 3 (2001): 165-191.Google Scholar

32 HEFAD I, 49.Google Scholar

33 Ibid., 50-57.Google Scholar

34 Ibid., 53.Google Scholar

35 Ibid., 49.Google Scholar

36 Ibid., 59.Google Scholar

37 The “general course” arose in the 1920s. During that decade, according to Thomas, “For the first time since Eliot [introduced his] elective principle, an intensive and concerted effort was made to review the idea of liberal education and to take constructive measures for restoring to the curriculum and integrity and a breadth of learning which had long been absent.” Thomas, The Search for a Common Learning, 69.Google Scholar

38 HEFAD I, 59.Google Scholar

39 Ibid., 60.Google Scholar

40 Ibid., 61.Google Scholar

41 Ibid., 14. For Dewey's views see his The School and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1900).Google Scholar

42 HEFAD I, 49, 62. Even as it made a seemingly clear statement of the difference between general education and liberal education, the Commission conflated the two, referring once to a “liberal general education.”Google Scholar

43 ACLS Committee, Liberal Education Re-examined, vii.Google Scholar

44 AAC Report, 275.Google Scholar

45 Ibid., 277.Google Scholar

46 “Minutes of the Executive Committee Meeting” of the NCEA Higher Education Department, June 16-17, 1943, Buffalo NY, College Newsletter Supplement 6:4 (May 1943): 2. It is not clear how minutes of a June meeting appeared in a May newsletter. Most likely the newsletter did not actually appear until after the June meeting despite its May date.Google Scholar

47 Association of American Colleges Commission on Liberal Education, “Report of Commission on Liberal Education,” Association of American Colleges Bulletin 35 (1949): 162.Google Scholar

48 On McConnell's importance for the Commission's concept of general education, see John Young Reid, transcript of interviews with Dr. Earl James McGrath [another important Commission member who shaped its concept of general education, and founding editor of the Journal of General Education], February-November 1977, Part 7, 32, University of Arizona Library.Google Scholar

49 “The Official Records, Minutes of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Association of American Colleges, January 10-12, 1949, Hotel Commodore, New York City,” Ibid., 183.Google Scholar

50 “Minutes of the Executive Committee Meeting,” 2.Google Scholar

51 AAC Report, 286-287.Google Scholar

52 On liberal culture see Veysey, Emergence.Google Scholar

53 ACLS Committee, Liberal Education Re-examined, 70-78.Google Scholar

54 Whelan, James F., ed., Catholic Colleges of the United States of America at the Middle of the Twentieth Century: A Compilation of Information Submitted by Constituent Members of the Department of Colleges and Universities, National Catholic Educational Association, on the Questionnaires of the Committee on Membership (New Orleans: Bookstore, Loyola University, 1952), 120.Google Scholar

55 Westbrook, Robert B., John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 371-373.Google Scholar

56 Tanner, Daniel, Crusade for Democracy: Progressive Education at the Crossroads (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991), 105-106. Prominent President's Commission member George Stoddard was also a founding member of the Dewey Society.Google Scholar

57 HEFAD I, 11. The Commission regularly referred to “democracy as a way of life,” a common mantra among certain intellectuals in the 1940s; Ibid., 102. See for example Fred W. Beuttler, “Organizing an American Conscience: The Conference on Science, Philosophy, and Religion, 1940-68” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1995). T.V. Smith encouraged the “way of life” terminology in The Democratic Way of Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1926), a book that Dewey lauded; see Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (New York: H. Holt and Company, 1927), 147n.1.Google Scholar

58 Dewey, John, Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education (New York: Macmillan, 1916), 101; cf. The Public and Its Problems, 143.Google Scholar

59 HEFAD I, 102,8, 5.Google Scholar

60 Dewey, Democracy and Education, 115.Google Scholar

61 Ibid., 100.Google Scholar

62 HEFAD I, 102.Google Scholar

63 Ibid., 13, 11.Google Scholar

64 Ibid., 11.Google Scholar

65 Ibid., 5, 13.Google Scholar

66 Ibid., 102.Google Scholar

67 Ibid., 14.Google Scholar

68 Ibid., 50.Google Scholar

69 Ibid., 14.Google Scholar

70 Higher education would be the finishing school because the Deweyan concept of democracy already permeated the K-12 public school system. Lawrence A. Cremin, The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876-1957 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961).Google Scholar

71 A group of Catholic educators who attended the NCEA meeting did publish a short pamphlet-style book; Allan P. Farrell, ed., Whither American Education? The Report of the President's Commission on Higher Education (New York: The America Press, 1948).Google Scholar

72 Postcard signed by Hochwalt, Folder: “Committee-To Analyze the Report of the President's Commission on Higher Education,” NCEA records.Google Scholar

73 Hochwalt, to John, A. Elbert, S.M., University of Dayton philosophy professor, March 5, 1948, Folder: “Committee-To Analyze the Report of the President's Commission on Higher Education,” NCEA records.Google Scholar

74 Rooney, Edward B. to Hochwalt, , March 20, 1948, Folder: “Committee-To Analyze the Report of the President's Commission on Higher Education,” NCEA Records.Google Scholar

75 Farrell, , ed., Whither American Education? 15.Google Scholar

76 Ibid., 16.Google Scholar

77 Ibid., 15.Google Scholar

78 Farrell, Allan P., “Report of the President's Commission: A Critical Appraisal,” in Gail Kennedy, ed., Education for Democracy: The Debate over the Report of the President's Committee on Higher Education (Boston: D.C. Heath and Company, 1952), 102.Google Scholar

79 Wickey, , “The President Studies Higher Education,” 98.Google Scholar

80 Hollinshead, Byron, “Which Way Salvation,” AAC Bulletin 29:3 (October 1943): 389.Google Scholar

81 ACLS Committee, Liberal Education Re-examined, 39.Google Scholar

82 Ibid., 23, 43.Google Scholar

83 Ibid., 38.Google Scholar

84 Ibid., 43.Google Scholar

85 Ibid., 37.Google Scholar

86 Greene, Theodore M., “Christianity and Its Secular Alternatives,” in Henry Van Dusen, ed., Christian Answer (London: Nisbet and Co., 1946), 84, 87. At this late stage of Dewey's life, Hook was significantly involved in helping Dewey prepare letters and manuscripts. Martin, “Dewey-Hutchins Debate,” 217-218.Google Scholar

87 Ibid., 89.Google Scholar

88 Greene, Theodore M., The Basic Tenets of a Liberal Christian Theology (Henderson Home Report Service, 1949), 3.Google Scholar

89 Ibid., 15, 16, 19.Google Scholar

90 Ibid., 3.Google Scholar

91 Ibid., 11.Google Scholar

92 Kerr, Clark, The Uses of the University (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), 20.Google Scholar

93 HEFAD I, 14.Google Scholar

94 Ibid., 94.Google Scholar

95 Ibid., 91.Google Scholar

96 Ibid., 92.Google Scholar

97 In Pierce v. Society of Sisters 268 US 510 (1925), which invalidated Oregon's Compulsory Education Act of 1922 that required parents to send children only to public schools, the unanimous Supreme Court held that “the fundamental liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only.”Google Scholar