Science Education and Citizenship

Fairs, Clubs, and Talent Searches for American Youth, 1918–1958

S. Terzian

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781137031877
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Modern History
• Index: History

Science fairs, clubs, and talent searches are familiar fixtures in American education, yet little is known about why they began and grew in popularity. In Science Education and Citizenship, Sevan G. Terzian traces the civic purposes of these extracurricular programs for youth over four decades in the early to mid-twentieth century. He argues that Americans' mobilization for World War Two reoriented these educational activities from scientific literacy to national defense a shift that persisted in the ensuing atomic age and has left a lasting legacy in American science education.

CHAPTER 1

---

Origins of Science Clubs and Fairs

In the midst of American military involvement in World War I, a young participant at a conference on science education at Teachers College in New York City opened his address with a bold declaration: “The war is the most vital factor in the world today. America is the most vital factor in the war. Education is the most vital permanent factor in America. Science, considered in the large, can and must become the most vital factor in Education.” The speaker then pointed to science education as the most promising means for societal progress: “We, to whom has been entrusted this dominant note of modern life, are now confronted with the golden opportunity for change which comes with every cataclysm in life.”¹ This was the conviction of Morris Meister, a doctoral student at Columbia University and science teacher in the New York City public schools. His teaching and research over the ensuing decade pioneered efforts to engage students in hands-on experiments in the science classroom, and increasingly, in after-school science clubs. Believing that schools must “utilize the social nature of the boy and make each and every subject a part of the real life of the school,” Meister developed and promoted an elaborate rationale and plan for science clubs. Science had rapidly yielded scores of technological innovations that shaped modern living. As a result, science clubs would empower future generations by educating “a citizenship of men and women really appreciative and intelligent in judging the affairs of life.”² His application of John Dewey’s educational philosophy to science activities for youth would influence thousands of teachers in New York City and across the United States in the 1920s and early 1930s.³

Meister taught science at the new and innovative Speyer Junior High School from 1916 to 1918 and then at Horace Mann Elementary School until 1921, when he earned his doctoral degree. In both his studies and teaching, Meister experimented with new pedagogies to make science more meaningful and influential in the lives of youth.⁴ Like many educators of his generation, Meister believed that public schools should extend their reach to combat the seemingly pernicious effects of increased leisure time: “What our pupils do during every hour of the twenty-four in the day—and of every day in the year— is . . . a legitimate consideration for the school and teacher.”⁵ His doctoral dissertation, “The Educational Value of Certain After-School Materials and Activities in Science,” analyzed the rising popularity of toys and the companies that produced and marketed them to American youth. Concerned by “the taint of commercialism [that] endangers the whole future of the boy science movement in this country . . . [and] . . . puts the child at the mercy of the sale manager of the company,” Meister endeavored to understand why youth activities affiliated with toy manufacturers were popular. Subscriptions to company magazines or booklets, he believed, fostered a sort of group ethos or “spirit” that presented an “outlet for the ‘gang’ instinct or tendency among boys of a certain age.”⁶

Indeed, widespread concerns about American youth were intensifying in the decade following World War I. The advent of a modern society, particularly in urban settings, had introduced movie theaters, telephones, and automobiles. Many adults worried that increased leisure time, coupled with the allure of commercial entertainment, prompted the rise of peer groups and dating, which, in turn, weakened moral traditions and diminished parental influence. Seeking immediate and material gratification in an era scarred by the horrors of the world war, the behavior and attitudes of younger generations led some critics to lament that American society had become conducive to juvenile delinquency. Some speculated that child rearing was no longer instinctive, and they implicated parents for raising thieving boys and sexually promiscuous girls. In response, many professional educators encouraged longer school days and terms for youth under their supervision. The celebrated Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education report of 1918 reflected this conviction in establishing “worthy use of leisure,” “worthy home-membership,” and “citizenship” among its seven central purposes.⁷

In trying to widen the influence of schools in the lives of American youth, Meister sought to understand the appeal of commercial organizations to younger generations. Specifically, he felt that toy companies’ competitions for scholarships proved popular with boys who wanted to measure their worth against one another. “Boy Universities,” like the International Society of Meccano Engineers, the Gilbert Institute of Engineering, or the Boys’ Chemcraft Chemist Club, fostered feelings of belonging. Letter bureaus of toy company magazines similarly held enormous appeal. In their ability to capture the developmental interests of early adolescent boys, Meister considered these commercial organizations to be a sort of model for creating after-school science clubs: “To bring the boys of the whole country together in this common pursuit, with this common interest and in cooperative effort is an ideal which can take the shape of a real boy movement in the field of science.”⁸ However, because the effects of affiliating with these for-profit institutions were unclear, and as the lack of personal contact from mail correspondence was limiting, activities under teacher supervision posed a better alternative. Rather than allow toy companies to influence youth for their own gains with their “advertising propaganda, so genuine and keen an interest should legitimately fall to the teacher for development.”⁹ Like many social reformers of his generation, Meister aimed to bolster and extend the authority of public schools.

Junior high schools appeared especially suited to the task. As nascent additions to the public school system, particularly in urban districts, they were open to innovations such as ability grouping, interdisciplinary curricula, and new pedagogies such as the project method. From a developmental standpoint, according to Meister, junior high schools could accommodate the “gang tendencies” of early adolescent boys, as they also tended to enjoy tinkering with machines. Specifically, after-school science clubs, featuring projects and first-hand experiments, could accommodate students’ inclinations for shop and laboratory work.¹⁰

More generally, Meister envisioned an expansive program of general science for all elementary and junior high school students. Regardless of whether a student aspired to become a scientist, science education should “enable our pupils to appreciate the methods of science and to use this method and the thinking procedure of science in their every-day lives.”¹¹ Like many educators of his generation, Meister touted the civic and social benefits of understanding how “scientific laws and principles” applied to business and governmental affairs. Scientific knowledge also held “avocational value,” or improved aesthetic awareness of one’s natural environment. Training future professional scientists assumed secondary importance.¹² Meister’s priorities reflected some of the emerging justifications for science education in the early twentieth century. For example, in 1920 the Commission for the Reorganization of Secondary Education’s science committee emphasized the importance of teaching students the value of good health, responsible citizenship, and productive uses of leisure time. The rise of general science courses in the interwar decades, especially in the eighth and ninth grades, would attempt to ensure that a wider segment of youth would gain at least some exposure to the field and its societal applications.¹³

In secondary education, Meister believed that the project method could capture and sustain students’ curiosity about science while furthering the school’s social functions. Historians have demonstrated that the project method popularized by William Heard Kilpatrick did not always remain faithful to the philosophical tenets of John Dewey’s educational progressivism. According to Kilpatrick’s conception, the project method catered to students’ particular interests by allowing them the opportunity to study the academic subjects of their choosing. It tended to emphasize the practical applications of student activity to the point where a teacher’s primary responsibility was reduced to directing that work to purposeful ends. A teacher’s intellectual mastery of subject matter diminished in importance. Dewey, by contrast, cast the teacher as a powerful moral and academic guide. Furthermore, there was a larger civic end to active learning, interdisciplinary activities, and individually meaningful lessons: cultivating both rational thought and empathy for healthy citizenship and societal progress. Despite his zeal to promote Dewey’s philosophy, Kilpatrick’s brand of educational progressivism tended to lose sight of that overarching goal.¹⁴

In the realm of science education, Dewey found a more faithful advocate in Meister, whose conception of the project method reconciled both pedagogy and civic purpose.¹⁵ Meister had implemented the project method in the science classes he taught at the Speyer School, because it accommodated students’ interests. But he also stressed its social and ethical dimensions. Unlike many science educators who, as historian John L. Rudolph has shown, unduly simplified Dewey’s stages of thought to a “formulaic” and “numbingly algorithmic” arrangement called “the scientific method,”¹⁶ Meister encouraged students to tinker with any number of everyday machines and chemicals. He echoed Dewey’s mantra in declaring that the project method was “closely allied with the spirit of democracy in education.” Meister promoted scientific understanding among all students to cultivate new generations of citizens capable of evaluating and resolving societal problems. Although he would later found one of the most selective and competitive magnet schools for science, Meister’s quest to promote widespread scientific literacy remained prominent throughout his career.¹⁷ “The world won’t solve its problems,” he later reflected, “until the masses understand the world they live in.” This meant that the vast majority must comprehend scientific principles and their societal consequences: “Until ninety percent of the people know the workings of the human body, we will not have a healthy people. Until ninety percent of the people know the composition of the crust of the earth, we will not be able to make full use of the materials in it.” “The world can be made a better place,” Meister concluded, “through scientific education.”¹⁸

Teachers had the responsibility of establishing parameters and directing students’ projects. In this, Meister echoed Dewey’s recognition of an apparent paradox in democratic life: “The highest kind of freedom of the individual is built upon a system of controls and restrictions—so in a project there must be a definite place for guidance and control.”¹⁹ He articulated Dewey’s criteria for evaluating the worth and suitability of student projects. Science teachers therefore had the responsibility of determining whether a student’s interest in a proposed project was genuine, purposeful, and feasible: “It is a mistake to think that in a project all that the teacher does is to get out of the way.”²⁰ Frequent consultations would allow teachers to propel, navigate, and monitor students’ science projects. Teachers also needed to furnish classroom resources including an extensive library of science books, magazines, newspapers, and pamphlets; a file of productive science projects, experiments, and related questions; and a school shop for laboratory experiments. To connect this individualized activity to larger social ends, Meister established detailed criteria for each student to prepare an interactive lecture or report to the class. The teacher, having closely guided the project to fruition, then allowed the student to lead this “socialized recitation.”²¹ By balancing teacher authority with student initiative, Meister believed, these sorts of “play activities” or laboratory projects leading to class demonstrations facilitated students’ direct contact with natural phenomena. Such purposeful experiences empowered students by reducing their dependence on mechanical or electrical experts and, more generally, made “the average individual a less gullible, more inquiring, and better-reasoning citizen.”²²

Science clubs complemented Meister’s implementation of the project method in the curriculum. He viewed after-school organizations as a ripe arena for teachers to influence students’ leisure activities. With the proper balance of control and freedom, teachers could supervise science clubs “without losing that free, vital, purposeful urge to thought and to action that is so common to things our pupils do outside the classroom and often so sadly lacking in the things they do for us during school hours.”²³ Meister organized a science club at the Speyer School to stimulate greater student enthusiasm: “It seemed entirely contrary to the supposed interests of boys that there should be a flourishing Latin Club in the school, among other things, and no interest in science.”²⁴ Taking inspiration from his work in New York City’s settlement houses and recreation centers, moreover, Meister viewed school clubs as a “safety valve” for impressionable boys in the “gang age.” It was especially important to him that science clubs contribute to the overall welfare and spirit of the school community.²⁵

At the Speyer School, for instance, Meister attempted to align the science club with the school’s larger mission by outlining a “creed” of character traits and skills that each member should possess. Only 20 students qualified as “grade A” science club members for their exemplary grades in science classes and their sole extracurricular attention to science and school service. These handy students, Meister recalled, “became masters of the school environment.” They applied their scientific knowledge to repairing plumbing and electrical problems in the school, operated audiovisual equipment, and even implemented new technological features such as class bells and an intercom system. “Grade B” science club members enjoye...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1  Origins of Science Clubs and Fairs
• 2  Building a Network
• 3  Showcasing Young Scientists at the New York World’s Fair
• 4  Enlisting Science Education for National Strength
• 5  Sustaining Mobilization in an Atomic Age
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index