Defining the Camps.

One point of agreement among almost all scholars of reform during the 1960s was that American education needed a fundamental restructuring. Unfortunately there was no agreement about how that new system should look. Many educators still followed the original tenets of philosopher John Dewey's progressive education. They believed that because of changes wrought by science and technology, the mind of modern man differs from that of the Victorians. They argued, therefore, that modern education should emphasize modern needs: tolerance of different beliefs and of individual liberties; an emphasis on cooperation, not competition; and the scientific approach to the solution of human problems. Problem solving is more valuable than rote learning, and traditional teaching methods create a "repressive, irrelevant, impersonal authoritarian environment," proponents believed. "The story of survival is the story of creatures who adapted to change in their...