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Progressivism and Curriculum Differentiation: Special Classes in the Atlanta Public Schools, 1898–1923

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Barry M. Franklin
Barry M. Franklin*
Affiliation:
Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Kennesaw State College
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Extract

Addressing the Atlanta Board of Education at its January 1898 meeting, Superintendent William F. Slaton called for the adoption of a regulation to “prevent children of dull minds and weak intellects from remaining 3 or 4 years in the same grade.” Their presence, Slaton stated, was leading “to the annoyance of the teacher and detriment of the grade.” This call to deal with low achieving students was not the only recommendation to alter existing school policies and programs that the city's Board of Education heard that year or the next. In his annual reports for both 1898 and 1899, Slaton called on the Board of Education to introduce vocational education into Atlanta's course of study to meet the needs of high school students who, as he put it, “are bread-winners early in life and subsequently heads of families.” And during May 1899, the Board of Education received proposals urging it to introduce physical education into the curriculum and to establish kindergarten classes in several of the city's schools. Here were the first stirrings of Progressive educational reform, which would lead in Atlanta, as in other urban school systems, to a differentiated program, including vocational education and guidance, kindergartens, junior high schools, and special classes for handicapped children.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , Winter 1989 , pp. 571 - 593
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 by the History of Education Society 

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References

1 Atlanta Board of Education, Minutes, 6 Jan. 1898, 2: 522.Google Scholar

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4 For illustrations of curriculum differentiation in Atlanta, see Atlanta Constitution, 13 Nov., 18 Dec. 1927, 1, 8, 22 Jan., 19 Feb., 11 Mar. 1928.Google Scholar

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6 Atlanta Board of Education, School Directory, 1920–1930. The two special classes for black children in existence in 1920, one at Carrie Steele School and the other at Pittsburg Night School, were closed the following year and replaced by two classes at Storrs School. The next year, however, those classes were also closed. There were no other special classes for black children until 1929. For a discussion of special education for blacks in Georgia, see Vivian Mack Strong, Jane, “A Study of Educational Facilities Available to Atypical Negro and White Children in Georgia” (, Atlanta University, 1949).Google Scholar

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27 I examined on a daily basis the Atlanta Independent, Atlanta's principal black newspaper, between 1916 and 1925 and the Journal of Labor, the official newspaper of the Atlanta Federation of Trades, between 1914 and 1921, and found no mention in either paper of low achieving children or special classes. I only found one reference to special classes in the papers of the Atlanta Public School Teachers’ Association. At the February 1920 meeting of the Association's Board of Directors, Brenner, Gussie, principal of Fair Street School, noted the need for a “centrally located” facility to provide for the city's handicapped children. See Atlanta Public School Teachers’ Association, Directors’ Meeting, Feb. 1920, folder 3, box 2072, Atlanta Education Association Collection, Southern Labor Archives, Special Collections Department, Georgia State University.Google Scholar

28 Atlanta Board of Education, Minutes, 4 Jan. 1912, 5: 288.Google Scholar

29 Ibid., 8 Apr. 1914, 6: 147–48.Google Scholar

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38 For a discussion of the symbolic role of educational policy in legitimizing the educational professions, see Kliebard, Herbert M., “Curriculum Policy as Symbolic Action: Connecting Education with the Workplace“ (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, Calif., 27 Mar. 1989).Google Scholar

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53 Adanta Board of Education, Minutes, 27 July 1916, 7: 59.Google Scholar

54 This information could, of course, have been recorded elsewhere, but the manager of the Atlanta Public Schools Record Center was unaware of the existence of any other records for these students.Google Scholar

55 To protect the identity of the Lee Street special class students, I have given them pseudonyms that indicate their gender. For a discussion of the meaning of the scores on this first version of the Stanford-Binet Test, see Terman, Lewis M., The Measurement of Intelligence: An Explanation of and a Complete Guide for the Use of the Stanford Revision and Extension of the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale (Boston, 1916), ch. 5.Google Scholar

56 In 1914, the Atlanta Board of Education adopted the following grading system: A (excellent), 90–100; B (good), 80–89; C (satisfactory), 70–79; D (fair), 60–69; E (unsatisfactory), below 60. In 1918, the board introduced a new grading system: A (excellent), 90–100; B (good), 80–89; C (fair), 70–79; D (unsatisfactory), below 70. See Ecke, , From Ivy Street 101, 129.Google Scholar

57 U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920: Population (Washington, D.C., 1922), 4: 1053–55.Google Scholar

58 Anderson, James D., The Education of Blacks in the South 1860–1935 (Chapel Hill, 1988), 229–31.Google Scholar

59 U.S. Department of Commerce, Fourteenth Census, 1920: Population, 1053–55; Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910: Population (Washington, D.C., 1913), 4: 536; Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930: Occupations by States (Washington, D.C., 1933), 391–93.Google Scholar

60 The cumulative records of thirteen of the Lee Street special class students listed the occupations of their fathers. I categorized those occupations according to Thernstrom's Socio-Economic Ranking of Occupations as follows: high white collar–owner of a furniture factory (1 child); low white collar–foreman (1), insurance agent (1), postman (1), shipping clerk (1), skilled–railroad engineer (1), carpenter (2), plumber (1), semiskilled/unskilled–packer (1), textile worker (2), waiter (1). I combined semiskilled and unskilled because it was not possible to tell from the information on the cumulative record in which of these categories the occupations fell. See Thernstrom, Stephan, The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis, 1880–1979 (Cambridge, 1973), 289–302 (Appendix B). Although this data set is exceedingly small, I have decided to report the results. I am doing so because after three years of searching records in Atlanta, I have not been able to identify any other special children.Google Scholar

61 To determine the class background of children from Lee Street's regular classes, I selected every fifth unduplicated name for which school cumulative records could be located from the 1921–22 class roster of 591 children and from the 1922–23 class roster of 568 children. Using Thernstrom's Socio-Economic Ranking of Occupations to categorize these students, I found that 15 (12.1%) of the children's fathers held high white collar occupations; 55 (44.4%), low white collar occupations; 31 (25%), skilled occupations; and 23 (18.5%), semiskilled/unskilled occupations. For the population of Atlanta, I again used Thernstrom's rankings with the occupations of white males reported in the 1920 census. This analysis indicated that 6,349 (16%) of white males held high white collar occupations; 17,728 (44.6%), low white collar occupations; 7,511 (18.9%), skilled occupations; and 8,160 (20.5%), semiskilled/unskilled occupations.Google Scholar

62 For a discussion from a Marxist vantage point of how the initiative of state bureaucrats may be independent of the interests of business classes yet ultimately advance capital accumulation, see Block, Fred, “The Ruling Class Does Not Rule: Notes on the Marxist Theory of the State,“ Socialist Revolution 7 (May 1977): 6–28.Google Scholar

63 For a discussion of how Progressive Era school reforms undercut the ideals of the common school movement, see Reese, William J., “Public Schools and the Common Good,“ Educational Theory 38 (Fall 1988): 431–40.Google Scholar

64 Kaestle, Carl, “Conflict and Consensus Revisited: Notes toward a Reinterpretation of American Educational History,“ Harvard Educational Review 46 (Aug. 1976): 390–96.Google Scholar