





































Prelude to Professional Identity and Organization: 
American Public School Curriculum Workers 

and Their Annual Meetings, 1927-1929 

O. L. Davis, Jr. 

In February, 1927, a larger than 
usual number of school curriculum 
workers met informally at the Dallas 
meeting of the Department of 
Superintendence. As had done at 
their previous two meetings, they 
talked about curriculum projects in 
their school systems. The small group 
also took an unusual action. It 
requested the Research Division of the 
National Education Association to 
survey curriculum work being 
undertaken by city schools across the 
United States Additionally, it asked 
the Research Division to serve as a 
clearing house for curriculum research 
studies completed in school systems 
enrolled in the Department's 
Cooperative Plan of Curriculum 
Revision.! Their short meeting 
completed, the curriculum workers 
agreed to meet at the following year's 
convention of the Department of 
Superintendence. The 1928 meeting 
would be in Boston. A. K. Loomis2, 
Denver's Director of Curriculum, 
continued to serve as the group's 
convener. 

The informal sessions of curriculum 
workers at the 1927 meeting occurred 
within the fulsome context of 
continuing emphasis accorded to local 
school curriculum revision by the 
nation's school superintendents. 
During the three previous years, for 
example, successive yearbooks of the 
Department of Superintendence focused 
attention on public school curriculum 
improvement.) Furthermore, at this 
convention, the National Society for 
the Study of Education formally 
presented its 26th yearbook, The 
Foundation and Techniques of 
Curriculum Construction. 4 More than 
1, 000 school administrators attended 
the meeting at which this landmark 
two-volume yearbook was presented. 
Two nights later, an audience of 
approximately 6, 000 attended a forum 
on the junior high school curriculum. s 

The curriculum revision "movement," 
a "grass roots," ical 

enterprise, was underway and the NSSE 
yearbook appeared only to contribute 
to its attractiveness rather than to 
offer any order to the 
emerging curriculum field. still, the 
entire Dallas meeting could only have 
heightened school administrators' 
sense of the vital of local 
school curriculum revision. Within 
this environment, increased 

29 

enthusiasm for their special work was 
an easy yield for the small, informal 
band of public school curriculum 
administrators. 

These school curriculum workers had 
begun to meet regularly in 1925, only 
two years before the Dallas meeting. 
L. Thomas Hopkins, then the de facto 
administrator of Denver' s curriculum 
revision program as well as a faculty 
member at the University of Colorado, 
arranged that initial meeting and 
recalled that the group was small 
enough to sit around a single large 
table with room to spare. 6 These few 
curriculum workers, with Hopkins the 
single exception, were school 
administrators charged with 
system-wide curriculum revision 
responsibilities. Also, they were all 
men. 

Informality characterized these 
meetings of school curriculum workers. 
The group never organized formally and 
also never had an "official" name. It 
never assessed dues. Membership was 
casual in the extreme. In fact, 
"membership" may have been asserted by 
attendance at the short yearly 
meeting. Not included as regular 
meeting participants were prominent 
university professors like Franklin 
Bobbitt and W. W. Charters7 who were 
popularizing curriculum reform through 
their graduate courses in their school 
consultations. An advance agenda for 
the first meetings was not set. 

This structural informality may 
have been important to those early 
sessions. Never a separatist schism 
from other superintendents and their 
administrative assistants, this 
informality permitted easy association 
of those who began to know themselves 
mainly as curriculum workers. 
Importantly, the informal meetings 
nourished the development of their 
professional understandings. In this 
process, school curriculum work 
developed a ional identity and 
an specialty independent 
of e superintendency. 
Organizational , however, 
could not sustain the needs of the 
growing curriculum field. In fact, 
this informal group continued for 
five more years, until 1932, when it 

with another, and 
formally structured 
form the for 



Nevertheless, the meetings of this 
informal group, even for a few years, 
served as prelude to the emerging 
American professional specialty of 
curriculum practice. 

Plans for the 1928 Meeting: Questions 
Back of Routine Curriculum Problems 

A. K. Loomis began to plan the 1928 
Boston meeting of public school 
curriculum workers in November, 1927. 
In a letter to Jesse H. Newlon,9 his 
former superintendent in Denver, 
Loomis inquired about the 
appropriateness of inviting a small 
number of people active in city 
schools' curriculum work to 
participate in the meeting. 1O He also 
suggested that the meeting feature 
discussions of two questions earlier 
raised by Newlon.!! 

Both questions arose from the 26th 
NSSE yearbook published the previous 
year. They lay "back of the problems" 
routinely considered by most 
curriculum directors. "Should the 
curriculum be made in advance?", 
although Newlon opined that it "may 
not be a question of great importance 
for a city school system at this 
time," clearly warranted fundamental 
consideration. William Heard 
Kilpatrick had answered the question 
with a strong negative response in his 
yearbook chapter12 and Newlon, then 
only three months into his new post at 
Lincoln School and Teachers College, 
recognized the merits of Kilpatrick's 
position, at least in experimental 
schools. Newlon also urged 
consideration of a second question, 
"Are you satisfied with the subject 
matter divisions that obtain in the 
elementary grades?" This question was 
stimulated by Harold Rugg's contention 
that current subject divisions should 
be jettisoned and substituted with a 
"resynthesis of knowledge" .13 Newlon 
obviously hoped that curriculum 
workers would begin to rethink 
conceptions and functions of "content" 
and "subject matter" which framed 
their curriculum decisions. 

Loomis initially proposed that one 
of the Boston sessions include both 
these questions with five minute 
responses by three or four 
individuals. Newlon courteously 
replied that consideration of each 
question would require at least the 
participation of several (2-4) persons 
each of whom would speak for a 30-40 
minute period. 14 In order that the 
expected discussions be accommodated, 
he also suggested that Loomis increase 
the number of sessions at the 

30 

curriculum workers' meeting. Loomis 
responded with a detailed program 
outline for two 2-hour sessions on 
Saturday, February 25. IS 

Newlon would open the morning 
session with an address, "Should the 
curriculum be made in advance?" 
Respondent "discussions" of 5-minutes 
would be offered by four school 
curriculum workers: John Coulbourn of 
Baltimore, Ethel Salisbury of Los 
Angeles, Walter D. Cocking, formerly 
of St. Louis, and Thomas D. Gosling of 
Madison, Wisconsin. The second half 
of the morning would feature an 
address by the University of Chicago's 
William S. Gray on the topic, "What is 
subject matter and what is its 
function?" Then, George Wheeler of 
Philadelphia, John W. Studebaker of 
Des Moines, Richard E. Rutledge of 
Oakland, and Velda C. Bamesberger, 
formerly of Oklahoma City, would 
present short discussions of the 
question. 

The afternoon session, likewise, 
would be packed with consideration of 
two major questions. Ernest Horn of 
the State University of Iowa would 
present a 3D-minute address on the 
question, "Should the subject matter 
divisions in the elementary grades be 
changed?" Proposed discussants 
included Michael J. Downey of Boston, 
L. L. Nolin of San Francisco, Charles 
A. Brown of Baltimore, and Arthur 
Dondineau of Detroit. Concluding the 
intensive day would be L. Thomas 
Hopkins' principal remarks on "What 
can the elementary schools do in 
character education?" followed by 
commentary by T. V. Goodrich of 
Lincoln, Nebraska, Julius E. Warren of 
Springfield, Massachusetts, Emil Lange 
of Long Beach, and Florence B. 
Stratemeyer of Teachers College, 
Columbia University. 

Newlon may have been replaced on 
the program, a final copy of which has 
not survived. He requested that 
Loomis not use him because he thought 
"it would be better for you and for 
the movement" for him to remain in the 
background. 16 Newlon, only recently 
removed from public school leadership, 
understood that the group of school 
curriculum workers or "the movement" 
was fueled by school interests and 
composed mainly of school curriculum 
administrators. He clearly sensed the 
looming tension between the practical 
and the theoretic or between "public 
school men" and professors. 
Loomis also must have understood the 
political sensitivity of this 
Nevertheless, he positioned 



professors (Newlon, Gray, Horn, and 
Hopkins) to make the only major 
presentations at the meeting. Too, he 
included as discussants, in addition 
to Stratemeyer, both cocking and 
Bamesberger, then in residence at 
Teachers College, Columbia University, 
but identified as "formerly of" their 
previous school systems. Newlon's 
continuing influence with Loomis, 
moreover, certainly influenced the 
nature if not the structure of plans 
for the 1928 Boston meeting of school 
curriculum workers. Newlon was less 
persuasive on Loomis' decisions about 
individuals to be invited to the 
meeting. 

In his first letter to Newlon about 
the meeting, Loomis suggested names of 
eighteen school administrators then 
involved in curriculum research and 
seven others, mainly university 
professors, who might be invited to 
join the Boston meeting. Newlon' s 
specific advice on membership was to 
include only individuals active .. in 
directing curriculum revision work the 
same as you do in Denver" and .. not 
load up your conference with a lot of 
people who have only a nominal 
interest in the work." No direct 
evidence is available as to whom 
Loomis extended invitations. On the 
other hand, Loomis' final program 
failed to include from his first list 
only three of the school 
administrators (M. A. Dalman of 
Indianapolis, A. L. Hartman of 
Montclair, N. J., and Worcester Warren 
of Bridgeport, Connecticut) and two of 
the others (Herbert B. Bruner of 
Teachers College, Columbia University, 
and Margaret M. Alltucker of the NEA 
Research Division). These twenty-five 
individuals plus Loomis may well have 
constituted the substantial part of 
the attendance at the Boston meeting. 
This group consisted mainly of school 
curriculum workers. The four 
university professors included were 
ones actively involved in school 
curriculum revision efforts. 
Exclusion of the growing number of 
university professors interested but 
not involved full time in school 
curriculum reform activities must be 
recognized, in retrospect, as a major 
contribution to the forthcoming 

gle for the field's 
ional identity. 

The program for the 1928 Boston 
meeting of school curriculum workers 
was densely crowded with 
presentations and discussions. It did 
not include time for the curriculum 
workers to share results of their 
individual schools' curriculum 

31 

research and revision efforts. This 
trade-off may well have been palatable 
by the availability of the report to 
them requested of the NEA Research 
Division at their previous year's 
meeting. 

This report of curriculum research 
and revision practices clearly 
reflected the period's favorable 
sentiments about scientific inquiry. 17 

Practically and symbolically I the 
report undoubtedly offered support to 
their work. Also, with the report 
available for reading, the public 
school curriculum workers could spend 
their Boston meeting time on matters 
other than "shop talk." 

Creative Activities for 
Meeting: A Program Agenda 
for a New Organization 
Curriculum Field 

the 1929 
and Plans 
for the 

Following the intellectually packed 
meetings in Boston, the small group of 
school curriculum workers edged a bit 
further away from its informal 
organizational policies. It 
established an executive committee of 
unknown membership although A. K. 
Loomis continued as its program 
organizer and convener. Unknown to 
these school curriculum workers, a few 
university curriculum specialists 
began to plan for what could only 
become a competing organization. Both 
groups pointed for the 1929 meetings 
in Cleveland. 

As he had done the previous year, 
Loomis wrote to his friend Newlon 
about plans for the public school 
group's next meeting. He noted that 
the executive committee desired that 
"Creative Activities" be the focus of 
the next year's sessions. Further, 
the committee identified fifteen 
individuals who might discuss 
dimensions of this topic. At 
least half of them, people like 
Newlon, Cocking, Dondineau, Gosling I 
Alltucker, Lange, and Loomis, had been 
active in the group for one or more 
years. Several others, mostly women 
and newcomers to the group, included 
Prudence Cutright of Minneapolis; Elma 
A. Neal of San Antonio; Rose Wickey of 

, Missouri; Ethel I. 
Los ; Charles C. 

of Kalamazoo; and Mildred 
of Raleigh. Significantly, 

these women were central office 
administrators, assistant 
superintendents or curriculum 
directors. 



Newlon, in his reply to Loomis, 
approved the plans for the Cleveland 
meeting .19 Following his consistent 
position over several years, he urged 
Loomis to restrict the size of the 
group to thirty or fewer persons, ones 
"actively concerned with curriculum 
construction and giving practically 
all their time to such work." Newlon 
also nominated three individuals to 
JOkn the forthcoming meeting. He 
thought that John R. Clark, principal 
of Lincoln School's high school 
division "clearly belongs in the 
group." He also suggested "a Miss 
McGregor of Rochester," the editor of 
that school system's curriculum 
revision work. Newlon's third nominee 
was Paul R. Hanna, "a young research 
associate who has come into the 
Lincoln School." 

The February, 1929, sessions in 
Cleveland for the school curriculum 
workers apparently occurred as planned 
although no record of them is known to 
exist. This silence partially may be 
explained by a concurrent development, 
a proposal to establish a solid 
national organization for the 
curriculum field. This new society 
began to take shape, in fact, during 
the months that Loomis planned the 
1929 meeting for his small group of 
school curriculum workers. 

Henry Harap led the efforts to 
found the new organization. Then an 
associate professor of education at 
western Reserve University in 
Cleveland, Harapw shared his 
perception of the need for such a 
national organization of curriculum 
workers with W. W. Charters and Harold 
O. Rugg, two university professors 
prominent in the promotion of school 
curriculum revision efforts. Both men 
encouraged Harap and suggested that he 
canvas prospective members. In early 
December, 1928, he wrote to a number 
of individuals to inquire of their 
possible interest in the proposed 
organization.~ His justification of a 
new organization was sharply rendered. 

"If the curriculum making movement 
is to be more than a fad, it needs to 
be organized for permanent action," 
Harap wrote. Implicitly recognizing 
the contributions to the curriculum 
field by yearbooks of the Department 
of Superintendence and the National 
Society for the Study of Education, he 
noted that both associations were then 

other concerns. He 
or was unaware of the annual, 
meetings of school curriculum workers. 
Harap further claimed that, beginning 
in 1918, the number of curriculum 

32 

investigations rose until output 
peaked in 1926 after which they 
declined. This phenomenon should 
"serve as a warning to those of us who 
are deeply concerned over the work 
that still remains to be done." 
Harap's ready answer to the problem 
was a national organization of 
curriculum workers. 

His "Initial List of Curriculum 
Workers" contained names of 44 
individuals. Only twelve were 
identified with school systems; of the 
others, 31 were college or university 
faculty members and one, Margaret 
Alltucker, was an NEA staff member. 
Moreover, just five of the school 
administrators (Cocking, Lange, 
Loomis, Rutledge, and Wickey) and six 
of the others (Alltucker, Bruner, 
Hopkins, Horn, Newlon, and 
Stratemeyer) are known to have been 
involved in the informal meetings of 
curriculum workers convened by Loomis 
during the previous two years. Only 
four of the school administrators who 
made Harap's list had responded to the 
national survey of curriculum work 
conducted by the NEA. The other eight 
school administrators were from 
Cuyahoga County (greater Cleveland), 
Ohio; Cleveland; Santa Monica; 
Pittsburgh; Chicago; Denver 
(Superintendent A. L. Threlkeld); 
Kansas City, Missouri; and Winnetka 
(Carlton W. Washburne). Furthermore, 
only three women (Alltucker, Wickey, 
and Stratemeyer) were included. 
Harap's vision of curriculum workers, 
quite obviously, differed markedly 
from that which guided Loomis and 
Newlon during the previous years. 

"If a new society of curriculum 
workers is formed," Newlon replied to 
Harap, "I want very much to be a 
member of it."22 Newlon's endorsement 
carried with it, however, his 
sensitive understanding of the 
implicit political "take over" of the 
curriculum revision "movement" by 
university professors. 

Newlon pointed out that the 
informal group of school curriculum 
workers ·with a few others" had met 
for several years and that Loomis, 
Denver's curriculum director, served 
as its chair. Newlon admitted that he 
saw no need for two ions and 

that Harap invite Loomis to 
his invitation to the sessions 

already scheduled for Cleveland. The 
resultant Of should embrace both 
the workers in schools and in the 
schools of education." Newlon also 
j that some individuals on 

list were "not 



concerned with curriculum work." 
Pointedly, he excluded Threlkeld, his 
former assistant superintendent in 
Denver, but called attention, in 
general, "to some of the college 
professors and others whose interests 
are not in the curriculum field, as 
are yours." Harap did not heed 
Newlon's advice. 

An overwhelming number of those 
contacted by Harap about a new 
national organization responded 
affirmatively. Subsequently, Harap 
invited those having expressed 
interest to nominate individuals to 
serve as a steering committee to 
establish the organization. The seven 
member steering committee met in 
Cleveland on February 25, 1929, and 
formed a permanent organization. Its 
first name may have been the National 
Society of Curriculum Workers; within 
a year, it was the Society of 
Curriculum Specialists. B The 
organizing committee selected the 
University of Chicago's W. W. Charters 
to chair the new group and Harap as 
its secretary. As a final act, it set 
the Society's first meeting for the 
1930 annual meeting of the Department 
of Superintendence. Within the next 
year, 49 individuals became members of 
the Society;~ all were university 
professors. 25 Three years later, the 
Society was commonly known as "the 
college group". 

Organization of a New Professional 
Specialty for Curriculum Workers: 

Informality Overcome; 
Identity Asserted 

Effectively, the new Society 
quickly overshadowed the informal 
group of public school curriculum 
workers. It also may have 
appropriated, for a short time, their 
self-styled if informal designation of 
themselves, "curriculum workers," as a 
key element of the new organization's 
formal name. The public school 
curriculum workers, known by this time 
as the "Public School Division," met 
with the Society in 1930 and 1931. In 
1932, the two groups publicly merged 
to become the Society for Curriculum 
Study. 26 

The informal group of public school 
curriculum workers could not serve the 
interests of the emerging and 
enlarging curriculum field. Likely, 
it was too small; it certainly lacked 
a sense of permanence. Still, during 
its existence, it contributed 
to its members' sense of 

ional as school 
curriculum workers. At its annual 

33 

meetings, colleagues shared ideas and 
descriptions of work in progress. 
Especially, they provided one another 
professional support during years when 
practical school curriculum revision 
struggled for success and visibility. 
Its meetings helped sustain the notion 
that school curriculum work was 
viable, not simply administratively 
desirable. Especially, its 
participants understood themselves to 
be members of a larger undertaking, 
the creation of what Newlon called the 
curriculum "movement to. For them, 
their curriculum work was practical, 
not theoretical. These individuals, 
their work, and their informal 
meetings created an impressive prelude 
to the development of a new 
professional specialty. It was known, 
simply, as "curriculum work". 

This emerging professional 
specialty and its new organization 
continued to focus on curriculum 
revision, later termed curriculum 
development. 27 In the absence of 
centralized authority in American 
education, the new Society, like other 
professional associations, offered an 
expanded influential authority of 
peers and practice. The curriculum 
field had been asserted into 
existence. Still, it differed from 
what it might have been. One aspect 
was particularly obvious. 

The influence of university 
professors and scholars swiftly 
replaced their earlier near absence 
from the community of school 
curriculum workers. Such a 
development was not simply a 
deliberately planned exercise of power 
politics. To be sure, neither 
Charters nor Harap, the Society's 
first officers, had participated in 
the yearly discussions of the informal 
group of public school curriculum 
workers. They may have believed that 
they and other university curriculum 
specialists had been excluded from 
these annual meetings. Certainly, 
Newlon had cautioned against 
involvement of professors in the early 
meetings, as well as school 
administrators not directly involved 
in curriculum work. Nevertheless, the 

history of the Soc for 
Curriculum Study highlighted the 
productive association of both school 
and university curriculum workers. 
One ameliorative influence in the 
rapidly changing curriculum enterprise 
surely helped redraw uncertain 

boundaries of location of 
and involvement in curriculum work. 



Newlon, Cocking and a number of 
other prominent early school 
curriculum workers joined college and 
university faculties. They, 
university colleagues similarly 
disposed (e.g., Hopkins, Horn, 
Stratemeyer), and other university 
recruits to the curriculum field 
(e.g., Hollis L. Caswell, Ralph Tyler, 
Hilda Taba) continued to work 
cooperatively with associates in the 
schools on practical curriculum 
problems. 

The Society for Curriculum Study 
and its successor, the Association for 
Supervision and Curriculum 
Development,U stressed their 
organizational openness to individuals 
regardless of their occupational roles 
in school curriculum work. 29 The 
resultant association, and only 
tenuous collaboration, of individuals 
in Newlon's typification of 
"curriculum workers in the schools and 
in the schools of education" 
contributed an impressive dimension to 
the emerging professional identity of 
the curriculum field. 

34 

NOTES 

1 (NEA Research Division), 
"Coordination of Activities of 
Curriculum Directors in City School 
Systems," undated (19277), 32 pp. 
(mimeo.). Copy in the Jesse H. Newlon 
Papers, Special Collections, Penrose 
Library, University of Denver 
(hereafter cited, Newlon Papers). The 
cooperative Plan of Curriculum 
Revision, authorized in 1925, grew out 
of the work of the Department of 
Superintendence's Commission on the 
Curriculum which had begun work in 
1924. About 300 school systems of 
different sizes were members of the 
Cooperative Plan. See, Department of 
Superintendence, The Nation at Work on 
the Public School Curriculum, Fourth 
Yearbook (Washington, D. C.: the 
Department, 1926), Chapter II, pp. 
21-27. 

2 Loomis joined Denver 
Superintendent Jesse H. Newlon's 
administrative staff in 1925 as 
Director of the Curriculum Department. 
His new full-time position legitimated 
both the success of the curriculum 
revision project and the importance of 
system-wide curriculum work. Loomis' 
position replaced the part-time 
appointments of L. Thomas Hopkins and 
his associates, W. D. Armentrout and 
Frederick L. Whitney, both professors 
at Colorado State Teachers College, 
Greeley. See Jesse H. Newlon, Review 
of Four-Year Period, August, 1923 to 
July, 1927. Twenty-fourth Annual 
Report of Super intendent of Schools, 
Section 1. (Denver: the Board of 
Education, 1927), p. 18. 

3 These Department of 
Superintendence yearbooks included The 
Elementary School Curriculum 
(Washington, D. C.: the Department, 
1924) i Research in Constructing the 
Elementary School Curriculum 
(Washington, D. C.: the Department, 
1925); and The Nation at Work on the 
Public School Curriculum (Washington, 
D. C.: the Department, 1926). The 
next two yearbooks continued this 
emphasis: The Junior High School 
curriculum (Washington, D. C.: the 
Department, 1927) and Development of 
the High School Curriculum 
( D. C.: the Department, 
1928) . 

4 Harold O. Rugg (Chairman), The 
Foundation and Techniques of 
Curriculum Construction, Parts I 
II of the Yearbook of 
National the 
Education ( , IL: 
School Publishing Co., 1926). 



5 "Minutes of the Dallas Meeting of 
the Society, February 26, and March 1, 
1927," in Lewis M. Terman (Chairman), 
Nature and Nurture, Part II of the 
Twenty-Seventh Yearbook of the 
National Society for the Study of 
Education (Bloomington, IL: Public 
School Publishing Co., 1928), 358-360. 

6 Hopkins, a former Massachusetts 
superintendent of schools, began his 
role, carrying the title of 
Consul tant, with Denver' s then 
struggling curriculum revision program 
in September, 1923. See L. Thomas 
Hopkins oral history interview and his 
"My Curriculum Viewpoint," unpublished 
paper (mimeo.), August, 1978, p. 3, 
Hopkins Papers, Oral History in 
Education Collection, College of 
Education, The University of Texas at 
Austin. In 1929, Hopkins became 
Director of Research at Lincoln School 
and associate professor of education 
at Teachers College, Columbia 
University. 

7 Hopkins acknowledged Charters' 
assistance in arranging the first 
meeting of curriculum workers. 
Charters is not listed as a 
participant in any of the meetings. 
See Hopkins, "My Curriculum 
Viewpoint," Hopkins Papers. 

8 See J. Galen Saylor, "ASCD and 
Its Beginnings." In William Van Til, 
ASCD in Retrospect (Alexandria, VA: 
Association for Supervision and 
Curriculum Development, 1986), 6-7. 

9 Newlon became Denver's 
superintendent of schools in August, 
1920, after having been superintendent 
of Lincoln, Nebraska, public schools. 
With substantial financial support of 
the Board of Education, he initiated 
Denver's program of extensive 
curriculum revision two years later. 
This program brought international 
attention to Newlon and the Denver 
schools. Newlon resigned his 
superintendency effective August 31, 
1927, to become Professor of Education 
and Director, Lincoln School, Teachers 
College, Columbia University. See 
Gary L. Peltier, Jessie H. Newlon as 
Superintendent of the Denver Public 
Schools, 1920-1927. Unpublished 
doctoral dissertation. Denver: 
University of Denver, 1965. 

10 Letter from A. K. 
Jesse H. Newlon, November 
Newlon Papers. 

Loomis to 
5, 1927, 

11 Letter from Jesse H. Newlon to 
A. K. Loomis, October 20, 1927, Newlon 
Papers. 

35 

12 William Heard Kilpatrick, 
"Statement of Position," Chapter X in 
Harold O. Rugg (Chairman), The 
Foundations of Curriculum-Making, Part 
II of the Twenty-Sixth yearbook of the 
National Society for the Study of 
Education (Bloomington, IL: Public 
School Publishing Co., 1926), 119-146. 

13 Harold O. Rugg, "Curriculum­
Making: Points of Emphasis," Chapter 
XI in Ibid., 147-162. 

14 Letter from Jesse H. 
A. K. Loomis, November 
Newlon Papers. 

15 Letter from A. K. 
Jesse H. Newlon, November 
Newlon Papers. 

Newlon to 
12, 1927, 

Loomis to 
25, 1927, 

16 Letter from Jesse H. Newlon to 
A. K. Loomis, December 5, 1927, Newlon 
Papers. 

17 See, for example, Raymond E. 
Callahan, Education and the Cul t of 
Efficiency (Chicago: University of 
Chicago Press, 1962), and Herbert M. 
Kliebard, The Struggle for the 
American Curriculum, 1893-1958 
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 
1986) . 

18 Letter from A. K. 
Jesse H. Newlon, November 
Newlon Papers. 

19 Letter from Jesse H. 
A. K. Loomis, November 
Newlon Papers. 

Loomis to 
17, 1928, 

Newlon to 
21, 1928, 

20 Harap gained early prominence 
for his 1920's work in consumer 
education. The organizer of the 
National Society of Curriculum Workers 
or Society of Curriculum Specialists, 
he was its first secretary and, later, 
its chairman. He edited its News 
Bulletin and, after the formation of 
the Society for Curriculum Study in 
1932, its Curriculum Journal from 1932 
to 1943 when the Society merged with 
the Department of Supervisors and 
Directors of Instruction and this 
journal was superseded by Educational 
Leadership. In 1937, he became 
Professor of Education and Associate 
Director, Division of Surveys and 
Field Services, George Peabody College 
for Teachers. See Harap Papers, Oral 

in Education Collection, The 
University of Texas at Austin. 

21 Letter from Henry Harap to Jesse 
H. Newlon, December 6, 1928, Newlon 
Papers. Included with this letter was 
Harap's "Initial List of Curriculum 
Workers" . 



22 Letter from Jesse H. Newlon to 
Henry Harap, December 18, 1928, Newlon 
Papers. No other replies to Harap's 
inquiry are known to exist. 

23 Saylor's account uses the name, 
National Society of Curriculum 
Workers. See Saylor, Ibid., p. 7. 
However, no issues of the Soc iety , s 
News Bulletin (1930-32) identified the 
group by that name. Beginning with 
its February 19, 1931, issue (Vol. 2, 
no. 2, p. 1), the News Bulletin 
carried the name, Society of 
Curriculum Specialists, as its 
sponsoring organization until after 
the merger of the Society (the college 
group) with the group of public school 
curriculum workers to form the Society 
for Curriculum Study. See News 
Bulletin 3 (May 2, 1932), p. 2. 

24 Saylor, Ibid., p. 7. 

25 At least, Harap remembered the 
membership in this way. See Henry 
Harap, "The Background of ASCD," 
unpublished paper (mimeo.), November 
10, 1958. 2 pp. Harap Papers. 

26 Saylor, Ibid. Harap, the 
Society's chairman, negotiated the 
merger with the representative of the 
"public school division," L. Frazier 
Banks of the Birmingham, Alabama, 
schools. On only one key point of the 
merger agreement, acceptance of the 
Society's dues structure, did Banks 
believe he must consult with his 
group's executive committee. Quite 
possibly, the informal group of public 
school curriculum workers had never 
assessed dues. Harap, Ibid.; also, 
News Bulletin 3. 

27 Only slowly did the concept of 
"curriculum development" arise. An 
early use of this term and its 
meanings appear in Hollis L. Caswell, 
"Curriculum Revision in Rural 
Schools," Virginia Journal of 
Education, 25, 1932, 301-303. After 
publication of the book by Caswell and 
Doak S. Campbell, Curriculum 
Development (New York: American Book 
Co., 1935), the term's popularity 
swelled. 

28 In 1943, the Society merged with 
the NEA' s Department of Supervisors 
and Directors of Instruction to form 
the Department, later, the Association 
for Supervision and Curriculum 
Development. Saylor, Ibid., 10-13. 
See, also, O. L. Davis, Jr., "Symbol 
of a Shift from Status to Function: 
Formation of the Association for 
supervision and Curriculum 

of Educational 

36 

35 (May, 1978), 609-614. 

29 This history notwithstanding, 
tension between the interests of both 
groups in the Association for 
Supervision and Curriculum Development 
has continued to the time. 
Embedded in this tension are contested 
perceptions of the legitimacy of 
different functions of curriculum work 
and of various roles of curriculum 
workers. University curriculum 
professors were very prominent in the 
organization until only very recently. 
Clearly, they are much less visible 
and active in the Association now. 
Recent explorations of elements of 
this tension in ASCD, the 
organizational descendant of both the 
informal group of public school 
curriculum workers and the group of 
university curriculum specialists 
include O. L. Davis, Jr., "ASCD and 
Curriculum Development: The Later 
Years." In William Van Til (Ed. ) 
Ibid., 83-93; his "Curriculum 
Professors' Curriculum Work, or Can We 
Expand Our Practice While We Teach?" 
Teaching Education 4 (Spring, 1992), 
43-49; his "Before We Were Members. 
.Looking for ASCD's Future in Its 
Past," unpublished assembly address, 
ASCD Annual Conference, Washington, D. 
C., March 28, 1993; and ASCD Review 
Council, "ASCD and Higher Education: 
An Analysis and Reflections" 
(Washington, D.C., March, 1993), 12 p. 
(mimeo. ) 


