National Defense Education Act (NDEA)

The National Defense Education Act (NDEA), enacted on September 2, 1958, stands as a major act of reform. It marked the beginning of large-scale involvement of the federal government in education, pairing what was billed as “good education” with the national interest.

In the wake of World War II the major movement in the nation's schools was the life adjustment movement, headed by the vocational educator Charles Prosser. This movement, claiming to represent true “democracy” in education, was roundly criticized by academicians as “soft.” Adherents of the National Science Foundation and others held education professors and schools of education as mainly responsible for what they believed was the low-achieving status of American students, particularly in mathematics, science, and modern foreign languages.

The criticism of American education, especially its public schools, increased immensely with the launching of Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite, by the Soviet Union in October 1957. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his Message to Congress on January 27, 1958, called for matching educational programs with national defense and recommended the federal government play an important part in this activity. Warning of the Soviet threat, Eisenhower called for the nation to beat the Soviet Union in the military competition, which included directing schooling toward that end. The NDEA was the result of the enlarged federal role in education.

The purpose of the NDEA was to improve and strengthen all levels of the school system and to [Page 628]encourage students to continue their education beyond high school. Specific provisions included scholarships and loans to students in higher education, with loans to students preparing to be teachers and to those who showed promise in the curricular areas of mathematics, science, engineering, and modern foreign languages; grants to states for programs in mathematics, science, and modern foreign languages in public schools; the establishment of centers to expand and improve the teaching of languages; help to graduate students, including fellowships for doctoral students to prepare them to be professors at institutions of higher learning; assistance for the improvement of guidance, counseling, and testing programs; provisions for research and experimentation in the use of television, radio, motion pictures, and related media for educational purposes; and the improvement of statistical services at the state level.

Educators were called to the bar to do their part in meeting the challenge posed by Soviet totalitarianism in service, industry, government, military strength, and international relations. Supporters of the legislation pointed to precedents, such as the federal aid to land grant higher education institutions in the 1862 Morrill Act in 1862 and vocational education, embodied in the Smith-Hughes Act in 1917, during World War I. The NDEA differed from Smith-Hughes, however, in that professors of education, who had lost credibility by their espousal of, and involvement in, life adjustment education, played at best a minor role in the structure and operation of the NDEA. Advocates of the NDEA contended that they were not interfering with the fundamental principle that states and local communities were responsible for the conduct of American schooling and institutions of higher education in the operation of higher education. Opponents maintained, however, that categorical aid such as was proposed by the NDEA would shape educational policy and would place the federal government in charge. This was not, in their view, as NDEA supporters averred, a constructive policy on the part of the federal government. Other critics, such as the National Education Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers objected to what they felt was the narrow focus of the NDEA on science and technology plus the Act's reliance on the National Science Foundation university-oriented community for direction as opposed to the broader approach of the education-oriented U.S. Department of Education.

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