Article 5: The Great Depression and Elementary School Teachers As Reported In Grade Teacher Magazine

The Great Depression ravaged much of the American landscape. Preceded by World War I and a flurry of educational change, it impacted public schools in profound ways. In the years leading up to the Great Depression, educators continued to reel from the uncomfortable discovery that was made during World War I: many prospective young American soldiers could not read, write, or do computations (Kyvig 2001; Wilhelm 1990). In the years that followed, the school curriculum, shored up during and directly after World War I, continued to be refined. These changes brought about by World War I included: a marked shift in the emphasis of contemporary history over ancient history, new attention to the current events in lieu of traditional history, and the creation of curriculum materials by governmental and commercial publishers (Mehaffy 1987). Further, teachers were encouraged to “maintain a journal and scrapbook of the war years, and to collect posters, pictures … [and make use of] classroom maps, globes and geographic teaching aids” (Mehaffy 1987, 27). By the late 1920s, curriculum research, design, and construction became “a recognized enterprise” (Button and Provenzo 1989, 247). For elementary school teachers, this meant that the school curriculum grew beyond traditional history and geography instruction to include character education, economics, civics, and use of new methods of instruction. As the curriculum continued to be more focused, the economy of the country began to worsen. The ten-year period from Black Monday in 1929 to the start of World War II in 1939 impacted schools and its teachers and brought about understandably substantial change. This paper reports the daily school and personal challenges that faced teachers during the Great Depression, as reported in the pages of Grade Teacher magazine.