General Education Board

The General Education Board was a philanthropy created by John D. Rockefeller and Frederick T. Gates in 1902. Rockefeller gave it $180 million, which was used primarily to support higher education and medical schools in the United States, and to help rural white and black schools in the South, as well as modernize farming practices in the South. It helped eradicate hookworm and created the county agent system in American agriculture, linking research as state agricultural experiment stations with actual practices in the field. Its head Frederick Gates envisioned "The Country School of To-Morrow," wherein "young and old will be taught in practicable ways how to make rural life beautiful, intelligent, fruitful, recreative, healthful, and joyous."

By 1934 the Board was making grants of $5.5 million a year. It spent nearly all its money by 1950 and closed in 1964.

Programs

It had four main programs:

1. The promotion of practical farming in the Southern States. Through the Department of Agriculture the board had made appropriations amounting in 1912-1913 to $659,700 for the purpose of promoting agriculture by the establishment of demonstration farms under the direction of Dr. Seaman A. Knapp. About 236 men were employed in supervising such farms.

2. The establishment of public high schools in the Southern States. For this purpose the board expropriated to the State universities in the South sums to pay for the salaries of high-school representatives to travel throughout their States and stimulate public sentiment in favor of high schools. As a result of this work, 912 high schools had been established in 11 Southern States by 1914.

3. The promotion of institutions of higher learning. By 1914 the board had made conditional appropriations to the amount of $8,817,500, gifts towards an approximate total of $41,020,500.

4. Schools for Negroes. By 1914, the board had made contributions, amounting to $620,105, to schools for Negroes, mainly those for the training of teachers. Mrs. Anna T. Jeans had contributed $1,000,000 for that purpose.

At first, $50,000,000 was given. Rockefeller gave it $180 million, which was used primarily to support higher education and medical schools in the United States and to improve farming practices in the South. It helped eradicate hookworm and created the county agent system in American agriculture, linking research at state agricultural experiment stations with actual practices in the field. By 1934 it was making grants of $5.5 million a year. It spent nearly all its money by 1950 and ceased operating as a separate entity in 1960, when its Programs were subsumed into the Rockefeller Foundation.

Criticism

"The purpose of the foundation (the General Education Board) was to use the power of money, not to raise the level of education in America, as was widely believed at the time, but to influence the direction of that education... The object was to use the classroom to teach attitudes that encourage people to be passive and submissive to their rulers. The goal was-and is-to create citizens who were educated enough for productive work under supervision but not enough to question authority or seek to rise above their class. True education was to be restricted to the sons and daughters of the elite. For the rest,, it would be better to productive skilled workers with no particular aspirations other than to enjoy life." -G. Edward Griffin in The Creature from Jekyll Island

Further reading

• Fosdick, Raymond Blaine, Adventures in Giving: The Story of the General Education Board, (1962).
• Harr, John Ensor, and Peter J. Johnson. The Rockefeller Century: Three Generations of America's Greatest Family, (1988).
• General Education Board, The General Education Board: An Account of Its Activities, 1902-1914. ((1915))

See also

• Rockefeller family
• Rockefeller Foundation
• John D. Rockefeller
• John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

External links

• Activities in Tennessee [1]
• Activities in 1939 1939: General Education Board - Archive Article - MSN Encarta (Archived 2009-10-31)
• General Education Board Archives [2]
• http://www.thememoryhole.org/edu/school-mission.htm

• This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.