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Constructing a Culture

Democracy vs Communism

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Constructing a Culture
Post-World War II: The Rise of the Teenager
As men and women returned home from war, how did post-World War II American life change?

What ideals emerged?

How were teenager's identities shaped as the new ideology emerged?
As a result of postwar fever, adults created a network of resources and tools to coerce and disseminate their concocted standard of upstanding American youth to teenagers across America.
Post-World War II life had changed as GI’s returned home to begin families, and the rise of the middle-class began with the creation of suburbanization in the early 1950s.[1] In response to movement to the suburbs, the social-emotional American landscape promoted homogenization, blandness and conformity.[2] During this same moment, the American post-war life gave rise to a new class of people: teenagers.

Despite the growing terror spreading across the American landscape, teenagers were viewed as a "threat" that could be controlled. Film and print media attempted to constrain teenagers by using different modes of educational material. Informational sources such as The Journal on Audio-Visual Learning and Educational Screen: The Audio-Visual Magazine aimed at disseminating information and promoting conformist ideology to educators, who in turn, cultivated and circulated "idealist" dogma upon their students, American teenagers. Across America, teens were "tuning in" to films created by production agencies such as Cornet. During this same moment, magazines such as LIFE circulated photo-essays concerning the new group and acted as an agent of culture to the public using multidimensional images. The hope was that the image would "speak louder than words" and further impress white, bourgeois ideals upon the impressionable youth.
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[1] Donald Miller, “Program 23: The Fifties/From War to Normalcy,” Video, Fred Barzyk (2000; WGBH Education Foundation.), Online Video.https://www.learner.org/series/biographyofamerica/prog23/transcript/index.html.

[2] S. Mintz & S. McNeil, “The Cold War,” Digital History, Retrieved (January 7,2016)
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3401.
McCarthyism in Education The Communist witch hunt started in the U.S. government by Senator Joseph McCarthy had leaked into all levels of American education by the early 1950s. It was only natural for the red scare to cause paranoia of educators including teachers and librarians because according to Eugenia Kaledin, they were “considered dangerous influences on the general public, [and] were singled out for special scrutiny.”[1] Educators who were believed to be Communist sympathizers or have affiliations with Communists were interrogated at all levels by deans and school boards and all educators were also encouraged to “name names.” This paranoia had a real effect as it is believed that approximately 600 teachers in the U.S. lost their jobs due to McCarthyism in education.[2]

The Case of Professor Burgum

The film “Freedom to Learn” featured in this project portrays a veteran high school teacher, Mrs. Orin, who is called in front of the school board after a parent discovers that she had been teaching her social studies class about Communism. What Mrs. Orin experiences in this film is a representation of what real educators went through during the McCarthy period. One prominent case of a teacher losing his job due to McCarthyism is that of professor Edwin Berry Burgum.

Burgum was an Associate Professor of English at New York University and he was dismissed from his job in 1953 after facing a committee that accused him of teaching Communism. He had been a known member of the U.S. Communist Party but when he was questioned by the McCarran Committee in 1952 about his affiliations with the Party, he avoided answering by pleading the Fifth Amendment.[3] Philip Deery explains that Burgum invoked the Fifth Amendment as “‘a matter of principle’ since the McCarran Committee had no moral or constitutional grounds for attacking ‘the right to private opinion and social action.’”[4] Even though Burgum’s refusal to answer questions about his Communist affiliation was not a breach of his employment and the McCarran Committee never found any evidence of Burgum discussing Communist beliefs in his classes, he was still dismissed from his position.[5]

Zeal for Democracy

The only acceptable way to even discuss Communism in the classroom was to teach it in direct contrast to American democracy. A new educational program called “Zeal for Democracy” was introduced in April 1947 which urged schools across the U.S. to conform their curriculum to a “democracy versus communism” philosophy.[6] The Zeal for Democracy program did not critically examine American democracy or U.S. society, but instead “encouraged students to think of American democracy in normative fashion, and define it solely in opposition to totalitarianism.”[7] The scene in “Freedom to Learn” in which Mrs. Orin writes the characteristics of democracy on the chalkboard next to a list of the characteristics of Communism illustrates the Zeal for Democracy philosophy of discussing Communism only in juxtaposition to American democracy.

[1] Eugenia Kaledin, Daily Life in the United States, 1940-1959: Shifting Worlds (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000), 78.
[2] Stephen H. Aby, “Discretion Over Valor: The AAUP During the McCarthy Years,” American Educational History Journal 36 (2009): 122.
[3] Philip Deery, “’Running with the Hounds’: Academic McCarthyism and New York University, 1952-1953,” Cold War History 10 (2010), 474.
[4] Deery, 475.
[5] Deery, 476, 472.
[6] Andrew Hartman, Education and the Cold War: The Battle for the American School (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), 70.
[7] Hartman, 70.