Word: commonalities
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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These developments are all peopled by the newly prospering Negro middle class, who all seem to have one thing in common : a fever for good living. Technicians, professional men, teachers, nurses, well-paid factory workers, federal employees-they settle where the air is clean and the schools good, join the P.T.A., buy power lawnmowers, curse the crab grass, endure the rigors of commuting, barbecue their steaks, buy second cars and second TV sets, grumble about taxes...
Revolution. Criticizing the schools is no new habit. Ever since it took root in the mid-1800, the "common school" has been under whiplash criticism. When educators urged a broader curriculum than "the Bible and figgers," opponents cried that "every county in the state will need an insane hospital." When education began to reach sizable proportions in the 1880s. alarmists predicted the downfall of parental authority by "a crime-and-pauper-breeding system." In just one of his dozens of leaflets, Maryland's polemical Pamphleteer Francis B. Livesey blamed public schools for "the Negro problem, the servant problem...
...year of inspecting 55 top schools in 18 states, Conant found only eight came close to being exactly "right" (all have improved since). Most common deficiency: only two years of foreign language study (partly because few colleges require more). Other flaws: able girls shunned math and science; able boys concentrated on them, skipping foreign languages and neglecting English. All down the line, observed Conant. "the academically talented student is not being sufficiently challenged...
Jaundiced Eye. It took Detroit and the U.S. a long time to recognize Yamasaki, as it took Yamasaki a long time to find himself. Born in Seattle, he shared the indignities common to Japanese Americans. But he had a burning desire, inspired by an architect uncle, to become an architect. After getting his degree in architecture from the University of Washington, he went East to New York, struggled through a long apprenticeship working as a draftsman, waited out the animosity of the war years, in 1945 landed a job with a firm in Detroit, where he stayed. Steady progress...
...savings habits of people with small incomes. Before, if they saved at all, they put their money under the mattress, or in government securities or postal savings. Today, millions who once looked on stock ownership as the pastime of the rich, and stock exchanges as sinister cabals against the common man, are eagerly investing in capitalism. One of the easiest ways, as in the U.S., is through mutual funds...