1960-1975

Economic, Social, Political Debates:

Government agencies and private corporations increased their efforts to bring education in the U.S in line with national economic and social policy. They tried to use schools as a way to cultivate human resources for the benefit of industrial and corporate leaders. A concern after the war was to have trained workers to serve economic growth of the nation as well as national security. Russia's launch of Sputnik challenged the U.S's technological dominance.


Changes in Methods, Curriculum and Students:
The education method that was in place was life adjustment, it was centered around the student. It was under attack at this time by conservative critics of the schools. they felt that the schools weren't providing the proper education to create experts that were needed for a strong economy. They also believed that public schools should be subject based focusing on scientific and scholarly disciplines. In 1958 the National Defense Act wanted to improve schools math and science curriculum; and in 1964 literature, language and composition were included. The Process of Education became an account of the new spiral curriculum. This plan organized the curriculum around an academic discipline which would be presented to the students according to their level of cognitive development. Burner also thought that students should take an active role in learning by actually doing the literary criticism, math and not relying on experts. James Moffet wrote Teaching the Universe of Discourse and it had a series of activities to correspond with four developmental stages of students from elementary to high school. interior dialogue, conversation, correspondence and public narrative were the four stages. There was a lot of emphasis on the cognitive version of the composing process but it was not the only alternative, a related paradigm was endorsed by Dartmouth Conference in 1966. In this conference Britain told the U.S teachers that their emphasis was not on the subject matter, but on providing an experience which the kids can experiment and test while strengthening their linguistic and intellectual skills by using them in different contexts. The method of writing that's prosued in a supportive environment and are engaged in self discovery has been a method that has faded but was never completely gone.