Education and the Cold War: The Battle for the American School

by Andrew Hartman

Shortly after the Russians launched Sputnik in 1957, Hannah Arendt quipped that "only in America could a crisis in education actually become a factor in politics." The Cold War battle for the American school - dramatized but not initiated by Sputnik - proved Arendt correct. The schools served as a battleground in the ideological conflicts of the 1950s. Beginning with the genealogy of progressive education, and ending with the formation of New Left and New Right thought, Education and the Cold War offers a fresh perspective on the postwar transformation in U.S. political culture by way of an examination of the educational history of that era.

Genres: American History

262 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 2008

Reviews

[Goran Ovčariček · Rating 4 out of 5]

This, more-or-less, objective book offers a valuable insight into the American educational intellectual scene in the Fifties, the formation of the Human rights ideology in the wider context of the Cold War, and it explores the ways in which specific Cold War atmosphere shaped the lives of Americans down to the smallest details, portrayed mainly through the progressive v. conservative dichotomy present in education.