Education and the Teaching of History

Abstract

Despite chairman Ralph Tyler's hope that the University of Chicago's Department of Education would act as a clearinghouse for campus research and thought on education, the School Review during the 1940s only infrequently published submissions from colleagues in cognate Chicago departments. On the other hand, reflecting a greater orientation to practitioner concerns, secondary school teachers were represented in almost every issue. Although article authorship by a Chicago sociologist such as Reinhard Bendix is thus rather atypical, the piece itself reflects the major curricular controversies of the day, many of which emanated from the Midway. In offering an answer to a perennial question, Why study history? Bendix first surveys the range of answers offered by contemporaries and then offers his own synthesis. A perennial question, he argues, does not necessarily possess a perennial answer. Bendix embraces the relativism that strongly influenced many contemporary social scientists. Our teaching of history must seek to promote values that will help to guide the citizens of tomorrow, he writes. It must also face the perspective of our time, which holds that our study of history cannot yield eternal verities and that the tentative truth of its insights is inevitably tested in the light of their relevance for action in society (in the broadest sense). Under the editorships of Nelson Henry and Maurice Hartung during the 1940s and 1950s, the School Review remained sympathetic to progressive reform and retained its emphasis on secondary schooling. Its physical appearance changed more than its content. Financial difficulties dictated a shift to a double column format, which allowed a given amount of material to be printed on fewer pages. A monthly since its inception, School Review also eliminated one issue per volume as an additional cost saving measure.