Drug and alcohol education in public schools may be important, but
its authoritarian stance often invites skepticism among teachers
and students alike. Yet this program has its roots not in modern
bureaucracy or even Prohibition but in a social movement that
flourished over a century ago.
Scientific Temperance Instruction was the most successful
grassroots education program in American history, championed by an
army of housewives in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union under
the leadership of Mary Hanchett Hunt. As Hunt and her forces took
their message across the country, they were opposed by many
educators and other professionals who believed that ordinary
citizens had no business interfering with educational matters. STI
sparked heated conflict between expert and popular authority in the
debate over alcohol education, but it was eventually mandated as
part of public school curricula in all states.
The real issue surrounding STI, argues Jonathan Zimmerman, was
not alcohol but the struggle to reconcile democracy and expertise.
In this first book-length study of the crusade for STI, he shows
Mary Hunt to be a wily and manipulative politician as he examines
how citizens and experts used knowledge selectively to advance
their own agendas. His work offers a microcosm for observing
Progressive Era tensions between democracy and professionalism,
localism and centralization, and social conservatism and
liberalism.
"Distilling Democracy" points up a crucial and ongoing dilemma
in our education system: educational directives handed down by
experts deny citizens the right to transmit their values to their
children, while populist educational values sometimes stifle
classroom debate. By using history to demonstrate the public's
participation in shaping public education, Zimmerman suggests that
however unappealing the program, society needs to embrace such
popular movements in order to uphold true democracy. His book
offers fresh insight into an overlooked chapter in our history and
will spark debate by raising fresh questions about lay influence on
school curricula in modern America.
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