Conserving the American man: gender, eugenics and education in the Civilian Conservation Corps

Abstract

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a novel United States federal education programme that enrolled nearly three million men during the 1930s and early 1940s. This public work relief programme provides a case study of the ways that masculine, eugenicist ideas concerning public education evolved from the Progressive Era through the Great Depression. This educational philosophy was espoused by a small group of men–some educators, some not–who sought to remedy what they saw as the failures of public schooling, namely its overly feminine nature. Through an analysis of their public writings and the images that were used to advertise the CCC, we examine the programme’s vision of education for white working-class men intended to help rebuild the United States following the Great Depression. Our exploration of these ideas provides an important bridge between the educational theories of the Progressive and the Post-Second World War eras.