The 1920’s
Education and Popular Culture
Progressive Education –
John Dewey
By 1914,1 million American
students attended high school
By 1926 , 4 million high school
students
John Dewey introduces the idea
of learn by doing-vocational ed.
Teachers were challenged by
immigrant students who did not
speak English.
Total cost of American
education to taxpayers in the
mid-1920s amounted to $2.7
billion a year.
Park
Whittier High School
Magazines
Magazines, newspapers, and advertising promoted
the flapper life style.
A blend of fiction, cartoons, and articles which
focused on tales of crime and “true confessions.”
By end of the 1920.s magazines includes Time,
Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, and Reader’s Digest
boasted a circulation of over 2 million each.
A. Hernandez
Magazines
Radio
Average price in 1928: $75
1926, NBC network formed
1927 CBS network formed
Famous radio personalities:
Graham McNance, WEAF
broadcaster, H.V. Kalten
Radio events: World News,
Presidential addresses, The
World Series, ( live 10/5/21 NY
Yankees v NY Giants)
1929 Americans spent $850
million on radio equipment
By 1930, 40% of U.S.
households owned radios
V. Zepeda
The Silver Screen
By 1925, film-making had become the nation’s 4th largest
industry and had more than 20,000 movie theaters worldwide.
By 1927 Films became more popular when sound was added
and color soon after.
Weekly attendance doubled for 40 million in l922 to 80 million by
1930, price of admission was 5 cents.
First full length film was The Birth of a Nation by D.W. Griffith
which glorified the KKK
First talkie was The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson
Hammitt
Stars of the Silver
Screen
Mary
Pickford
Charlie
Chaplin
Rudolph
Valentino
Clara Bow
Stars of the Silver
Screen
Walt Disney, 1927
Literary Notables: The
Lost Generation
Sinclair Lewis, 1st Noble Prize
for literature: Main Street &
Babbitt
F. Scott Fitzgerald: This Side of
Paradise , The Great Gatsby
Ernest Hemingway: The Sun
Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms
Edith Wharton: The Age of
Innocence
Willa Cather: My Antonia
John Dos Passos: Three
Soldiers
Poets
Edna St. Vincent Millay:
Ezra Pound
T.S. Elliot: The Wasteland,
CATS
Lacy
Theater, Music, the Arts
Eugene O’Neill’s play, The Hairy Ape, forced
Americans to reflect upon modern isolation,
confusion, and family conflict.
George Gershwin, a composer, who fused traditional
elements with jazz, Rhapsody in Blue
Artists: Edward Hopper & Georgia O’Keeffe
Edward Hopper
Room in New York
Georgia O’Keeffe
Oriental Poppies
The Golden Age of Sports
Football-Red Grange
Boxing-Jack Dempsey and
Gene Tunney
Tennis-Bill Tilden
Baseball-Babe Ruth & Ty
Cobb
Golf-Bobby Jones
Football was the dominant
college sport
Thousands of Americans
took up sports
R. Hernandez
Bobby Jones
Bill Tilden
Jack Dempsey
Ty Cobb
Gene Tunney
Red Grange