Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education

A thirty-two-page booklet published in 1918, Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, radically changed the curricular and social objectives of the nation's public secondary schools. Largely due to mass immigration, urbanization, and industrialization, the nation's relatively young, public, secondary institutions began to see a sharp increase in enrollment. Concerned with the democratic education of the growing industrial nation, the National Education Association appointed twenty-seven members to the Committee on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, which produced the booklet.

In the wake of World War I, the nation's political and economic climate was peculiarly conducive to the social agenda set forth in Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education. The publication outlined seven principles meant to guide the social, moral, and intellectual development of American public school children between ...