Pulling Out the Rugg (Curriculum)

Given that we're a library, we are naturally biased towards librarians. We've mentioned former Dartmouth librarian Harold G. Rugg, member of the class of 1906, several times before. However, today we're going to take a different tack and talk about at Harold O. Rugg, a member of the class of 1908. Rugg graduated from Dartmouth with a B.S., which he followed a year later with a degree in civil engineering from Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering. He then worked for the Missouri Public Railroad before going to the University of Illinois to teach in their engineering department.

This story sounds like that of many other alumni: get a degree from Dartmouth, then possibly complete a grad degree, and then land a respectable upper-middle-class industry job. However, during his time at Illinois, Rugg departed from this well-trodden path. It was there that he began working on a PhD in sociology and education, primarily because of his fascination with the quantification of the learning process and how it works. From there, Rugg went on to serve with his Illinois faculty advisor in World War I on a committee that was the first group to make widespread use of intelligence and aptitude tests on adults.

After the war, Rugg became a faculty member at the Teachers College of Columbia University, where he began work on a social studies textbook series published in pamphlets and titled "Man and His Changing Society." The 14-book series was published between 1929 and 1940. Although initially very successful, selling over 5.5 million copies, in the early 1940s Rugg's work was labeled as subversive by various American conservative groups because it intentionally delineated the weaknesses of American society as well as the strengths. As a result, sales dropped, reactionary pamphlets outlining his philosophy were published and distributed, and there was at least one instance of an actual book-burning of Ruggs's educational series. Although Rugg's direct influence in the school system may have waned since the 1930s, he is still credited with unifying the social sciences into a cohesive curriculum.

To learn more about Harold O. Rugg '08, come to Rauner and ask to see his alumni file.