1 Cremin, Lawrence A. “The Revolution in American Secondary Education, 1893-1918,“ Teachers College Record 56, no. 6 (March 1955), 307. Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, Bulletin 1918, no. 35. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education. (Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office).Google Scholar

2 See, for example, Monroe, W. S. and Herriott, M. E. Reconstruction of the Secondary School Curriculum: Its Meaning and Trends Bulletin No. 41, Bureau of Educational Research, College of Education, University of Illinois (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1928); Committee on the Orientation of Secondary Education, Functions of Secondary Education, published in Bulletin of the Department of Secondary-School Principals of the National Education Association, 64-70 (1937): 1-263; Educational Policies Commission, Education for ALL American Youth (Washington, DC: National Education Association, 1944, 1952); Hollis L. Caswell, ed. The American High School: Its Responsibility and Opportunity 8th Yearbook of the John Dewey Society (NY: Harper & Row, 1946).Google Scholar

3 Notably, American Association of School Administrators, The High School in a Changing World 36th Yearbook of the AASA (Washington, DC: National Education Association, 1958); ASCD Commission on the Education of Adolescents, The High School We Need (Washington, DC: ASCD, 1959); James Bryant Conant, The American High School Today (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959); idem., The Comprehensive High School (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967).Google Scholar

4 Popular critics who implicated the Cardinal Principles report in the undoing of American secondary education included: Arthur Bestor, Educational Wastelands: The Retreat from Learning in our Public Schools (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1953); John F. Latimer, What's Happened to Our High Schools? (Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1958); Hyman G. Rickover, Education and Freedom (New York: Dutton, 1959); Richard Hofstadter, Antiintellectualism in American Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963).Google Scholar

5 Krug, Edward A. The Shaping of the American High School, 1880-1920 [1964] (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969).Google Scholar

6 Kandel, Isaac L. History of Secondary Education (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930), 489; Noble, Stuart G. A History of American Education (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1954), 412. Also see Knight, Edgar W. Education in the United States 2nd. ed. (Boston: Ginn, 1941) and idem., Fifty Years of American Education: A Historical Review and Critical Appraisal (New York: The Ronald Press, 1952).Google Scholar

7 Cubberly, Ellwood P. Public Education in the United States (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1919), 419.Google Scholar

8 Noble, A History of American Education, 405.Google Scholar

9 Freeman Butts, R. and Cremin, Lawrence A. A History of Education in American Culture (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1953), 593.Google Scholar

10 Krug, The Shaping of the American High School, 1880-1920, 379.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., 380.Google Scholar

12 On this idea, also see Clarence D. Kingsley, “The Study of Nations: Its Possibilities as a Social Study in High Schools,” School and Society 3, no. 54 (January 8, 1916): 37-41.Google Scholar

13 Krug, The Shaping of the American High School, 1880-1920, 381. Krug also discerned similarities between wording in Kingsley's reports as Massachusetts State High School Inspector and wording in the Cardinal Principles report, but offered no documentation in support of this claim. See p. 452.Google Scholar

14 Krug, The Shaping of the American High School, 1880-1920, 387.Google Scholar

15 Representative works include: David B. Tyack, ed. Turning Points in American Educational History (Waltham, MA: Blaisdell, 1967); Herbert M. Kliebard, “The Curriculum Field in Retrospect,” in Technology and the Curriculum ed. P. Witt, (New York: Teachers College Press, 1968), 69-84; T. James and David Tyack, “Learning from Past Efforts to Reform the High School,” Phi Delta Kappan 64 (1983): 400-406; Herbert M. Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893-1958 (Boston: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1986); Joel Spring, The American School, 1642-1990 (New York: Longman, 1990); Herbert M. Kliebard, “The Cardinal Principles Report as Archeological Deposit,” Curriculum Studies 3, no. 2 (1995): 197-208; David Tyack and Larry Cuban, Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995); Jurgen Herbst, The Once and Future School (New York: Routledge, 1996); Herbert M. Kliebard, Schooled to Work: Vocationalism and the American Curriculum, 1816-1946 (New-York: Teachers College Press, 1999); Herbert M. Kliebard, “Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education,” in Historical Dictionary of American Education ed. Richard J. Altenbaugh (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 67-68; Diane Ravitch, Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000). Works that have taken exception to this interpretation include Daniel Tanner and Laurel Tanner, History of the School Curriculum (New York: Macmillan, 1990) and William G. Wraga, Democracy's High School: The Comprehensive High School and Educational Reform in the United States (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1994).Google Scholar

16 Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893-1958, 115; Spring, The American School, 1642-1990, 205; Diane Ravitch, The Schools We Deserve (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 126; Ravitch, Left Back, 125; Tyack and Cuban, Tinkering Toward Utopia, 51.Google Scholar

17 Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, 8.Google Scholar

18 Johnston, Charles Hughes ed. High School Education (New York: Charles Scribners, 1912), 31. Emphasis in original. Also see 32-33.Google Scholar

19 Terry, H. L. “Four Instruments of Confusion in Teaching Physics,“ School Review 18 (January/December 1910): 245.Google Scholar

20 Terry, H. L. “Two Lines of High-School Reading,“ School Review 20 (1912): 476.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Terry, H. L. “Tests and Examinations,“ School and Society 4, no. 96 (October 28, 1916): 673 (original in italics), 675.Google Scholar

22 Ibid., 676. On the application of subject matter, also see CRSE member Cheesman A. Herrick, “What High-School Studies are of Most Worth?” School and Society 4 (August 26, 1916): 308.Google Scholar

23 Neumann, Henry “The True Mission of the School,“ The Standard 1, no. 1 (May 1914): 14. Neumann had earlier proposed a course in moral education for secondary schools, a version of which he evidently taught at the Ethical Culture School in Manhattan. See Frank Chapman Sharp and Henry Neumann, “A Course in Moral Education for the High School,” School Review 20 (1912): 228-245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Neumann, Henry “The Aims of American Education in the Light of Proposed Innovations,“ The Standard 3, no. 8 (May 1917): 183.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., 186.Google Scholar

26 Neumann, “The True Mission of the School,“ 14–15.Google Scholar

27 Neumann, “The Aims of American Education,“ 186–87. In this article, Neumann also attacked proposals for compulsory military service and harshly criticized sexist and racist views that emerged during the conscription debate. See 188-189.Google Scholar

28 See Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, 15. Also on this point see CRSE member Edward O. Sisson, “The High School's Cure of Souls,” Educational Review (April 1980): 360; and idem., “An Educational Emergency,” Atlantic Monthly 10, no. 6 (1910): 60, 61.Google Scholar

29 Sharp and Neumann, “A Course in Moral Education,” 235; Herrick, “What High-School Studies are of Most Worth?” 309; and Johnston, High School Education, ix-x, emphasis in original.Google Scholar

30 Johnston, Charles Hughes ed. The Modern High School (New York: Charles Scribners, 1914), 11.Google Scholar

31 See Beineke, John A. And There Were Giants in the Land: The Life of William Heard Kilpatrick (New York: Peter Lang, 1998), 125.Google Scholar

32 Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, 23.Google Scholar

33 Sisson, Edward O. “The Genius of the American High School,“ Educational Review 37 (January 1909): 33.Google Scholar

34 Neumann, “The True Mission of the School,“ 14.Google Scholar

35 Stuart, Milo H. “The Cosmopolitan High School in its Relation to College Entrance,“ NEA Proceedings and Addresses (Ann Arbor: NEA, 1913): 471.Google Scholar

36 Stuart, “The Cosmopolitan High School,“ 472. See Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, 20.Google Scholar

37 Inglis, Alexander “The Socialization of the High School,“ Teachers College Record 16, no. 3 (May 1915): 205–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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40 Simmons, Noah Gayle “The Emerging Design for the Comprehensive High School, 1913-1922“ (Unpublished Ph.D. diss., Washington University, 1960), 339. Raymond Callahan served as the chair of Simmons’ dissertation committee. Perhaps significantly, Callahan omitted the CRSE and the Cardinal Principles report from his definitive study, Education and the Cult of Efficiency (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). Also see Daniel Tanner and Laurel Tanner, Curriculum Development: Theory into Practice (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Merrill, 1995), 412; considering available evidence, however, Tanner and Tanner underestimate Kingsley's contributions and may overestimate Inglis's. See note 56 below.Google Scholar

41 Inglis, Alexander James Principles of Secondary Education (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918), 703.Google Scholar

42 “Meetings of the Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education,” Educational Administration and Supervision 1, no. 5 (May 1915): 330-332.Google Scholar

43 Krug, The Shaping of the American High School, 1880-1920, 382–383.Google Scholar

44 “Preliminary Plan for Meeting of the Reviewing Committee,” September 30, 1915, Record Group 12, Reorganization of Secondary Education, National Archives and Records Administration. “Third Report of the Committee on the Articulation of High Schools and Colleges,” NEA Journal of Proceedings and Addresses (Ann Arbor: National Education Association, 1913), 490-491. Additionally, most of the section topics that Kingsley proposed in the “Preliminary Plan” did not appear in the final report.Google Scholar

45 In his narrative, Krug also misrepresented the chronology of these events. In fact, the “Preliminary Plan” was dated September 30, 1915 and the “Topics Suggested” paper was distributed attached to July 1915 correspondence.Google Scholar

46 Clarence Kingsley to P. P. Claxton, July 10, 1915, Record Group 12, Reorganization of Secondary Education, National Archives and Records Administration [hereafter NARA].Google Scholar

47 Krug, The Shaping of the American High School, 1880-1920, 383.Google Scholar

48 “Minutes of Motions, Chicago, Ills., November 23rd and 24th, 1915,” “Purpose and Outline of Reports and Summary on High School Subjects Recommended by Reviewing Committee,” and Edward O. Sisson, “The Nine Prescribed Units,” and attachments to Clarence Kingsley to P. P. Claxton, October 18, 1915, Record Group 12, Reorganization of Secondary Education, NARA.Google Scholar

49 Krug, The Shaping of the American High School, 1880-1920, 384; “Minutes of meeting of Reviewing Committee, Detroit, February 20, 21, 22, 1916,” Record Group 12, Reorganization of Secondary Education, NARA.Google Scholar

50 Krug, The Shaping of the American High School, 1880-1920, 384.Google Scholar

51 Clarence Kingsley to Members of the Reviewing Committee, June 3, 1916, Record Group 12, Reorganization of Secondary Education, NARA.Google Scholar

52 Krug, The Shaping of the American High School, 1880-1920, 385.Google Scholar

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55 Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, 21, 23, 24.Google Scholar

56 Kingsley to Claxton, January 8, 1917, Kingsley to Members of the Reviewing Committee, June 2, 1917 and attachment. Record Group 12, Reorganization of Secondary Education, NARA. Records of the CRSE between June 1916 and the publication of the Cardinal Principles report in 1918 unfortunately contain documents relating only to a schedule of its publication and plans to disseminate the report nationally. Surviving CRSE records provide no clue as to the deliberations about the substance and wording of the report during the eighteen months immediately preceding its publication. A search for personal papers of CRSE members yielded no substantive documents pertaining to the Commission's work during that period. Thus the extent of the impact of any CRSE member on the text of the report remains impossible to establish irrefragably.Google Scholar

57 Snedden, David “Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education,“ School and Society 9 (May 3, 1919): 519, 527.Google Scholar

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60 See, for example, Dewey, John Democracy and Education [1916] (New York: Free Press, 1966), 154, 158, 230, 122, 84, 21, 358; idem., The Educational Situation, [1902] in John Dewey: The Middle Works, vol. I (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1976), 257-313.Google Scholar

61 Krug, The Shaping of the American High School, 1880-1920, 405.Google Scholar

62 Krug, Edward A. The Shaping of the American High School, 1920-1941 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1972), 3.Google Scholar

63 Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, 9.Google Scholar

64 For Dewey's ideas about social efficiency that bear a striking resemblance to ideas and language contained in the Cardinal Principles report, see John Dewey, Democracy and Education, 85, 118-19. Dewey wrote, for example, “But if democracy has a moral and ideal meaning, it is that a social return be demanded from all and that opportunity for development of distinctive capacities be afforded all” (Democracy and Education, 122). Cf. Kliebard, Schooled to Work, 143, 144, 147, 252.Google Scholar

65 Wraga, William G. “The Cardinal Principles Report Revisited,“ Education and Culture 11, no. 2 (1994): 6–16; Wraga, Democracy's High School. Google Scholar

66 Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, 27.Google Scholar

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68 Oakes, Jeannie Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 3.Google Scholar

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70 Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, 18.Google Scholar

71 Ibid., 25.Google Scholar

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73 Report of the Committee on Secondary School Studies, Department of the Interior, US Bureau of Education (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1893), 17 and 48.Google Scholar

74 Wraga, Democracy's High School.Google Scholar

75 For graphic representation of a proposal for a dual system of secondary education with respect to both organization and governance, see Committee on Industrial Education, Industrial Education: Report of the Committee on Industrial Education (Twentieth Annual Convention of the National Association of Manufacturers, New York, NY, May 25, 1915), 4, 13.Google Scholar

76 The CRSE claimed, “The conception that higher education should be limited to the few is destined to disappear in the interests of democracy.” Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, 20.Google Scholar

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78 Ravitch, The Schools We Deserve, 147 146. On this matter Ravitch cited Krug. Also see Ravitch, Left Back, 124-125.Google Scholar

79 Angus, David L. and Mirel, Jeffrey E. The Failed Promise of the American High School, 1890-1995 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999), 15. Angus and Mirel also cited Krug. Interestingly, allegations of anti-intellectualism on the part of the CRSE and the comprehensive model are often accompanied by, as in Ravitch's and Angus and Mirel's cases, evocation of the recommendations of the Committee of Ten's report as, for example, a “vision of equal educational opportunity” (Angus and Mirel, Failed Promise, 15), despite the fact that the Committee of Ten stated: “Their [secondary schools of the United States] main function is to prepare for the duties of life that small proportion of all the children in the country—a proportion small in number, but very important to the welfare of the nation—who show themselves able to profit by an education prolonged to the eighteenth year, and whose parents are able to support them while they remain so long at school.” (Report of the Committee on Secondary School Studies, 51). Also see Theodore R. Sizer, Secondary Schools at the Turn of the Century [1964] (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976), 132; Krug, The Shaping of the American High School, 1880-1920, 64.Google Scholar

80 Hofstadter, Anti-intellectualism in American Life. For allegations that comprehensiveness made high schools “easier,” see Arthur G. Powell, E. Farrar, and David K. Cohen, The Shopping Mall High School (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985), 245, 256, 267, 276; and Robert E. Hampel, The Last Little Citadel (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), 105.Google Scholar

81 In the report the CRSE named specific subjects on pp. 12, 14, 15, 20, 22, and 23, and referred to the subject reports on p. 16.Google Scholar

82 Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, 27-28, also 19.Google Scholar

83 Ibid., 8, 11, 22.Google Scholar

84 Krug, The American High School, 1880-1920, 400. Counts found this to be the case in the short run; see George S. Counts, The Senior High School Curriculum, Supplementary Education Monographs, No. 29 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1926), 11.Google Scholar

85 Krug, Edward A. The Secondary School Curriculum (New York: Harper, 1960), 36. Krug, The Shaping of the American High School, 1880-1920, 398, also noted the early appearance of a common but inaccurate reference to the Commission's “seven cardinal principles.” In fact, in the Cardinal Principles (9) report the CRSE articulated 19 cardinal principles, one of which held that curriculum should focus on achieving seven “main objectives of education.” This error continues, even on the part of scholars, to this day, and has the effect of reducing the report simply to the seven objectives and of obscuring the myriad other proposals the CRSE proffered.Google Scholar

86 Raywid, Mary Ann ed., “What Will Replace the Comprehensive High School?” [Special issue] Educational Administration Quarterly, 33 (Supplement) (December 1997); William G. Wraga, “Repudiation, Reinvention, and Educational Reform: The Comprehensive High School in Historical Perspective,” Educational Administration Quarterly, 35, no. 2, (1999): 292-304; Mary Ann Raywid, “On the Viability of the Comprehensive High School: A Reply to Professor Wraga,” Educational Administration Quarterly, 35, no. 2, (1999): 305-310.Google Scholar

87 See note 2 above. This is not to suggest, of course, that every past practice is appropriate for the present. For example, while the narrow range of courses the CRSE identified as “constants” in pupils’ programs would be inappropriate today, the concept of “curriculum constants,” especially considered as a complement to “curriculum variables,” remains useful.Google Scholar

88 Kliebard, Herbert M. “Constructing a History of the American Curriculum,“ in Handbook of Research on Curriculum ed. Jackson, Philip W. (New York: Macmillan, 1992), 161.Google Scholar

89 Moreover, because the CRSE expressly addressed neither general matters of educational governance nor specific matters of centralization of control, to characterize the report as a manifestation of the thinking of “administrative progressives” appears problematic. Indeed, Tyack did not discuss the CRSE in his definitive work. See David B. Tyack, The One Best System (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974).Google Scholar

90 Cremin, Lawrence A. The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876-1957 (New York: Knopf, 1962), viii.Google Scholar

91 Ibid., viii.Google Scholar

92 Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, 7, 8, 9.Google Scholar

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94 Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, 8.Google Scholar

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