Welcome to our module on public education in The Great Depression. In our first episode we look at the economic catastrophe known as The Great Depression, and the federal government's efforts to mitigate its effects on the nation's youth. The signal for the onset of the Great Depression was the stock market crash of 1929. Caused by reckless banking practices and overextended credit and debt, the same fundamental causes that propelled the Great Recession of 2008. By the early 1930's, the nation was in the throws of a great misery. As if to mock President Herbert Hoover's ineffectual efforts to ease the Depression, shanty towns called Hoovervilles sprouted across the country. They were often the last resort for America's newly homeless. Unemployment was rampant in every sector of the economy, reaching 25% in 1933. Bread lines formed in cities, and migrants roamed the nation's highways and byways in search of jobs. In the farming regions of the Midwest, the effects of the Depression were exacerbated by a drought across the Great Plains that created the notorious Dust Bowl. And drove uprooted farmers westward to California's agricultural valleys. >> In 1931 the US counted some 128,000 urban and rural school districts. Not surprisingly, as public schools were heavily dependent on local taxes, in a devastated economy financial retrenchment was inevitable. When it came in the early 1930's, retrenchment entailed severe cuts in teacher salaries and so called frills and fads, such as kindergarten, art, music, and physical education. The administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, promised a New Deal for America. Between 1933 and 1935, a spade of new federal agencies were established to provide a massive stimulus to the American economy. Education was a targeted sector for New Deal expenditures. As the Roosevelt administration had little faith in leaders of the nation's public schools, the new federal agencies sidestepped school district officials and exercised direct control of their own educational programs. They provided emergency relief dollars to shore up rural teacher salaries in poor southern states. Various new agencies provided funds for the construction and renovation of school buildings. Indeed, 70% of all new construction between 1933 and 1939 received New Deal support. Photographers for the New Deal's Farm Security Administration provided poignant images of rural schoolchildren and their schoolhouses. >> The New Deal agencies associated with public education programs were primarily the Works Progress Administration, WPA, the Civilian Conservation Core, CCC, and the National Youth Administration, NYA. The WPA had the greatest impact, placing at the federal government's expense, tens of thousands of unemployed professional and technical workers in public schools. They were mainly teachers, but also nurses, artists, musicians, actors and librarians. The Civilian Conservation Corp, CCC, provided training and employment for some 2.5 million jobless young men over a nine year period. The national service rendered by CCC workers included among other projects, planting trees and fighting fires in the national forest, and constructing wilderness trails, notably the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail. While the CCC employed blacks, its camps were racially segregated, and CCC administrators were white. >> Hm. Yet as, as Lawrence Cremin notes, quote, life in the CCC was itself a form of education, unquote. Bringing together youth from a variety of localities, working together on common goals, adjusting to common standards of hygiene, food, and socializing. More formal instruction, initially optional and later required, followed, with libraries and work camps. Courses of study were developed under the Office of Education in everything from forestry to boiler making to philosophy and economics. The CCC was an early forerunner of subsequent adult education practices. By 1937, some 35,000 illiterates had learned to read and write. Over 1,000 gained high school diplomas, and even a few completed college through the CCC. The National Youth Administration provided work-study jobs for about 1.5 million needy highschool students including 300,000 black students. Paying an average of $5.41 per month. >> [LAUGH]. >> For no more than ten hours of weekly work, an amount sufficient to pay for clothes, car fare, and school fees. In our next episode, we look more explicitly at the Great Depression's impact on the American high school. [MUSIC]
