Harold Rugg was a professor at the University of Chicago and Columbia University, and his work as a curriculum writer was linked with several educational ideologies from the twentieth century. These included not only scientific curriculum-making and child-centered education, but especially social reconstructionism. His greatest contribution was the articulation of a fused social studies curriculum conceived out of several individual disciplines.
Into this kind of reconstructionist, interdisciplinary approach to curriculum, begun in the 1920s and extending into the 1940s, Rugg injected a new vision of America. His six-volume textbook series, Man in a Changing Society (1929–1937) for junior high school students, represented the apex of his achievements as a curriculum reformer. Cutting across these textbooks and his other curriculum writings was the thinking of a social progressive. Eschewing the dry memorization of isolated and meaningless facts in school knowledge, Rugg sought a means to challenge students to think about drawing interconnections between the great economic, social, and political ideas of the age. With a reformist zeal, Rugg drew together a series of generalizations from history and the social sciences that he felt represented the “glue” for higher-thinking process.
Unlike most other curriculum writers in the social studies, Rugg placed special emphasis on the importance of understanding the dynamics of propaganda and the manipulation of public opinion under both democracy and dictatorship. The tone of social protest that laced much of his curriculum material encouraged a growing conservative opposition to his work during the late 1930s.
Although receding into the background with the advent of World War II, Rugg’s curriculum ideals re-emerged once again during the tumultuous 1960s.
Bibliography:
- Carbonne, P. (1977). The social and educational thought of Harold Rugg. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
- Riley, K., & Stern, B. (2001). Reflecting on the common good: Harold Rugg and the social reconstructionists. Social Studies, 92, 56–59.
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