"A Chance to Be Professional": Detroit Teachers, Textbook Writing, and the Ford Foundation, 1960–1967

• In Event: 61.034 - Analyzing the Arc: What History Teaches Us About Civil Rights and Educational Justice

Abstract

Objective
In 1960, as part of the Ford Foundation’s Great Cities project, Detroit teachers wrote the nation’s first primers oriented specifically for black children. This paper examines the construction, reception, and significance of the Detroit City School Series primers (published from 1962 to1967), including the philosophies about teacher expertise embedded in the Ford’s decision that teachers would make the best authors of children’s primers. Unfortunately, these convictions were undermined by a larger social theory of black children’s cultural deprivation to which Ford officers and Detroit teachers subscribed. Their shared belief in “culturally disadvantaged [black] children” resulted in simplistic textbooks that, while at first receiving national acclaim, would be discounted within a decade and would do little to improve teacher professionalism.
Perspective
In a complex history of philanthropic engagement with public schools, the story of 1960s Detroit teachers illustrates with particular clarity how theories about and strategies for educational improvement—and teacher aptitude—are nearly impossible to disentangle from political beliefs about low-achieving students. As preparation for writing the textbooks, the selected teachers interviewed black and white public school students and found that the black children’s speech contained fewer words, simpler sentence structures, and more grammatical errors. In response, the teacher-committee created books that contained shorter stories, fewer words, and a lower new to familiar word ratio than other primers being used in the Detroit schools. When the books were first published, local civil rights organizations and some teachers criticized their unflattering depictions of black homes, especially the absence of black fathers. The books were immediately revised. It took longer for parents and civil rights groups to question the books’ basic premise about black children's language development. Once they registered this criticism, however, the ramifications were important; by 1970, the best-selling multicultural primers were written by professional authors instead of concerned teachers.
In showing how a political theory about black children became transformed into a theory about learning and reading acquisition, this paper engages and connects histories of policy and political theories as well the history of literacy. In its focus on the role of teachers and foundations, it draws on philanthropic history and the history of the teaching profession.
Data
This research uses traditional historical methods and draws on foundation reports, academic and teacher-written reports, the primers, newspaper reviews and accounts, the papers of civil rights organizations, and congressional committee reports located in the Ford Foundation’s archives and the University of Michigan and Wayne State University archives.
Results and Significance
While much of the history on the Great Cities project focuses on its wider vision for urban reform and how it experimented with schools as institutions for community reform, this first analysis of Detroit teachers provides a new view into how the Ford Foundation impacted urban schools. As such, it explains how philanthropic programs in public schools stand to shape views of teacher professionalism and low-achieving students, historically and in our own time.

Author

• Jonna Perrillo, The University of Texas - El Paso