The progressive idea of reform developed through years of experimentation in St. Louis and achieved success in the 1897 School Board reorganization. As early as 1877 the tendency to treat the city as a separate entity became apparent when a new charter separating the city from the county was effected. Previously there had been both a city and a county government in the same area, each with two legislative houses and the power to tax. The “dual double-headed system then in force,” one critic argued, “was anomalous and absurd.” The two bodies, both of which levied taxes, did not really represent the people, since neither was elected at large. The new charter, although retaining the two-house City Council, required one house to be elected at large; efficiency was increased through extended terms for most officials and an increase of administrative powers for the mayor.

The social reconstructionist educators within the progressive education movement were only one of the many groups to emerge in response to the depression of the thirties with the promise that their plan would regenerate society. Compared to Upton Sinclair's “End Poverty in California” program, the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party and the large followings of Huey Long, Father Coughlin and Francis Townsend, their movement seemed insignificant indeed. Yet they were taken seriously by political groups on both the Left and the Right. This was in marked contrast to the large body of classroom teachers, who remained indifferent to the Promethean role they were being called upon to perform. The extreme Left was forced to consider the social reconstructionists because the revolutionary role they assigned to the school represented a direct challenge to the orthodox Marxist position. Conservative groups responded to the program of the social reconstructionists out of fear that the minds of the young were being filled with un-American ideas and values. While the latter created a louder clamor, it was the Communists who were most deeply affected by social reconstructionism.

A major problem with Lawrence A. Cremin's The Transformation of the School is the neglect of one aspect of progressive political ideology and one stream of educational thought during the pre-World War I period. The neglect of these two movements was probably caused by a failure to give a coherent statement as to the nature of educational reforms during this period and the use of a rather vague definition of progressive political and social change. What Cremin calls “progressive education” during the pre-World War I period appears to be a conglomeration of educational changes with no particular common bonds except that they represented something new. This lack of clarity gives the impression that a strange combination of people were called “progressive educators.” Under the roof of this title is mixed the free atmosphere of Marietta Johnson's Organic School with the well ordered air of the platoon system of the Gary Public Schools. The title also houses the educational elitist and test-oriented Edward L. Thorndike with Caroline Pratt's Play School. This confused picture of educational change is a function of an equally obscure definition of progressive political and social change. Cremin vaguely defines “American Progressivism writ large” as social and political change designed to improve the lives of individuals, a valueless definition since it literally includes everyone.

If he is alert to avenues of advancement, an educator (a term here applied to all college teachers) will heed the dictum “publish or perish.” Indeed, if he is in the fullest sense of the word an educator, he will have developed or be developing ideas and information he wants to share with readers somewhere. Unpublished material is of little benefit to a waiting world; obviously, information must appear in print to help either the reader or the educator-writer. For a person who has information to communicate, the problem of finding readers cannot be considered acute today. The beginner, whether he considers himself a specialist or a generalist, should find a measure of encouragement in the simple fact that there are literally scores of publications available to him.

In the years immediately following World War II, national attention was directed to the problems of education in the United States. As was the case with other aspects of American life, the exigencies of war had required that normal growth and development of the educational system be deferred until the cessation of hostilities.