Chapter 4: Theodore Brameld: Reconstructionism for our Emerging Age

Theodore Burghart Hurt Brameld (1904–1987) could easily have led a distinguished career in a university department of philosophy. Trained at the University of Chicago with the well-known and highly-regarded American Progressive philosopher and politician, T. V. Smith, and versed in early twentieth-century Russian social-political thought, Brameld instead wished to breathe the oxygen of everyday human life and made the field of education his professional home. Following a distinguished line of Progressive educators who left university philosophy departments to become members of colleges of education, Brameld sought to implement Progressive ideals and to strive for cultural renewal through education.¹ His quest to redefine the means of Progressive education and to designate Reconstructionist ends for educational reform proved a lifelong theme from his first major work in 1950, Ends and Means in Education—A Midcentury Appraisal, to his 1961 publication, Education for an Emerging Age: Newer Ends and Stronger Means, and concluding with his final work on education, The Climactic Decades: Mandate to Education, published in 1970.² In his effort “to relate theory to practice,” he directed his considerable analytical abilities to address many of the classic educational issues of the day: fostering democracy in schools and society, integrating the subjects of the curriculum, reconciling free inquiry with the inculcation of values, and establishing broader cultural and international awareness.