Cold War

Cold War

Research Paper
The Cold War real and imagined threats from the Soviet Union Changed how the American nation political, social and economic life was shaped. The changes really affected the educational policies and practices. The US was shattered in 1957 when the Soviets put sputnik, which is the first man – made satellite into orbit. By launching Sputnik the US really was inflicted from a psychic wound. Once Sputnik was launched Congress than passed what’s known as the National Defense Education Act. The National Defense Education Act strived to shape local educational priorities in science education, technology mathematics, and modern foreign language. It also channeled the schools funds, interdisciplinary area studies for colleges, language development, school counseling, teacher education, libraries, educational media, and helped with guaranteed low – interest student loans. The ESES also known as the Elementary and Secondary Act replaced the National Defense Education Act as the most important federal government act which authorizes expenditures for elementary and secondary schools and teacher education. The Elementary and Secondary Act was the centerpiece of the Great Society. The plan was suppose to increase educational opportunities for children of the low – income families. The National Defense Education Act and Elementary and Secondary Act brought federal government dollars and federal oversight into the school systems. Since the early 60’s the United States Federal Government focused on creating plans for public education programs that would try to adopt learning and therefore shrink poverty. Many of the programs such as Project Head Start are focused on boosting cognitive scores in children in preschool so that they are at level of children from middle class or high socioeconomic status by the time they enter the first grade. The War on poverty focused more on adults than children. The focus did shift to impoverished children in order to help them...