Chapter 9: Through a Glass Darkly: History-onics and Moderation in Tanner and Tanner’s (1975) Curriculum Development

The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Or so Chicken Little thought as he ran from friend to friend trying to convince them the end was near. The1970s was a decade of similar sentiment, especially when it came to finding a focus for curriculum development. The era began with the gradual winding down of the Vietnam War, the first war the United States is said to ever have lost. From the Kent State University student protests and their tragic results to terrorist hijackings, oil embargos, Middle East wars, earthquakes, and Richard Nixon, the country seemed perpetually on the brink of the disaster that was foretold by doomsayers of the 1960s who lamented our nation’s demise due to the great Sputnik debacle. Hot on the heels of the rise of Progressive education in the earlier half of the century and the case having been made for the ability of education to improve society, the worm turned as our political leaders made the obvious deduction that what could be ascribed as improving society could also be blamed for its failings. Having lost the great space-race, education was held to account for our students’ supposed inability to compete globally.