No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 July 2017
Progressive Era advocates of spelling reform argued that adopting “simplified” word forms would increase the efficiency of American schools. National education leaders and administrators sustained the movement as they discussed simplified spelling extensively in meetings of the National Education Association and state teachers’ associations as well as in education journals. While emphasizing saving money and time, their arguments for spelling reform also infused social justice into social efficiency, and efficiency into child-centered pedagogy. Although leaders saw schoolteachers as the torchbearers for simplified spelling, teachers’ subtle resistance undermined the movement. Teachers and the few administrators who opposed spelling reform occasionally voiced objections to efficiency itself, but their concerns about public scrutiny most influenced their opposition and thus the movement's ultimate demise. This examination of the public education sector's relationship to the simplified spelling movement illustrates the complexity of education leaders’ relationship with efficiency as well as their vulnerability to teacher resistance and public censure.
1 March, F. A., “The Relation of Educators to Spelling-Reform,” The Addresses and Journal of Proceedings of the National Educational Association (National Educational Association, 1880), 147 Google Scholar. Hereafter, NEA Proceedings refers to The Addresses and Journal of Proceedings of the National Educational Association (National Educational Association, 1876–1891)Google Scholar, Journal of Proceedings and Addresses of the National Educational Association (National Educational Association, 1897–1906)Google Scholar, or the Journal of Proceedings and Addresses of the National Education Association (National Education Association, 1907–1920)Google Scholar.
2 Powell, J. W. in March, F. A. et al. , “Simplified Spelling: A Symposium,” American Anthropologist 6, no. 2 (April 1893), 194 Google Scholar.
3 Edward Shallow, quoted in Vivian, John H., “Spelling an End to Orthographical Reforms: Newspaper Response to the 1906 Roosevelt Simplifications,” American Speech 54, no. 3 (Oct. 1979), 170–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 Collins, Jos V., “Language Reform and Education,” School and Society 8, no. 195 (Sept. 21, 1918), 333 Google Scholar.
5 March, “The Relation of Educators to Spelling-Reform,” 147; and Shallow, quoted in Vivian, “Spelling an End to Orthographical Reforms,” 171.
6 Tyack, David B., The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974)Google Scholar; and Callahan, Raymond, Education and the Cult of Efficiency (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962)Google Scholar.
7 Wesley, Edgar B., “The Simplified-Spelling Movement,” in NEA: The First Hundred Years: the Building of the Teaching Profession (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), 218–29Google Scholar.
8 Zimmerman, Jonathan, “Simplified Spelling and the Cult of Efficiency in the ‘Progressiv’ Era,” Journal of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era 9, no. 3 (July 2010), 365–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Aside from Zimmerman's article, the small amount of historical scholarship on the simplified spelling movement has appeared mainly in the fields of linguistics, speech, and journalism. See, for example, Baron, Dennis E., “The Spelling Reform Movement,” Grammar and Good Taste: Reforming the American Language (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982), 68–98 Google Scholar; Dornbusch, Clyde H., “American Spelling Simplified by Presidential Edict,” American Speech 36, no. 3 (Oct. 1961), 236–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ranow, George R., “Simplified Spelling in Government Publications,” American Speech 29, no. 1 (Feb. 1954), 36–44 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Vivian, “Spelling an End to Orthographical Reforms,” 163–74. Spelling reform and simplification are minor topics in Crystal, David, Spell It Out: The Singular Story of English Spelling (London: Profile Books, 2012)Google Scholar. See also Marks, Paula Mitchell, “The Three-Hundred Words,” American History Illustrated 20, no. 1 (March 1985), 30–35 Google Scholar. In addition, Wayne A. Wiegand's biography of Melvil Dewey covers Dewey's extensive involvement in the movement. Wiegand, Wayne A., Irrepressible Reformer: A Biography of Melvil Dewey (Chicago: American Library Association, 1996)Google Scholar. On the efficiency movement and opposition to it, see Alexander, Jennifer Karns, The Mantra of Efficiency: From Waterwheel to Social Control (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Rodgers, Daniel T., The Work Ethic in Industrial America, 1850–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Noble, David F., America by Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977)Google Scholar; Montgomery, David, The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865–1925 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lears, T. J. Jackson, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994)Google Scholar; and Haber, Samuel, Efficiency and Uplift: Scientific Management in the Progressive Era, 1890–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964)Google Scholar.
9 Tyack, The One Best System. In short, administrative progressivism is the conservative side of progressivism in education, focusing on efficiency, bureaucracy, and educating children for their projected future roles in society, or social control; and pedagogical progressivism is the liberal side of progressive reform in education, focusing on the needs of the child and education for a harmonious democracy and social justice. For challenges to the notion of an administrative-pedagogical dichotomy, see Gamson, David A., “District Progressivism: Rethinking Reform in Urban School Systems, 1900–1928,” Paedagogica Historica 39, no. 4 (Aug. 2003), 417–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mirel, Jeffrey E., “Progressive School Reform in Comparative Perspective,” in Southern Cities, Southern Schools: Public Education in the Urban South, ed. Plank, David N. and Ginsberg, Rick (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990), 151–73Google Scholar; and Steffes, Tracy L., School, Society, and State: A New Education to Govern Modern America, 1890–1940 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In their account of the history of school leadership, Tyack and Hansot acknowledge the spelling reform movement only in a footnote when they explain in passing, “The NEA was then in the grip of a phonetic spelling craze.” Tyack, David and Hansot, Elisabeth, Managers of Virtue: Public School Leadership in America, 1820–1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1982), 97 Google Scholar.
10 Fallace, Thomas and Fantozzi, Victoria, “Was There Really a Social Efficiency Doctrine? The Uses and Abuses of an Ideal in Educational History,” Educational Researcher 42, no. 3 (April 2013), 142–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Franklin, Barry M., “Curriculum History and Its Revisionist Legacy,” in Rethinking the History of American Education, ed. Reese, William J. and Rury, John L. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 223–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Franklin, Barry M., “The Social Efficiency Movement Reconsidered: Curriculum Change in Minneapolis, 1917–1950,” Curriculum Inquiry 12, no. 1 (Spring 1982), 9–33 Google Scholar; Wraga, William G., “A Progressive Legacy Squandered: The Cardinal Principles Report Reconsidered,” History of Education Quarterly 41, no. 4 (Winter 2001), 494–519 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Null, J. Wesley, “Social Efficiency Splintered: Multiple Meanings Instead of Hegemony of One,” Journal of Curriculum and Supervision 19, no. 2 (Winter 2004), 99–124 Google Scholar; Knoll, Michael, “From Kidd to Dewey: The Origin and Meaning of ‘Social Efficiency,’” Journal of Curriculum Studies 41, no. 3 (June 2009), 361–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Fallace, Thomas D., “Tracing John Dewey's Influence on Progressive Education, 1903–1951: Toward a Received Dewey,” Teachers College Record 113, no. 3 (March 2011), 463–92Google Scholar.
11 Tyack, The One Best System, 59–65, 255–68; Urban, Wayne J., Why Teachers Organized (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1982), 154–72Google Scholar; Apple, Michael W., “Teaching and ‘Women's Work’: A Comparative Historical and Ideological Analysis,” Teachers College Record 86, no. 3 (Spring 1985), 455–73Google Scholar; Blount, Jackie M., Destined to Rule the Schools: Women and the Superintendency, 1873–1995 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 11–37 Google Scholar; and Hoffman, Nancy, Woman's “True” Profession: Voices from the History of Teaching (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2003), 228–46Google Scholar. For ways in which teachers balanced or worked around administrative demands, see Cuban, Larry, How Teachers Taught: Constancy and Change in American Classrooms, 1890–1990, 2nd ed. (New York: Teachers College Press, 1993)Google Scholar; and Rousmaniere, Kate, City Teachers: Teaching and School Reform in Historical Perspective (New York: Teachers College Press, 1997)Google Scholar.
12 Callahan, Education and the Cult of Efficiency; Berman, Barbara, “Business Efficiency, American Schooling, and the Public School Superintendency: A Reconsideration of the Callahan Thesis,” History of Education Quarterly 23, no. 3 (Autumn 1983), 297–321 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Mencken, H. L., The American Language: An Inquiry Into the Development of English in the United States, 4th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941), 399 Google Scholar; March, Francis A., The Spelling Reform (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1893), 29 Google Scholar; Wiegand, Irrepressible Reformer, 63; Wesley, “The Simplified-Spelling Movement,” 218–19; and Bryson, Bill, The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1990), 129–30Google Scholar. The movement to adopt the metric system in some ways paralleled the movement for simplified spelling in the Progressive Era. For a discussion of why machine-shop owners resisted the metric system despite its potential to increase efficiency, see Noble, America By Design, 77.
14 Harris also devised a system of book classification for the school libraries of St. Louis, which he shared with Melvil Dewey as Dewey devised his Dewey Decimal System. Leidecker, Kurt F., Yankee Teacher: The Life of William Torrey Harris (New York: The Philosophical Library, 1946), 294 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reese, William J., “The Philosopher King of St. Louis,” in Curriculum and Consequence: Herbert M. Kliebard and the Promise of Schooling, ed. Franklin, Barry M. (New York: Teachers College Press, 2000), 155–77Google Scholar; William Torrey Harris Papers, Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis; Superintendents’ Reports to the Board of St. Louis Public Schools/Annual Reports of the Board of Directors of St. Louis Public Schools, 1860–1881, Missouri Historical Society.
15 Tyack and Hansot, Managers of Virtue, 98; Wesley, NEA: The First Hundred Years, 3; NEA Proceedings, 1879, 249–83; NEA Proceedings 1880, 257–67; and NEA Proceedings 1881, 271–80. Urban argues that although the NEA did pay attention to classroom teachers, who were mainly women, it allowed them little voice in the organization and did not advocate for their professional autonomy until well into the twentieth century. Urban, Wayne J., Gender, Race, and the National Education Association: Professionalism and Its Limitations (New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2000), 1–41 Google Scholar.
16 Pickett, J. K., “The Spelling Reform,” Proceedings of the State Teachers’ Association of Iowa (Davenport, IA: Gazette Company, Steam Printers, 1877), 23–29 Google Scholar; Parish, L. W., “Our Mother Tongue,” Proceedings of the Iowa State Teachers’ Association … 1886 (Dubuque: Iowa Normal Monthly Publishing Company, 1887), 41–48 Google Scholar.
17 Kirk, Hyland C., A History of the New York State Teachers’ Association (New York: E. L. Kellogg, 1883), 103 Google Scholar; Salisbury, Albert, A Historical Sketch of the Wisconsin Teachers’ Association in its First Half Century, 1853–1903 (Madison, WI: Democrat Printing Company, State Printer, 1903), 61, 66, 78Google Scholar.
18 E. O. Vaile, “Spelling Reform” and “Discussion,” in Transactions of the Michigan State Teachers’ Association (1878), 10–25.
19 The Iowa Normal Monthly 1, no. 1 (Aug. 1877), 28 Google Scholar (hereafter cited as INM); INM no. 11–12 (June–July 1905); “official journal” statement in INM 10, no. 1 (Aug. 1886), 1 Google Scholar; “The Spelling Book–Shall We Discard It,” INM 8, no. 10–11 (June–July 1885), 451 Google Scholar; and “Spelling Reform,” INM 11, no. 6 (Jan. 1888), 238 Google Scholar.
20 March, F. A., The Spelling Reform (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1881)Google Scholar.
21 March, The Spelling Reform (1893).
22 “Notes,” The School Review 2, no. 2 (Feb. 1894), 114–16CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Johnson, Charles W. L., “Must Spelling Reform Be Phonetic?” Educational Review 26 (Dec. 1903), 516–25Google Scholar; Vaile, E. O., “The National Educational Association and the Spelling Question,” Educational Review 27 (May 1904), 510–20Google Scholar; Vaile, E. O., “Spelling Reform I” Educational Weekly 2, no. 31 (Aug. 16, 1877), 84–86 Google Scholar; Vaile, E. O., “Spelling Reform—II,” Educational Weekly 2, no. 36 (Sept. 20, 1877), 166–67Google Scholar; Vaile, E. O., “Spelling Reform—III,” Educational Weekly 2, no. 37 (Sept. 27, 1877), 182–83Google Scholar; “Spelling Reform Department,” Educational Weekly 2, no. 49 (Dec. 20, 1877), 348 Google Scholar; “Spelling Reform Department,” Educational Weekly 3, no. 52 (Jan. 10, 1878), 28 Google Scholar; “Spelling Reform Department,” Educational Weekly 3, no. 53 (Jan. 17, 1878), 44 Google Scholar; “Spelling Reform Department,” Educational Weekly 3, no. 55 (Jan. 31, 1878), 76 Google Scholar; “Spelling Reform Department,” Educational Weekly 3, no. 56 (Feb. 7, 1878), 92 Google Scholar; and “Spelling Reform Department,” Educational Weekly 3, no. 58 (Feb. 28, 1878), 120–21Google Scholar.
23 The Intelligence: A Journal of Education 19, no. 1 (Jan. 1, 1899)Google ScholarPubMed; “Progress in Spelling Reform,” The Intelligence 19, no. 7 (April 1, 1899), 247–48Google Scholar; The Intelligence 22, no. 19 (Dec. 1, 1902), 741 Google ScholarPubMed.
24 INM 11, no. 4 (Nov. 1887)Google Scholar, ISTA program appended at end; INM 14, no. 4 (Nov. 1890), 127, 146Google Scholar.
25 Proceedings of the State Teachers’ Association of Iowa … 1876 (Dubuque: Iowa Normal Monthly Publishing Company, 1877), 29 Google Scholar; and “Third Day's Proceedings,” INM 2, no. 7 (Feb. 1879), 233 Google ScholarPubMed.
26 NEA Proceedings (1879), 253–54; and Proceedings of the Iowa State Teachers’ Association… 1886 (Dubuque: Iowa Normal Monthly Publishing Company, 1887), 21 Google Scholar.
27 Proceedings: Iowa State Teachers’ Association … 1887 (Dubuque: Iowa Normal Monthly Publishing Company, 1888), 10 Google Scholar; and Proceedings of the Iowa State Teachers’ Association … 1888 (Dubuque: Iowa Normal Monthly Publishing Company, 1889), 19 Google Scholar.
28 Journal of the Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Illinois State Teachers’ Association … 1902 (Springfield, IL: Phillips Bros., State Printer, 1903), 10, 21–22 Google Scholar.
29 NEA Proceedings (1897), 196–97; and NEA Proceedings (1898), 303, 37.
30 For examples of newspaper coverage of the twelve words, see “Simplified Spelling Will Be Used,” Chicago Daily Tribune (May 23, 1897), 1; and “Short Spellings,” Chicago Daily Tribune (Sept. 5, 1898), 6. Zimmerman mentions the twelve words but does not acknowledge their endorsement by the NEA. Zimmerman, “Simplified Spelling,” 370.
31 Broomell, Geo D., “Reformed Spelling,” Friends’ Intelligencer 55, no. 49 (Dec. 3, 1898), 881 Google Scholar.
32 NEA Proceedings (1899), 43.
33 “Simplified Spelling Board, Circular No. 1, March 21, 1906,” republished in Simplified Spelling for the Use of Government Departments (Washington, DC: Office of the Public Printer, 1906), 9 Google Scholar.
34 “Simplified Spelling Board, Circular No. 1, March 21, 1906” and “Circular No. 2, March 21, 1906,” both republished in Simplified Spelling for the Use of Government Departments, 7–23.
35 Sullivan, Mark, Pre-War America, vol. 3 of Our Times: The United States, 1900–1925 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1930), 183 Google Scholar; Marks, “The Three-Hundred Words,” 30–35; and Dornbusch, “American Spelling Simplified,” 236–38.
36 Vivian, “Spelling an End,” 165.
37 Dornbusch, “American Spelling Simplified,” 237; Wesley, “The Simplified-Spelling Movement,” 226; Zimmerman, “Simplified Spelling,” 374; and Mencken, The American Language, 400. Regarding the ultimate impact of the three hundred words, Ranow describes a “variegated pattern of acceptance.” Ranow, “Simplified Spelling in Government Publications,” 38, 39, 43.
38 “Secretary Minutes, Department of Superintendence,” NEA Proceedings (1901), 36, 189; and NEA Proceedings (1903), 140–41.
39 For example see NEA Proceedings (1904), 339–40; NEA Proceedings (1905), 157; NEA Proceedings (1907), 30–34; NEA Proceedings (1908), 39; NEA Proceedings (1909), 163; NEA Proceedings (1911), 36, 163–64, 323–29; and NEA Proceedings (1912), 332–33.
40 Homer H. Seerley to C. P. G. Scott, June 1, 1908, Correspondence, Homer H. Seerley Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Rod Library, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA (hereafter cited as Seerley Papers). By all accounts, Vaile's disagreeable nature hurt the cause he held so dear. Seerley wrote in 1916, “The mere fact that he presents a resolution is sure to lead to its downfall if the proper persons are in the meeting, as he has the ill will of the leadership of the N. E. A.” Homer H. Seerley to H. G. Paine, June 28, 1916, Correspondence, Seerley Papers.
41 NEA Proceedings (1908), 39.
42 Simplified Spelling Bulletin 5, no. 3 (Dec. 1913), 26, 30–31 (hereafter cited as SSB); and SSB 5, no. 4 (March 1914), 45, 55; For example of STAs’ continuing discussions of spelling reform, see the Journal of Proceedings of the Illinois State Teachers’ Association (Springfield, IL), for the years 1906–1914; Proceedings of the Iowa State Teachers’ Association … 1906 (Des Moines, IA, 1907), 6 Google Scholar; Homer H. Seerley to David Felmley, Jan. 4, 1912, Correspondence, Seerley Papers; INM 30, no. 1 (Aug. 1906)Google Scholar; INM 34, no. 11–12 (June–July 1911)Google Scholar; American School Board Journal 32, no. 6 (June 1906)Google Scholar; and American School Board Journal 59, no. 2 (Aug. 1919)Google Scholar.
43 “Third Annual Meeting,” SSB 1, no. 1 (June 1909), 1–2 Google ScholarPubMed; “Fourth Annual Meeting,” SSB 2, no. 1 (June 1910), 1 Google ScholarPubMed; “Fifth Annual Meeting,” SSB 3, no. 1 (June 1911), 1 Google ScholarPubMed; “Sixth Annual Meeting,” SSB 4, no. 1 (June 1912), 1 Google ScholarPubMed; “Seventh Annual Meeting,” SSB 5, no. 1 (June 1913), 1–2 Google ScholarPubMed; “Committee on Normal Schools,” SSB 1, no. 1 (June 1909), 7 Google Scholar; “In Memoriam,” SSB 2, no. 1 (June 1910), 6 Google ScholarPubMed; “William James,” SSB 2, no. 2 (Sept. 1910), 22 Google ScholarPubMed; “Seven New Members,” SSB 3, no. 3 (Dec. 1911), 25 Google Scholar; and “Spelling Board Enlarged,” American School Board Journal 43, no. 5 (Nov. 1911), 28 Google Scholar.
44 “In the Educational World,” SSB 1, no. 1 (June 1909), 7 Google Scholar; “In the Educational World,” SSB 1, no. 2 (Sept. 1909), 3 Google Scholar; “In the Educational World,” SSB 1, no. 3 (Dec. 1909), 2 Google Scholar; “In the Educational World,” SSB 1, no. 4 (March 1910), 7 Google Scholar; “In the Educational World,” SSB 2, no. 1 (June 1910), 7 Google Scholar; “In the Educational World,” SSB 2, no. 2 (Sept. 1910), 19 Google Scholar; “In the Educational World,” SSB 2, no. 3 (Dec. 1910), 27 Google Scholar; “In the Educational World,” SSB 2, no. 4 (March 1911), 37 Google Scholar; “In the Educational World,” SSB 3, no. 3 (Dec. 1911), 27 Google Scholar; “In the Educational World,” SSB 3, no. 4 (March 1912), 37 Google Scholar; “In the Educational World,” SSB 4, no. 1 (June 1912), 7 Google Scholar; “In the Educational World,” SSB 4, no. 3 (Dec.1912), 35 Google Scholar; “In the Educational World,” SSB 5, no. 1 (June 1913), 5 Google Scholar; “In the Educational World,” SSB 5, no. 3 (Dec. 1913), 29 Google Scholar; and “In the Educational World,” SSB 5, no. 4 (March 1914), 45 Google Scholar.
45 “Spelling Bees,” SSB 1, no. 4 (March 1910), 5 Google Scholar.
46 “Dr. Maxwell's Address,” SSB 3, no. 1 (June 1911), 6 Google Scholar.
47 Tyack and Hansot, Managers of Virtue, 94–95.
48 Tyack, The One Best System, 182–98.
49 Null, “Social Efficiency Splintered,” 118.
50 Gamson, “District Progressivism,” 418, 422.
51 Fallace and Fantozzi interrogate the doctrine of social efficiency within the historiography of the curriculum, summarizing how Krug acknowledged the social-service strand but focused on social control, revisionists defined social efficiency only as social control, and postrevisionists have retained this definition as they have modified other claims of the revisionists. They explain further that even as Herbert Kliebard outlined additional curriculum-reform camps, he viewed social efficiency as a distinctive strand focused on social control through curricular differentiation. Finally, Fallace and Fantozzi synthesize more recent scholarship that is beginning to reveal the complexity of the idea of social efficiency, highlighting, among other things, how social harmony and justice coexisted with or even overshadowed social control as a curricular aim. Fallace and Fantozzi, “Was There Really a Social Efficiency Doctrine?” See also Krug, Edward A., The Shaping of the American High School (New York: Harper & Row, 1964)Google Scholar; Katz, Michael B., Class, Bureaucracy and Schools: The Illusion of Change in America (New York: Praeger, 1971)Google Scholar; Karier, Clarence J., Violas, Paul C., and Spring, Joel, eds., Roots of Crisis: American Education in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1973)Google Scholar; Kliebard, Herbert M., The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893–1958, 3rd ed. (New York: Routledge Falmer, 2004)Google Scholar; Franklin, “The Social Efficiency Movement Reconsidered”; Wraga, “A Progressive Legacy Squandered”; Null, “Social Efficiency Splintered”; Franklin, “Curriculum History and Its Revisionist Legacy”; Knoll, “From Kidd to Dewey”; and Fallace, “Tracing John Dewey's Influence.” David Gamson observes that viewing progressivism in education as a dichotomy “tends to distract us from understanding the more subtle nuances associated with the realities of educational practice and decision making.” Gamson, David A., “The Infusion of Corporate Values into Progressive Education: Professional Vulnerability or Complicity?” Journal of Educational Administration 42, no. 2 (2004), 140 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the local versus state and national levels, Gamson adds, “The theoretical and political differences were more obvious on the national scene than at the local level.” Gamson, “District Progressivism,” 420. This was not the case in discussions of simplified spelling, however.
52 Tyack, The One Best System, 28–29; and Tyack and Hansot, Managers of Virtue, 94–95.
53 F. A. March, “Opening Address,” NEA Proceedings (1880), 260.
54 W. C. Sawyer, “Report on Otheopy,” NEA Proceedings (1876), 140; and Johnson, David N., “The Spelling Reform,” Educational Weekly 2, no. 33 (Aug. 30, 1877), 120 Google Scholar.
55 W. G. Ballantine, “The Duti Ov Our Colejez Toward the Speling Reform,” NEA Proceedings (1880), 262–63.
56 Charles Payson Gurley Scott, “The Simplification of English Spelling: A Present Duty,” NEA Proceedings (1902), 131.
57 H. W. Brewster, “Spelling Reform,” NEA Proceedings (1891), 149–50; Homer H. Seerley, “Simplified Spelling with Reference to the Masses,” NEA Proceedings (1911), 652; and Marks, “The Three-Hundred Words,” 30.
58 S. N. D. North, “Speling Reform in Jurnalism,” NEA Proceedings (1879), 276–77.
59 T. R. Vickroy, “Spelling Reform,” NEA Proceedings (1891), 157.
60 Wright, D. S., “Spelling,” INM 19, no. 3 (Oct. 1895), 97–98 Google Scholar.
61 Vaile, “Spelling Reform,” 16.
62 March, The Spelling Reform (1893), 34;
63 Collins, “A Plea for Simplified Spelling,” 51–52; Funk, I. K., “Progress in Spelling Reform,” The Intelligence 19, no. 1 (April 1, 1899), 248 Google Scholar.
64 Alexander Melville Bell, in March et al., “Simplified Spelling,” 166; and Stein, Robert, “The Jackson Bill for a World-Alphabet,” School Review 20, no. 1 (Jan. 1912), 54 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
65 F. A. March, “Opening Adres,” NEA Proceedings (1881), 275.
66 Vaile, “Spelling Reform I,” 85.
67 Reese, “The Philosopher King of St. Louis”; and Curti, Merle, “William T. Harris, The Conservator, 1835–1908,” in The Social Ideas of American Educators (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1935), 310–47Google Scholar. In the rare instances when historians discuss education as part of the wider efficiency movement, they focus on differentiated vocational education. See Rodgers, The Work Ethic in Industrial America, 85–90; and Noble, America By Design, 307–309.
68 Vaile, “Spelling Reform,” 16; Vaile, “Spelling Reform–II,” 167.
69 Homer Seerley, David Felmley, and Charles McKenny to Presidents and Faculties of the State Normal Schools, United States of America, Dec. 20, 1909, folder 1, box 5, David Felmley Presidential Papers, Dr. Jo Ann Rayfield Archives at Illinois State University, Milner Library, Normal, IL (hereafter cited as Felmley Papers);
70 “Dr. Maxwell's Address,” 5.
71 Seerley, “Simplified Spelling with Reference to the Masses,” 651–52.
72 Vaile, “Spelling Reform–II,” 167.
73 March, “The Relation of Educators to Spelling-Reform,” 150; Bell, part IV, in March et al., “Simplified Spelling,” 167.
74 “Discussion—Subject: Simplified Spelling,” NEA Proceedings (1901), 216.
75 On the romantic strand within pedagogical progressivism, see Reese, William J., America's Public Schools: From the Common School to “No Child Left Behind” (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 79–117 Google Scholar.
76 T. R. Vickroy, “The Necessity for Spelling Reform,” NEA Proceedings (1881), 91.
77 Vickroy, “Spelling Reform,” 157.
78 W. T. Harris, in March et al., “Simplified Spelling,” 158; “Discussion—Subject: Simplified Spelling,” 216; Stein, “The Jackson Bill,” 56.
79 Seerley, “Simplified Spelling with Reference,” 651.
80 “Discussion—Subject: Simplified Spelling,” 116; “Dr. Maxwell's Address,” 5; and Stein, “The Jackson Bill,” 56.
81 North, “Speling Reform in Jurnalism,” 273–74.
82 Tyack, The One Best System, 255–68; Tyack and Hansot, Managers of Virtue, 180–201; Urban, Why Teachers Organized; Apple, “Teaching and ‘Women's Work’”; Hoffman, Woman's “True” Profession, 228–46; Rousmaniere, City Teachers; and Cuban, How Teachers Taught. See also MacDonald, Victoria-Maria, “The Paradox of Bureaucratization: New Views on Progressive Era Teachers and the Development of a Woman's Profession,” History of Education Quarterly 39, no. 4 (Winter 1999), 427–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
83 Lears, No Place of Grace, xv, 4; and Zimmerman, “Simplified Spelling.”
84 North, “Speling Reform in Jurnalism,” 273–74.
85 Callahan, Education and the Cult of Efficiency, viii; Berman, “Business Efficiency,” 315. See also Katz, Class, Bureaucracy and Schools; and Steffes, School, Society and State. Gamson further examines educators’ vulnerability to public opinion; see Gamson, “The Infusion of Corporate Values.”
86 Goldstein's notion of “moral panic” in her recent history of the teaching profession in the United States is arguably a teacher-focused version of the vulnerability thesis. Goldstein asserts that American teachers have endured a series of “bad-teacher” scares in which the media blame schoolteachers for larger problems in American society. These attacks reflect harsh censure of teachers and invoke fear of further scrutiny. See Goldstein, Dana, The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession (New York: Doubleday, 2014)Google Scholar.
87 Marks, “The Three-Hundred Words,” 30; Zimmerman, “Simplified Spelling,” 375.
88 E. O. Vaile, “Report of the Committee on Simplified Spelling,” Journal of Proceedings of the Illinois State Teachers’ Association (1911), 30.
89 “Papers Red at the Meeting,” SSB 1, no. 1 (June 1909), 6 Google Scholar; and March, “The Relation of Educators to Spelling Reform,” 151. Urban explains that women teachers—and women in general—were not allowed to speak at NEA meetings until the twentieth century. Teachers began in the mid-1900s to assert their concerns within the NEA, and the association established the Department of Classroom Teachers in 1912. By the late 1910s, the NEA began to actively recruit classroom teachers, but the Department of Superintendence maintained its position of power within the larger organization. See Urban, Gender, Race, and the National Education Association, 1–41. An early history of the Iowa STA notes that the 1886 meeting “was distinguished by the appointment of a woman to the executive committee. It had been pointed out that while three-fourths of the teaching force was composed of women only one appeared upon the program among forty participants.” Aurner, Clarence Ray, History of Education in Iowa, vol. 2 (Iowa City: State Historical Society of Iowa, 1914), 232 Google Scholar.
90 March, “The Relation of Educators to Spelling Reform,” 151.
91 Brewer, Fisk P., “Thirteen Amended Spellings. What Next?,” INM 11, no. 9 (April 1888), 368 Google Scholar.
92 “A Letter to Teachers,” SSB 1, no. 3 (Dec. 1909), 7 Google ScholarPubMed; and “Dr. Maxwell's Address,” 5.
93 Homer H. Seerley to C. P. G. Scott, Jan. 3, 1910 and April 25, 1910, Correspondence, Seerley Papers; and Charles P. G. Scott to David Felmley, July 26, 1906, folder 1, box 5, Felmley Papers.
94 David Felmley, “A Defense of Simplified Spelling,” Alumni Quarterly of the Illinois State Normal University (Aug. 1912), 13.
95 Scott, “The Simplification of English Spelling,” 130, 132.
96 “In the Educational World,” SSB 1, no. 1 (June 1909), 7 Google Scholar; and “Signers and Their Occupations,” SSB 5, no. 1 (June 1913), 16 Google Scholar.
97 NEA Proceedings (1907), 33.
98 NEA Proceedings (1911), 655.
99 Curry, T. F. M., “Spelling Reform,” INM 2, no. 10 (May 1879), 324–25Google Scholar.
100 “Missouri Teachers,” SSB 5, no. 3 (Dec. 1913), 26 Google Scholar.
101 “Discussion—Subject: Simplified Spelling,” 210; and O. C. Blackmer to Homer H. Seerley, July 18, 1907, Correspondence, Seerley Papers.
102 NEA Proceedings (1911), 653–56.
103 Coffman, L. D., “Reformed Spelling in the State,” Illinois Teacher 3, no. 1 (Sept. 1, 1914), 3–4 Google Scholar. Of course, the majority of classroom teachers were women; Zimmerman notes, “Women were particularly vocal in their opposition to the movement, as simplifiers often noted.” Zimmerman, “Simplified Spelling,” 391.
104 Transactions of the Michigan State Teachers’ Association … 1878, 23.
105 “Two Important Steps in Spelling Reform,” The Intelligence 20, no. 2 (Jan. 15, 1900), 46 Google Scholar; and Harris's comments, “revised and extended” in “Discussion—Subject: Simplified Spelling,” 224.
106 Seerley, Homer H., “The Attitude of the Leaders of Public Education Toward Simplified Spelling,” Educational Review 36 (Sept. 1908), 183 Google Scholar.
107 Greenwood, J. M., “Spelling Yelpers,” INM 25, no. 9 (April 1902), 433 Google Scholar.
108 “Discussion—Subject: Simplified Spelling,” 215–16; “Notes and Comments,” INM 28, no. 11–12 (June–July 1905), 549 Google ScholarPubMed; and Lears, No Place of Grace, 7.
109 American School Board Journal 33, no. 3 (Sept. 1906), 22 Google Scholar.
110 American School Board Journal 33, no. 4 (Oct. 1906)Google Scholar, cover.
111 American School Board Journal 42, no. 3 (March 1911), 11 Google Scholar.
112 Callahan, Education and the Cult of Efficiency.
113 Transactions of the Michigan State Teachers’ Association, 23.
114 Harris, “Letter of Transmittal,” in March, The Spelling Reform, 10.
115 Harris's comments, “revised and extended” in “Discussion—Subject: Simplified Spelling,” 221–24.
116 “National Meeting of Superintendents,” The Intelligence 21, no. 5 (March 1, 1901), 170 Google Scholar; Vaile, “Report of the Committee on Simplified Spelling,” 31; and “Report on the Committee on the Simplification of Spelling,” NEA Proceedings (1905), 157.
117 Charles C. P. Scott to David Felmley, Sept. 27, 1909, folder 1, box 5, Felmley Papers. While this archival evidence suggests that Young supported simplified spelling at least to some extent, Zimmerman and historian of Illinois State Normal University Marshall state that Young must have opposed it because she teased David Felmley about using simplified words. See Zimmerman, “Simplified Spelling,” 391; and Marshall, Helen E., “Simplified Spelling—and David Felmley,” Alumni Quarterly of the Illinois State Normal University 43 (May 1954), 8–9 Google Scholar.
118 Homer H. Seerley to David Felmley, April 22, 1910, Correspondence, Seerley Papers.
119 William Aldrich to Homer H. Seerley, Feb. 5, 1908, Correspondence, Seerley Papers.
120 Seerley, Homer H., “The Simplification of the Spelling of the English Language,” INM 22, no. 9 (April 1906), 442, 443Google Scholar.
121 Seerley, “The Attitude of the Leaders,” 180, 182–83, 184.
122 Homer H. Seerley to Charles C. P. Scott, Jan. 13, 1912, Correspondence, Seerley Papers.
123 Homer H. Seerley to E. O. Vaile, April 22, 1910, Correspondence, Seerley Papers.
124 Homer H. Seerley to Charles C. P. Scott, Jan. 23, 1911, Correspondence, Seerley Papers. On criticism of the Iowa State Teachers College and Seerley's response, see various letters, Jan.–Feb. 1911, Correspondence, Seerley Papers; and Lang, William C., A Century of Leadership and Service: A Centennial History of the University of Northern Iowa, vol. 1, 1876–1909 (Cedar Falls: University of Northern Iowa, 1990), 270–314 Google Scholar.
125 Homer H. Seerley to J. W. Jarnagin, April 27, 1920, Correspondence, Seerley Papers.
126 Wesley, “The Simplified Spelling Movement,” 228; and Mencken, The American Language, 403.
127 Marshall, Carl C., “Studies in English Expression,” INM 30, no. 4 (Nov. 1906), 191 Google Scholar.
128 Tyack, The One Best System, 182–98; and Reese, America's Public Schools, 118–79.