Troublemaker
A Personal History of School Reform since Sputnik
Chapter One
Schoolkid in the Fifties
Through pastel lenses, many recall the Eisenhower era as the good old days
of American education, when things were less complicated, frenetic,
fractious, and fraught. Others, donning different spectacles, deplore the
injustices and complacency of that era.
Both are partly correct.
U.S. schools bulged in the 1950s as the postwar baby boom hit. K-12
enrollments soared from 25 to 36 million. Just building enough classrooms
and hiring teachers to staff them was ample challenge.
America was also beginning to expect all its children to attend high
school-and to scorn as "dropouts" those who failed to complete it. During
the fifties, the ratio of high-school graduates to seventeen-year-olds in
the U.S. population rose from .59 to .69, close to where it is today.
College, too, was more widely sought and, thanks to the GI Bill and
similar financial aid schemes, more widely affordable. Postsecondary
enrollments ballooned from 2.3 million to more than 4 mi ... read full excerpt from Troublemaker: A Personal History of School Reform since Sputnik ebook
