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“One's Total World View Comes Into Play”: America's Culture War Over Alcohol Education, 1945-1964

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Jonathan Zimmerman
Jonathan Zimmerman*
Affiliation:
New York University's School of Education
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Extract

In 1948, fundamentalist theologian Edward John Carnell launched a spirited attack upon the “disease concept” of alcoholism. The Bible stated in no uncertain terms that drunkenness was a sin, Carnell wrote. By deeming alcoholism a sickness, clergymen and educators threatened to erode the “sense of guilt” that had once surrounded it. “The drinker takes the first glass as a free agent,” Carnell intoned. “He knows in advance the risks of his act, yet he proceeds…. As a moral, rational being, then, the drunkard is guilty and stands under God's severe wrath.” Yet in public schools and even in churches, Carnell complained, too many Americans learned to regard alcoholism as a medical affliction rather than as an ethical lapse. “The crux of the problem is whether man is made in the image of God, and thus is a responsible moral being, or whether he is just a product of naturalistic forces and is responsible to none,” Carnell concluded. “In judging drunkards, then, one's total world view comes into play.”

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Articles
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History of Education Quarterly , Volume 42 , Issue 4 , Winter 2002 , pp. 471 - 492
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Copyright © 2002 by the History of Education Society 

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Footnotes

He would like to thank the Spencer Foundation and New York University for generously funding the research in this essay. Thanks also to Richard Altenbaugh, Richard Arum, and three anonymous History of Education Quarterly readers for their critiques and suggestions, which improved the essay immeasurably.

References

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2 McCarthy, Raymond G. Teen-Agers and Alcohol: A Handbook for the Educator (New Haven: Yale Center of Alcohol Studies, 1956), 3, 63, 66; Chafetz, Morris E. and Demone, Harold W. Alcoholism and Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), 187.Google Scholar

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12 Most historical examinations of life-adjustment focus upon the intellectual opponents of the movement, who feared it would displace so-called “basic education” in the humanities and sciences. This article illustrates a more grass-roots form of dissent, targeted less at the intellectual weaknesses of life-adjustment than at its promise to prepare children for the day-to-day realities of the modern world—including the widespread use of alcohol. Rather than “adjusting” children to a drinking society, teetotal critics said, schools should teach them to avoid drink.Google Scholar

13 Ariés, Philippe Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1962), 99.Google Scholar

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16 Martin, Lender and Drinking in America, 187; Blocker, Jack S. Jr., American Temperance Movements: Cycles of Reform (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989), 146; “Interview with Robert Straus,” in Edwards, ed., Addictions, 85; “Interview with Mark Keller,” ibid., 59, 62. Attacks upon the Center of Alcohol Studies reached a crescendo in 1960, when the Yale Corporation delicately resolved to help it find a “more appropriate home.” The Center moved two years later to Rutgers University, where it remains today. “Interview with Mark Keller,” 62.Google Scholar

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20 Callahan, J. R. to Wilson, William G. 31 Jan. 1947, folder 2.2; Poole, Delbert to Wilson, 10 Nov. 1948, folder 2.1; Wilson to Poole, 18 Nov. 1948, folder 2.1, all in AA Papers; Hickey, Margaret “Teen-Agers And Alcoholism,“ Ladies Home Journal 69 (April 1952): 25, 114-16; Trevithick, David R. “The Utah State Board on Alcoholism,” Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol 11 (June 1950): 365, 368-69.Google Scholar

21 Hiltner, Seward to “Miss Caldwell,” 17 July 1939, folder 19, box 64, record group 18, National Council of Churches Papers [hereafter NCC Papers], Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Hancock, David C. “Alcohol and the Church,“ in Alcohol, Science, and Society Revisited, ed. Gomberg, Edith L. White, Helene R. and Carpenter, John A. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1982), 357–58; Blocker, American Temperance Movements, 149-50; National Council of Churches, The Churches and Alcohol (n.p., 1958), folder 1, box 3, record group 6, NCC Papers.Google Scholar

22 McCarthy, “Activities of State Departments of Education,“ 507; McCarthy, Teen-Agers and Alcohol, 54, 48-49, 4-6; North Dakota Commission on Alcoholism, What Shall We Teach?; Ishee, Vashti “A Program of Education on the Alcohol Problem,“ Scientific Temperance Journal 59 (Summer 1951): 48–49.Google Scholar

23 North Dakota Commission on Alcoholism, What Shall We Teach?; “Report of the Maine Liquor Research Commission,” Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol 12 (June 1951): 334; Daniel, Ralph W. “Alcohol Education and a Social Hangover,” PTA Magazine 56 (Dec. 1961): 32; Cavert, Samuel McCrea to Hawley, C. O. 11 Jan. 1949, folder 6, box 21, record group 18, NCC Papers.Google Scholar

24 Alumni News of the Yale Summer School of Alcohol Studies 11 (Feb. 1955): 4, “Yale Alumni News” notebook, box 37, Cherrington Papers; BRP, “Facts for Your Personal Information About the Yale School of Alcohol Studies” (typescript, June 1943), folder 17, box 5; Albert Betts to BRP, 14 August 1943, folder 2, box 7; C. Aubrey Hern to BRP, 1 Sept. 1943, folder 1, box 7; BRP, “For your personal information after the Yale School of Alcohol Studies” (typescript, Aug. 1943), folder 17, box 5, all in Palmer Papers; Alumni News of the Summer Session, School of Alcohol Studies 8 (April 1951), “Yale Alumni News” notebook, box 37, Cherrington Papers.Google Scholar

25 “Alcohol Straight,” Newsweek, 23 Aug. 1943, folder 3; Heisler, A. R. to “Dear Coworker,” 5 April 1946, enclosed with Zeigler, Earl F. to BRP, 13 May 1946, folder 5; Heisler to BRP, 22 April 1946, folder 5, all in box 7, Palmer Papers; Bergerstock, E. N. to Warner, Harry 16 Oct. 1946, “B” folder, box 85, Scientific Temperance Federation Papers, OHS.Google Scholar

26 BRP to Jellinek, E. M. 3 Oct. 1945; BRP to Helen Sacharoff, 19 Nov. 1945, both in folder 17, box 5, Palmer Papers; “WCTU Takes Stand for ‘No Surrender,’” New York Times, 24 January 1945, 23; “Excessive Drinking By 3 Million Seen,” ibid., 6 Nov. 1946, 25; Alumni News of the Yale Summer School of Alcohol Studies 11 (February 1955): 4, “Yale Alumni News” notebook, box 37, Cherrington Papers; Selby, P. E. “Abstinence Education” (typescript, 14 May 1949), quoted in Othell Mills to Selby, n.d. [1949], “Selby, P. E.” folder, box 109, Temperance Education Foundation Papers [hereafter TEF Papers], OHS.Google Scholar

27 Since combatants in the 1950s culture wars used the labels “fundamentalist” and “evangelical” interchangeably, this essay does the same. To quote a self-avowed fundamentalist—and evangelical—in Colorado, the terms connoted Christians who “hold that the essence of the gospel consists mainly in its doctrines of man's sinful condition and need of salvation, the revelation of God's grace in Christ, the necessity of spiritual renovation, and participation in the experience of redemption through faith.” Andreasen, Paul J. “An Appeal for Evangelical Released-Time Education,“ United Evangelical Action 5 (1 April 1946): 4.Google Scholar

28 Carpenter, Revive Us Again, 231–33.Google Scholar

29 Following Hunter, James Davison many scholars have noted the prominence of educational issues in present-day culture wars. See, e.g., Hunter, Culture Wars, 197–224; Bates, Stephen Battleground: One Mother's Crusade, the Religious Right, and the Struggle for our Schools (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1993); Gaddy, Barbara B. Hall, T. William and Marzano, Robert J. School Wars: Resolving Our Conflicts Over Religion and Values (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1996); Randall, E. Vance “Culture, Religion, and Education,” in Religion and Schooling in Contemporary America: Confronting our Cultural Pluralism, ed. Hunt, Thomas C. and Carper, James C. (New York: Garland Publishing, 1997), 59-81. As in the “culture wars” literature generally, however, this work assumes that our “school wars” date to the 1960s or 1970s. Hence it blinds us to cultural conflict that permeated schools in earlier periods.Google Scholar

30 “Sickness,” Christian Herald, Nov. 1954, folder 19, box 11, Alexander C. Burr Papers, SHSND; “More Taxes for Dupes,” Bulletin [Bethlehem, PA], 17 Dec. 1954, p. 22, volume 13, Alcoholics Anonymous Scrapbooks [hereafter AA Scrapbooks], Alcoholics Anonymous Archives; Christy, Wayne H. “A Matter of Morals,“ in The Christian Case for Abstinence (New York: Association Press, 1955), 155. See also Carnell, “Is Drunkenness a Sin?,” 6.Google Scholar

31 “NCC Fails to Stand for Total Abstinence,” Evangelical Newsfront 1 (April 1958), folder 1, box 3, record group 6; “The Federal Council and ‘Sane Drinking,’” Methodist Challenge, n.d., enclosed with Paul R. Smith to Federal Council of Churches, 29 Sept. 1948, folder 6, box 21, record group 18, both in NCC Papers; Ernest Gordon, “The Federal Council and Alcohol Study,” Christian Beacon, 10 June 1943, folder 3, box 7, Palmer Papers; Knecht, John R. “‘Awake or We Perish!’” in Christian Case for Abstinence, 133-34; Palmer, Everett W. “Lift Up a Standard,” ibid., 4.Google Scholar

32 Dailey, E. H. untitled manuscript, n.d. [1951], “E. H. Dailey” folder, box 115, TEF Papers; McGoldrick, Edward J. Jr., “Are Alcoholics Sick People?“ Scientific Temperance Journal 66 (Spring 1958): 11; Hess, P. K. to BRP, 27 Aug. 1943, folder 1, box 7, Palmer Papers.Google Scholar

33 Malley, Charles to Mason, Frances 13 Nov. 1962, “Foundation for Alcohol Education” folder, box 20, Lee, Maurice DuPont Papers, Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Delaware; Powers, B. B. “Alcoholism,“ Waynesboro [TN] News, 2 March 1956, “1956” folder, box 9, Mann Papers.Google Scholar

34 The Roaster, Rhamkatte “Alcoholic Anonymous,“ News and Observer [Raleigh, NC], 10 July 1945, p. 6, volume 6, AA Scrapbooks; DuBois, Lauriston J. “If Alcoholism is a Disease—Let's Kill the Germ,“ The Florida Searchlight 1 (Sept. 1947): 4, “Postmaster—Westerville” folder, box 104, TEF Papers.Google Scholar

35 Letter from Christie, Augusta K. Portland [ME] Press-Herald, 30 June 1947, p. 71, volume 10, AA Scrapbooks; Ethyl is Not a Lady (Westerville, OH: Temperance Education Foundation, n.d. [1955]), enclosed with Hill, H. H. to Dailey, E. H. 22 November 1955, “Washington” folder, box 103; Information Bulletin of the Virginia Church Temperance Council 2 (January 1948): 1, “Virginia” folder, box 114, both in TEF Papers; Stout, Lynn B. “The Fight on Alcoholism,” Detroit Free Press, 24 February 1956, “1956” folder, box 9, Mann Papers.Google Scholar

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37 See, e.g., “Report of the Maine Liquor Research Commission,” 334; North Dakota Commission on Alcoholism, What Shall We Teach?; Ishee, “A Program of Education on the Alcohol Problem,“ 48–49.Google Scholar

38 Gusfield, Symbolic Crusade, 133–34.Google Scholar

39 During and after prohibition, as historian Catherine Gilbert Murdock has shown, middle-class women helped popularize a newly “domesticated” style of drinking. Formerly centered in all-male saloons, alcohol consumption become a heterosocial activity that was based primarily in the home. Murdock, Domesticating Drink: Women, Men, and Alcohol in America, 1870-1940 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).Google Scholar

40 Martin, Lender and Drinking in America, 173; Burnham, Bad Habits, 74.Google Scholar

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42 Shimmel, Gilbert M. “Content and Method in Controversial Areas,“ Journal of School Health 31 (September 1961): 230; Bacon, Seiden “The Classic Temperance Movement of the USA: Impact Today on Attitudes, Action, and Research,” British Journal of Addiction 62 (March 1967): 16. Historian John Burnham has maintained that alcohol education became “drinking education”—not abstinence education—in the early postwar period. But Burnham's account relies upon the pronouncements of educational spokesmen and alcoholism researchers rather than textbooks and other classroom materials, which still touted total abstinence. Burnham, Bad Habits, 84. For a view that more closely parallels my own, stressing continuity in schools’ abstinence message, see David J. Hanson, Alcohol Education: What We Must Do (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1996), 33.Google Scholar

43 See, e.g., Daniel, “Alcohol Education and a Social Hangover“; idem., “Alcohol or Alcoholism Education,” Journal of Alcohol Education 13 (Spring 1967): 45.Google Scholar

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45 See, e.g., Bainton, Roland H. “Total Abstinence and Biblical Principles,“ Christianity Today 2 (7 July 1958): 3–6; “The Alcohol Problem,” ibid. 2 (7 July 1958): 20-22; “Abstinence Makes Sense,” ibid. 8 (24 April 1964): 24-25; Huffman, “Alcoholism: Its Cause and Cure.” On Christianity Today and the “new evangelicalism,” see Ellwood, The Fifties Spiritual Marketplace, 133-35.Google Scholar

46 McCarthy, Teen-Agers and Alcohol, 68.Google Scholar

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48 Linden, Arthur V. “What is Being Done About Alcohol Education?,“ Journal of School Health 27 (December 1957): 292, 295, 298; McCarthy, Raymond G. “What Shall Our Schools Teach About Alcohol?” National Parent-Teacher 48 (June 1954): 20; Hill, Margaret “What Shall We Teach About Alcohol?” Grade Teacher 70 (June 1953): 50; Krimmel, Herman E. “What Approach to Alcohol Education?” National Parent-Teacher 54 (June 1960): 26.Google Scholar

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50 McCarthy, Teen-Agers and Alcohol, 48–49. See also Linden, Arthur V. “Some Random Thoughts on Alcohol Education,“ Journal of School Health 29 (January 1959): 4.Google Scholar

51 Although several states offered alcohol-education courses at teachers’ colleges and in-service trainings for classroom instructors, few teachers appear to have availed themselves of these opportunities. McCarthy, Teen-Agers and Alcohol, 54; Dalis, Gus T. “Health Interest Groups and the Public Schools—Letter to a Judge,“ Journal of School Health 39 (December 1969): 693.Google Scholar

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53 Males, Mike A. The Scapegoat Generation: America's War on Adolescents (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1996), 185; Hollingshead, August B. Elmtown's Youth: The Impact of Social Classes on Adolescents (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1949), 319-20; Daniel, “Alcohol Education and a Social Hangover,” 32; Milgram, Gail “A Historical Review of Alcohol Education Research and Comments,” Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education 21 (Spring 1976): 7.Google Scholar

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55 See, e.g., Demone, Chafetz and Alcoholism and Society, 187; Daniel, “Alcohol Education and a Social Hangover,“ 32; Hill, “What Shall We Teach About Alcohol?” 50; Ferrier, W. Kenneth “Alcohol Education in the Public School Curriculum,“ in Alcohol Education for Classroom and Community, ed. McCarthy, Raymond G. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1964), 142–43; Mullin, Laurence S. “Alcohol Education: The School's Responsibility,” Journal of School Health 38 (Oct. 1968): 521.Google Scholar

56 Pasciutti, John J. “With Focus on Youth,“ Scientific Temperance Journal 75 (March 1967): 4.Google Scholar

57 See, e.g., Berube, Allan Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two (New York: Free Press, 1990); Breines, Wini Young, White, and Miserable: Growing up Female in the Fifties (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992); Graebner, William Coming of Age in Buffalo: Youth and Authority in the Postwar Era (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990); Lipsitz, George Class and Culture in Cold War America: “A Rainbow at Midnight” (South Hadley, MA: Bergin Books, 1981).Google Scholar

58 See, e.g., Hunter, Culture Wars, 85–86; Wuthnow, Robert The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith Since World War Two (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 185. For an account that accords more closely to my own, stressing “public conflict” as well as “private dissatisfaction” in the early postwar years, see Ribuffo, Leo “God and Contemporary Politics,” Journal of American History 79 (May 1993): 1518.Google Scholar

59 See, e.g., Graebner, Coming of Age in Buffalo, esp. 7-8, 20; Brown, JoAnne “'A is for Atom, B is for Bomb': Civil Defense in American Public Education, 1948-1963,“ Journal of American History 75 (June 1988): 68–90. But see also Fones-Wolf, Elizabeth “Business Propaganda in the Schools: Labor's Struggle Against the Americans for the Competitive Enterprise System, 1949-1954,” History of Education Quarterly 40 (Fall 2000): 255-78, which demonstrates how labor unions and their allies on the Left challenged the pro-business views that corporations promoted in public schools.Google Scholar

60 For a more extensive discussion of this idea, see Zimmerman, Jonathan Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002).Google Scholar

61 See, e.g., Branch, Taylor Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 278; Kluger, Richard Simple Justice (New York: Vintage Books, 1975), 433; Findlay, James F. Jr., Church People in the Struggle: The National Council of Churches and the Black Freedom Movement, 1950-1970 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 4.Google Scholar

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63 At the same time, this essay suggests a striking continuity over the past half-century in the way that schools have addressed alcohol. Most accounts of the liquor issue in America describe a shift from the “wet” 1950s and 1960s to the “dry” 1980s and 1990s, when the nation witnessed a “new public health movement”—or, as its critics called it, “The New Temperance.” Seeking to dampen overall alcohol consumption, this trend brought higher drinking ages, reduced hours of sale, and other coercive measures. It also required total-abstinence lessons in the schools, linking youth drinking to the more publicized scourge of illegal drugs. Schools increasingly taught that all alcohol use—like all drug use—was potentially addictive, so children should “Just Say No” to both of them.Google Scholar

Yet as this essay demonstrates, schools never abandoned their emphasis upon abstinence. Even as public opinion and rhetoric about alcohol fluctuated, classroom messages remained remarkably constant. From an educational perspective, then, “The New Temperance” might not be “new” at all. Instead, it reflects a shift by other parts of society-especially medicine and law-into closer accord with our educational institutions. To put it differently, America's recent turn to “dry” solutions simply echoes what our schools have been saying all along. A seminal text of the “New Temperance” was Beauchamp, Beyond Alcoholism; for recent critiques of the concept, see Ruth Clifford Engs, Clean Living Movements: American Cycles of Health Reform (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2000), 179-266; Hanson, Alcohol Education: What We Must Do; Lender and Martin, Drinking in America, 191-201; David Wagner, The New Temperance: The American Obsession with Sin and Vice (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997).