Between Mutuality and Diversity - The Project in Intergroup Education and the Discourse of National Unity in Post World War II America

Oct 15, 2026

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Brian R. Sevier explores how post–World War II rhetoric of national unity shaped intolerance, tying its elimination to social cohesion while also promoting assimilationist and meritocratic ideas. Centering the Project in Intergroup Education, the article traces how teachers, supported by universities and supervised through public and religious funding structures, created localized curricula to foster tolerance and strengthen American unity. It further examines how intergroup and intercultural education sought to address diversity, bigotry, and minority exclusion in schools, offering educators’ rare mediation of these concepts.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages26

Reading Time1 h 6 min

AccessFree to download

Between Mutuality and Diversity

The Project in Intergroup Education and National Unity

Post–World War II Discourse and Intolerance

Teachers’ Curricular Mediation

Intergroup and Intercultural Education Background

Brian R. Sevier is an assistant professor of social studies education at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Between Mutuality and Diversity: The Project in Intergroup Education and the Discourse of National Unity in Post World War II America By Brian R. Sevier Democracy rests upon brotherhood. Justice, amity, understanding, and cooperation throughout our nation are cornerstones of democracy even as they are requirements for brotherhood. With them we can maintain our national unity and keep the teamwork needed inpeace as in war.—HarryTruman (“Tolerance Awards,” 1946) . Look around and seefriends and neighbors alljoined in a common cause for the defense of this country. There is no quarrel between them. It is possible here. There are no hyphens among us now.—Fiorelli LaGuardia (“Unity,” 1947) . In considering these quotes it might be possible, if we ignored the names of the deceased political leaders who spoke them, to imagine them uttered recently. Their references to a common cause, democracy, and unity echo the “united we stand” political rhetoric espoused by contemporary leaders and promulgated on bumper stickers, billboards, and public service announcements in the post September 11th era. Yet these quotes are not of our time. The words of President Truman and NewYork Mayor LaGuardia hark back to the years following WorldWar II when social and political circumstances prompted widespread concern over national unity. Race riots, Cold War politics, and the United States’image as a newly minted superpower were just some of the events/exigencies that precipitated a renewed sense of urgency regarding national unity in the post-war years. This push for unity reverberated beyond the political arena involving numerous community organizations, churches, and public schools in efforts to boost American citizens’sense of connectedness with one another. The Project in Intergroup Education, an educational effort that originated in this context, asked teachers to create curricula with the concomitant goals of teaching tolerance and increasing national unity. From 1945-1951, the Project in Intergroup Education, with the support of various universities, offered teacher in-services and summer workshops designed to help teachers create localized and specific curricula focused on eliminating discrimination in their schools, communities and, ultimately, society at large (Taba, Brady, & Robinson, 1952) . Arguably this country’s most ambitious effort of its kind in terms of scope and scale, the Project’s central staff coordinated field visits to public schools and school districts, managed in-service training and summer workshops, and published numerous documentson intergroup education.1As Project director Hilda Taba understood it,“intergroup conflict”within the larger population not only signified clear disruptions in American unity but also established schools and education as possible remedies for these national woes (Taba, 1948) . With supervision from the American Council on Education (ACE) and funding from the National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ), a total of 260 teachers from thirteen different states and eighteen school districts participated in the Project (Taba, 1948) .2 Consistent with the Project’s progressive educational philosophy that privileged the situated and contextual nature of classroom learning, these teachers wrote their own intergroup textbooks and units for use within their unique classrooms (ibid, pp. 10-12). In fact, these teacher-created documents allow us to juxtapose the intergroup curricula of teachers against the vision of intergroup education promulgated by the leaders of the Project within the post-WWII milieu. In this article I posit a dual argument. First, I contend that the post-WWII discourse of national unity pushed intolerance to the forefront of the domestic agenda linking its elimination with social cohesion while simultaneously advancing assimilationist and meri

FAQs

What is the main focus of the Project in Intergroup Education discussed in the article?

The project asked teachers to create classroom curricula aimed at teaching tolerance and increasing national unity, particularly by eliminating discrimination in schools and surrounding communities.

How does the article connect post–World War II national unity rhetoric to intolerance?

It argues that discourse of unity pushed intolerance to the forefront of the domestic agenda, linking elimination to social cohesion while advancing assimilationist and meritocratic beliefs about American life.

What does the article say teachers could do within the Project, and why is that important?

Teachers were able to act both as creators and implementers of intergroup curricula. This freedom provides a historically rare view into how educators mediated the content and treatment of diverse populations.

Oct 15, 2026

Upload by moss~