Arlene L. Barry

Attempting to reinvigorate a nation in the throes of a depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent a message to Congress in 1933 requesting legislation that would permit him to take thousands of unemployed men from across the nation and give them “healthful” work in the forests. A concern at the time was that the unemployed youth would “destroy our civilization” unless their energies were directed into “disciplined” and “constructive projects.” Government officials believed that if they didn’t step in to keep these young men busy, the “underworld” would (1). Therefore, the Roosevelt administration created the Office of Emergency Conservation Work, in an executive order, naming Robert Fechner director. This same order instructed the Secretaries of War, Interior, Agriculture, and Labor to assist the director in selecting the men, establishing and operating a nationwide chain of forest camps, and supervising the work program. Fechner’s task was to execute the program and coordinate the activities of all departments. Under his direction, the Labor Department selected the participants (only men were allowed) and the War Department enrolled them, set up and operated the camps, and fed and clothed the men until they were discharged.

During the nine years (1933-1942) the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps operated, nearly three million men were given work experience and training. Camps were established in all fifty states, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. The kinds of work done in these camps varied: trail construction; work on reservoirs, dams, springs, roads, wells, telephone lines, and fences; fire protection; and rodent, insect, and poisonous plant control. Because the CCC programs were designed as “relief” measures, these enrollees were required to make an allotment of not less than twenty-two dollars of their monthly salary to their families (2). The majority of participants (about 84 percent) were considered “juniors.” These were young, unmarried men between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-eight. Camps also included “Local experienced men” (7 percent); a small group of war veterans (8 percent), sometimes housed in separate camps; Native Americans (1 percent); and African Americans, also housed in separate camps (3). Men could re-enroll after a six-month period, and veterans could stay on indefinitely.

Educational Programs

The CCC originally implemented educational programs in the camps because the unstructured evening time had begun to be a problem for many officers, since “they were responsible for the men in their leisure time.” Also, “Many men . . . interested in forest improvement, began to ask how they could acquire knowledge beyond what their jobs gave them” (4). Additionally, vocational training and other course work filled in gaps in enrollee education and increased enrollees’ potential employability. Finally, in a very practical sense, the educational programs provided jobs for unemployed teachers. Standardized tests and interviews prior to entering CCC camps determined individuals’ educational needs. As a result, enrollees studied a wide range of subjects at a wide range of levels. Options included “elementary subjects” (reading, arithmetic, spelling); “high school subjects” (English, history, mathematics); “college subjects” (accounting, psychology, French); “vocational courses” (forestry, photography, agriculture); “correspondence courses” (diesel engineering, mechanical drawing, civil service); and “lectures” (health and hygiene, first aid, sanitation). One gap that CCC administrators considered critical to fill was that left by illiteracy, defined as “an inability to read a newspaper or write a simple letter” or less than three years of schooling (5).

Finding primary-level reading materials appropriate for adult males presented one of the major problems in working with men classified illiterate. One solution noted by educational advisers was essentially, “Try everything and anything.” Eventually, however, in order to aid the teachers of these classes, a special course of study on the elementary level was developed by a team of specialists in curriculum, teacher education, and elementary education. Special curriculum materials (such as camp life readers and workbooks) were constructed and issued to the camps for teaching illiterate enrollees. A group of professors wrote additional materials (pamphlets and short books or booklets), because some administrators believed available textbooks were “too big, too dull and too difficult.” These materials were “supposed to give enrollees an understanding of the prevailing social and economic conditions in the United States so that each man could cooperate intelligently in improving these conditions.” Sociology professor W. F. Ogburn wrote the first booklet, You and Machines, which focused on the social and economic consequences of the “rapid mechanization of production.” Before the booklet could reach the enrollees, however, it was banned by CCC director Robert Fechner, whose explanation of his action appeared in a letter he sent to the War Department in November 1934. He wrote that the booklet “might include a desire to destroy our present economic and political structures which are held to be responsible for present conditions” (6). Regardless of the reasons for the ban, Ogburn, the American Association of University Professors, and others were very critical of Fechner’s act of censorship.

Objectives

Prior Knowledge

Analysis of Documents

Endnotes

1. Frederic M. Thrasher, “Crime and Juvenile Delinquency,” Official Report, Department of Superintendence, National Education Association (1935).

2. Frank E. Hill, The School in the Camps: The Educational Program of the Civilian Conservation Corps (New York: American Association for Adult Education, 1935).

3. Paul Couch, “Educational Emphasis in Civilian Conservation Laws of the Seventh Corps Area” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1944).

4. Hill, The School in the Camps.

5. U.S. Civilian Conservation Corps, Education in Civilian Conservation Corps Camps (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1936).

6. Calvin W. Gower, “Conservatism, Censorship, and Controversy in the CCC, 1930s,” Journalism Quarterly 52, no. 2 (1975): 277-84.

Bibliography

“Book by Dr. Ogburn Banned by Fechner.” New York Times, 16 November 1934.

Civilian Conservation Corps. Camp Life Reader and Workbook: Language Usage Series, nos. 1 and 2. Federal Security Agency. Washington, DC: U.S. Office of Education, 1939.

“Dr. W. F. Ogburn’s Booklet Banned from CCC Camps.” Chicago Daily Tribune, 16 November 1934.

Ogburn, William F. You and Machines. N.p., American Council on Education, 1934.

Arlene L. Barry is a literacy professor in the Department of Teaching and Leadership at the University of Kansas. In the spring of 2000 she was awarded a Kansas Reading Association Research Award for a published article titled, “Is the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s a 1990s Approach to Dropouts and Illiteracy?”