Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-x4r87 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T06:57:19.748Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Reconsidering Schools and the American Welfare State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Miriam Cohen*
Affiliation:
Vassar College

Extract

Recalling her experience as an exchange teacher in Birmingham, England, in 1938-39, in the midst of the Great Depression, Oregon teacher Mary Kelly, wrote:

When I witnessed the first ‘leaving’ day … in one of the Birmingham schools and learned that as soon as the majority of the English children were fourteen they were through with regular schooling forever, I almost shed tears.

“Do you mean that those girls will never go to high school?” I asked.

“Yes it is true.”

“Will they have jobs or will they be idle?”

“The Education Department will place most of them in positions in homes, shops or factories ….”

There were no graduation exercises, no lovely new dresses, no parents or relatives invited. I thought of my high-school graduation, which possibly would never have been if education was not free, because the means were limited. Still another graduation after going through college on nothing a year permitted me to take up teaching … . To me, at that moment, there was nothing more precious than democracy and I mean the American way.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 by the History of Education Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Kelly, Mary Adventures of an Exchange Teacher (New York: Vantage Press, 1954), 6970.Google Scholar

2 Cohen, Miriam J. and Michael Hanagan, “Work, School and Reform: A Comparison of Birmingham, England and Pittsburgh, USA: 1900–1950,” International Labor and Working–Class History 40 (Fall 1991): 6780.Google Scholar

3 The study involves a comparison of national policies in England, France, and the United States and a detailed look at the politics and policies enacted in two cities for each country. In the United States, we study New York City and Pittsburgh, for England, London and Birmingham, for France, Paris and St. Etienne. The cities were chosen so that we might compare the politics and policies in cities that were characterized almost exclusively by industrial labor with cities that were characterized by mixed economies and were centers of finance and trade.Google Scholar

4 In 1973, by a vote of 5–4, the United States Supreme Court ruled in an San Antonio v. Rodriguez that education was not a right guaranteed by the United States Constitution. On state court efforts to enforce education rights under state constitutions, see Cohen, Lizabeth A Consumer's Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Knopf, 2003), 244; Hochschild, Jennifer and Scovronick, Nathan, The American Dream and the Public Schools (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 27. In 1982, the United States Supreme Court (Plyler v. Doe) did rule that even illegal aliens, though not American citizens are entided under the Fourteenth Amendment to public education in Texas. Although education is not a fundamental right, the Court concluded, it, unlike other government benefits, “has a pivotal role in maintaining the fabric of our society.” http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/bjordan/PlylerDoc.html, 1.Google Scholar

5 Katzenelson, Ira and Weir, Margaret, Schooling for All: Class, Race and the Decline of the Democratic Ideal (New York: Basic Books, 1988), 8,5.Google Scholar

6 Patterson, James America's Struggle Against Poverty, 1900–1994 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), Chapter 12; Heidenheimer, Arnold J. “Education and Social Security Entitlements in Europe and America,” in The Development of the Welfare State in Europe and America ed. Flora, Peter and Heidenheimer, Arnold J. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1981), 259–304.Google Scholar

7 Weir, Katznelson and Schooling for All, 14.Google Scholar

8 Norton Grubb, W. and Lazerson, Marvin Broken Promises: How Americans Fail Their Children [1982] (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 130; Carnoy, Martin and Levin, Henry M. Schooling and Work in the Democratic State (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985). See also Scovronick, Hochschild and The American Dream and the Public Schools. Google Scholar

9 Labaree, David F. How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning: The Credentials Race in American Education (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 17,19. See also idem, The Making of an American High School: The Credentials Market and the Central High School of Philadelphia, 1838–1939 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), Chapter 7Google Scholar

10 Labaree, How to Succeed, 37.Google Scholar

11 Katz, Michael B. In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America (New York: Basic Books, 1986), 114,115.Google Scholar

12 Weir, Katznelson and Schooling for All, 31.Google Scholar

13 Tyack, David Lowe, Robert, and Hansot, Elisabeth, Public Schools in Hard Times: The Great Depression and Recent Years (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984). See especially Chapters 2 and 5.Google Scholar

14 Fass, PaulaWithout Design: Education Policy in the New Deal,American Journal of Education 91: 1 (November 1982): 3664. See also Bower, Kevin P. “‘A favored child of the state': Federal Student Aid at Ohio Colleges and Universities, 1934–1943,” History of Education Quarterly 44:3 (Fall 2004): 364–387.Google Scholar

15 See for example, Ladd-Taylor, Molly Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare and the State, 1890–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), Chapters 1,3. Borrowing from Ladd-Taylor, I use the term progressive maternalism to refer to those women who used the politics of maternalism to expand the welfare state.Google Scholar

16 Skocpol, Theda Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992), 466, 426.Google Scholar

17 U. S. Children's Bureau, Laws Relating to “Mothers’ Pensions” in the United States, Canada, Denmark, and New Zealand Legal Series No. 4, Bureau Publication No. 63, Compiled by Thompson, Laura A. (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1919), 12.Google Scholar

18 Gordon, Linda Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare (New York: The Free Press, 1994); Taylor, Ladd Mother-Work; Sklar, Kathryn Kish “Historical Foundations of Women's Power in the Creation of the Welfare State,” in Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of the Welfare State, ed. Koven, Seth and Michel, Sonya (New York: Routledge, 1993), 43–49.Google Scholar

19 My analysis of the strategic ways that social and political activists name injustices and propose solutions, by “finding symbols that are familiar enough to mobilize people” (119), is most heavily influenced by Tarrow, Sidney Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action and Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), Chapter 7.Google Scholar

20 For an elaboration of this comparison, see Cohen, Miriam and Hanagan, Michael P.The Politics of Gender in the Making of the American Welfare State in England, France and the United States,Journal of Social History 24 (Spring 1991): 469–84. See also Sklar, “Historical Foundations of Women's Power in the Creation of the Welfare State,” 43–93.Google Scholar

21 Labaree, How to Succeed ìn School, Chapter 1; Smith, Roger M. Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U. S. History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 24632469. See also Weir, Katznelson and Schooling for All, Chapter 7.Google Scholar

22 Mink, Gwendolyn The Wages of Motherhood, Inequality in the Welfare State, 1917–1942 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 78. In his history of the American welfare state, Katz, Michael whose early work focused on the development of public schooling, not surprisingly, points out that interest in compulsory education, like the promotion of mothers’ pensions was part of larger progressive social reform agenda of “saving children.” Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse, 130. For an excellent discussion of how the anti-child labor crusade fits into the larger program of saving children see Zelizer, Viviana Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994, 2nd. ed.), Chapter 3.Google Scholar

23 Third New York City Conference of Charities and Corrections, Proceedings (Albany, N.Y.: J.B. Lyon, 1912), 95.Google Scholar

24 State of New York, Report of the New York State Commission on Relief for Widowed Mothers, transmitted to the legislature, March 27, 1914 (New York: Arno Press, 1974 c. 1914) 19.Google Scholar

25 Kelley, Florence Modern Industry, in Relation to the Family, Health, Education and Morality, (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1914), 9; Third New York City Conference of Charities and Corrections, Proceedings, 79.Google Scholar

26 Second Annual Report of the Factory Inspectors of the State of New York, for the Year Ending December 1, 1887, The Child and the State, Vol. 1, Legal Status in the Family, Apprenticeship and Child Labor, Select Documents and Introductory Notes, ed. Abbott, Grace (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938), 416.Google Scholar

27 New York State, Factory Investigating Commission, Public Hearings in New York City, Second Series, reprint from the Preliminary Report of the New York State Factory Investigating Commission (Albany, NY: J. B. Lyon, October 1912), 1740.Google Scholar

28 New York State, Preliminary Report of the New York State Factory Investigating Commission, Vol. 1. (Albany, NY: J.B. Lyon, 1912), 89.Google Scholar

29 Allegheny County Mothers Pension League Report, (Archives of Industrial Society [AIS]), University of Pittsburgh; State of New York, State Board of Charities, “Senator William Hill's Letter to Governor Whitman, Memoranda of Conditions Upon Which Relief is Granted in Other States” (Albany, NY, April 1, 1915), pp. 14–16; U.S. Children's Bureau Laws Relating to Mothers Pensions in the United States, Canada, Denmark, and New Zealand, 13; Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Public Welfare, Public Welfare in Pennsylvania, 19; Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, 428.Google Scholar

30 Kelley, Florence Some Ethical Gains Through Legislation (New York: Macmillan Company, 1905), 96.Google Scholar

31 National Child Labor Committee, “Reports from State Committees,” Child Labor: A Menace to Industry Education and Good Citizenship (New York: National Child Labor Committee, 1906), 130,131.Google Scholar

32 Excellent critiques of New Deal legislation can be found in Cates, Jerry R. Insuring Inequality: Administrative Leadership in Social Security (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1983); Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse, Chapter 8; Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled; Mettler, Suzanne Dividing Citizens: Gender and Federalism in New Deal Public Policy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998); Quadagno, Jill The Transformation of Old Age Security: Class and Politics in the American Welfare State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). A recent, nuanced discussion of the relationship between social movements, politics and the power of business in shaping New Deal welfare policy can be found in Klein, Jennifer For All These Rights: Business, Labor, and the Shaping of America's Public-Private Welfare State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).Google Scholar

33 See Boris, Eileen Home to Work: Motherhood and the Politics of Homework in the United States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).Google Scholar

34 See, among other things, Mirel, Jeffrey The Rise and Fall of the Urban School System, Detroit 1907–1981 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 132; Angus, David and Mirel, Jeffrey, The Failed Promise of the American High School, 1890–1995 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999), 60; al., Tyack et Public Schools in Hard Times, 144–150.Google Scholar

35 Census of England and Wales, 1931 Industry Tables (London: HMSO, 1934), 142–150. Board of Education Educational Pamphlets, Education for Industry and Commerce: The West Midlands Metal Working Area (London: HMSO, 1930), 20; City of Birmingham Education Committee, Juvenile Employment and Welfare Subcommittee: Twentieth Annual Report, July 1932 (Birmingham: Birmingham Education Committee, 1932), 19.Google Scholar

36 Works Progress Administration, Historical Records Survey, Population Archives, Municipal Archives, New York City; New York City Board of Education, Thirty-Seventh Annual Report of the City Superintendent of Schools for the School Year 1934–35 (New York: Board of Education, 1936), 85. For more on the efforts to eliminate youth labor through increases in personnel to track down truants and greater coordination of policies regarding work certificates for adolescents, see Cohen, Miriam From Workshop to Office: Two Generations of Italian Women in New York, 1900–1950 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), Chapter 5; Felt, Jeremy Hostages of Fortune: Child Labor Reform in New York State (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1965), 126, 127; Trattner, Walter I. Crusade for the Children: A History of the National Child Labor Committee and Child Labor Reform in America (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970), Chapter VII.Google Scholar

37 Wilkinson, Edith R.Development of Public Secondary Education in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania“ (M.A. thesis, University of Pittsburgh, 1934), 62. Mirel, The Rise and Fall of the Urban School System, Chapter 3, Weir, Katnelson and Schooling for All, Chapter 4; Wrigley, Julia Class, Politics and Public Schools (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1982), Chapter 6.Google Scholar

38 Tyack, et al., Public Schools in Hard Times, 104. My discussion of the relationship between the school establishment and the New Deal is heavily indebted to this study. See especially Chapter 2.Google Scholar

39 See Weir, Katznelson and Schooling for All, Chapter 3; Wrigley, Class, Politics and Public Schools, Chapter 6.Google Scholar

40 Mirel, The Rise and Fall of an Urban School System, 110.Google Scholar

41 Klein, Philip A Social Study of Pittsburgh (New York: published for the Social Study of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County by Columbia University Press, 1938), 332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42 Weir, Katznelson and Schooling for All, 131.Google Scholar

43 Tyack, et al., Public Schooling in Hard Times, 81 82.Google Scholar

44 White House Conference on Children in a Democracy, Preliminary Statements Submitted to the White House Conference on Children in a Democracy (January 18–20, 1940), 105.Google Scholar

45 Tyack, et al., Public Schools in Hard Times, 104105.Google Scholar

46 Federal Security Agency, War Manpower Commission, Final Report of the National Youth Administration, 1936–1943 (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1944), 51. See also Fass, Paula Outside In: Minorities and the Transformation of American Education (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), Chapter 4.Google Scholar

47 Fass, Without Design,58 59.Google Scholar

48 Mirel, Angus and The Failed Promise of the American High School, Chapter 3. See also, Reiman, Richard A. The New Deal and American Youth: Ideas and Ideals in a Depression Decade (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992); Tyack, et al, Public Schools in Hard Times, Chapter 3.Google Scholar

49 Federal Security Agency, Final Report of the NYA, 50, 246.Google Scholar

50 Simon, Brian The Politics of Educational Reform, 1920–1940 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1974), 288.Google Scholar

51 Ibid., 221. While the United States was successful in routing out child labor in American factories, agricultural interests, as in England, remained powerful enough to severely limit the reach of child labor laws for commercial (as well as family) farming. See Trattner, Crusade for the Children, Chapter VIII.Google Scholar

52 Ibid., 292.Google Scholar

53 Burgevin, Jules DavidPolitics and Education: Case Study of a Pressure Group, The National Association of Labour Teachers, 1927–1951“ (Ph. D. diss., Syracuse University, 1969).Google Scholar

54 Federal Security Agency, Final Report of the NYA, 46.Google Scholar

55 U.S. Children's Bureau, White House Conference on Children in a Democracy, Papers and Discussion at the Initial Session, April 26, 1939 (Washington, D.C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1939), 33.Google Scholar

56 Katznelson, Weir and Schooling for All, 137; Mirel, The Rise and Fall of an Urban School System, 110,111.Google Scholar

57 “Democrats Challenge School Policies,” The Union Press, Official Organ of Lodge 1211, Steel Workers Organizing Committee, CIO, October 6, 1937,1 (AIS, University of Pittsburgh).Google Scholar

58 “Charges Republicans Steal Democratic Platform,” The Union Press, October 13, 1937, 1.Google Scholar

59 American Youth Commission, Youth and the Future, The General Report of the American Youth Commission (American Council on Education: Washington D.C., 1942), 115.Google Scholar

60 See Mirel, Angus and for their excellent discussion of the educational establishment as well as the ultimate triumph of the establishment. The Failed Promise, Chapter 3.Google Scholar

61 U. S. Children's Bureau, White House Conference on Children in a Democracy, General Report Adopted by the Conference, January 20, 1940, Bureau Publication No. 266 (Washington, D.C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1941) 35; United States Advisory Committee on Education, Report, February 1938 (1938; repr., New York: Arno Press, 1974), 194–206.Google Scholar

62 Pear, RobertU.S. Pensions Found to Lift Many of Poor,New York Times, December 28, 1988,1.Google Scholar

63 U. S. Children's Bureau, White House Conference on Children in a Democracy, Papers and Discussion at the Initial Session, April 26, 1939, 100.Google Scholar

64 “Without Design,” 62. See also, 42.Google Scholar

65 Tyack, David The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 275. Census quoted on 269.Google Scholar

66 Freeman, Joshua has argued that despite the general conservatism in post war America that limited the growth of entitlement programs, New York City made substantial progress in extending benefits to its inhabitants, because of a left/liberal coalition that remained politically powerful. See Freeman, Joshua B. Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II (New York: The New Press, 2000).Google Scholar

67 As Brian Simon notes, throughout the 1940s and into the 1950s, “the development of secondary education for all was restricted and distorted by the dead hand of a doctrine … that secondary education is not for all.” The Politics of Educational Reform, 331. See also Morgan, Kenneth O. Labour in Power: 1945–1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 175,176. Lowe, Roy Education in the Post War Years: A Social History (Routledge: New York, 1988), 7; Maclure, Stuart One Hundred Years of London Education, 1870–1970 (London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1970), 143; Scovronick, Hochschild and The American Dream and the Public Schools, 19.Google Scholar

68 Cohen, A Consumer's Republic, 169 170. For an important analysis of how the GI Bill reinforced discrimination against gay Americans, see Canady, Margot “Building a Straight State: Sexuality and Social Citizenship under the 1944 Bill, G. I.Journal of American History 90:3 (December 2003): 935–957.Google Scholar

69 Cohen, A Consumer's Republic, 157. See also Mettler, SuzanneBringing the State Back In to Civic Engagement: Policy Feedback Effects of the GI Bill for World War II Veterans,American Political Science Review 96:2 (June 2002): 361.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70 “National Defense Education Act” Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), http://www.bardeby.com/85/na/natdefe.html; “Summary Major Provisions of the National Defense Education Act,” http://www.ishi.lib.berkeley.edu/oshe/ndea/ndea.html.Google Scholar

71 For a discussion of the civil rights movement that emphasizes the struggle over the right to consume (one arena for this struggle would be public accommodations), rather than the right to education, see Cohen, A Consumer's Republic, Chapter 4. On the importance of access to schooling and citizenship in the civil rights struggles, see Weir, Katznelson and Schooling for All, Chapter 7.Google Scholar

72 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, et. al. No. 1 Supreme Court of the United States, 347 U. S. 483 (1954), 10, http://library.vassar.edu/reserves/reserve-readings/hist160/brown%20v.board.Google Scholar

73 In 1965, the Congress enacted both Medicare, health insurance for old age pensioners, and Medicaid, health insurance for welfare recipients, as amendments to the 1935 Social Security Act.Google Scholar

74 Dillon, SamSchool is Haven When Children Have No Home,New York Times, November 27, 2003, 1. While the politics of schooling in the history of America's public health care would be the subject of another study, education historians have long known that for one hundred years, schools have served as an arena for providing medical services to poor children, just as they have been used to feed poor children for the last fifty years.Google Scholar

75 Across the country, the school adequacy movement has successfully won state court judgments requiring governors and legislators to fulfill their constitutional obligations to adequately educate their students by changing the structure of school funding. The resulting changes in school funding formulae are disappointing, at best. See Winter, GregFifty Years After Brown, the Issue Is Often Money,New York Times, May 17, 2004,1; Cashin, Sheryll The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class are Undermining the American Dream (New York: Public Affairs, 2004).Google Scholar

76 Schooled to Work: Vocationalism and the American Curriculum, 1876–1946 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999), 220.Google Scholar

77 Kliebard, Schooled to Work, 219 Dewey, John quoted: “The Schools and Social Preparedness,” The New Republic, 6 May 6, 1916, 15.Google Scholar

78 On the role of the market in many areas of America's welfare state, see Katz, Michael B. The Price of Citizenship: Redefining the American Welfare State (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001); Klein, For All These Rights. Google Scholar

79 Rodgers, Daniel and Tyack, David, “Work, Youth and Schooling: Mapping Critical Research Areas,” in Work, Youth and Schooling: Historical Perspectives on Vocationalism in American Education, Kantor, Harvey and Tyack, David, eds. (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1982), 293.Google Scholar

80 Lazerson, Grubb and Broken Promises; Scovronick, Hochschild and The American Dream and the Public Schools, 7. See also Henig, Jeffrey R. Rethinking School Choice: The Limits of the Market Metaphor (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).Google Scholar