Kappan authors on intellectual development 

This issue of Kappan takes Richard Hofstadter’s 1964 book Anti-intellectualism in American Life as its inspiration. Decades before Hofstadter, though, contributors to this magazine had already begun to voice concerns about the public schools’ commitment to the life of the mind. In January 1935, for example, Earl Marlott asked “Does America believe in thinking?” Too many Americans prefer action to contemplation, he argued, and this influences our schools in numerous ways. Completing projects often comes to seem more important than learning the principles and ideas behind them. Activity is exalted over thinking, and schools often emphasize training rather than education (which, to Marlott, meant the inculcation of certain habits of thought that would enable students to evaluate whatever new and old ideas were circulating around them). And just three months later, in April 1935, I.W. Howerth (“Popular indifference to science?”) urged educators to prioritize scientific thinking in particular (science, in his view, being not just a body of content but a means of acquiring knowledge): 

But while dozens of Kappan authors since the 1930s have called upon educators to do more to teach young people to use their minds, they haven’t always agreed on what such teaching should look like or the extent to which it should emphasize the study of traditional academic content.