Stories of the Eight-Year Study: Reexamining Secondary Education in America

Notes

249 Notes Epigraph 1. James A. Michener, correspondence to Craig Kridel, August 28, 1986. See also G. W. Dybwad and Joy V. Bliss, James A. Michener: The Beginning Teacher and his Textbooks (Albuquerque, NM: The Book Stops Here, 1995). Introduction 1. Lawrence A. Cremin, The Transformation of the Schools (New York: Knopf, 1961): viii. 2. Richard Lipka, John Lounsbury, Gordon Vars, et al., The Eight-Year Study Revisited (Columbus, Ohio: National Middle School Association, 1998); David Tyack and Larry Cuban, Tinkering Toward Utopia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995); Ellen Lagemann, An Elusive Science: The Troubling History of Educational Research (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000); Linda Darling -Hammond, The Right to Learn (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997); Education Week staff, Lessons of a Century: A Nation’s Schools Come of Age (Bethesda, MD: Editorial Projects in Education, 2000); Diane Ravitch, Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000): 267–268, 281–282; Alfie Kohn, The Schools Our Children Deserve (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999): 232; Patricia Graham, Schooling America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005): 88. 3. We must note that the project was never totally forgotten. Fifteen years after its release, educators were summarizing the project to a European audience : James Hemming, Teach Them to Live (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1957). Twenty years after its publication, Cremin stated: “Long after the other efforts of the PEA have faded into history, its work [the Eight-Year Study] may well remain as the Association’s abiding contribution to the development of American education” (The Transformation of the Schools, 251). During the 1970s and 1980s, the Eight-Year Study was described by Daniel and Laurel Tanner as “the most important and comprehensive curriculum experiment ever carried on in the United States” [Daniel Tanner and Laurel Tanner, Curriculum Development : Theory into Practice (New York: Macmillan, 1975): 319]. Many other texts and reference books have featured the Eight-Year Study: William H. Schubert, Curriculum (New York: Macmillan, 1986); Jon Snyder, Frances Bolin, and Karen 250 Notes to Introduction Zumwalt, “Curriculum Implementation,” in Handbook of Research on Curriculum, ed. P. W. Jackson (New York: Macmillan, 1992): 402–435; Richard Gibboney, The Stone Trumpet (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994); William F. Pinar, et al., Understanding Curriculum (New York: Peter Lang, 1995). 4. Cremin, The Transformation of the Schools, ix. 5. Wilford M. Aikin, The Story of the Eight-Year Study (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1942): 116. 6. While the final 1940s’ volumes of the Eight-Year Study hyphenate “Eight Year,” not all period reports and internal documents do so. In keeping with period documents, we have standardized all references to the Committee on the Relation of School and College as the Commission on the Relation of School and College. Wilford M. Aikin, “Commission on Relation of School and College,” Educational Research Bulletin XVII (November 1938): 211. 7. Robert Gilchrist, personal interview with author-CK, Columbus, Ohio, July 3, 1997. 8. Alice Keliher, correspondence to Flora M. Rhind (October 25, 1937); GEB: S 1–2, B 283, F 2960; Alice Keliher, correspondence to W. Carson Ryan (May 16, 1938); GEB: S 1–2, B 283, F 2961. 9. Progressive Education Advances: Report on a Program to Educate American Youth for Present-Day Living (New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1938). 10. Katharine Taylor (Chair), “Introductory Memorandum on Plans for Experimental Work in Secondary Education” (January 16, 1932): 2; GEB: S 1– 2, B 281, F 2935. 11. “Commission on Relation of Secondary School and College,” Minutes of the Meeting of the Board of Director, PEA Minutes (February 21, 1939): 1; American Education Fellowship Executive Committee, Vol. 4 (February 1938– November 1940); TC: 370.62 Am 38 v.1. 12. Paul Diederich, “Introduction,” Thirty Schools Tell Their Story (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1942): xvii–xxiii. 13. “Memorandum of Interview: FPK[epple] and Mr. Aiken [sic], Dean McConn and Dean Hawkes” (August 31, 1933); CCF: III.A, B 300.10. 14. J. L. Bergstresser, “Interviews: Annual Conference of the Directing Committee and Heads of Schools” (October 12–15, 1938): 1; GEB: S 1–2, B 281, F 2933; Frederick L. Redefer, “The Eight-Year Study—Eight Years Later: A Study of Experimentation in the Thirty Schools” (Ph.D. diss., Teachers College, Columbia University, 1951): 193; Robert J. Havighurst, “Interviews: Meeting of the Curriculum Staff” (March 2, 1937): 29; GEB RG 12; Havighurst, 1937–1938, Box 4. 15. Dean Chamberlin, Enid Straw Chamberlin, Neal E. Draught, and William E...