The 1950s Education: Headline Makers

James B. Conant (1893–1978) Beyond his stature as president of Harvard University, one of America's premier schools of higher learning, James B. Conant achieved fame as an innovative educational theorist. Throughout the 1950s, he called for reform in the American school system. Conant was a proponent of broad curricula for college students, and he urged implementation of a wide range of academic and vocational high school-level courses, to serve all students regardless of their intellectual capabilities. Conant's campaign for higher standards in education culminated in his authorship of The American High School Today, published in 1959, which sold a half-million copies.

John Dewey (1859–1952) John Dewey was the founder and president of the American Association of University Professors and the father of "progressive education." Although he lived only two years into the 1950s, his ideas regarding education were at the core of one of the decade's major educational trends. Dewey believed that educators should directly link the learning process to intellectual curiosity and artistic expression, and that students should learn by doing. His critics maintained that students under Dewey's system lacked basic skills.

Orval E. Faubus (1910–) Of all the Southern politicians determined to maintain segregation, Arkansas Governor Orval E. Faubus was one of the most aggressively outspoken. In 1957, Faubus signed four bills into law, each of which impeded school integration. The laws created an antiintegration investigation committee; allowed parents to refuse to enroll their children in integrated schools; required organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to reveal membership rolls and financial data; and authorized school district funds to pay for anti-integration legal fees.

Theodore S. Geisel (1904–1991) During the 1950s and beyond, Theodore S. Geisel, better known to millions as Dr. Seuss, wrote and illustrated children's books. His stories not only enchanted youngsters but also helped teach them the joys of reading. Among Geisel's books were such verse tales as Horton Hears a Who (1954) and the classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1957). In these rhyming stories, and the countless others he authored over the following decades, Geisel created cleverly rhymed and whimsically illustrated fantasies.

Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993) Thurgood Marshall is best-remembered as the first African American appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to his tenure as a Supreme Court justice, Marshall was a civil rights activist. From 1939 to 1961, he worked as a NAACP legal advocate. Among his most famous cases as a lawyer were: Sweatt v. Painter, argued before the Supreme Court in 1950; and Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which came before the court in 1954. Victories in both of these cases helped give black Americans the legal right to educational opportunities equal to those of whites and spearheaded a social revolution in America.