Sputnik, drawing by Ginger Carol Burrus, sixth grade, East Clinton School, Huntsville, Alabama, October 14, 1957 and
Essay about Sputnik by a girl, fifth-sixth grade, in a school on Wheeler Air Force Base, Oahu, Hawai'i Territory, October 1957
At the time of Sputnik’s launch, Congress was concerned about the state of science and math education in the United States. Columbia University anthropologist Rhoda B. Metraux studied attitudes of fifth- and sixth-grade students towards the Soviet satellite by asking them to write or make drawings about Sputnik. Several expressed excitement and optimism about Sputnik’s space-age potential.
Rhoda Bubendey Metraux Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress
Student Reactions to Sputnik
The National Defense Education Act
The Soviet Union’s successful 1957 launch of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, spurred Congress to pass the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) of 1958. Perceiving an urgent need to train Americans in science, technology, languages, and other essential skills for Cold War defense, Congress committed the federal government to an active role in education by providing seed money to states for curriculum development and student loans. The NDEA included a mandatory loyalty oath that evoked widespread protest; Congress renewed the act without the oath in 1964.
Sputnik, drawing by Ginger Carol Burrus, sixth grade, East Clinton School, Huntsville, Alabama, October 14, 1957 and
Essay about Sputnik by a girl, fifth-sixth grade, in a school on Wheeler Air Force Base, Oahu, Hawai'i Territory, October 1957
At the time of Sputnik’s launch, Congress was concerned about the state of science and math education in the United States. Columbia University anthropologist Rhoda B. Metraux studied attitudes of fifth- and sixth-grade students towards the Soviet satellite by asking them to write or make drawings about Sputnik. Several expressed excitement and optimism about Sputnik’s space-age potential.
Rhoda Bubendey Metraux Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress
