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Arthur E. Bestor Collection
Arthur Bestor, assistant professor of history, was the editor of Proceedings, a publication of the Middle States Association of History and Social Science Teachers. Bestor contended that low academic standards were the gravest threat to democracy and equality imaginable, and that liberals should be the first to condemn them. Bestor concluded that the first thing higher education must do was to establish the academic standards for secondary school teachers through rigorous exams. He wrote a controversial and well known polemic titled Educational Wastelands: The Retreat from Learning in Our Schools.

The following documents, largely correspondence, relate to Dr. Bestor's approved proposal and the subsequent publication, sponsored by the Association, of the Guide to Ten Major Depositories of Manuscript Collections in New York State. The Guide was published in order to “make available to teachers and scholars a reference work that might not otherwise be issued in a form so much more usable than the mimeographed volumes which the survey ordinarily published.” The cost of printing the Guide was nearly 4 times greater than expected, causing strain on the already weakening financial situation of the Association. Although the financial obligations to the printers were eventually paid, the tension this situation created between Association board members and Bestor prompted Bestor’s resignation as editor. Soon after his resignation, Bestor left Teachers College to take a position at Stanford University.
Arthur E. Bestor Faculty File
Created By: Pocket Masters

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