<Begin Segment 8>

AI: Well, so at this time that you were at Stanford, both as an undergrad, but then also in your graduate work, could you tell me a little bit about Stanford and the new progressive education theory that was being developed and, and studied? Because, I think, as we were discussing before the interview, how, what a big change this was from the traditional education methods. So could you tell us some about that?

RC: Well, in the class that I learned about it, there were, I guess, four professors. And there were only twenty of us in the class. And it was just like opening a door. It was kind of a dark, you know, "Well, what's going on here? This is different. What will I find inside that dark room?" kind of thing. And they challenged us with the course, the core program. It was (...) social studies and English, combining them in using writing techniques, for instance. When you, (...) in the social studies area you have to learn to be able to use a vocabulary and write and using the right English techniques in writing. So we really got quite a handful from these four professors. There were two women and two men professors. I was going to be a teacher of public speaking. And so I had an English minor. (But) I always loved social studies, so I always had social studies as a background, too. So I took to it rather quickly. And I could see what they were (...) trying to do. And I think I did very well in that class. And of course, when I went to do my student teaching, it was altogether different because I (was not teaching English and Social Studies). There were techniques (...) I had learned in taking public speaking classes at USC and at Stanford. So I wasn't able to, in my student teaching, use that technique of the core program, but I had been trained to by those four professors.

AI: Well, so for people who don't, who don't know about this, I think it, maybe we could distinguish that the traditional method of saying, of teaching, say English, would be in, during the English subject matter teaching, the teacher would focus solely on matters of English, whether that be grammar, or vocabulary, or construction of an essay. But there would be --

RC: Or literature, too.

AI: Right. But there would be no mixing over of another subject. And likewise, with social science class, that you would be focusing on geography or some other topic in the social scientist -- sciences but you would not be mixing in issues of writing and English and so forth. And that was, was the difference then with the core curriculum.

RC: (Yes).

AI: Is that right?

RC: Well, when you (...) were doing some social studies work, your compositions would be based on subjects that they had been reading in the history books. And it was an easy thing then, you see. Because it gave them ideas. The children (...) at Minidoka, (were) bewildered (...). But they soon got the point.

AI: Well --

RC: It gave them subject matter, you see. And then it piqued their interest.

AI: Well, we're jumping ahead a little bit.

RC: Alright.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.