Abstract
In 1917, psychologist J. Mace Andress acknowledged the difficulties of teaching about alcohol in a “modern” manner. An instructor at Boston Normal School, Andress was also a national leader in the movement to promote “proper health habits” among American public school children. From diet and fumigation to dental care and physical fitness, Andress maintained, good habits emerged only from continued practice and reinforcement. When it came to alcohol, however, “it is practically impossible to give any kind of training in action,” Andress admitted. To teach oral hygiene, for example, instructors could simply drill students in teethbrushing “until the habit has been cultivated.” Yet the entire object of alcohol instruction was to prevent—not to promote—the “habit” of drinking. Even as it became a standard credo for the rest of the curriculum, Andress conceded, “learning by doing” would never do for alcohol.1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Reference
J. Mace Andress, The Teaching of Hygiene in the Grades (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917), 87–88.
Russell Baker, “Observer: Bad News for the Old Booze School,” New York Times, January 18, 1966: 36; “Idea of Drinking in Schools Scored,” ibid., January 14, 1966: 41; “School Daze,” ibid., January 16, 1966, IV, 2.
Lawrence A. Cremin, The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957 (New York: Vintage, 1961), esp. 127–176, 274–327; Arthur Zilversmit, Changing Schools: Progressive Education in Theory and Practice. 1930–1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 19–36; Diane Ravitch, Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), esp. 162–201. As Larry Cuban and other scholars have reminded us, the vast majority of actual classroom instruction in the United States has hewed to teacher-centered “traditional” methods rather than to childcentered “progressive” ones. Yet the persistence of “reform talk” in most academic subjects—that is, the perpetual demand to make these subjects more activity-based— differentiates them sharply from the sex/drugs/alcohol nexus, where (as Morris Chafetz would discover) the mere suggestion of “learning-by-doing” is enough to provoke a scandal. Larry Cuban, How Teachers Taught: Constancy and Change in American Classrooms, 1890–1980 (New York: Longman, 1984); Linda M. McNeil, Contradictions of Control: School Structure and School Knowledge (New York: Routledge, 1986), esp. 157–190; David K. Cohen, “Teaching Practice: Plus Que Ca Change … ,” in Philip W. Jackson, ed., Contributing to Educational Change: Perspectives on Research and Practice (Berkeley, CA: McCutchan, 1988), esp. 44–47.
B. Edward McClellan, Moral Education in America: Schools and the Shaping of Character from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999), 46–61.
Robert D. Russell, “Alcohol,” NEA Journal 53 (1964): 66.
Charles H. Stowell, A Primer of Health: Practical Hygiene for Pupils in Primary and Lower Grades (New York: Silver, Burdett and Co., 1906), 123. The information about Mary Hunt in this paragraph and the ensuing ones comes from Jonathan Zimmerman, Distilling Democracy: Alcohol Education in America’s Public Schools, 1880–1925 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999).
W.B. Ferguson, “Temperance Teaching and Recent Legislation in Connecticut,” Educational Review 23 (1902): 242; “Discussion,” NEA Proceedings 39 (1900): 256. Of course, Mary Hunt and the WCTU could also cite Scripture—against the doctrine of learning by doing. When God handed down the Ten Commandments, Hunt argued, He never paused to consider that His “Thou Shalt Nots” would encourage people to steal, murder, or commit adultery. “How unfortunate,” quipped one of Hunt’s supporters, “that the Bible is so unpedagogical as to teach the Decalogue as well as the Beatitudes.” Mary Hunt, “These Are the Commandments,” School Physiology Journal 6 (January 1897): 84–85; Macy A. Smith, “Some Untenabl.
Gail Milgram, “A Historical Review of Alcohol Education Research and Comments,” Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education 21 (1976): 4; “All Views Necessary,” Stillwater [OK] News-Press, February 9, 1956, “1956” folder, box 9, Marty Mann Papers, George Arents Research Library, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York. For an overview and interpretation of alcohol education in the postwar period, see Zimmerman, “ ‘One’s Total World View Comes Into Play.’ ”
Bernard Bard, “The Shameful Truth and Consequences of School Drug Programs,” Parents Magazine 49 (September 1974): 50; Donald J. Wolk, “Four Rules for TeachingAbout Drugs,” in Donald J. Wolk, ed., Drugs and Youth (Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies, 1971), 76; “Dr. Helen Nowlis Named to Head U.S. Drug Education,” Drugs and Drug Abuse Education Newsletter 2 (September 1971): 1, 6.
Chwee Lye Chng, “The Goal of Abstinence: Implications for Drug Education,” Journal of Drug Education 11 (1981): 14; Dan Baum, Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 1996), 88–90, 99. See also Marsha Manatt, Parents, Peers and Pot (Rockville, MD: National Institute on Drug Abuse, 1979), chapter 1.
Peggy Mann, Marijuana Alert (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985), 413, 416; David F. Musto, The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control, 3rd edn (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 265; Jonnes, Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams, 393; Baum, Smoke and Mirrors, 122; Marsha Manatt, Parents, Peers and Pot II: Parents In Action (Rockville, MD: National Institute on Drug Abuse, 1983), 36.
Richard A. Hawley, “The Bumpy Road to Drug-Free Schools,” Phi Delta Kappan 72 (December 1990): 312; Kitty Kelley, Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), 368–371, 389; Baum, Smoke and Mirrors, 200; “Drug Education Gets an F,” U.S. News and World Report 101 (October 13, 1986): 64.
Moran, Teaching Sex, 25; “Sex Education,” Vigilance 27 (1913): 6, quoted in John C. Burnham, Paths Into American Culture: Psychology, Medicine, and Morals (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988), 163; Charles W. Eliot, untitled remarks, Social Hygiene 1 (1914): 2, quoted in Carter, “Birds, Bees, and Venereal Disease,” 225.
Edgar F. Van Buskirk, “How Can Sex Education be Made a Part of Biology?” School Science and Mathematics 19 (1919): 336, quoted in Philip J. Pauly, “The Development of High School Biology: New York City, 1900–1925,” Isis 82 (1991): 684; Carter, “Birds, Bees, and Venereal Disease,” 244; Third Report of Joint Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities (Sacramento: California Senate, 1947), 324, California State Archives, Sacramento, California.
Tom Anderson, “Straight Talk,” Southern Farm Publications (June 1969), “Sex Education” folder, box 7, William Ford Papers, Bentley Historical Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan; Irvine, Talk About Sex, 55–57; “Sees Reds Under Beds,” Leawood Sun [Shawnee Mission, Kansas], February 6, 1969; Mike Royko, “The New Peril: A Red in Bed,” Chicago Daily News, February 24, 1969, both in folder 46, accession 73-150-81 M35, Mary Steichen Calderone Papers, Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Harvard University.
David Wagner, The New Temperance: The American Obsession with Sin and Vice (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), 73–78; Jonathan Zimmerman, “Amotivation and Other Syndromes,” Baltimore Sun, June 14, 1991.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2006 Donald Warren and John J. Patrick
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Zimmerman, J. (2006). Sex, Drugs, and Right ‘N’ Wrong: Or, The Passion of Joycelyn Elders, M.D.. In: Warren, D., Patrick, J.J. (eds) Civic and Moral Learning in America. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403984722_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403984722_13
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-53462-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4039-8472-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)