Polio Epidemic in 1937 Closed Chicago Schools: Kids Learned at Home from Radio (Michael Hines)
An assistant professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, Michael Hines researches and teaches the history of education in the United States. His articles have appeared in the Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth and History of Education Quarterly; he is writing a book on race, democracy and Chicago’s schools during World War II. This piece appeared in the Washington Post, April 3, 2020.
A rapidly spreading virus with no known cure or vaccine. Chicago-area schools closed. Experiments in remote learning and concerns over access to technology. This has happened before.
While the challenges to education stemming from the novel coronavirus pandemic may seem unprecedented, educators may be surprised to learn that almost 100 years ago Chicago’s schools faced similar circumstances.
In the fall of 1937, an outbreak of poliomyelitis, or polio, a highly infectious disease that can lead to paralysis and death and is especially dangerous to young children, swept through the Chicago area. It forced schools to delay the opening of the academic year and prompted widespread alarm about lost instructional time and students left to their own devices.
Determined to continue instruction for the district’s nearly 325,000 elementary age students, then-Superintendent William H. Johnson and then-Assistant Superintendent Minnie Fallon initiated a massive experiment that brought school lessons directly into the homes of students through the coordinated efforts of public schools, major radio stations, daily newspapers and local libraries.
Although some of the area’s more well-heeled schools had already begun using radio inside the classroom, the technology itself was still fairly new and largely untested in education in the 1930s, and the idea of school-by-radio was highly innovative, prompting excitement and comment from educators around the country.
As Chicago and other cities and school districts again prepare to tackle the CONTINUE READING: Polio Epidemic in 1937 Closed Chicago Schools: Kids Learned at Home from Radio (Michael Hines) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice