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. 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