New Deals in Learning: Depression-Era Education to Conserve and Transform Race, Gender, and Religion

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

The Great Depression put unprecedented stress on the nation’s education institutions. In response, Roosevelt’s administration created agencies with functions parallel to public schooling; those who administered these programs promoted and developed initiatives that alternately attempted to conserve and transform society. This panel explores three such efforts. First, how architects of the Civilian Conservation Corps’ (CCC) education program sought to restore masculinity to counter “feminized” public schooling. Second, how African American CCC educational advisors adapted and expanded their mission to promote racial pride within a segregated institution. Finally, how the homestead project in Granger, Iowa was both an exemplar of the New Deal belief in the transformative power of relocation and re-education and a conservative blueprint for a Catholic back-to-the-land movement.

Sub Unit

• Division F - Historical Inquiry in Education

Chair

• Daniel Perlstein, University of California - Berkeley

Papers

• The Civilian Conservation Corp: ". . . The Sort of School You Can Like" - Charles Tocci, Loyola University Chicago; Ann Marie Ryan, Loyola University Chicago

• Race Boys in the University of the Woods: African American Education Within the Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933–1942 - Michael Hines, Loyola University Chicago

• Learning to Live on the Land: Remaking American Catholics on a Subsistence Homestead - Michael Bowman, Iowa State University

Discussant

• Daniel Perlstein, University of California - Berkeley