| This dissertation is an examination of how Americans variously experienced the crisis of the Cold War as a crisis in education and, in turn, how education facilitated the construction of Cold Warriors conditioned to fear and loathe communism and the Soviet Union. In the 1940s and 1950s, education in the United States underwent what was referred to as the "great reappraisal." All sorts of people seemed to believe that the U.S. system of public education was woefully out of step with the needs of a nation in the midst of a global struggle against communism, and, as a result, an undifferentiated fury of displaced anxiety was directed at "progressive education." The twentieth century crisis of epistemology entered the arena of education, as critics of all ideological stripes questioned the principles of progressive education and John Dewey's philosophical pragmatism. Intellectuals and activists had both epistemological and political problems with progressive education, deemed too "soft"---politically and epistemologically---for the global struggle against communism. Beginning with John Dewey and the genealogy of progressive education in the late nineteenth century, and ending with the formation of New Left and New Right thought in the early 1960s, with many twists and turns along the way, this dissertation traces the Cold War transformation in U.S. political, intellectual, and pedagogical culture. Schooling became more conservative in the 1950s, part and parcel of U.S. society as a whole becoming more conservative. This Cold War political shift is at the heart of my project. |
