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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. Businessmen and some educators argued that the role of the school was to select the gifted few from the dull mass, to sort out a capable elite from the incapable many. Given this presumption, education could be ruthlessly slashed: the gifted, the able, those struggling to achieve, would claw their way to success regardless, and the rest would take their place as the underlings of industrial society. In theory anyone, from any class or race, was capable of succeeding in this meritocratic model of education. In practice, however, there were enormous class and racially based barriers to educational success.
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This section contains 142 words (approx. 1 page at 300 words per page) |
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