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COMMENTARY
Revisiting James Bryant Conant
Realism, Then and Now
By William A. Proefriedt

Conant believed that the democratic purposes of education were best served in a school attended by all of the students in the community.

We rarely speak in public nowadays of a fundamental assumption of Conant’s inquiries and policy suggestions: that students were quite different in ability, and that the high school had to find ways to be responsive to these differences.

Educational policymakers today are caught in the same bind in which Conant was caught in his day: They are trying to make the schools work within an economically unjust society.

William A. Proefriedt is a professor emeritus in the school of education at Queens College, a part of the City University of New York, where he continues to teach courses on the history of American education as an adjunct professor.

He came to see the importance of the high schools’ role not only in working with the academically talented, but also in providing a general education for all, in preparing some for work immediately after high school, and in contributing to the creation of a democratic society by fostering understanding among young people who, after high school, would follow quite different career paths.

He expected that all students would be exposed to a general education program for about half their time in school, with students assigned to different ability levels.

Published Online: May 17, 2005
Published in Print: May 18, 2005, as Revisiting James Bryant Conant

Vol. 24, Issue 37, Pages 30,32