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"Education is life," Dewey once ruminated vaguely. "Education is life," parroted the educationists, and turned the thought into revelation. So began the grand detour of progressive education. In 1938 the powerful Education Policies Commission placed "recreation" on a par with "the inquiring mind." In some schools, flycasting crowded out French (no trick after 22 states in the World War I era passed laws discouraging "foreign"-language study. Dewey himself was shocked at the excesses. The college professors scowled—silently. By World War II, many a school was running along happily as a substitute for summertime down on the farm. A good many parents were delighted.
Ventilation. The great awakening began when new postwar suburbanites put their children in public schools. Often they were bright young graduates of private schools, and they found plenty to complain about: lower standards, overcrowding, the teacher shortage. No help was the nation's sudden flood of babies: 40 million in the last decade (the total U.S. population in 1870). Up went the cost per pupil, from $197.65 in 1949 to $340 this year. Up went parental blood pressure. And out of their shells popped the college professors.
When the academics began to cry out, it was not so much to denounce public schools as to defend their presumed purpose. They spoke as scholars concerned that a know-nothing smog had smothered the schools; they indicted the educationists' "copper-riveted" union shop. They attacked the quality of teacher training, the tedious "methods" courses required by educationist-inspired certification laws. For the first time in a generation, men of learning paid grave attention to the content of public education.
Some of the charges were wild—but the ventilation was immensely productive. Last year West Virginia began certifying on the basis of exams instead of courses; 33 other states now are revamping their laws; all are asking liberal arts advice. And the professors have made a discovery: only 24% of elementary and 17% of high school teachers come from the despised (and fast vanishing) teachers colleges. The rest come from the professors' own liberal arts colleges.
Today, after years of pooh-poohing public school teachers, professors are trying to recruit them. The need is so great that one-third to one-half the next decade's college graduates should theoretically become school teachers. M.I.T.'s Physical Science Study Committee is revolutionizing high school physics. This summer, top university scientists taught 17,000 high school science and math teachers at 350 National Science Foundation institutes. All over the country, professors are beginning to drop in on the schools—following the pattern set by James Conant.