Cooperative Educational Experimentation in the Jim Crow South: A Comparative Historical Analysis

• In Event: Critical Perspectives in Curriculum Development

Abstract

This historical study reconstructs and compares the activities around 1940 of the Southern Association Study in Secondary Schools and Colleges and the Secondary School Study of the Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools for Negroes, explains these cooperative studies in the context of the historiography of education in the American South and the history of curriculum reform in the US, explores the contradictions and implications of pursuing progressive, democratic forms of curriculum development in an oppressive segregationist environment, and considers the extent to which an understanding of these regional efforts to improve local schools can inform national- and state-coordinated initiatives to improve local schools.

Author

• William G. Wraga, University of Georgia