Rosenstock-Huessay notes that the differences between European and American elementary education have much to do with the fact that “The teaching function in America, until recent years [this from a 1962 interview], had been women’s work. All teaching up to higher education, therefore, had a completely different appearance than in German or even in France. The aggressive manly, forward-driven, innovative, revolutionary element in the whole art of teaching in the United States was lacking. Teaching was a quieting sort of ornament by which youth learned to associate with the beautiful, agreeable, and even true things of life of the great past. BUt iwas all based on thinking back, not on thinking forward.”
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