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Second in line to the presidency after the vicepresident, the Speaker is chosen by the majority party in the House of Representatives. All the people who have held this position have wielded considerable power, but particularly so if they have belonged to the party not currently occupying the presidency When this is not the case, then the Speaker has generally been overshadowed, having the purpose mainly to ensure that the president’s legislative program is passed through the House. In such a case, the Speaker is judged merely according to success in this endeavor.
Sam Rayburn provided the exception to this rule. Rayburn, a Texas Democrat, was Speaker during the Kennedy administration and, along with most Southern Democrats, opposed much of the northerner’s “New Frontier” agenda. When fellow Texan, Lyndon Johnson became president following the Kennedy assassination, however, Rayburn’s role was reduced to that of an assistant to Johnson in the passage of his “Great Society” legislation.
William “Tip” O’Neill, as Speaker during the Reagan administration, was highly visible as Democrats negotiated with the presidency over which elements of “Reagonomics” and the rollback of the welfare state to pass through Congress. This power and visibility were curtailed considerably however, by Reagan’s 1984 landslide reelection victory over Mondale.
Newt Gingrich succeeded in giving the position of Speaker perhaps the greatest visibility it has received. Only two years after the election of Clinton on a platform of “change,” Gingrich trumped him in the 1994 elections by demanding more change still.
Announcing his “Contract with America,” Gingrich pushed for tax cuts and an end to big government. The Republican Party’s astounding victory giving the Grand Old Party control of both Houses, placed Gingrich in the unusual position of dictating policy to a presidency that had lost control of its legislative agenda.
Gingrich’s ability to inspire great hostility among those who were not in his faction of the Party made his ascendancy relatively short-lived. Miscalculations leading to the 1995 shut-down of government over the budget, which greatly reduced Gingrich’s popularity and increased Clinton’s, began to provide room for congressional Democrats and moderate Republicans to begin to oppose the Speaker. When ethics violations were unearthed that appeared to far outweigh the magnitude of those that had caused the downfall of Democrat Jim Wright (and for which Gingrich would be fined $300,000), the Speaker’s claims to being a new style of politician were destroyed. An attempted Republican coup in 1998 failed, but following the surprise setbacks in the November elections of that year Gingrich resigned.
Another power struggle ensued within the Grand Old Party which saw the rise and fall of Bob Livingstone, who was forced to step down because of claims of marital infidelity (which didn’t look good for the Party endeavoring to impeach the president for acts arising out of extra-marital liaisons). Into the vacuum left by Livingstone moved ex-House Deputy Majority Whip J. Dennis Hastert, whose main appeal was that, in contrast to Gingrich, he was offensive to none.
Industry:Culture
Secondary education generally constituted by 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th grades (corresponding roughly to ages 14–17). It is separated from elementary education by an intermediate stage of middle school (grades 5–8) or junior high (grades 7 and 8), often housed in separate buildings. High school represents a crucial and difficult period of transition both academically and socially Academically it entails specialization, differentiation and competition—a transition to college for many although some will only complete the education legally required of them (leaving when grade level or age permits). Socially and psychologically moreover, this is a time of changing sexuality independence, experimentation and peer relations which produces a strong group culture among teenagers, as well as sometimes highly charged relations with parents and educators. Hence, concerns with education and growth intersect with fears about violence, security sexuality, drugs and adjustment in American images of high school.
In 1965, 11,610,000 students in grades nine to twelve were enrolled in public schools in the US, with an additional 1,400,000 in private schools. By 2000, numbers in public schools had risen to 13,357,000, a rise projected to continue, while those in private schools remained constant. In 1960, 41.4 percent of Americans completed four years of high school, while in 1997 this had risen to 82.1 percent (dropouts constitute roughly 5 percent of the high-school population). These numerical changes are only part of the changing meaning of high schools. High schools were primary sites for integration and racial conflicts from the 1950s onwards, for example. They also have been caught in the decline of inner cities (with aging “problem” schools), the rise of suburbs with a new consumer ethos, class and racial divisions and demands for huge student parking lots.
High schools must respond to these multiple changing demands, extremely diverse populations and contradictory needs while also constrained, in the case of public schools, by limited finances. Academic programs, for example, have become more costly in terms of computers and equipment required for sciences, libraries and research materials and changing demands for first- and second-language learning. Given the juxtaposition of students from different class and ethnic/racial backgrounds at the same school, moreover, school systems face the choice of dividing programs (tracking by strata of tested intelligence or career goals) or constructing an academic “middle ground” that will frustrate special students. Magnet schools, specializing in sciences, arts or other fields, represent an alternative for larger school systems (see Fame, 1980). At the same time, schools may be forced to cut teacher-intensive programs like art or drama to balance their budgets, or rely on television and large classes to deal with mass education. Private and parochial schools control selection of students more closely and raise funds for specific activities, but they too, strain to compete and balance the needs of mass projects against individual changes and demands.
Counseling has also become increasingly necessary and complex, dealing with issues ranging from home life to learning disabilities to multicultural issues. Concern with gender stereotyping (male athletes versus cheerleaders) and sexuality including gay issues, have also become prominent. In many areas, from sexual education and driver’s education to civic involvement, the high school must take over roles previously managed by the family.
Other services in high school include food, basic healthcare and, increasingly security Lunch and breakfast may entail a form of welfare or a competition for privilege to escape campus.
In addition, high schools incorporate expanding extra-curricular activities, including sometimes massive sports programs, journalism (newspapers, yearbooks, literary magazines), travel, bands and orchestras, drama, volunteer and community service, preprofessional formation (Future Farmers of America, Future Teachers) and other interests, generally under faculty supervision. These promote both interests and leadership among students, training for citizenship outside the classroom (or filling résumés for college applications and scholarship competitions). They may also become sites for intense competition among students for internal and external recognition. Such activities may also raise questions of freedom and censorship, for example, in the case of school newspapers, or the rights of students as citizens, in the case of drug tests for participation in activities.
American high schools, moreover, are community institutions, especially in the case of consolidated public institutions with several thousand students. Through social reproduction of community and parental involvement, programs in sports may become community surrogates. High-school events, whether crises or celebrations (school plays, commencement, conflict), are rallying points for a wide range of views and participation. At the same time, high schools reflect divisions of race and class within their catchment pools, and have proved vulnerable to violence, censorship, political debate and social crises, from integration in the 1950s to guns and school shootings in the 1990s. American news media, for example, have often explored perceived high school in terms of threats of drugs, alcohol, tobacco and sexuality. In the Cold War period, the impact of anti-American ideologies through teachers and materials was also prominent, although this has given way to concerns with covert agendas of culture and sexuality The intensity of concern with high school is magnified by its role as a shared experience in American society and by the consumer power of high-school students, who are primary targets for advertising and consumption in fashion, music, Hollywood and fast food. This creates a mall culture as a spatial displacement of high school itself (as soda shops figured as a hang-out in postwar generations). Hence, depictions of high school pervade American literature and mass media. although they illustrate distinctive paradigms. One is the celebratory/nostalgic vision of movies like American Graffiti (1973) or Grease (1978) and long-running television series like Happy Days (ABC, 1974–84) or The Wonder Years (ABC, 1988–93), which build on postwar generations of “innocent” high-school films (teenage werewolves, beach movies, etc. in the 1950s/1960s). Nostalgic issues are also sorted out in “high-school reunions,” like Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) and/or episodes of television sitcoms.
Others have seen high school from the point of view of outsiders created by a conformist peer culture—J.D. Salinger’s controversial classic Catcher in the Rye (1951) Jim Carroll’s Basketball Diaries (film, 1995, linked by mass media to the Columbine High School massacre) or the television series Freaks and Geeks (1999–). These sometimes coincide with media representations of high schools as places of serious social malaise (Asphalt Jungle, 1950; Dangerous Minds, 1998).
Other popular genres have combined celebration and soap-opera sexuality (the longrunning Beverly Hills 90210 (FOX, 1990–2000), Dawson’s Creek (WB, 1998–) or the movie Can’t Hardly Wait, 1999). Still others show teenage difference and experience (Breakfast Club, 1985; Pretty in Pink, 1986) or provide social commentary (Heathers, 1989; Clueless, 1995; Election, 1999). High-school depictions, however, rarely deal with complex academic issues. As both a complex formative experience and one whose participants seek knowledge, guidance and shared experience, depictions of high school, whether insightful or commercial, promise to be a staple of mass media for generations to come.
Industry:Culture
Seemingly innocent phrase used by conservatives and others to denigrate multicultural efforts and sensitivities. The phrase evokes insincerity and empty rules, rather than new, complex worlds of knowledge, behavior and communication that a recognition of diversity and equality entails. Certainly colleges (a frequent target for those who decry p.c. thinking) and other cultural institutions have created missteps as they try to regulate speech or interpersonal relations or interpret activities through a rigid template of race, class and gender. Nonetheless, attempts to deconstruct cultural patterns based on white male dominance prove both difficult and threatening towards those conservatives who throw this term (like “family values”) around rather freely.
Industry:Culture
Segregation, which kept blacks and whites separate in their social relations, developed in the aftermath of Reconstruction as a system of race control and oppression. Its constitutionality was questioned and then affirmed in the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896, in which the Supreme Court made “separate but equal” legal—blacks and whites could be segregated, so long as separate facilities were provided. Until the 1950s, therefore, segregation on streetcars and railroad carriages, and at movie theaters grew throughout the South despite intermittent protests. Under the regime commonly referred to as “Jim Crow” in the South, separate public schools, washrooms, water fountains and park benches were established for blacks and whites, while churches, clubs and neighborhoods echoed this division.
In the North de facto segregation also existed, with blacks commonly required to sit in balconies at neighborhood movie theaters in cities like Chicago, IL, or excluded from downtown hotels and restaurants. Restrictive covenants kept blacks out of white neighborhoods, while unions and employers also enforced divisions of race and class.
Challenges to segregation came early nonetheless. Even Plessy v. Ferguson was itself a challenge, while individuals like Ida B. Wells endeavored to fight discrimination through the legal system. In a climate of pervasive lynching, however, such challenges faced a veritable reign of terror. However, the establishment of the NAACP in 1911, and its strong legal department, brought more systematic challenges in the courts. By the 1930s and 1940s, the NAACP had numerous incremental successes, generally challenging instances of segregation where southern states were clearly not providing equal facilities for blacks (e.g. Gaines v. University of Missouri, 1938).
The 1940s also witnessed two other important milestones in changing American apartheid. One was President Truman’s 1948 decision (urged by A. Philip Randolph) to desegregate the armed forces. The other was Branch Rickey’s 1945 signing of Jackie Robinson for the Brooklyn Dodgers, beginning the desegregation of baseball. Both, in turn, profoundly influenced the South. Desegregating army bases increased pressure to integrate areas surrounding US army bases. Similarly northern teams with black players put pressure on the towns hosting their spring training to change.
By the mid-1950s, other challenges to segregation emerged through the Supreme Court and black consumer power. The NAACP made a fullfrontal assault on segregation, persuading the Supreme Court to declare in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) that segregation was “inherently unequal.” Other decisions attacked segregation on interstate travel. But such decisions were meaningless unless they were enforced. It fell to African Americans to test the decisions and make federal and local authorities enforce them. In 1957, at Little Rock, Arkansas, black school children enrolled at Central High School, pushing President Eisenhower to send in troops and federalize the national guard to protect them. In 1960 CORE and SNCC volunteers embarked on freedom rides on interstate buses through the South, forcing Attorney-General Robert Kennedy to intervene.
Meanwhile, attempts were made to pressure businesses and communities. In 1956, in Montgomery AL, E.D. Nixon, the regional representative of the NAACP, orchestrated a bus boycott following the arrest of Rosa Parks. The rise of Martin Luther King, Jr.
during this boycott and its successful conclusion led to the creation of SCLC and further attempts to dismantle segregation. Students, first in North Carolina and then throughout the South, developed the strategy of sit-ins employed at the lunch-counters in stores like Krell’s and Woolworth’s.
The Civil Rights movement successfully destroyed the southern system of segregation. It was not as effective at breaking down less concrete racial barriers in the North, or creating equal and integrated societies. Further, integration was not without its own negative side effects. While some commentators have overly romanticized the segregated communities that existed around schools, colleges and baseball leagues, it is nevertheless true that the black middle class of these segregated communities was greatly disrupted by desegregation. Though members of the segregated elite parlayed their talents into successful positions in previously all-white schools and sporting leagues, the effect also severed the black middle class from the rest of the black community in ways not seen by immigrants who had “escaped” earlier ghettos.
Industry:Culture
Self-help group to combat alcohol addiction through a twelve-step program to quit and stay dry. Founded by Bill Wilson and Doctor Bob Smith in 1935, it has become a worldwide fellowship and model for other programs.
Industry:Culture
Seven Eastern universities—Harvard (Cambridge, Massachusetts), Yale (New Haven, Connecticut), Princeton (Princeton, New Jersey), Dartmouth (Hanover, New Hampshire), Brown (Providence, Rhode Island), Cornell (Ithaca, New York), Columbia (New York City) and the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia)—constitute America’s oldest and most prestigious college association. Harvard, with an endowment of $13 billion, was founded in 1636, with Yale following in 1702, both with religious support. The University of Pennsylvania, was founded later by Benjamin Franklin. Mainly male until the 1960s, all are now co-educational.
The name evokes an elite style of academic life, with ivy-covered halls and gentlemen scholars, embodied in a football association that grouped these schools together in 1898.
Although athletics continues to be a unifying feature, the schools are more likely to be characterized today by their wealth as private institutions (Cornell also includes some state programs). The renown of their faculties and the selectivity of their student body within the US and the world matches the importance of their libraries and laboratories as national resource centers.
All these schools include both undergraduate programs and well-known graduate and professional schools which have produced recent American leaders like John F. Kennedy (Harvard), Al Gore (Harvard), George Bush (Yale) and Bill and Hillary Clinton (Yale Law), as well as world figures like Benazir Bhutto (Harvard) and stars like Brooke Shields (Princeton) and Jodie Foster (Yale). All these schools have organized and active alumni networks.
In general, despite a widening student body since the 1960s, they appear in popular culture as shorthand for a social and economic elite (for example, “preppie” or Ivy League clothes in the 1950s and 1960s).
Industry:Culture
Several distinctions should be made between folk art and the more familiar high art, the art of the masters and of most museums. In contrast to the materials, practices and intentions of high art, folk art makes use of common materials, cheap and readily available, such as those employed by Grandma Moses, who used house paint on Masonite to portray scenes of rural New York State. The creative act itself is usually selftaught, without the benefit of allegiance to or education in a particular school or movement. The intentions of folk art, rather than to express universal concepts or use broad, culturally recognizable imagery, are highly personal and generally concentrate on topics of regional interest. Folk art usually finds its voice through an intensely individual expression.
A further distinction should be made between folk art and the closely associated primitive art (the product of so-called “primitive” societies, such as the tribal cultures of sub-Saharan Africa and Australian Aborigines) and popular art (art produced for a mass audience). Though often lumped together, folk art is generally the product of the rural environment of an industrialized society and, rather than being mass produced for a broad popular audience, it is often unique in production and values. These classifications are often lumped together under the general heading of “primitivism,” denoting a naive expression on topics of limited appeal.
Folk art can be differentiated from folk craft in that the latter is the commercial production of a traditional form of hand manufacturing, such as quilting or basket weaving.
Industry:Culture
Several hundred thousand Hungarians migrated to the US during the years 1880–1914, mostly landless young men seeking work. A substantial number, possibly as many as one-half, later returned to Europe. Of the remainder, many especially those of Jewish origin, settled in New York City’s Lower East Side; most of the others found their way to the industrial centers of the Midwest where work was plentiful. Like other Eastern European ethnic groups, the Hungarians encountered low wages, discrimination and poverty Today the majority of Americans of Hungarian origin are to be found in the upper Midwest, especially Illinois and Ohio. Several thousand Hungarian refugees also came to the US after the failed revolution of 1956.
Industry:Culture
Signed into law in June 1944, the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, better known as the GI Bill of Rights, offered education and home-loan benefits to Second World War veterans. The program helped to triple college graduates from 1939 to 1950 and kept returning soldiers and sailors out of the labor force longer, allowing the economy slowly to absorb job-seeking veterans. Similar programs were implemented for Korean War and Vietnam War veterans as well as reservists. Since 1944, more than 20 million veterans and dependents have participated in education programs and 14 million home loans have been guaranteed.
Industry:Culture
Simply: physics is the study of the physical universe. From the puzzling quantum world of the very small to the majestic motion of galaxies; from the wonderland world of the very fast to the almost motionless world of the very cold; from our everyday world to the beginning of time—all of the beauty mystery and unexpected delights of the physical universe are the realm of physicists. More fully, physics is many things—a database of knowledge, a collection of paradigms and mathematical theories, a community of researchers, teachers and students and a vital and dynamic social institution affecting all parts of the American and world communities. But, primarily physics is a way of inquiring into the physical universe. From experience, physicists expect that all of the operation of the physical universe can be explained by a few general principles and that these principles can be expressed mathematically. Most people appreciate the beauty of a rainbow, but physicists appreciate the physical beauty and more. They understand the principles of reflection and refraction and recognize other phenomena described by the same principles. Physicists also grasp and relish the mathematics which describe these phenomena. The general population has a very Aristotelian worldview. These ideas of motion, energy and light are based on casual observations and “common-sense” interpretations of these observations. But the operation of the physical universe is subtle and needs a more critical investigation. The worldview of physicists and the general public began to diverge after the work of Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton, and are now (due to the theories of quantum mechanics and relativity) radically different.
Many people retain an Aristotelian worldview even after a course in physics. This has led to a widespread attempt at physics education reform. The standard texts used in American colleges and universities are now being challenged by texts which are more aware of the need to alter explicitly the worldview of students. The primary organization overseeing the teaching of physics in K-16 grades and at the graduate levels is the American Association of Physics Teachers. The content of physics represents a formidable collection of observations, theories and applications. Authoritative summaries of twentieth-century physics have been put together by the American Physical Society the primary physics research organization in the USA.
The application of quantum mechanics to the structure of matter has revolutionized technology, leading to the transistor, integrated chips, lasers, nuclear power, etc. Major theories, which withstood many tests in the latter half of the twentieth century include the standard model of particle physics, general relativity and the Big Bang. New theories, which began in the second half of the century and are still being developed and tested, include chaos, nonlinear systems and superstrings. Since the Second World War, the American physics community has pursued the Big Science approach to research, and to the education and training of physicists. Yet the collapse of Big Science led to a surplus of physicists on the world market in the early 1990s and caused the physics community to re-examine its goals, education system and research sociology.
Industry:Culture
