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Business Propaganda in the Schools: Labor's Struggle Against the Americans for the Competitive Enterprise System, 1949–1954

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Elizabeth Fones-Wolf*
Affiliation:
West Virginia University

Extract

In early March 1953, the Americans for the Competitive Enterprise System (ACES), a private, business-backed economic education association, opened up shop in Reading, Pennsylvania. Founded three years earlier in Philadelphia, ACES sought to “demonstrate the superiority of the American competitive system over any forms of collectivism.” To achieve that goal, the organization distributed literature, created a speakers’ bureau, and offered educational activities for clergy, women's groups, and industrial workers. ACES’ most extensive program, however, targeted high school students. It consisted of a three-day schedule of activities that included classroom instruction in economics and tours of local industries. In 1953, after having successfully established a program in the Philadelphia public and parochial schools, ACES sought to expand its base of operations throughout Pennsylvania with chapters in Harrisburg, Lancaster, Erie, and Reading. Although unions throughout the state were suspicious of the organization from its inception, ACES met the strongest resistance in Reading. In that city, local socialists and trade unionists immediately mobilized along class lines and blocked ACES from gaining access to the Reading public school classrooms.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the History of Education Society 

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References

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4 There are only a handful of studies that discuss this topic, including Rippa, S. Alexander Education in a Free Society: An American History (New York & London: Longman, 1984), chap. 10; Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise, chap. 7; Moore, Colleen Ann “The National Association of Manufacturers: The Voice of Industry and the Free Enterprise Campaign in the Schools, 1929–1949,” (Ph.D diss, University of Akron, 1985).Google Scholar

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6 One work that examines labor's struggle against business’ involvement in the public schools is Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise; Katznelson and Weir, Schooling for All, 125–26.Google Scholar

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19 It is important to note that despite this conflict, organized labor was not offering an alternative vision for education. While it had a distinct perspective, postwar labor was firmly anchored in a political consensus that embraced economic growth through increased productivity rather than redistribution as the solution to social and economic inequality. Like business, unions saw schools as critical to facilitating that growth. “Improve Educational Opportunity,” 35–38; Jones, Orville C.Labor's Concern for Education,“ Education Digest 18 (April 1953): 2729; Brodinsky, B.P. “Labor Has a Plan for Public Education,” Nation's Schools 43 (Jan. 1949):22–25; “Labor Leaders Tell Philadelphia Teachers What Labor Hopes for From the Schools,” American Teacher, Feb. 1945, 27–28; Reuther, Walter P. “What the Public Schools Should Teach,” Harvard Educational Review 27 (Fall 1957): 246–50; Labor and Education, CIO pamphlet, n.d., box 13, Mark Starr Papers, ALUA.Google Scholar

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