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My name is Walter Feinberg.
I've been a professor
in ah, the department of Educational Policy Studies
since ah, 1967 when I came as a young ah, assistant professor
at a time when most of my students were older than I.
And they gradually got younger and younger
and my colleagues got younger and younger and ah,
um, I wound up the oldest person in the department
a- and decided a few years in that role, the retire.
Um, but I've been here since, as I said, since 1967.
When I came the department was
ah, largely a department in social foundations of educations
and it had a different name.
It's name was The Department of History and Philosophy
of Education, and um,
much of its work was centered around the relationship
between school and society which had been a
very um, normal way of- of um,
l- l- organizing the subjects that went into the
content of the- of the department.
Um, the major role of the department
at the time was to um,
ah, teach the courses of social foundations of education at-
but at the time it was also becoming
more and more disciplinary orientated.
So I was hired perhaps
a-as the second person, I think,
to have actually have their Ph. D. in philosophy,
Harry Broudy, an older colleague at the time,
um, was a Ph. D. in philosophy
and was r- was writing a good deal on um, the role of
the public schools and the aims of education.
So one of his books, kind of a later book,
is "The Real World of the Public Schools"
in which he um, tries to sort of,
he was always a little bit against the tide.
Um, trying to sort of push for a ah,
more classical orientated public school education,
not so much Latin and Greek
but especially the role of the arts and aesthetics
ah, in education.
He was a very, very prominent um, figure in the field.
The other um, side of the work that was done early on
were a group of people that were ah,
much more pragmatic in their orientation,
many of them- or thre- at least three of them um,
Bunny Smith who was head of the department when I came,
um, William Stanley um,
whose book "Education and Social Integration"
was at that time, read by all Masters of Education Students
in the college, ah, in a course that is still on the books,
that was required um, Education, I think, 304,
was the name of it,
Social Foundations of American Education
and ah, this book is a um,
a- an argument that the role of public education
needs to be um, social integration.
Ah, and it ah, it's- it's impetus was, of course, the um,
the- the signif- great-
great immigration movements of the 19- um -00s
the early 1900s
and at this time it was significant too because
even though it doesn't mention it very much,
the Civil Rights Movement was um, ah,
initiated just earlier- j- a few years earlier than I came.
So teaching this book was ah, important
because we could also talk about the role of civil rights
as an integrating factor in American education.
Um, the early work was also ah, had significant um,
work in the um, in- in forming
the idea of the social foundations.
So this book was sort- sort of a major book
throughout the country in social foundations at the time.
It was written by four members of the college,
ah, Bill Stanley, who I mentioned,
Bunny Smith, who I mentioned was head of the department
when I came,
ah Kenneth Benne
ah, who actually had been in the department
and then left ah, for Boston University um,
in the ah, late 1950s and was one of my major teachers,
and then um, a different Anderson,
I'm blocking on his first name but ah,
he was the historian in the department.
Ah, so this book has a very ah, significant role
in the foundation of the field nationally
ah, and ah, now I don't think it's u- used much
but at that time it was very important.