Teaching with 'fanfare and military glamour': School mathematics, the federal government, and World War II*

Educational Forum, The, Spring 2003 by Garrett, Alan W

Public education in the United States grew at an unprecedented rate during the first half of the 20th century. Only 10 percent of all eligible students attended high school in 1900; by 1950, 76 percent were enrolled (Newman 2002). Throughout these years, the federal government played a minimal role in the schooling of the nation's children. Despite the federal government's growth in influence and prominence in people's daily lives resulting from the First World War and the Great Depression, local schools remained largely true to their name and were almost entirely the domain of states and lesser governmental entities. The only significant exception to this generalization was the limited federal aid provided to vocational education programs as a result of the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917, itself largely a result of World War I (Gutek 1992). Lesser-known federal attempts to influence public schools during the First World War included publication of The National School Service and formation of the U.S. School Garden Army. The National School Service, a 16-page product of the Committee on Public Information, was sent directly to every U.S. teacher beginning in the fall of 1918 and offered war news and suggested lessons (Davis 1996). The School Garden Army organized some public school students along military lines to aid the war effort through the increased production of food (Davis 1995). Only vocational education supported in part by the Smith-Hughes Act survived the war's immediate aftermath, and its curriculum significantly impacted only a minority of students nationwide. Educational problems, by and large, were left to the states, school boards, and educators themselves to resolve.

The same enrollment growth that made public schooling a ubiquitous feature of life in the United States, touching virtually every family, fueled a crisis for mathematics educators in the years prior to the Second World War. Mathematics long had been a component of the U.S. school curriculum, yet it had received relatively little scrutiny. Rationales for its place in the curriculum could be grounded in arguments based on psychology, tradition, or usefulness. A confluence of events in the late-19th and early-20th centuries ultimately led to the vulnerability of school mathematics. First, early psychological research discounted the notion of mental discipline, long a central justification for the study of mathematics. Second, increasing student enrollments, especially during the economic depression of the 1930s, resulted in more students entering and remaining in high school than previously had been the case. Many of these students had different academic backgrounds and aspirations than did their more homogeneous predecessors. For them, the traditional curriculum, especially mathematics in an era of greatly diminished career prospects, appeared neither appropriate nor beneficial. Finally, the progressive education movement questioned virtually all educational practices and long-held beliefs. Tradition alone became insufficient as a justification for curriculum decisions. Critics of school mathematics argued it was a relic that had outlived its usefulness and should play a significantly reduced role in the curriculum. The great majority of students would use no more mathematics than simple arithmetic in their daily lives and thus had no need to study mathematics beyond that point. Curricular and course-taking data indicate that critics of traditional mathematics education made significant inroads immediately prior to World War II (Garrett 1999).

The advent of the war did much to change the perception that mathematics beyond arithmetic was a largely esoteric subject to be reserved for those few students who, upon their graduations from high school, would pursue higher education in scientific or technical fields. Suddenly, the need for a large number of mathematically capable individuals for both military service and industrial work became apparent. One way the importance of improved mathematics teaching and learning in the nation's schools was emphasized was through communications directed specifically to mathematics educators from members of the military and other officials of the federal government. Some of these officials further suggested that mathematics classrooms offered venues in which other government goals could be pursued. Often published as articles in periodicals likely to be available to mathematics teachers, these attempts to inspire, motivate, and enhance the teaching, and hopefully by extension the learning, of that subject were unprecedented. Additionally, they served to bind the nation's schools to larger purposes. Today, such uses of public schools are taken largely for granted. In the 1940s, however, local schools remained largely the realm of local authorities. One of the first and probably most influential calls for improved mathematics education came from a well-known source of unquestioned national stature.

THE NIMITZ LETTER