In the 1940s and ’50s, Americans engaged in an intense debate over the content of school textbooks, particularly social studies texts. Fears of communism and socialism spurred a conservative backlash against anything that smacked of collectivism or unpatriotic criticism of the United States.[1] Dangerous books were poisoning the minds of schoolchildren, turning them into Reds, and had to be removed from classrooms.[2] Study of the controversy sparks an interesting question. How did contemporaries understand the relationship between citizenship and dissent? Could one remain a good citizen if engaging in critique of American society? The answers to this question diverged along political lines. Those who might answer no tended to be conservative, with the hypothetical yes associated with leftists. However, how most citizens — left, center, and right — felt remains open to interpretation.
Textbooks and series accused of “subversion” included American Government (Frank Magruder), Building America (National Education Association), and Man and His Changing Society (Harold Rugg).[3] Alongside George Counts, William H. Kilpatrick, John Dewey, and others, Rugg was a social reconstructionist and progressive reformer who believed education could build a better society. Reconstructionists engaged in leftwing critiques of capitalism and other realities. Rugg’s widely used series included 1931’s An Introduction to Problems of American Culture. In the introduction, student attention was drawn to ideas like conflicting reports in newspapers, censorship, influence of environment and exposure on belief, job loss from automation, a rapidly changing society, poverty, who controls the government and the press, and more.[4] Youth were asked to “study the needs and try to learn how to improve the community in which you live.”[5] The book went on to explore the booms and busts of the capitalist economy and associated miseries: “even in times of prosperity millions are out of work.”[6] “Why,” Rugg asks, “should there be unemployment and starvation in the richest country in the world?… There are many reasons, but the most important ones can be summed up in one phrase — LACK OF PLANNING.”[7] The U.S. needed a “national plan of producing goods and providing jobs for all.”[8] Rugg uses multiple chapters to lay out his vision, shifting from facts concerning the state of American society to unabashed editorializing of a flair ranging from New Dealist to socialistic. He advocates for public ownership of select industries, wealth redistribution, and other methods of State intervention to solve the “outstanding problems of American civilization and culture.”[9] While he does not call for the nationalization of all industries, which would have placed him more firmly in the communist or socialist camp, Rugg nods approvingly at the Soviet Union’s centrally planned production, and in sections on politics is sure to include Socialists alongside Republicans and Democrats as potential candidates for elected office.[10]
In a 1940 article in The New York Times, Rugg, perhaps feeling the pressure of a fierce attack on his books, vehemently denied that he was a communist or socialist, saying he supported “free discussion,” insisting education create “citizens who understand the forces at play in our own land and abroad, and who are concerned to do something about them. I feel sure that they can solve America’s problems and build a magnificent civilization…”[11] This was key to making “the American way work.”[12] A good citizen recognized national faults and worked to fix them. In the aforementioned textbook, Rugg connected his proposed right to a job with the American way. The Constitution vowed to “promote the general welfare” and the Declaration of Independence spoke of “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — these are inalienable rights! What can guarantee them more securely than to provide a job for everyone?”[13] George Shuster, president of Hunter College, wrote that Rugg’s textbooks pushed the idea that America has “changed and must necessarily go on changing…”[14] Reform was an American tradition. Progressive education made “young people interested in helping to make their world a better world,” which of course required understanding (That Men May Understand was Rugg’s book-length response to critics) and acknowledgement of social issues — like “economic problems” that might be addressed by government intervention.[15] Others agreed that introspection and criticism were healthy, such as a committee of school officials and citizens in Michigan that castigated textbook censorship, declaring, according to historian of education Jonathan Zimmerman, that “textbooks should examine ‘accomplishments and failures’ in American history, so that students would develop the analytical abilities that democratic citizenship demanded.”[16]
To critics, Rugg’s content represented “Treason in the Textbooks,” to quote the headline of a 1940 article by journalist O. K. Armstrong.[17] Planning meant “strict government control of individual and group activities,” Armstrong wrote. Collectivism was the “bitter foe” of democracy, the birthmother of totalitarianism. The “insidious destruction of American ideals by way of the minds and hearts of American boys and girls” had to be stopped.[18] For many conservatives, good citizenship required an uncritical, flattering approach to American society and history. Zimmerman writes, “In the white-hot politics of the Cold War, the suggestion that America needed any reform was ‘subversive’” to some observers, aiding the communists and their cause.[19] Some California lawmakers explicitly called for “a constructive, positive approach” with a focus on the “good things” the United States had to offer.[20] The American Legion, a veterans’ organization and a leading crusader against subversive textbooks, published “A School Program for Positive Americanism” in its magazine, written by the superintendent of Chicago’s public schools in 1941.[21] “Sinister” ideas had to be purged from school materials and replaced with those that “inculcated” a “love of country” and a “loyal desire” to serve “the best interests of the community, State, and nation.”[22] (Note the contradictory tension between opposing collectivism and stressing that the individual must put community and country first, a common feature of this period, alongside condemnations of indoctrination by those intent on utilizing it for different purposes.[23]) The “teaching of patriotism” and “respect” for the American way of life was needed for “true American citizenship.”[24] Students must study and celebrate American institutions, heroes, founding documents, flags, patriotic songs, and so on.
This approach of course was already a big part of public education. The Chicago superintendent reported proudly that his commissions were finding no subversive materials in his schools, which somewhat undermined the threat and framed education as already serving his function (“We have found no material that…seeks to cast doubt upon the importance of the patriotism of our American heroes and their services to mankind”).[25] Indeed, widely used readers for young students produced in the 1930s featured patriotic songs, drawings of children carrying flags, and stories of dutiful and loyal Americans.[26] Using possession to indicate importance and stress obedience, one basic reader explained that a citizen is a “person who lives in a country and belongs to it.”[27] There were obligations of service in exchange for liberty. The United States “protects you and gives you many things to make you happy. But your country cannot be great and free and happy unless its boys and girls do their part,” do “what your country needs…”[28] Another book left the value and benefit of machines unquestioned, quite different from the concern over automation leaving workers unemployed.[29] Although it should be noted these texts were for younger readers than Rugg’s Problems. The point is that patriotic texts were a major presence in public schools, alongside those that addressed the pain of the Depression and other social ills.
Clearly, the meaning of good citizenship tended to differ by political ideology, with staunch conservatives far less likely to tolerate questioning and dissent as a component of citizenship compared to staunch left-wingers, who saw no contradiction. But perhaps these are the extremes — whether most Americans of the period saw proper citizenship as incompatible with criticism is debatable. On the one hand, Rugg’s books were wiped off the face of American education.[30] Education historian Adam Laats notes that Rugg’s books sold 152,000 copies in 1940 but only 40,000 the next year, with many cities and school boards eliminating them.[31] The conservative “attacks took their toll.”[32] “Significant numbers of Americans” opposed subversive material and sought “to make schools and society more patriotic, more friendly to capitalism,” achieving real “success.”[33] However, Jonathan Zimmerman argues that while Rugg’s books were largely defeated, conservative activism failed to topple most other accused texts.[34] He writes that multitudes of citizens, veterans, school boards, businesses, and committees, as well as Congress and “almost every legislature” that took up the issue, refused to support content censorship.[35] Despite widespread opposition to communism and support for patriotism, a distinction was made, Zimmerman suggests, between the former and much critical material.[36] Perhaps a mix of nuanced thinking, disdain for censorship, fealty to familiar or beloved books, memories of the Depression, and other factors contributed. Laats suggests the Rugg controversy was more about the man than the books.[37] Indeed, far-left teachers may have had it worse than texts.[38] Zimmerman concludes: “By 1954, if not earlier, both the critics and the defenders of American textbooks declared that the campaign against the books had failed.”[39] Given the inconsistency of textbook fates, historians must continue to study the period and its controversy, seeking new ways to measure general American sentiment.
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[1] Jonathan Zimmerman, Whose America?: Culture Wars in the Public Schools (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2002). See chapter four.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Zimmerman, 83-84, and Adam Laats, The Other School Reformers: Conservative Activism in American Education (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2015), chapter three.
[4] Harold Rugg, An Introduction to Problems of American Culture (Boston: Ginn and Co., 1931). See the introduction.
[5] Ibid., 14.
[6] Ibid., 181.
[7] Ibid., 185.
[8] Ibid., 195.
[9] Ibid., 217, 594, 595-598.
[10] Ibid., 3-4, 265, 596-597.
[11] “Rugg Defends His Textbooks, Long Attacked,” New York Times, April 5, 1940.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Rugg, 196.
[14] George Shuster, “Dr. Harold Rugg Replies to His Critics,” The New York Times Book Review, April 27, 1941.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Zimmerman, 95.
[17] O. K. Armstrong, “Treason in the Textbooks,” The American Legion Magazine 29 (September 1940): 8-9, 51, 70-72.
[18] Ibid., 72.
[19] Zimmerman, 85.
[20] Ibid.
[21] William Johnson, “A School Program for Positive Americanism,” The American Legion Magazine 31 (September 1941): 12-13, 50-52.
[22] Ibid., 12.
[23] Irene Corbally Kuhn, “Your Child is Their Target,” The American Legion Magazine 52 (June 1952): 18.
[24] Ibid., 13.
[25] Ibid., 13.
[26] “Little American Citizens,” William Elson and William Gray, Elson-Gray Basic Readers Book Four (Boston: Scott, Foresman, and Company, 1936).
[27] Ibid, 68.
[28] Ibid.
[29] “Workers and their Work,” William Elson and William Gray, Elson-Gray Basic Readers Book Five (Boston: Scott, Foresman, and Company, 1936), 276, 306.
[30] Zimmerman, 78-79.
[31] Laats, 75.
[32] Ibid., 75, 119-120.
[33] Ibid., 76, 121.
[34] Zimmerman, 79.
[35] Zimmerman, 101-103.
[36] Ibid., 101.
[37] Laats, 121.
[38] Zimmerman, 83.
[39] Ibid., 101.
