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Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1916
Professor of Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
Author of The Principles of Education (1924); American
Road to Culture (1930); The New Russian Primer (1931); The
Soviet Challenge to America (1931); Dare the School Build
a New Social Order (1932); The Social Foundations of Education (1934); The
Prospects of American Democracy (1938); The Country of the
Blind (1949); Education and American Civilization (1952);
and Education and the Foundations of Human Freedom (1963). |
At the 1932 Progressive
Education Association’s (PEA) annual conference during the height
of the Great Depression, George Sylvester Counts’s speech stunned
his audience into a silence that spoke louder than applause (Cremin
1964). His speech Dare Progressive Education Be Progressive? (1932)
prompted convention organizers to “suspend the remainder of the business
of the convention in order instead to ponder and react to Counts’s
ideas” (Urban 1972, vi). Though this speech impacted how many educators
thought about their work, Counts’s overall contributions surpass
his significant PEA address.
Important Intellectual Contributions to Education
Dare Progressive Education Be Progressive (1932)
emerged from Counts’s research in the 1920s on social-class assumptions
underlying the American educational system and his perceptions of
the nation’s economic crisis. He argued (Counts 1932, 258) that the
PEA’s focus on child-centered education betrayed an upper-middle
class orientation and, to become genuinely progressive:
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| . . . it [the PEA] must emancipate itself
from the influence of this class, face squarely and courageously
every social issue, come to grips with life in its stark
reality, establish an organic relation with the community,
develop a realistic and comprehensive theory of welfare,
fashion a compelling and challenging vision of human destiny,
and become somewhat less frightened than it is today at the
bogeys of imposition and indoctrination. |
Counts’s social class critique of the PEA (1932,
259) argued that its organizational vision was complicit with an unjust
historic capitalism “in which dire poverty walks hand-in-hand with
the most extravagant living that the world has ever known.” Further,
Counts’s critique (1932, 260) argued for “the development of a coordinated,
planned, and socialized economy.” This socialized economy required
that Americans “set ourselves to the task of reconstituting and revitalizing”
(Counts 1932, 261) the tradition of the American Dream, and argued
for the creation of collectivist orientations in American education
that would serve as a guide in American life.
Counts’s most anthologized work Dare the School Build a
New Social Order? (1932) elaborated on his PEA address. This book
served to document several of Counts’s most important contributions
to educational thinking, including:
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Education is culture-based. Rather than children
being born “free” to develop according to the doctrine of child
interest, Counts brought into education an anthropological
view of history that holds “the most crucial of all circumstances
conditioning human life is birth into a particular culture”
(Counts1932, 11). |
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Education, as it takes place within culture, is value-based.
Education, rather than pursuing child development or human
achievement in a vacuum, revolves around “particular systems
of human values” (Counts 1932, 17) that a culture happens to
possess. |
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Any system of education involves types of imposition and
indoctrination. In holding that education is culture- and value-based,
“the real question is not whether imposition will take place,
but rather from what source it will come” (Counts 1932, 25). |
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Education, in as much as it involves degrees and types of
imposition and indoctrination, represents a political activity.
In holding that education is political, Counts argued that
“the school follows the wishes of the groups or classes that
actually rule society” (Counts 1932, 25). |
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Teachers, by the nature of their work, engage in political
activity, usually without being conscious of the political
nature of their work. Teachers, as a result of this assertion,
can “no longer say they are merely teaching the truth nor that
they are unwilling to wield power in their own right,” but
instead “need to respond to the abiding interests of the people”
(Counts 1932, 26) rather than the interests of the upper-middle
and upper classes represented in the status quo. |
Counts’s most important contributions continued as points of reference
throughout his intellectual and political careers.
Educational and Career Backgrounds
Counts’s research
focused on the socio-cultural foundations of education. He explored
topics such as the role of social class in high school education and
the formation of school boards in the American educational system.
Counts also visited many countries and helped develop the field of
comparative education. He was a member of the Educational Survey Commission
to the Philippines and Associate Director of Teachers College’s International
Institute. As a result of his work in comparative education, Counts
visited more than 17 countries, including three extensive trips to
the ex-Soviet Union. In 1946, he worked with General Douglas MacArthur’s
team of advisors concerning the reconstruction of education in Japan.
As a result of his research and practical experience in comparative
education, Counts became nationally prominent for his international
perspectives on education, especially regarding the social, cultural,
and historical background of the Soviet Union.
Counts also became politically active. As National President
of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) from 1939–1942, Counts
led a newly elected anti-communist administration to reconcile the
split between the AFT and Teachers Guild Local #5 that had seceded
the union in 1935 because of the AFT’s leftist orientation. Counts
also became New York State Chairman of the American Liberal Party during
the mid-1950s. Counts was an active member of the American Civil Liberties
Union and the National Academy of Education. Though many people considered
Counts to be an industrial socialist, his political work spoke mainly
to his liberal orientation.
Contributed by James C. Jupp, Martin Middle School, Austin,
TX Independent School District
References
Counts, G. S. 1932. Dare progressive education be progressive? Progressive
Education 4(9): 257–63.
Counts, G. S. 1932. Dare the school build a new social order? New
York: John Day.
Cremin, L. A. 1964. The transformation of the American school:
Progressivism in American education 1876–1957. New York: Vintage
Urban, W. J. 1972. Preface. Dare the school build a new social
order? Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
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