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- Teachers gained more control over their work through unions and new laws aimed at standardizing education. Teachers had to be better qualified, and their performance was monitored, but laws were brought in to give them "tenure," protecting them from dismissal.
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During the 1930s, teachers came under pressure from the school boards, the press, the bankers, and communist members of their own unions. Academic freedom was also challenged by the need for teachers to swear loyalty oaths.
- The 1930S Medicine and Health
Before the 1930s there was no treatment for infectious...
- Overview
The main causes of death in the early 1930s, in order of...
- George S. Counts
COUNTS, GEORGE S. (1889 – 1974). Progressive educator,...
- The 1930s Education
The promise of public education was that it would create...
- Education
As labor rights struggles were forged in the industrial...
- The 1930S Medicine and Health
The promise of public education was that it would create knowledgeable citizens. But what knowledgeable citizens actually need to know has always been open for debate. For many in the 1930s, success in education meant going to college, and in theory this was possible for anyone with the ability.
During the 1930s, though, the attitudes of the “Normalites” changed rapidly. Turn the dusty pages of Calgary Normal School’s yearbooks and you’ll find a dust bowl revolution. Teachers of the 1920s were part of a rising middle class on the prairies.
Businessmen were the foremost advocates of school retrenchment during the 1930s, not only because they were pressured by the Depression, but also because they embraced a particular outlook regarding the role of schools in American society, one shared by many educators.
- Introduction
- Issue Summary
- Contributing Forces
- Perspectives
- Impact
- Notable People
- Primary Sources
- Suggested Research Topics
- Bibliography
Although the Depression began in the fall of 1929, its ominous cloud did not overshadow schools until the fall of 1932 when many citizens facing unemployment or reduced incomes could no longer pay their property taxes. Retrenchment became the buzzword for budget cutbacks, resulting in reductions in the hours schools operated, increased class sizes,...
The Great Depression became a time of crisis in public education in the United States. Because of thelack of employment opportunities, more youth were likely to stay in school longer. School attendance, however, would actually decline through the 1930s due to budget crises of local school districts. The rise of unemployment and cuts in pay meant le...
The U.S. Constitution does not provide for federal funding of public schools. In fact, in the eighteenth century no public general education existed. Such matters as education and health would be left to the states. It was not until the economic crisis of the Great Depression that the federal government, through New Deal programs, would enter the s...
Business Community and Educators
Following a decade in which businessmen played a strong role in running school districts, the economic strife of the 1930s led to major change. By 1932 economically strapped businessmen changed direction. Instead of lobbying for higher taxes as they had before they became hostile to using tax money for funding schools, they now wanted to lower their own taxes because of the economic hard times. They also demanded that the loans to school districts be paid back. The interaction between busines...
Militant Teachers
Teachers who had long desired greater control and advocated professionalization of their endeavors became more militant in the 1930s. They saw the dayto-day miserable situations that children were living under. Many school children were suffering from malnutrition. Teachers helped individually when they could on their limited incomes. They paid for school lunches for hungry kids or collected clothing for those students in need. Detroit teachers contributed $30,000 to a general relief fund. Te...
Educational Progressives Versus Educational Conservatives
Progressives, organized and becoming a force by 1919, were interested in creating a better society through child center education. Teaching by rote memorization was out of favor. Progressives believed that allowing a child to be creative would better prepare him or her to solve problems and meet challenges as an adult. In progressive education the teacher was conceived as a friendly guide. Progressive ideas translated in the 1920s into hands-on learning in science laboratories, art studios, g...
Trends in Education
As the 1930s came to a close, the decade of scarcity altered the development of American public schools in the years to come. The Depression did not reflect trends in education that began in the 1920s. The percentage of children and teenagers aged five to seventeen attending school increased from 83.2 percent in 1920 to 94.2 percent in 1940. During World War II, the numbers dropped a bit because youth left school to work or go into the armed services. After the war, however, the rise resumed...
Black Students
Ironically, the Depression in some ways improved the situation of black education. Some northern schools began to abolish segregated education as a cost-saving measure in the 1930s. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) won a series of Supreme Court challenges to segregation in the 1930s and 1940s. Yet the South resisted desegregation. In 1954 the NAACP mounted another legal challenge to segregation and won in Brown v. Board of Educationwhich declared that any...
Progressive Education
Reform spawned by the progressive education movement began appearing in schools in the 1920s. The child centered, "learn by doing" approaches included science laboratories, vocational classes including shops and home economics, physical education, and art projects. After a temporary setback in the first half of the 1930s due to perceptions that these classes were unnecessary expensive "frills," progressive education expanded from primary grades to high schools. The education provided in New D...
Charles Austin Beard (1874–1948). In the 1930s Charles Austin Beard was counted with John Dewey and George Counts as one of the foremost examples of U.S. teachers as political and social reformers. Beard grew up on a prosperous Indiana farm and graduated from DePauw University in 1898. During his undergraduate years, Beard spent a summer in Chicago...
"He must attend some kind of school."
The following excerpt is from a 1935 pamphlet by Kingsley Davis, entitled "Youth in the Depression," funded by the American Council on Education. First Davis describes how few students in the early 1930s made it through high school. He then relates in practical terms what the Depression was doing to youth and how it affected their schooling and job possibilities (quoted in Davis, Youth in the Depression,pp. 8–12):
Evaluate the public education available to black American students between 1900 and 1939. Narrow the study to a specific geographic area or compare and contrast urban versus rural schools.Imagine, before you are allowed to teach, you must swear a loyalty oath that forbids you to teach certain ideas. Discuss the pros and cons of such a test. Are there any basic American principles th...Explore reasons why high school attendance increased during the 1930s Depression decade.Research public school funding at the beginning of the twenty-first century. How have state governments attempted to deal with inequity of funding between districts? Explore property tax funding ve...Sources
Anderson, James D. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935.Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988. Bondi, Victor, ed. American Decades: 1930–39.Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1995. Clark, Burton R. The Distinctive College: Antioch, Reed & Swarthmore.Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1970. Davis, Kingsley. Youth in the Depression.Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1935. Dennis, Lawrence J. George S. Counts and Charles A. Beard: Collaborators for Change. Albany...
Further Reading
Altenbaugh, Richard J. Education for Struggle: The American Labor Colleges of the 1920s and 1930s.Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1990. American Federation of Teaching, available from the World Wide Web at http://www.aft.org. Davis, Maxine. The Lost Generation: A Portrait of American Youth Today.New York: The Macmillan Company, 1936. Dennis, Lawrence J., and William E. Eaton, eds. George S. Counts: Educator for a New Age.Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980. Iversen...
Dec 9, 2015 · Teachers struggled to teach undernourished children whose families were struggling with unemployment. Despite these challenges, the 1930's were a “vibrant time for literature...
Before taking charge of their schoolhouses, many teachers had been accustomed to the relative comforts of city life. Rural teachers—mostly young women—were responsible for grades 1–8, sometimes grades 1–11, all in one room. Physical conditions were harsh in the prairie schoolhouses in the 1930s.
