Beyond “Progressive” Reform: Bodies, Discipline, and the Construction of the Professional Teacher in Interwar America

Rose Freistater was twenty-six years old when the New York City Board of Examiners denied her a teaching license. She had been teaching at James Monroe High School, first as a student teacher and then as a substitute teacher for five years, and her work was characterized by the chairman of the biology department in which she taught as “difficult to overstate in its excellence.” But in 1931, Rose stood five feet and two inches and weighed 182 pounds. When she applied for her teaching license that year, she weighed thirty pounds more than the maximum weight allowed by the Board for her height. She was given six months to lose thirty pounds; when she lost only twenty in that time, she was rejected by the Board altogether. Although a number of overweight and underweight teachers were rejected by the Board of Education in the ten years that the standards had existed, Rose was the first to appeal to the state that the qualifications were unfair. When her case reached the State Commissioner of Education in 1935, it was rejected again, and the city board issued a statement claiming, “Other things being normal, a person of abnormal weight is likely to have more absences because of ill health and be less efficient as a teacher than a person of average weight.” Furthermore, it added, “Teachers must climb stairs, take part in fire drills, and be able to handle all real school emergencies. Overweight teachers are less likely to stand the strain of teaching…. Teachers should [be]… acceptable hygienic models for their pupils in the manner of weight.” Finally, overweight teachers, who represented greater health risks than others, “constitute[d] a drain on the teachers' pension fund.” In response, the Freistater family contended that Rose walked the five flights of steps to their apartment several times a day, but her case was closed.

Mandating Americanization: Japanese Language Schools and the Federal Survey of Education in Hawai'i, 1916–1920

Under the policies of the United States, it will be very difficult to prohibit schools of this kind unless it were definitely proven that they were teaching treasonable things.—P. P. Claxton, U. S. Commissioner of EducationThis article critically examines how the 1919 Federal Survey of Education in Hawai'i, under the guise of a scientific study to guide educational reform, was used as the means to implement colonial policies over the territory's largest ethnic group, the Nikkei, people of Japanese ancestry. Furthermore, the survey was also used by various other political and religious parties and individuals to further their own objectives. Although there were many facets to the federal survey, this study focuses only on the debate surrounding Japanese language schools, the most sensational issue of the survey. The battle over the control of Japanese language schools among the white ruling class, educational authorities, and the Nikkei community in Hawai'i created the foundation for an anti-Japanese language school movement that spread to the West Coast of the United States. The survey was also a catalyst for Nikkei in redefining their Japanese language schools and a battleground concerning their future and identity. Despite numerous studies on Japanese Americans in Hawai'i, and studies of the Japanese language schools, neither the process, results, nor effects of the survey have been critically examined to date. This paper analyzes the process of how the federal survey evolved and how it arrived at its conclusions through an examination of the Education Bureau's files in order to illuminate the origins of the Japanese language school control movement and its chapter of ethnic American educational history.

The Higher Education Acts Contrasted, 1965-1986: Has Federal Policy Come of Age?

Francis Keppel, former United States Commissioner of Education, 1962-1965, and Chairman, National Student Aid Coalition, 1981-1986, here gives his view of the evolution of the historic Higher Education Act of 1965 from the time of its passage to its reauthorization in 1986. He focuses particularly upon those sections of the law that deal with undergraduate education and student financial aid, for which the act is now best known. While the basic intent of the act — increasing equality of educational opportunity — has remained constant, there have been important shifts both in the methods chosen to approach that goal and in the social context within which the act operates. The present political and economic atmosphere differs markedly from that of 1965. Federal support for higher education has shifted in emphasis from financing of physical resources to support for students themselves, and has come to rely increasingly on loan programs. Priorities for serving different kinds of institutions and student populations have changed in attempts to meet new needs. Yet, the author remarks, several difficult challenges and unresolved problems in the field of higher education finance remain. Careful collaboration among the branches of government and the higher education community will be required if we are to achieve the full potential of the Higher Education Act in the coming years.