Storm over the schoolhouse: Exploring popular influences upon the Americancurriculum, 1890-1941

Recent histories of the American curriculum have shown how citizen groups i nfluenced local course offerings and state requirements during the early tw entieth century. Using case studies of three subject areas-history, militar y training and foreign languages-this article demonstrates that lay activis ts also affected the content and even the enrollment of these courses. The article illustrates the enormous range of citizens who entered curricular d isputes, the diversity of strategies they employed, and the disparate resul ts of their efforts. It also suggests a new explanation for the decline of the traditional "3 R's" and the rise of a more "practical," differentiated curriculum between the turn of the century and World War Two. Hardly the pa wns of school officials, laypeople had their own "practical" reasons for em bracing this trend: it opened the door to whatever new agendas they hoped t o inject. Across the ideological spectrum, then, citizen groups joined hand s to condemn old-fashioned academic curricula, Not until the late 1940s wou ld conservative activists rally around the 3 R's, sparking a new school war that still rages today.