Making Scientific Americans: Identifying and Educating Future Scientists and Nonscientists in the Early Twentieth Century
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Making Scientific Americans: Identifying and Educating Future Scientists and Nonscientists in the Early Twentieth Century The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Miller, Rebecca B. 2017. Making Scientific Americans: Identifying and Educating Future Scientists and Nonscientists in the Early Twentieth Century. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard Graduate School of Education. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33052847 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Making Scientific Americans: Identifying and Educating Future Scientists and Nonscientists in the Early Twentieth Century Rebecca B. Miller Julie A. Reuben Jal Mehta Steven Shapin A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Education of Harvard University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education 2017 © 2017 Rebecca B. Miller All Rights Reserved iv Acknowledgments I am honored and grateful to have received support for this study from a number of sources: the Dean’s Summer Research Fellowship at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), a Dissertation Research Fellowship at the Philadelphia Area Center for History of Science, National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award # 1057639: “Crafting the Two Cultures: Identifying and Educating Future Scientists and Non-Scientists in America, 1910–1970,” and the HGSE Dissertation Fellowship. This project, like the last several years of my life, took a number of turns I did not anticipate. I am indebted to those who supported me as I worked to complete it. My heartfelt thanks go to Maureen, Joan, and Eileen and to my family for sustaining me. I am immeasurably grateful for the incisive feedback and unwavering encouragement of Jal Mehta and Steven Shapin; I am convinced there is no more brilliant or generous pair of readers to be found. I have conjured a great many words in these pages, but I have none that will suffice to express my regard and gratitude for Julie Reuben. She has been my adviser, teacher, champion, and beacon. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ............................................................................................................................ vii Introduction ........................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Envisioning the Scientific Society ...............................................................17 Chapter 2: Educational Designs for a Scientific Society ..............................................44 Chapter 3: Reconsidering Specialist Science for All ....................................................66 Chapter 4: Mass Education for the Scientific Citizenry ..............................................86 Chapter 5: The Scientific Attitude and the Ideal Citizen ...........................................121 Chapter 6: Identifying and Differentiating Education for Scientific Talent ............150 Chapter 7: Scientific Citizens in the Atomic Age ........................................................198 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................212 Appendix A: Abbreviations of Archival Collections Cited ........................................220 Appendix B: Research Design and Methods ...............................................................221 Bibliography ...................................................................................................................227 vi ABSTRACT While specialists in all academic disciplines identify with their subjects of study, speaking of themselves for example as Classicists or Sociologists, the status of “scientist” is a uniquely distinctive social category. Educators do not fret about how to teach social studies to “nonsocial scientists” or literature to “nonhumanists,” yet in the natural sciences the distinction between “scientists” and “nonscientists” has guided American educational thought and practice for nearly a century. This dissertation examines why American educators adopted a bifurcated approach to science instruction and how their practices produced an increasingly rigid distinction between those inside the world of science and those on the outside. Throughout much of the nineteenth century, U.S. secondary and college pupils followed a prescribed curriculum that included some instruction in natural history and philosophy. By the twentieth century, however, scientists, educators, and political and intellectual leaders concurred that instruction should be reconfigured to serve two purposes: to prepare citizens for life in the scientific age and to prepare scientists to secure its advance. In subsequent decades, amid changing views of the nature of the scientific enterprise and its place in society, educators launched a succession of projects to identify and differentially teach these two groups. In so doing, they constructed and institutionalized the notions of “future scientist” and “nonscientist” as entities distinct in makeup, educability, and civic responsibility. This study examines key episodes in the history of differentiated science instruction that connect varying conceptions of scientists and nonscientists with practices that shaped students’ educational and career trajectories. Educators enlisted new vii techniques of testing, curriculum and pedagogy, and psychological research to ascertain and measure indicators of scientific character and talent, foster the development of future scientists, and prepare nonscientists to participate in civil discourse and decision-making about scientific matters. These projects shaped beliefs about who could become a scientist, the characteristics indicative of scientific ability, and the social responsibilities ascribed to specialists and nonspecialists. This study sheds light on how educators’ conception of scientific identity developed, how it created and constrained student opportunity, and how it has formulated the relationship between science and the public. viii INTRODUCTION At a 2008 conference on science education hosted by the American Association of Colleges & Universities, physics professor James Trefil noted that, ever since John Dewey brought attention to the issue in 1910, educators have debated whether “the other 98 percent” of science students—the nonmajors—should be taught to “think like” the other two percent or to engage with scientific knowledge in their own, distinctive ways.1 Trefil’s estimate of the durability of this debate was conservative. Beginning around the turn of the twentieth century, U.S. educators widely considered science instruction a necessarily bifurcated endeavor. In prior decades, all secondary and college students learned a little science—usually in the form of natural philosophy, natural history, chemistry, geology, or physics—and generally all learned it in the same way, by reading and reciting renowned texts on these subjects. By 1900, however, the dominant view among educationists held that the forms and purposes of science instruction must vary according to students’ future plans. They adopted a pair of distinct goals: to prepare a workforce of competent scientific professionals and, at the same time, to help all other students understand and appreciate scientific knowledge and its relevance to their lives.2 Over the latter half of the nineteenth century, scientific inquiry had grown in scope and status in both intellectual and public life. Science had come to be viewed as both the 1 James Trefil, “Science Education for Everyone: Why and What?,” Liberal Education 94, no. 2 (8, 2008): 6. Nearly one quarter of the sessions at the 2008 conference focused on the merits and best practices of college courses designed specifically for nonscientists. 2 In this study, “science,” unless otherwise specified, refers to the natural sciences. It is beyond the scope of this dissertation to examine differentiation in social science education. However, my previous research suggests that the ways in which natural science educators distinguish their fields from the social sciences may bring into relief their ideas about the nature of science and scientists’ social roles. Rebecca B. Miller, “Natural Sciences 4 and the Shaping of Postwar America” (Qualifying Paper, Harvard University, 2008). I use the term “educators” to refer to those affiliated with educational institutions and organizations. This includes scientists in their roles as teachers, administrators, and members of professional organizations attending to educational matters. The term “educationists” refers to a subgroup of educators who were involved in crafting agendas for educational policy, theory, and practice. Only a few natural scientists were so involved. 1 body of knowledge that fueled technological and social progress and the mode of thinking that best characterized the modern age. Scientific and educational leaders were eager to expand opportunities for training scientific experts to produce new discoveries and innovations while also spreading scientific understanding among the citizenry to ensure America’s ongoing progress and social cohesion. In a technically sophisticated and diverse society comprising