Education and the Cold War: The Battle for the American School [Paperback]

Shortly after the Russians launched Sputnik in 1957, Hannah Arendt quipped that only in America could a crisis in education actually become a factor in politics. The Cold War battle for the American school - dramatized but not initiated by Sputnik - proved Arendt correct. The schools served as a battleground in the ideological conflicts of the 1950s. Beginning with the genealogy of progressive education, and ending with the formation of New Left and New Right thought, Education and the Cold War offers a fresh perspective on the postwar transformation in U.S. political culture by way of an examination of the educational history of that era.Shortly after the Russians launched Sputnik in 1957, Hannah Arendt quipped that only in America could a crisis in education actually become a factor in politics. The Cold War battle for the American school - dramatized but not initiated by Sputnik - proved Arendt correct. The schools served as a battleground in the ideological conflicts of the 1950s. Beginning with the genealogy of progressive education, and ending with the formation of New Left and New Right thought, Education and the Cold War offers a fresh perspective on the postwar transformation in U.S. political culture by way of an examination of the educational history of that era.1. Introduction: An American Crisis 2. John Dewey and the Invention of Childhood: Progressive Education in the Beginning 3. Education as Great Depression Experience: The Unraveling of the Popular Front and the Roots of Educational Vigilantism 4. From Hot War to Cold War for Schools and Teenagers: The Life Adjustment Movement and the Ideology of Maturity 5. Communist Teacher Problematic: Liberal Anticommunism and the Education of Bella Dodd 6. Progressive Education is Red -ucation: Conservative Thought and Cold War Educational Vigilantism 7. Crisis of the Mind: The Liberal Intellectuals and the Schools 8. From World-Mindedness to Cold War-Mindedness: The Lost Educational Utopia of Theol£Z