



































The Cold War Pursuit of Inquiry Learning:


The Cold War Pursuit of Inquiry Learning: A Search for Origins 
 

Ronald Evans 

San Diego State University 

 

 The purpose of this article is to provide an 

overview of the curriculum reform movement 

from the era of the new social studies during the 

1960s as a case study in curricular change and to 

place the era in historical context.  The 

presentation is drawn from a forthcoming book 

manuscript that includes discussion of the origins 

of the new social studies; the theoretical 

foundations for the new reforms; the projects; the 

outcomes; critiques made at the time; the 

aftermath—academic freedom controversies; and, 

the limited impact of the reforms in schools.  The 

manuscript will be published in two volumes:  

The Hope for American School Reform: The Cold 

War Pursuit of Inquiry Learning, and The 

Tragedy of American School Reform: How 

Curriculum Politics and Entrenched Dilemmas 

have Diverted us from Democracy (Evans 2011).  

This article draws from the first book, and will 

focus mainly on trying to understand the origins 

of the new social studies. 

 

Origins 

 The new social studies came to fruition 

during the 1960s, but was, in most ways, a 

product of the 1950s and the cold war struggle 

against Communism.  It was born of cold war 

manpower development concerns and as a 

carryover from developments in science and 

mathematics.  Largely discipline-centered, the 

social studies projects of the era, which received 

unprecedented federal and private financial 

support, were a direct outgrowth of the criticism 

of progressive education and of progressive social 

studies that had been brewing for decades.  In a 

very real sense, this was an extension of the war 

on social studies and a culmination of decades of 

criticism. 

 

The War on Social Studies.   

 In a recent book, Ronald Evans develops 

the argument that controversies and criticism over 

the social studies curriculum developed in a 

sequential pattern, with the controversy becoming 

broader and more damaging to progressive social 

studies as the years went on.  Criticism of 

progressive social studies emerged and intensified 

in three major episodes which preceded the era of 

the new social studies, the Rugg textbook 

controversy which spanned 1939-1942, the 

controversy over American history, 1942-1944, 

and the controversy over progressive education, 

1947-1958.  As Evans has argued previously, 

these three controversies were instrumental in the 

eventual evolution of the era of the new social 

studies, and were a strong reflection of the 

historical context (Evans 2004).  The Rugg 

textbook controversy developed in the early years 

of the Second World War.  Stirred in part by war 

related fears and the activism of conservative 

business and patriotic groups, attacks on the Rugg 

textbooks led to their elimination from schools, 

and to a broader questioning of progressive forms 

of social studies education, especially those which 

raised questions about the capitalist economic 

system.  Attacks on Rugg and his textbook series 

embodied questions about content and 

interpretations that critics considered 

controversial, and concerns over the replacement 

of traditional discipline based, history and social 

science coursework with a broader form called 

social studies (Evans 2007).  That questioning of 

the ―omnibus‖ social studies led to the 

controversy over American history initiated by a 

New York Times Magazine article written by 

Pulitzer Prize winning historian Allan Nevins 

which charged that the schools were no longer 

teaching American history.  These wartime 

controversies combined to stir the passions of 

educational critics of various stripes, but 

especially those who wanted a stronger focus on 

the disciplines and a traditional view of the 

American way.  In the postwar era, the 

controversy would spread to encompass all of 

progressive education. 

 

 



24 

 

The Cold War Critiques of Progressive 

Education.    

 In the late 1940s and early 50s, a growing 

crescendo of criticisms of progressive education 

emerged—with many of the most negative 

observations focused on social studies—packaged 

and marketed under colorful titles such as: 

Educational Wastelands (Bestor 1953), Quackery 

in the Public Schools (Lynd 1953), Progressive 

Education is REDucation (Jones & Olivier 1956), 

and "Who Own's Your Child's Mind?" (Flynn 

1951).  Arthur Bestor, perhaps the most respected 

critic, called social studies an anti-intellectual 

"social stew" (Bestor 1953).
 
 Bestor and others 

critiqued the "scrambling" of history, geography, 

and government into the social studies; they 

bemoaned the "anti-intellectualism" of educators 

who they derisively called "educationists"; and, 

they frequently linked progressive education to 

Communism, all critiques which had been raised 

during the Rugg and Nevins controversies, only 

this time, the deluge of attacks was longer and 

more intense.  Educators responded with articles 

and books countering the charges—though it was 

a relatively muted response, reflecting the times.  

The new social studies was, in part, a solution to 

the problems with education highlighted by 

Bestor and other critics. 

The social mileu of the cold war era is 

especially pertinent to a deeper understanding of 

the origins of the new social studies.  With the 

dropping of atomic bombs on Japan, and the 

subsequent development of the nuclear arms race, 

the world had entered the nuclear age, and the 

threat of global holocaust was very real.  

Competition with the Soviet Union, growing 

national security concerns, the development of 

McCarthyism, and the deluge of intellectual and 

red-baiting attacks on progressive education were 

all conditioned by this context. 

 

Manpower Concerns 

 The impetus for the broader curriculum 

reform movement which gave rise to the new 

social studies also grew, in part, out of cold war 

manpower studies conducted by the Central 

Intelligence Agency.  Manpower concerns were 

raised beginning in the late 1940s and early 1950s 

and were partly behind creation of the National 

Science Foundation (NSF) in 1950.  The NSF, 

established by Congress in 1950 with the aim of 

promoting basic research and education in the 

sciences, initially had little to do with the lower 

schools, though it did begin to sponsor science 

fairs and summer institutes for teachers in science 

and math.  Manpower concerns were heightened 

by a series of confidential CIA reports on 

developments in the Soviet Union.  The first of 

these reports provided evidence that the Soviets 

were training scientists, engineers, and technical 

manpower at a rapid rate, and employing the 

―Stakhanov‖ movement, or ―socialist 

competition‖ to spur productivity gains.  They 

were giving monetary awards for innovation and 

―Stalin Prizes‖ and ―Hero of Socialist Labor‖ 

awards.  In short, the report showed that the 

Soviet Union was an awakening industrial giant 

(NIS 1953).  A later report confirmed the earlier 

findings and indicated that the Soviets were 

devoting ―large sums to education, especially in 

the fields of science and engineering,‖ and that in 

many fields, ―Soviet technology equals or even 

exceeds that of the west‖ (NIS 1958, 13, 15).  By 

1963, a ―secret‖ report found that Soviet 

productivity was ―second only to the U.S.‖ and 

that the Soviets had made especially rapid 

progress in ―development of engineering and 

other professional and technical manpower,‖ with 

a 237% increase in engineers from 1939 to 1959 

(NIS 1963, 1, 4). 

 Among U. S. policymakers, the CIA 

manpower reports were cause for alarm at the 

highest levels and led to a manpower report from 

the Office of Defense Mobilization (ODM) 

commissioned by President Dwight D. 

Eisenhower (Eisenhower 1953).  The ODM study 

reported on the ―availability of manpower 

simultaneously to operate a military training 

program, to supply military personnel for active 

service, and to meet the needs of the civilian 

economy.‖  In essence, civilian scientific and 

technical manpower was viewed as an adjunct to 

military power and as an essential part of national 

security (Fleming 1954).  The report stated that 



25 

 

manpower resources, especially ―our supply of 

highly trained and skilled workers‖ was not 

keeping abreast of the current and potential 

requirements of the rapidly expanding 

technology‖ on which the nation‘s ―growth and 

security depend.‖  The authors of the report cast 

manpower as a key ingredient for ―success on the 

diplomatic front‖ (Committee on Manpower 

1953, 1).  By the fall of 1954 national security 

and manpower concerns had become the subject 

of alarming media coverage.  An interview with 

National Science Foundation (NSF) Director Alan 

T. Waterman published in Nation’s Business, 

organ of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, was 

titled, ―Russian Science Threatens the West,‖ and 

a New York Times article reported, ―Russia Is 

Overtaking U. S. In Training of Technicians‖ 

(Nation‘s Business 1954; Fine 1954).  Manpower 

concerns continued to loom large throughout the 

cold war era and stood behind government and 

business led efforts to develop more scientific and 

technical personnel, and better trained citizens. 

 

Curriculum Reform. 

 The curriculum reform movement which 

would eventually result in creation of the new 

social studies also had its seeds in two projects 

which began, almost unnoticed, at two 

universities in the 1950s.  The University of 

Illinois Committee on School Mathematics 

(UICSM) was formed in 1951 out of concerns 

over the math deficiencies of entering freshmen at 

the University of Illinois.  Based on similar 

concerns in science, Jerrold Zacharias at the 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote a 

memo in 1956 to James Killian, MIT president, 

titled, ―Movie Aids for Teaching Physics in High 

School,‖ in which he proposed a project for the 

improvement of physics teaching by creating 90 

twenty minute films as the heart of the 

curriculum, each with a ―real physicist‖ 

(Zacharias 1956).  Zacharias‘ memorandum led to 

the creation of what was called the Physical 

Science Study Committee (PSSC) which received 

NSF funding.  In each case, the rationale for the 

development of the curriculum improvement 

projects was rooted in manpower concerns which 

surfaced earlier, and which continued to be aired, 

in one form or another, throughout the period.   

 These early curriculum development 

programs established initial patterns for the 

funding of national curriculum development 

projects that would largely continue for the next 

fifteen to twenty years.  One pattern, represented 

by the University of Illinois Committee, was 

initial funding by private foundations (often 

Carnegie or Ford) followed by support from the 

NSF or the U. S. Office of Education (USOE).  A 

second pattern, represented by the MIT 

Committee, was long-term funding by the NSF or 

USOE from start-up to publication.  By 1956, six 

national projects were established and funded in 

science and math, five of which aimed at 

curriculum reform.   By this time, it was apparent 

that several broad assumptions or guidelines were 

shared by virtually all of these endeavors, and 

included: the need to change the content, 

materials, and methods of instruction; a focus on 

the textbook or learning materials; directors of 

projects drawn from the academic disciplines; a 

focus on courses for the academically talented 

and gifted because it was seen as more critical to 

the national interest; overriding concern about the 

integrity of the academic disciplines and their 

―structures;‖ learning by discovery and inquiry; 

and a focus on the cognitive over affective, 

personal, or social action dimensions (Haas 

1977).  Another shared assumption, if the 

problem with schools was the shoddy stuff they 

taught, the solution was to bypass the teacher by 

creating new and innovative materials under the 

direction of some of the leading minds in each 

discipline. 

 

Wartime Research Model 

 Virtually all of the later curriculum 

development projects involved an application of 

the same innovative model of research and 

development embodied in the initial projects.  

Reformers, most of whom had little previous 

experience with educational reform efforts, 

imported methods of research and development 

from military research programs to the field of 

education.  In effect, the projects owed much of 



26 

 

their form to the military-industrial research 

complex as it evolved during and after World 

War II.  The reforms of the era were ―designed 

and implemented by a small cadre of scientists,‖ 

led by Jerrold Zacharias of MIT, who transferred 

techniques ―almost seamlessly‖ from military 

weapons research and development programs of 

the postwar period to the field of education.  

Though the push for a more rigorous and 

academic education originated in critiques of 

progressivism and cold war manpower concerns, 

the trend was enhanced and given its 

―fundamental operational characteristics,‖ along 

with its conception of the essential ―problem of 

education, and the means of its solution,‖ by the 

newer research and development techniques 

drawn from wartime weapons research.  The 

particular ―intellectual skills and technical 

methods‖ involved had proven their worth during 

World War II (Rudolph, 2002).   

 In the eyes of scientists and policy makers 

during the cold war era, there seemed no limit to 

the power of these techniques to solve virtually 

any problem.  Influenced by the growing power 

and influence of the United States, curriculum 

reformers seemed to embrace a vision of 

omnipotence.  Partly due to its origins in wartime 

research and development, the reform strategy 

took little account of culture, history, mores, or 

social and economic context of the school.  If its 

reform implementation strategies were flawed, an 

oversimplification that failed to understand the 

complexities of schools and teaching, few inside 

the growing reform juggernaut were aware of its 

limitations.  Indeed, through the myopic vantage 

point of those most involved, the educational 

possibilities seemed limitless, even 

―revolutionary‖ (Bruner 1983). 

 

Sputnik and the NDEA. 

 The ideological turn behind passage of the 

National Defense Education Act developed over 

many years of red-baiting and criticism of 

progressive education from academic critics.  The 

stage was set, and the launching of Sputnik, the 

Soviet satellite, on October 4, 1957, affirmed the 

criticism and unleashed funds for educational 

reform.  Sputnik served as a clarion call for 

education in science and math, and other studies 

that would strengthen U. S. brainpower for the 

Cold War.  That call was answered by the 

National Defense Education Act, passed in early 

1958, providing unprecedented categorical aid in 

the hundreds of millions of dollars for the 

improvement of mathematics, science, and 

foreign language instruction.  The NDEA was 

supported by two main arguments: that national 

security required the ―fullest development of the 

mental resources and technical skills of American 

youth, and that the national interest required 

federal ―assistance to education for programs 

which are important to our national defense‖ 

(Gutek 1986). 

 Following Sputnik, national magazines and 

a new round of books stoked the fires of a 

renewed ―crisis‖ in education.  Critics such as 

Vice Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, father of the 

nuclear submarine, blamed the schools for our 

nation falling behind the Russians in science, 

math, and engineering, endangering national 

security.  In his criticisms of American education, 

published in a book titled, Education and 

Freedom, he called attention to Soviet successes 

and described the superiority of the Soviet and 

European educational systems (1959).  Another 

vociferous critic, E. Merrill Root, authored a 

critique of textbooks that exemplified the anti-

Communist tenor of the times and contributed to 

the crisis mentality.  In Brainwashing in the High 

Schools, Root sought to demonstrate that the 

United States was losing the Cold War because of 

the un-patriotic textbooks filled with misleading 

propaganda for socialism and communism 

(1958).  Another book that appeared shortly after 

Sputnik seemed to sum up many of the criticisms 

of education spawned by cold war fears and 

competition.  Second Rate Brains contained a 

compendium of thought on Soviet schools and 

scientists, and offering critiques of the mediocrity 

in American schools (Lansner 1958).  The 

cumulative effect of these persistent and strident 

attacks on education supported new directions, 

and a renewed emphasis on discipline-based 

academic study.   



27 

 

A Broadened Agenda 

 Following Sputnik, and passage of the 

NDEA, the growth of research and development 

for curriculum improvement which began in the 

technical fields, in math and science, was 

gradually broadened to include the humanities 

and social sciences.  Two important meetings 

took place in April, 1958, six months after the 

launch of Sputnik, and shortly after passage of the 

National Defense Education Act, which would 

have an important influence on the direction of 

curriculum reform.  The first of these was a 

conference on Psychological Research in 

Education (Easton Conference) aimed at 

investigating better approaches to teaching 

science and math ―than are now being utilized‖ 

(Proposed Conference 1958).  The second was a 

meeting held at the National Academy of 

Sciences at which virtually all of the major 

decision makers in funding the growing 

curriculum reform movement were present.  At 

that meeting it was decided to broaden the PSSC 

curriculum reform model to other science areas.  

That decision would open the door to curriculum 

reform in social studies.  At the same meeting, it 

was agreed that the PSSC would form a small 

corporation known as Educational Services 

Incorporated or ESI (Whaley 1958).  

 The furor and flurry of interest in education 

that followed Sputnik provided an invaluable 

assist to those who wanted schools to raise 

academic standards and give more attention to 

gifted students.  At the National Science 

Foundation, the ―crisis‖ in education and the 

intense interest following Sputnik increased the 

Foundation‘s role in secondary school reform.  

Projects proliferated, made possible by increased 

funding from the NSF and the USOE following 

passage of the National Defense Education Act in 

1958, and inspired by Sputnik.  At the heart of the 

curriculum reform movement was Jerrold 

Zacharias.  As Jerome Bruner later recalled, ―I 

think it was Zach, more that anybody else, who 

converted the Sputnik shock into the curriculum 

reform movement that it became rather than 

taking some other form‖ (Bruner 1983, 180).  

Gradually, the directors of funded projects 

became the new ―leadership‖ in American 

education.  With the backing of the national 

government, these new reforms represented a sort 

of ―official‖ direction for the creation and 

transmission of knowledge in the nation‘s 

schools, one that was built around the academic 

disciplines and the Cold War aim of manpower 

development, even if few of those involved 

seldom seemed to explicitly acknowledge it at the 

time.  Much later, Bruner recalled, ―We envied 

the Soviet selection system,‖ but that ―ran counter 

to our egalitarian traditions‖ (Bruner, 2008).  

Jerrold Zacharias, chief architect of the reform, 

envisioned an almost total rethinking of education 

to an inquiry model, and a reform movement 

which would eventually spread across subject 

areas and to all levels.   

Emergence 

 The aim of the new social studies 

movement was to "transform... students into 

junior historians and social scientists.‖  The 

developments of the 1960s rested, in part, on a 

small, influential book, The Process of Education, 

written by Jerome Bruner, reporting on the 

proceedings of the Woods Hole Conference. 

 

Woods Hole Conference   

 The Woods Hole Conference, held in 

September, 1959, at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, 

at a large mansion owned by MIT, brought 

together leaders in the new reforms in science and 

math, and led to a concise and well crafted 

formulation of the principles of curriculum 

development shared in the new movement.  

Among the 35 participants were luminaries such 

as conference director Jerome Bruner, Richard 

Alpert, Lee Cronbach, Robert Gagne, Jerold 

Zacharias, and John Morton Blum.  Key 

participants included the curriculum-makers, 

biologists, mathematicians, and physicists, along 

with a few psychologists, several educators, and a 

couple of historians and a classicist.  The National 

Academy of Scientists, the institution behind 

putting the conference together, wanted to have a 

closer look at the curriculum reform movement, 

and infuse some new thinking from psychology.  

Other sponsors of the conference included the 



28 

 

U.S.O.E. Cooperative Research Program, the 

Rand Corporation, the Air Research and 

Development Command, and the National 

Science Foundation.  From a larger perspective, 

the conference was fueled by the reaction to 

Sputnik and the complaints of critics such as Vice 

Admiral Rickover, and was funded by a range of 

federal agencies.  In a sense, what was emerging 

was a manufactured consensus, paid for by 

stakeholders with an interest in education 

conducted on behalf of national security. 

 In The Process of Education, Bruner 

summarized his own ―sense of the meeting‖ based 

on the reports of five working groups formed at 

the conference.  The conference took the 

―structure of the disciplines‖ as its central theme 

and overriding assumption, and examined in some 

depth, ―the role of structure in learning and how it 

may be made central in teaching.‖   The conferees 

assumed the goal of ―giving students an 

understanding of the fundamental structure of 

whatever subjects we choose to teach,‖ and the 

―teaching and learning of structure‖ rather than 

simply the ―mastery of facts and techniques‖ 

(Bruner 1960, 2-3, 11-12). 

 The second theme of the conference had to 

do with readiness for learning and ―the hypothesis 

that any subject can be taught effectively in some 

intellectually honest form to any child at any 

stage of development‖ (33).  A third theme 

involved the nature of intuition and the training of 

hunches. ―The shrewd guess, the fertile 

hypothesis,‖ Bruner asserted, ―is a much-

neglected and essential feature of productive 

thinking… .‖  These three themes, Bruner wrote, 

were all premised on a central conviction, ―that 

intellectual activity anywhere is the same, 

whether at the frontier of knowledge or in a third-

grade classroom… The difference is in degree, 

not in kind‖ (13-14).  A fourth theme centered on 

how to stimulate student motivation through 

interest in the material.  The essence of the reform 

centered on finding means that would help the 

learner get through the ―surface clutter‖ of details 

―to the pure, unflawed idea behind it: the deep 

structure‖ (Bruner 1983, 181).  That meant, in the 

case of history, for example, ―you don‘t just think 

about history, you think history.‖  In other words, 

history was not just a description of the past, but a 

way of getting to that description, a process.  As 

Bruner would frame it later, ―knowing how 

something is put together … allows you to go 

beyond it‖ (183). 

 Not all of these ideas were new.  The 

concept of inquiry or discovery oriented teaching 

had been around at least since the days of the 

scientific historians in the 19
th

 century, and was 

increasingly championed by many progressive 

educators.  Motivation through student interest 

was also an old song.  Parts of the new curriculum 

movement were a recapitulation of common ideas 

in the rhetoric of education.  The focus on the 

―structures‖ of the disciplines was a 

reformulation, though what it actually meant in 

terms of classroom practice remained somewhat 

unclear.   

 Though there was little explicit 

acknowledgement of the cold war backdrop to 

which the conferees at Woods Hole owed their 

existence, Bruner, a cold war liberal in politics, 

did refer somewhat obliquely to the social mileu.  

He wrote: ―…if all students are helped to the full 

utilization of their intellectual powers, we will 

have a better chance of surviving as a democracy 

in an age of enormous technological and social 

complexity‖ (1960, 10).  A part of that 

―complexity‖ was no doubt entangled in the cold 

war struggle with totalitarian Communism in the 

minds of Bruner and his colleagues. 

 In his role as Director, during the 

conference Bruner wrote memos to each of five 

working groups on: the apparatus of teaching; the 

sequence of the curriculum; the motivation of 

learning; the role of intuition; and, cognitive 

processes.  One of the most telling comments was 

contained in Bruner‘s memo to the work group on 

the apparatus of teaching.  ―Perhaps rather 

unfortunately,‖ the memo began, ―we introduced 

this subject for discussion today by suggesting the 

analogy to a weapon system – proposing that the 

teacher, the book, the laboratory, the teaching 

machine, the film, and the organization of the 

craft might serve together to form a balanced 

teaching system‖ (Bruner 1959).  It was a 



29 

 

revealing comment.  It alluded to the cold war 

backdrop, through which the entire program of 

curriculum reform might be seen as both a 

weapons system and an outgrowth of national 

security concerns, and it made an implicit 

connection to the earlier involvement of Bruner 

and Zacharias in the development of weapons 

systems.  Bruner‘s initial direct involvement with 

the wartime research model apparently came with 

his work on Project Troy, a highly classified 

summer study invited by the State Department  

and ostensibly created to find a way to overcome 

Soviet jamming of Radio Free Europe, but with 

the broader aim of getting ―the truth behind the 

Iron Curtain‖ by bringing together some of the 

―best brains in the country‖ to work on the 

problem and to counter the Soviet propaganda 

program (Needell 1998).  Zacharias was also 

deeply involved in similar wartime government 

projects and had been for some time, with key 

leadership roles in the MIT Radiation Lab and the 

Manhattan Project, as a consultant on Project 

Troy, and notably, as director of Project Hartwell, 

focused initially on anti-submarine warfare and 

completed at MIT in 1950 with funding from the 

Office of Navy Research (Goldstein 1992).  

These involvements provided a model and many 

of the personnel for what would become large-

scale consultancies involving scientists, social 

scientists, the U. S. military, intelligence, and 

propaganda agencies.  The model was later 

applied to social studies education as an arm of 

the propaganda effort, i.e. improve manpower 

development on a broad scale, improve social 

science instruction, and win the cold war, 

assuming, of course, that students gain strong 

inquiry skills and reach the proper conclusions.  

In the case of Bruner, participation in Project 

Troy was ―a rather heady experience‖ and led to a 

regular monthly dinner meeting at the St. 

Botolph‘s Club in Boston the first Friday evening 

of each month for the next 15 years‖ which he 

later described as ―the best club I ever belonged 

to‖ (Bruner 1983, 210). 

 Following Woods Hole, other theorists 

added to the mix, creating building blocks for the 

new reform and fleshing out the rationale.  The 

era of the new social studies was introduced most 

clearly when an article by Charles R. Keller, 

director of the John Hay Fellows Program, and a 

former college history teacher, appeared in the 

Saturday Review.  Keller‘s article was titled, 

"Needed: Revolution in Social Studies,‖ and 

appeared in 1961.  His thesis was that social 

studies was ―in the educational doldrums,‖ partly 

traceable to the fact that ―social studies‖ was a 

―federation of subjects …, often merged in 

inexact and confusing ways.‖ (Keller 1961, 60).  

Social studies teachers too frequently ―depend on 

textbooks,‖ leading to ―unimaginative, 

unenthusiastic, pedantic teaching… .‖  The 

remedy, according to Keller, was ―a possible 

revolution in social studies,‖ beginning with 

―eliminating the term ‗social studies,‘ which is 

vague, murky, and too all-inclusive and substitute 

for it the term ‗history and the social sciences,‘ 

which is exact and hence meaningful…‖ (61-62).  

Keller then echoed many of Bruner‘s 

recommendations, a clarion call for a social 

studies reform movement along the lines already 

begun in other subject areas. 

 Prior to the appearance of Keller‘s article, 

social studies reformers were already engaged in 

pioneering work in a few isolated places.  

Lawrence Senesh, a scholar in economics at 

Purdue University, was busily creating an 

economics program for elementary age students, 

drawing on the disciplines in creating a 

progressive oriented program and textbook series, 

Our Working World.  Edwin Fenton, a historian at 

Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh 

who had been given responsibility for pre-service 

teacher education in history, was bothered by the 

pat assertions found in high school history 

textbooks and by the boredom and loathing of his 

own students for many history and social science 

courses.  In an attempt to bring history to life and 

rekindle student curiosity he introduced primary 

source documents as a means of stimulating 

students, asking them to experience the work of 

historians, and to make sense of raw data.  

Fenton‘s experiences with using primary source 

documents led to publication of a book titled 32 

Problems in World History and an eventual 



30 

 

leadership role in the new social studies 

movement (Fenton 1964). 

 

Endicott House   

 During the period before and after the 

Woods Hole conference, a series of meetings took 

place with the general theme of broadening the 

curriculum reform projects to include other areas, 

such as English and social studies.  Perhaps the 

single most interesting and relevant of these 

meeting occurred at Endicott House in Cambridge 

in June of 1962.  The Endicott House meeting 

was the first comprehensive meeting to grow out 

of the reform movement to examine the need for 

curriculum reform in social studies in some depth.  

During the Kennedy administration, Jerrold 

Zacharias served as chair of the President‘s 

Science Advisory Committee and sponsored a 

number of meetings on a variety of topics aimed 

at further developing and broadening the 

educational reform movement.  The Endicott 

House meeting was a more immediate and direct 

outgrowth of a January, 1962, meeting at which 

Zacharias recommended development of an ESI 

social studies program.   

 The Endicott House Conference was held 

in June of 1962 at a secluded estate ten miles 

from Harvard Square with 47 scholars and 

teachers representing a broad spectrum of 

disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, 

and a wide range of views.  Controversy emerged 

almost immediately after Robert Feldmesser, a 

sociologist, blamed the poor condition of social 

studies teaching in the schools on historians, and 

the dominance of history in the curriculum.  ―We 

shall make no progress in transforming the social 

studies into social science,‖ he said, ―until we 

slaughter the sacred cow of history‖ (Dow 1991, 

42).  Feldmesser proposed inclusion of more 

social science materials at all levels, and that 

children be introduced to the inquiry methods and 

conceptual structure of the social sciences so that 

they could develop a more critical attitude toward 

the social world.  Most of the historians at the 

meeting were offended by Feldmesser‘s 

comments, and for a time the conference 

descended into a turf battle over whose content 

was most valuable.  Edwin Fenton, a historian 

from Carnegie-Mellon, was one of the few 

historians at the meeting who agreed with 

Feldmesser that traditional history had dominated 

the curriculum for too long. 

 Gradually, however, as the two-week 

session went on, and other voices were heard, a 

consensus began to develop around the notion 

that the problem in the schools had more to do 

with how history was typically taught, rather than 

with the subject matter itself.  What emerged 

from the Endicott House meeting was a proposal 

for more in-depth study, later given the name 

―post-holing,‖ that would engage students in 

source material and the process of inquiry and 

that would expose them to the uncertainty, 

speculation, and imagination that are part of 

scientific and historical investigation.  As at 

Woods Hole, the latter part of the conference was 

devoted to presentations by working group that 

had been meeting regularly throughout the two 

weeks to develop concrete suggestions for 

curriculum reform.  In the end, the meeting 

produced a few suggestions about where the 

emerging reform of social studies might head, but 

did not create a blueprint for reform (Dow 1991).  

Following the conference, Zacharias‘s new ESI 

social studies group began meeting regularly to 

develop a refined and concrete proposal to submit 

to the Ford Foundation, eventually evolving into 

the MACOS curriculum. 

 

The Projects 
 In the October, 1962, issue of Social 

Education, the same month as the Cuban missile 

crisis, a small, two paragraph, ―Announcement 

for Project Social Studies,‖ appeared on the 

bottom half of one page.  The announcement 

read, in part, ―The United States Office of 

Education has announced the initiation of Project 

Social Studies, which is designed to improve 

research, instruction, teacher education, and the 

dissemination of information in this field.‖  The 

announcement also stated that funds were 

available for research projects, curriculum study 

centers, and conferences and seminars 

(Announcement 1962).  The fact that the 



31 

 

announcement coincided with the height of cold 

war tension is not lost in hindsight, though at the 

time the de-politicization of education made it 

appear a rather innocuous research and 

development notice, with exciting possibilities for 

scholars and teachers. 

 The earliest social science projects had 

begun to receive funding prior to the 

announcement of Project Social Studies, and 

received support from the National Science 

Foundation as well as private foundations such as 

Ford or Carnegie.  Senesh and Fenton had already 

begun work on their projects in the 1950s, and 

had received at least some private funding for 

their efforts.  A similar endeavor, the Amherst 

history project, had its beginnings in the 1959-

1960 school year under the leadership of Van 

Halsey (Halsey, 1963). 

 Three additional projects were launched in 

1961, all emanating from professional 

associations.  All three eventually received 

funding from the NSF.  These included the High 

School Geography Project, Sociological 

Resources for the Secondary Schools, and the 

Anthropology Curriculum Study Project.   

 Following up on the announcement of 

Project Social Studies, in July, 1963, USOE 

reported that seven curriculum centers, eleven 

research projects, and two developmental 

activities had been approved for funding (Smith 

1963).  These included Fenton‘s project in 

American history, and Donald Oliver‘s project at 

Harvard focused on analysis of public issues.  

Four additional new projects were funded in 

1964.  By 1965 there were some two-dozen 

projects that made up the new social studies 

movement, funded by the NSF, the USOE, or 

private foundations.  Most notable among the new 

additions was the Harvard Educational 

Development Center‘s Man: A Course of Study 

(MACOS), for which Jerome Bruner served as 

the intellectual architect.  The vast majority of the 

projects fit the general theme of the ―structures of 

the disciplines,‖ but there was some diversity in 

orientation.  Perhaps the least compatible with the 

discipline-based focus was the Harvard Project, 

with its focus on public issues as the heart of 

citizenship education.   

 Clearly, a revolution of sorts was brewing, 

but what was its nature?  In April, 1965, Social 

Education devoted virtually the entire issue to a 

―Report on Project Social Studies,‖ with an 

overview provided by Edwin Fenton and John 

Good.  Their report began with a bold and 

confident statement: ―The curriculum revolution 

which began in mathematics, the natural sciences, 

and modern foreign languages about a decade ago 

has at last reached the social studies.  More than 

40 curriculum development projects of national 

significance promise to revolutionize teaching 

about man and society‖ (Fenton & Good 1965, 

206).  

 Calling the sum of the projects ―the new 

social studies,‖ in what appears to be the first use 

of this term, Fenton and Good provide a succinct 

summary of some of the general themes of the 

activities supported by Project Social Studies and 

other funding sources including the emphasis on 

structure, inductive teaching, the disciplines, 

sequential learning, new types of materials, new 

subjects, and emphases on evaluation.  Though 

the article gave a concise overview of the new 

reform the authors demonstrated little awareness 

of the contextual origins of the movement. 

 After 1965 another wave of projects was 

christened.  By 1967 more than 50 national 

projects were in progress, though curricular 

materials were slow to appear and were not issued 

in significant amounts until 1967.  The projects 

created after 1967 all claimed loyalty to the 

principles of the new social studies, but in 

actuality, seemed to move off in all sorts of 

directions.  Though there were many variations 

and permutations of the general themes of the 

new social studies, the general parameter of 

discipline-based inquiry appears to have held 

fairly constant as a working guideline for the vast 

majority of projects. 

 From a distance, it appears that the new 

social studies movement reached its zenith in 

1967.  In this year, the total number of funded 

projects appears to have peaked, and new social 

studies topics and concerns dominated both 



32 

 

Social Education and the NCSS annual 

conference.  Moreover, for many of the initial 

projects, funding periods were at or near their 

end.  The years after 1967 would be spent dealing 

with publication, dissemination, and diffusion of 

materials. 

 A second wave of projects received initial 

funding from 1968 to 1972.  Several of the newly 

funded projects added selected use of 

contemporary social problems as topics for study 

and as criteria for selection of social science 

content.  Adding to the general ferment, non-

project social studies curriculum workers, 

teachers, and teacher educators labored in the 

field, often providing conferences and workshops 

and receiving funds from the USOE, state 

departments of education and local school 

districts. 

 If 1967 was the zenith of enthusiasm for the 

new movement, the years following, through the 

early to mid-1970s, represented a continuing 

presence with activity at a lower level of 

intensity.  Events in the society, many of which 

impinged directly on schools, may have diluted 

teacher enthusiasm for the new social studies and 

its general focus on inquiry based in the 

disciplines, a step removed from the conflicts and 

dilemmas of the social world.  

 In retrospect, the materials produced in the 

era of the new social studies were among the most 

innovative and influential commodities ever 

produced for use in social studies classrooms. 

Despite the historical context out of which they 

were born, and perhaps partly because of it, 

projects funded by millions of grant dollars from 

the NSF, the USOE, and other sources 

contributed to creation of a rich and multifaceted 

explosion of curriculum development the likes of 

which may never be seen again.   The projects 

and materials set a tone for an era of innovation 

and inquiry that spread to other curriculum 

materials, textbooks, and curriculum guides.  

Though the materials and approaches to teaching 

of the period would later come under severe 

attack, leading to the end of the new social studies 

as an active movement, those materials remain a 

treasure trove for teachers and curriculum 

historians willing to explore them. 

Discussion 

 At this point, I will offer a few tentative 

conclusions.  The origins of the new social studies 

may be found in the confluence of at least four 

concurrent trends: critiques of progressive 

education; cold war manpower fears, justified or 

not; the increasing power of the military-

industrial-academic-government complex; and 

scientists and social scientists‘ belief in inquiry—

as an act of faith—to transform schooling and 

remake schools and schoolchildren in their own 

image, conceptualizing schools as sort of a minor 

league extension of the research university. 

 The new social studies had many strengths.  

Numerous leading scholars were involved.  The 

period illustrates that time, money, and 

brainpower devoted to curriculum development 

can have influence.  The unprecedented amounts 

of money devoted to the reform suggests that for 

that time, social education was taken quite 

seriously by the society.  The reform created a 

new language and had influence on many 

teachers.  Especially prominent was the belief that 

an inquiry orientation is one key to meaningful 

learning.  This belief has a good deal of 

continuing influence on scholarship in social 

studies, and to a lesser extent, on mainstream 

practice in social studies classrooms.  

 Unfortunately, leaders of the broader 

reform and the new social studies movement 

made a number of mistakes which may have 

limited their influence to some extent.  Key 

leaders chose to bypass educators with knowledge 

of schools, including professors of education and 

curriculum leaders.  Moreover, a number of the 

leaders of the reform exhibited a high level of 

arrogance—and made the assumption that their 

ideas and materials would catch on because of 

their high quality and inquiry orientation.  In 

many cases, teachers involved in the projects 

were treated as window dressing—and the 

resulting materials, in some cases, had a ―teacher 

proof‖ quality.  Most projects aimed at an elite, 

the upper one-fourth of students, and neglected 

others, thus the reform had an elitist, anti-



33 

 

democratic tone.  The reform lacked an explicit 

and fully developed rationale for citizen 

education.  Reformers failed to fully respect the 

grammar of schooling and obstacles to reform—

and consequently, it had relatively low influence 

in schools—and did not meet the expectations of 

reformers.  Though critics pointed out many of 

the reform‘s flaws—it was to little avail. 

 A few tentative lessons might be drawn 

from the history of the period.  First, it seems a 

truism, curriculum reforms always shaped by 

politics of the time.  Decisions of reformers can 

matter and can have influence, but may be limited 

by various constraints.  Despite its many flaws, 

the era of the new social studies can serve as a 

useful prototype, especially for an approach that 

places discipline-based social science inquiry at 

the heart of social studies instruction in schools.  

However, reformers would be wise to respect the 

grammar of schooling, the many obstacles to 

reform—and plan strategies to overcome them.  

Finally, the era of the new social studies deserves 

continuing study, especially given the lack of 

emphasis on inquiry in the current school reform 

movement. 

 

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This article was originally published in Curriculum History 

2010. Due to programming issues the articles is no longer 

available in that issue and is reprinted here.  Originally on 

pages 82 to 93. 

 


