More than science and Sputnik : the National Defense Education Act of 1958

Author / Creator

Urban, Wayne J

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Online

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Summary

""The National Defense Education Act broke a logjam of opposition to federal aid to elementary and secondary education in 1958. Many believe that the launch of the Soviet's Sputnik satellite enable...

""The National Defense Education Act broke a logjam of opposition to federal aid to elementary and secondary education in 1958. Many believe that the launch of the Soviet's Sputnik satellite enabled the bill's proponents to get it through Congress. But historians have pointed out that the scientific community's pressure for science and math education started long before Sputnik. Now Wayne Urban's exciting new book takes that argument a big step further. He argues that we must see this in the more general context of the agendas of politicians like Congressman Carl Elliott and Senator Lister Hill, white liberals from Alabama, to achieve federal education aid in any form, for whatever reason. They allied with President Eisenhower and the young Assistant Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Elliott Richardson, to move the NDEA through Congress, each for his own reasons. Urban's assessment is loaded with fresh insights about the meaning and legacy of this act for the various players, including also the scientific community and the National Education Association. Bravo."--Carl Kaestle, Professor Emeritus of Education, History, and Public Policy at Brown University "Urban fills a critically important void in our scholarship on the history and development of federal education policy in this book. He has drawn upon his deep understanding of the history of federal legislation and national education policy development to chart the dramatic expansion of the federal role in education, and what it has meant, and what it still means for the issues and interests of today."--Stephen G. Katsinas, Director of the Education Policy Center, The University of Alabama "The passage of the National Defense Education Act broke the dam of a hundred years of federal inaction in American education; its passage was an essential precursor to the landmark legislation of the 1960s and transformed the federal role in education in America."--Mary Allen Jolley, Legislative Clerk to Rep. Carl Elliott, House of Representatives Subcommittee on Special Education, 1957-58 Sparked by dramatic Soviet achievements, particularly in nuclear technology and the development of the Sputnik space orbiter, the United States responded in the late 1950s with an extraordinary federal investment in education. Designed to overcome a perceived national failure to produce enough qualified scientists, engineers, and mathematicians to compete with the Communist bloc, the effort resulted in the National Defense Education Act of 1958 (NDEA). Representative Carl Elliott and Senator Lister Hill, both from Alabama, and Assistant Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare Elliot Richardson were the prime movers in shaping this landmark legislation. More Than Science and Sputnik analyzes the papers of the three leaders to describe the political process that established the NDEA. The book illustrates what the assumptions of th"--Jacket.

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