The kids who are discussed in this article would be called "LD" today - you don't want to know how they were referred to in the early Twenties. Back then there were no Federally-funded commissions thronging with sympathetic PhD candidates to ramble on about "convergence issues", "processing concerns", "the-classroom-learning-environment" and the "Learning Disabled". There were only frustrated kids, frustrated teachers and broken-hearted parents. This 1937 news article reports on the pioneering teachers at Seward Park High School in New York City and the earliest attempts to address the needs of students who suffered from language processing disorders, dyscalculia, dyslexia, dysgraphia and America's favorite - good ol' ADHD. "A religion-in-the-schools trial, held last week in the Champaign, Illinois Circuit Court, will probably make history. The plaintiff was Mrs. Vashti McCollum, 32, pert, wide-eyed wife of a University of Illinois professor, demanding that the Champaign School Board discontinue a five-year program of religious instruction in school buildings, on the ground that the constitutional separation of church and state is jeopardized."
Posted herein was one of the first of many articles concerning what would come to known as the landmark Supreme Court case McCollum v. Board of Education (1948): the court decided in her favor.  |
This article charts the decline of Latin as an academic study in American schools. The disappearance of Latin began in the Thirties and steadily snowballed to such a point that by 1952 its absence was finally noticed.
"Is Latin on its way out in high schools? The answer is a confident 'NO.'
It's hard to see how it can go any lower,' declares Dr. John F. Latimer, head of Latin studies
at George Washington University." "Ten million Americans can't read and write, thousands of teachers are underpaid and, try as they may, our poorer states cannot afford to do anything about it. Every Congress since 1919 has refused to improve the situation... The truth seems to be that schools are no longer America's sweetheart. When there is money to be divided in a state, roads come first, public health second and schools third."
Click here to read about an American woman who grew heartily sick of the socialists who loitered on every street corner during the Great Depression...
When the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, in the Autumn of 1957 it shocked the American people and set in motion an event that was quickly labeled "the Sputnik Crises". Almost at once, school boards all across the fruited plane resolved to improve their math and science programs in order to ensure the blessings of liberty for generations yet unborn.
One of these institutions was Laguna Beach High School in Southern California and the attached article, "Turning Bad Schools into Good Schools", will tell you about the various steps they had taken in order to alter their curriculum and the prevailing campus culture as well.
We were gratified to learn that some fifty-odd years later, Laguna Beach High is still one of the finest schools in the country.
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