Scientists in the Classroom: The Cold War Reconstruction of American Science Education. By John L. Rudolph. (New York: Palgrave, 2002. x, 262 pp. Cloth, $65.00, isbn 0-312-29501-4. Paper, $22.95, isbn 0-312-29571-5.)

Abstract

During the early years of the Cold War, American public school education came under withering criticism. Leading educators, sensitive to declining intellectual standards and concerned that education focused more on life adjustment than life enhancement, emphasized that conceptual frameworks were years out of date and that too few students were being educated in science, mathematics, English, and history. Even in 1949 the National Education Association argued that Communism and furious preparations for war were the major realities around which educational policy must revolve, while the “fall” of China and the successful Soviet nuclear program intensified fears that the United States was actually losing the Cold War. Thus by the early 1950s defense needs had coalesced with the need to restructure American education, a process that took more than a decade to consolidate. It is in this historical context that John L. Rudolph examines the role of elite academic scientists in the reconstruction of science education. We learn much about the workings of the scientific community and the collaboration of the federal government and the National Science Foundation in developing new curricula in physics and biology. Although Rudolph utilizes other excellent studies such as Barbara Barksdale Clowse's Brainpower for the Cold War (1981), Scott L. Montgomery's Minds for the Making (1994), and Peter B. Dow's Schoolhouse Politics (1991), his work now stands as the finest analysis we have of the place of pre-college science education in Cold War America.