The Social Frontier: A Critical Reader

The Social Frontier is the most interesting and important educational journal to emerge from the Great Depression. First published in 1934 by a group of scholars at Teachers College, Columbia University that included George Counts and William Heard Kilpatrick, the magazine represented a conscious act of social and political reconstruction. With a strong collectivist orientation, the magazine was widely misperceived as communist in its approach. In fact, its editorial position called for a greater social role for teachers and a more just and equitable system of schooling.
The magazine, which was published for a total of nine years, included articles by major educational and social thinkers of the period from John Dewey to Robert Hutchins and Harold Rugg. Within months of the magazine’s first issue it came under attack by right-wing political groups, particularly the Hurst newspaper chain. The Social Frontier: A Critical Reader provides a selection of the most interesting and historically important articles from the magazine with a comprehensive introduction and critical commentaries on the selected articles, which are as timely today as they were when first published seventy-five years ago.