Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T19:54:45.672Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Private Foundations and Public Policy: The Case of Secondary Education During the Great Depression

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Charles D. Biebel
Charles D. Biebel*
Affiliation:
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

One of the conventional justifications for the existence of large private philanthropic foundations in the United States has been their role as creative, innovative promoters of social change. Built on the fortunes of such industrial entrepreneurs as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, foundations early in this century were granted extensive legal privileges and immunity from government regulation in exchange for “voluntary” charitable support of science, medicine, and education, which like religion, theoretically existed in a private, non-governmental domain. Until the emergence of the federal government after World War II as the chief source of funding, private foundations played a predominant part in fostering educational and scientific innovation. Foundation support for social and institutional change, however, was not without inherent problems. The educational program of John D. Rockefeller's General Education Board during the decade of the 1930's illustrates the extent of these problems.

Type
Article I
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , Spring 1976 , pp. 3 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © 1976 by New York University

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

Notes

I wish to thank the Faculty Research Allocation Committee of the University of New Mexico for their financial support of my research; the Rockefeller Foundation for permission to quote from their manuscripts; and my colleagues Joel Jones and Steven Kramer for their insights and encouragement.Google Scholar

1. See General Education Board (Edmund E. Day), “Recommendations,” in “Report on A Study of American Education,” December 13, 1932, in Rockefeller Foundation Archives, New York City, N. Y. The Archives of the Rockefeller Foundation contain over seventy-six boxes of extensive manuscript materials pertaining to the program in general education from 1931 to 1943. These include correspondence, staff memoranda, informal and formal reports and recommendations, minutes of meetings of the staff, trustees, and executive committee, and dialy material of staff members. Of the literature on philanthropic foundations in the United States, see especially, Bremner, Robert H., American Philanthropy (Chicago, 1960); Commission on Foundations and Private Philanthropies (Peterson Commission), Foundations, Private Giving, and Public Policy (Chicago, 1971); Nielsen, Waldemar A., The Big Foundations (New York, 1972); and Weaver, Warren, ed., U. S. Philanthropic Foundations, Their History, Structure, Management, and Record (New York, 1967).Google Scholar

2. See Fosdick, Raymond B., The Story of the Rockefeller Foundation (New York, 1952); Fosdick, , Adventure in Giving (New York, 1962); and Nielsen, , The Big Foundations, pp. 50–56.Google Scholar

3. Ibid., 380. In 1974 the federal government alone spent over 9 billion dollars on higher education. Chronicle of Higher Education, February 10, 1975.Google Scholar

4. For the activities of the General Education Board in this area, see especially Fosdick, , Adventure in Giving; and General Education Board, Review and Final Report, 1902–1964 (New York, 1964).Google Scholar

5. In this regard it is noteworthy that by 1914 the General Education Board subsidized the salaries of 625 employees of the United States Department of Agriculture engaged in Southern programs. The Smith-Lever Act of 1914 converted this part of the Board's activities into a federally financed program which included a $250,000 appropriation for work in Southern states where the Board had been active. See GEB, Review and Final Report, 14.Google Scholar

6. On the internal vicissitudes of the Board in the 1920's, see the unpublished personal historical notes written in 1930 by former Board officer Edwin Embree, in “Rockefeller Programs—Early History,” in the Rockefeller Foundation Archives. All GEB documents hereafter cited can be found in the Rockefeller Foundation Archives.Google Scholar

7. Concerning the reorganization of the Rockefeller philanthropies, see the materials in “General Education Board Reorganization, 1925–1928” Embree, , “Rockefeller Programs—Early History”; GEB Annual Report 1928–1929 (New York: GEB, 1930); and GEB, Minutes of the General Education Board, December 17, 1931, 2351–2352.Google Scholar

8. GEB, “Minutes of the Officers' Conference,” October 28, 1929, Volume II, 83.Google Scholar

9. GEB, “Minutes of the Officers' Conference,” April 10, 1930, Volume II, 117. By November, 1930, the officers' assessment was widened to include a review of the child study research which the Board had inherited from the Laura Spelman (Rockefeller) Fund in the major foundation reorganization in 1928–1929, GEB “Minutes of the Officers Conference,” November 10, 1930, Volume III, 30.Google Scholar

10. GEB, “Minutes of the Officers Conference,” January 15, 1931, Volume III, 40; and GEB, Minutes of the General Education Board, April 16, 1931, 2219–2222.Google Scholar

11. Ibid., 2227.Google Scholar

12. For additional biographical data on the trustees and officers, see Appendix.Google Scholar

13. For insight into the values of the trustees in the early 1930's, see especially the verbatim transcriptions of the Special meeting of the Board, December 13–4, 1932; the Special Trustee Committee Meeting, March 10, 1933; and the Stated Meeting of the Members and Trustees, April 13, 1933.Google Scholar

14. As late as December 1931, President Arnett was assuring the trustees that the officers would rapidly “put aside” any projects where there might be the “existence of uncontrollable opposition to Board participation.” See GEB, Minutes of the General Education Board, December 17, 1931, 2353. Given the Board's earlier reforming zeal in the South and later activities during the depression, this sensitivity is most ironic.Google Scholar

15. See the officers' “Report on the Survey of Education” presented to the Trustees o December 17, 1931, in Minutes of the General Education Board, 2350–2366. Arnett engaged eleven special consultants and assigned three additional staff members to this preliminary research. Results were then discussed at weekly staff meetings. The items to be covered in this research were outlined by Arnett in a memo “Critical Notes on Developments in Education,” May, 1931.Google Scholar

16. See “Reports Received During the Survey of American Education,” September 27, 1939; and GEB, Minutes of the Executive Committee, October 9, 1931, Book XX, 2333. Gifford was elected a trustee in 1935.Google Scholar

17. “Report on the Survey of Education,” in Minutes of the General Education Board, December 17, 1931, 2355.Google Scholar

18. See “Reports Received During the Survey of American Education,” September 27, 1939.Google Scholar

19. Day, Edmund E., “Report on a Survey of American Education,” December 13, 1932, 11–12. In all, some forty seven reports were completed in the summer and fall of 1932, and each was duplicated and bound for permanence and ease of reference.Google Scholar

20. See, for example, the memoranda from Trevor Arnett and Lawrence Frank to the officers assessing the American Council on Education, April 24, 1931, January 8, February 23, and October 9, 1932; and the memoranda from Frank, David Stevens, and Daniel Prescott concerning the Progressive Education Association, September 18 and November 9, 1931, and October 29, 1932.Google Scholar

21. “Survey Conference,” September 24, 1932.Google Scholar

22. “Survey Conference,” October 6, 1932.Google Scholar

23. Day, E. E., “Report on A Study of American Education,” December 15, 1932, 17–19.Google Scholar

24. Ibid., 22.Google Scholar

25. Ibid., 19.Google Scholar

26. Ibid., 14.Google Scholar

27. Ibid., 19.Google Scholar

28. Ibid., 27.Google Scholar

29. Since many experts predicted that two years of “terminal” junior college would also soon be added to the high school experience of many youth, this area was also added to secondary education.Google Scholar

30. Ibid., 31–35.Google Scholar

31. For the background of this decision, see the minutes of the officers' “Survey Conference,” October 6, 1932.Google Scholar

32. Minutes of Special Meeting of the Board, December 13, 1932, 1–2, 5.Google Scholar

33. Ibid., 2, 6–7.Google Scholar

34. Ibid., 3.Google Scholar

35. Ibid., 5.Google Scholar

36. See Report of the ACE Executive Committee, in Educational Record, 13 (July, 1932): 160–162. In 1931, the ACE had already lost 13 members unable to pay yearly dues.Google Scholar

37. Report of the ACE Executive Committee, Education Record, 12 (July, 1931): 222–226.Google Scholar

38. Memoranda to the staff written by Arnett, Trevor, July 15, 1932 and January 6, 1933; Stevens, David, March 4, 1933; and Frank, Lawrence, April 3, 1933.Google Scholar

39. Memoranda to the staff written by Stevens, David, March 4, 1933; and Frank, Lawrence, April 3, 1933; and Frank's telegram to Stevens, April 5, 1933. See also Judd, Charles to Frank, Lawrence, April 6, 1933; and Stevens, to trustee Chase, Harry, April 10, 1933.Google Scholar

40. See especially, “Memorandum on The Proposed Program in the Field of General Education,” January 18, 1933; Stevens', David memorandum concerning a meeting between Arnett, Stevens, and Angell in New Haven January 25, 1933; “Materials on the Problems of Secondary Education,” January, 1933; “Opinions on Reorganizing Secondary Education,” January, 1933; and “Memorandum for the Trustees' Committee on The Board Study of American Education,” March 10, 1933.Google Scholar

41. Stenographic transcripts, Special Trustee Committee Meeting on the General Education Program, March 20, 1933; and “Report on the Study of American Education,” in Minutes of the General Education Board, April 13, 1933, 2694–2698.Google Scholar

42. Minutes of the General Education Board, April 13, 1933, 2698–2699.Google Scholar

43. Stenographic transcripts, Stated Meeting of the Members and Trustees of the General Education Board, April 13, 1933, 5–6.Google Scholar

44. Minutes of the General Education Board, April 13, 1933, 2699–2670.Google Scholar

45. See Minutes of the ACE Annual Meeting, May 5–6, 1933, in Educational Record, 14 (July, 1933): 260–271; Stevens', David memoranda on ACE reorganization, May 4, May 8, and May 9, 1933; Mann, C. R. to General Education Board, May 6, 1933; Secretary Brierly, Walter to Mann, C. R., May 13, 1933; and Day, E. E., “Report on Program in General Education,” November 25, 1933, 4–5.Google Scholar

46. GEB, Annual Report, 1934–1935, vii.Google Scholar

47. Minutes of the General Education Board, December 14, 1933, 2864–2866; and Minutes of Special Meeting of the ACE, February 10, 1934, Educational Record, 15 (April, 1934): 154–157.Google Scholar

48. Dean Russell's speech at the Special Meeting is revealing:Google Scholar

The thing I did not understand and did not come to understand until late in the fall was that the work of the P and P committee and the work of the ACE had so highly recommended itself to certain of the foundations that far from trying to dominate the Council, they were really trying to call upon an organization of the type that they thought the Council wanted to be, to assist them in mapping out researches, investigations and experiments that would affect the welfare of American Education as a whole … Ibid., p. 155–156.Google Scholar

49. Minutes of the General Education Board, April 20, 1934, 3027–3028.Google Scholar

50. Day, , “Report on the General Education Program,” December, 1935. Zook worked on the prospectus for the Youth Commission throughout the winter of 1934 and into the Spring of 1935. A final proposal was submitted to the foundation March 23, 1935, and approved by the trustees April 15, 1935. See George Zook to Day, March 19, 1935; Zook to Arnett, March 23, 1935; and Minutes of the General Education Board, April 15, 1935, 3371–3372.Google Scholar

Day worked closely with Zook to refine the goals and personnel of the Commission prior to its first meeting September 16, 1935.Google Scholar

51. Day, , “Report on the General Education Program,” in Minutes of the General Education Board, December 17, 1936, 3992–3993.Google Scholar

52. See the General Education sections of the General Education Board Annual Report, 1933–34, 1934–35, 1935–36.Google Scholar

53. Minutes of the General Education Board, April 11, 1935, 3365–3369. It might be noted that trustee Owen Young also served as a Regent of the New York State Board of Regents and was chairman of the subcommittee of the Board of Regents responsible for the study. Mr. Young always excused himself from meetings when appropriations to the Board of Regents were discussed.Google Scholar

54. Day, E. E., “Report on a Study of American Education,” December, 1932, 31–35.Google Scholar

55. Havighurst was born in DePere, Wisconsin, June 5, 1900. He received his A.B. from Ohio Wesleyan in 1921 and his Ph.D. from Ohio State in 1924. He then spent two years at Harvard as a National Research Council post-doctoral fellow. He began his teaching career as an assistant professor of chemistry at Miami University (Ohio) in 1927 but left after one year to become an assistant professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin. At Madison, he was associated for four years with Alexander Meiklejohn's Experimental College. In 1932 he returned to Ohio State as associate professor of science education. Two years later, he began work for the GEB as assistant director of general education. After leaving the Board, he became a professor of education at the University of Chicago.Google Scholar

56. See Havighurst memorandum to Fosdick, Raymond, June 22, 1937, 2.Google Scholar

57. Havighurst, , “Preliminary Report on the Program in General Education, 1933–1940,” 1940, 14. Havighurst prepared this 110 page report shortly after the trustees' decision to terminate his program. For the contrast between Day and Havighurst, compare the former's “Report on the General Education Program,” December 1936 with the latter's “The Status of the Program in General Education,” November 10, 1937, especially pages 5 to 7.Google Scholar

58. Minutes of the General Education Board, May 19, 1939, 39099–39100. The American Youth Commission had begun its Employment and Occupational Adjustment Project a year earlier with an appropriation of $150,000. See Minutes of the General Education Board, January 21, 1938, 38003–38006.Google Scholar

59. Minutes of the General Education Board, December 2, 1937, 37209–37211; and Minutes of the General Education Board, June 10, 1938, 38140–38142.Google Scholar

60. See the “Treasurer's Report” appended to each General Education Board Annual Report for 1936–37, 1938, and 1939.Google Scholar

61. General Education Board, Annual Report, 1936–1937, viii, 6. For the first time, the annual report of the Southern Education Program preceded that of the General Education Program. General Education had dominated the Annual Reports since 1933.Google Scholar

62. For example, looking back in 1939 former officer Warren Weaver recalled that the trustees had “… had very vague ideas of what this was all about. They apparently had embarked on a rather venturesome education program without any very clear conception of motivation, of what they wanted to accomplish, or of what the practical possibilities actually were.” Weaver, Warren to Havighurst, Robert J., September 25, 1939.Google Scholar

63. Day, , “Report on the General Education Program,” in Minutes of the General Education Board, December 17, 1936, 3989. Day wrote Havighurst three years later that he believed that it was not until his speech in December, 1936 “… that the trustees had at last gained some real insight into the importance of what the program was trying to accomplish.” Day, to Havighurst, , January 16, 1940.Google Scholar

64. memorandum, Havighurst to Fosdick, Raymond, March 25, 1937.Google Scholar

65. See Havighurst, , “The Status of the Program in General Education,” November 10, 1937, 7–9.Google Scholar

66. GEB, “Trustee Bulletin,” no. 1, October 15, 1937, 7–9.Google Scholar

67. See especially “The Status of the Program in General Education,” November 10, 1937, and “Plan of Operations in the General Education Program,” May 31, 1939 for good examples.Google Scholar

68. Freeman, Douglas S. to Fosdick, Raymond, July 1, 1939.Google Scholar

69. Havighurst, to Fosdick, , March 8, 1940; and Fosdick to Professor George Works, April 25, 1940.Google Scholar

70. Minutes of the General Education Board, April 4, 1940, 39531. Fosdick, Raymond to Rockefeller, John D. III, et al., June 6, 1940.Google Scholar

71. For the final tabulation of the Board's appropriations, see Havighurst, , “Preliminary Report of the Program in General Education, 1933–1940,” 1940; and his public summary in General Education Board, Annual Report, 1940, 7–75.Google Scholar

72. After an abortive attempt to join the ACE and the EPC into one large National Education Policies Commission in 1941, the GEB authorized one final $300,000 appropriation for the ACE for general support. See Zook, George, “President's Annual Report,” Educational Record, 24 (July, 1943): 251.Google Scholar

73. For the activities of the ACE during World War II, see Tuttle, William M. Jr., “Higher Education and the Federal Government: The Lean Years, 1940–42,” Teachers College Record, 71 (December, 1969): 297–312; and Tuttle, , “Higher Education and the Federal Government: The Triumph, 1942–1945,” Teachers College Record, 71 (February, 1970): 485–499.Google Scholar

74. Cremin, Lawrence, The Transformation of the School (New York, 1961), pp. 329–332. On Day's active role with the EPC, see the stenographic transcripts of the EPC meetings for early 1940's in the Archives of the National Education Association, Washington, D. C.Google Scholar

75. General Education Board, Annual Report, 1940, 36.Google Scholar

76. The best account of the PEA's activities in the 1930's is Graham, Patricia A., Progressive Education: From Arcady to Academe (New York, 1967).Google Scholar

77. Ralph Tayler to Fosdick, December 9, 1940. On the fate of the PEA, see Graham, , Progressive Education, pp. 102–244; and Cremin, , Transformation of the School, pp. 257–270.Google Scholar

78. General Education Board, Annual Report, 1940.Google Scholar

79. Significantly, it was the U. S. Office of Education, not private educational or philanthropic organizations which provided funding for the Life Adjustment Movement, a movement which flourished from 1944 to 1954 and which embraced many of the principles of the GEB's program. The Office of Education sponsored two National Commissions on Life Adjustment Education for Youth, countless national, regional, state and local conferences, workshops, and surveys, and a host of publications.Google Scholar

With a few exceptions such as the Carnegie Corporation's support of James B. Conant's Study of American Education from 1954 to 1962, public secondary educational policy has increasingly been determined by federal priorities.Google Scholar