This dissertation traces the changing view of the "new education" as it appeared in the pages of the New Republic magazine, 1914-1930. The study examines the disparity between the promise of the new education and the reality of educational reform in the 1920s as recorded in the articles of the New Republic.

In 1914, Herbert Croly, the founding editor of the New Republic magazine, aligned the publication with the tenets of the emerging new education. Consequently, the New Republic chronicled the attempt of educators to refashion American education to fit an industrial democracy. The reality of the new education as it developed was one of growing educational eccentricity which led, by 1930 in the New Republic, to disillusionment and criticism of the new education.