sputnik at 50

["GERALD BRACEY" <gbracey1@verizon.net>]

 What follow are two op-ed length articles I wrote about Sputnik on the occasion of its 50th birthday--yesterday.  The Big Engine that Didn't is on the Ed Week web site.  We Coulda Been First was scheduled for the Washington Post, but when Ed Week put the first one up on Wednesday, the Post saw it and decided that, contrary to my belief, it wasn't a different story and canceled.

The two stories do have one finding in common: Schools had nothing to do with the Russians getting into space first.  Eisenhower wanted it that way.  He wanted deep space to be open and international but there was no precedent for that.  By letting the Russians go first, they established the precedent for us.  In fact, we had a rocket in the air on September 20, 1956, over a year ahead of Sputnik, flying at 862 miles and 13,000 miles an hour after firing its first three stages.  Its fourth stage could easily have pushed a satellite into orbit, but the 4th stage was a dud, filled with sand, not rocket fuel.

Jerry

THE GREAT BIG ENGINE THAT DIDN?T
Gerald W. Bracey

On the evening of October 4, 1957, at a party at the Soviet Embassy, Russian and American scientists celebrated ?the greatest scientific research program ever undertaken,? the International Geophysical Year.  As part of the IGY, both Russia and the U. S. were expected to orbit space vehicles.  Everyone anticipated the U. S. would do it first and its Vanguard program called for orbital liftoff in November, 1957.  About 6 p.m. word came that a Soviet R-7 rocket had pushed a satellite, Sputnik, into orbit.

According to journalist, Paul Dickson, ?The scientists and engineers assembled at the embassy party were thrilled. Cheers rang out.  Within minutes, one of the most impenetrable buildings in Washington was putting out the welcome mat to reporters?Vodka flowed.?  

President Eisenhower was pleased.  He wanted a system of spy satellites to monitor soviet military activity and forewarn of a surprise attack.  But overflights of a sovereign nation were forbidden and no precedent existed that declared deep space to be international.  Sputnik established that precedent.  ?We were certain,? Eisenhower wrote later, ?that we could get a great deal more information of all kinds out of the free use of space than they could.?

Not everyone was happy.  Comparisons to Pearl Harbor abounded.  ?Soon they?ll be dropping bombs on us the way school boys drop rocks from freeway overpasses? said Senate Majority Leader, Lyndon Johnson.  ?Control of the very heavens was at stake? was the way writer Tom Wolfe put it.

Ex-Nazi rocket genius, Wernher von Braun, now the lead scientist of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, was furious.  At the time of Sputnik?s launch, Defense Secretary designate, Neil McElroy, was touring von Braun?s operation in Huntsville, Alabama.  Von Braun, usually cool and politically savvy, lost it:  ?We knew they were going to do it!? he yelled at McElroy. ?Vanguard will never make it.  We have the hardware on the shelf.  For God?s sake, turn us loose and let us do something!?  

Von Braun did have the hardware on the shelf.  On September 20, 1956, over a year before Sputnik, his group had launched a 4-stage Jupiter-C rocket from Cape Canaveral.  The first three stages attained a speed of 13,000 miles an hour, a height of 862 miles and a distance down range of 3550 miles.  The fourth stage could have easily slipped a satellite into orbit.  But the fourth stage was filled with sand.

As the means to establish deep space as open, the Jupiter-C carried extra baggage: it was developed from and looked a lot like von Braun?s infamous V-2, the supersonic explosives-carrying rocket that had terrified England in the late stages of World War II.  The Jupiter-C, part of the Army?s intercontinental ballistic missile program, was obviously first and foremost a weapon.  Vanguard?s smaller rockets and smaller payloads would be seen as instruments of research and hence had the green light to orbit first.  But Vanguard would not see success until spring 1958 and its post-Sputnik failures generated headlines like ?Dudnik,? Flopnik? and ?Kaputnik.?

How could a technologically backward country like Russia beat the acknowledged world leader into space?  Did they have spies?  Maybe.  Some speculated that our hyper-materialism had left us more interested in developing color television and the princess phone than space-conquering vehicles.  Such theories quickly disappeared in favor of another:  The Russians beat us into space because they had better schools.  

In late 1956, U. S. News & World Report ran an interview with historian Arthur Bestor, author of Educational Wastelands: The Retreat From Learning in Public Schools, under the headline, ?We Are Less Educated now than 50 Years Ago.?  Shortly after Sputnik, the magazine brought him back to explain ?What Went Wrong With U.S. Schools.?  Mostly the fault rested with the misguided spin-off from progressive education known as ?life-adjustment education.?  ?In the light of Sputnik,? said Bestor, ??life adjustment education? turns out to have been perilously close to ?death adjustment? for our nation and our children.?  Life-adjustment education wastes time on trivialities.  ?That?s why the first satellite bears the label, ?Made in Russia.??  

This was absurd.  Life adjustment education was invented in 1945.  A 9th-grader in 1945 would have been at most two years out of engineering school in 1957, hardly of an age to lead rocket development.  Von Braun, a unique prodigy involved in rocketry since he was 17, was 45.

Still, pictorial proof of Russian student supremacy arrived in March, 1958 in the form of a five-part series in Life.  The cover of the first installment read ?Crisis in Education? in red letters on a black background.  In photos, stern-faced Alexei Kutzkov looked at the reader from Moscow while easy-smiling Stephen Lapekas gazed out from Chicago.  Inside photos showed Alexei doing complicated experiments in physics and chemistry and reading aloud from Sister Carrie.  Under pictures of teachers, the text informed the reader that they taught Alexei material considered too complicated for American high schools, organic chemistry and the mathematical theory of inequalities.  

Stephen, by contrast, retreated from a geometry problem on the blackboard and the caption advised, ?Stephen amused class with wisecracks about his ineptitude.?  Seated at a typewriter in typing class, Stephen tells us ?I type about one word a minute.?  

Where out-of-school pictures show Alexei in front of a bust of Russian composer Mikhail Glinka at a concert and reading from a Russian-English phrase book on the metro enroute to a science museum, Stephen is seen walking his girlfriend to school and dancing in rehearsal for the school musical.

The schools never recovered from Sputnik.  Sputnik wounded their reputation and as the scab formed, something else always came along to re-open the lesion:  In the 1960?s schools were blamed for the urban riots (but not credited for putting a man on the moon).  In the 1970?s they were seen as ?grim and joyless,? Charles Silberman?s characterization in Crisis in the Classroom.  In the 1980?s, ? A Nation At Risk? blamed them for allowing the Germans, South Koreans, and Japanese to race ahead of us competitively (but not credited for the longest sustained economic expansion in the nation?s history while the Japanese economy was in free fall and other Asian Tiger economies tanked).  

And today?  Tough Choices or Tough Times warns of oncoming economic disaster.  Leaders and Laggards, Ditto.  Eli Broad and Bill Gates have ponied up $60 million to ?wake up the American people? (Broad is 73 years old.  Has he been asleep all this time?).  So far, billionaire hedge fund investors are taking the heat for today?s sub-prime mortgage debacle.  But if by the time you read this, two months after it was written, the catastrophe has rippled through the economy and produced a true recession, don?t be surprised to see it being laid at the feet of Horace Mann and John Dewey.


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WE COULDA BEEN FIRST: SPUTNIK SAID 
NOTHING ABOUT AMERICAN SCHOOLS


On September 20, 1956, the U. S. Army Ballistics Missile Agency led by ex-Nazi rocket genius, Wernher von Braun, launched a 4-stage Jupiter-C rocket from Cape Canaveral.  Its third stage attained an altitude of 682 miles, a speed of 13,000 miles an hour and a range of 3,335 miles.  If fired, its fourth stage could have liberated itself from earth?s pull and entered orbit.  If fired, the U. S. would have had a satellite in space more than year ahead of Russia?s Sputnik. But it wasn?t fired.  It was filled with sand.  

Thus, as we toast the 50th anniversary of the first man-made satellite we drink to a Russian feat, not an American exploit, a 184-pound, beach-ball-sized, sphere launched from Kazakhstan on October 4, 1957.  

Sputnik produced panic.  Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson said, ?Soon they?ll be dropping bombs on us from space like school boys dropping rocks from freeway overpasses.?   Writer Tom Wolfe put it this way:  ?Nothing less than control of the heavens was at stake.  It was Armageddon, the final and decisive battle of the forces of good and evil.?  

U. S. News & World Report interviewed Arthur Bestor, history professor and author of the 1953 critique of life-adjustment education, Educational Wastelands: The Retreat from Learning in Public Schools.  Said Bestor, ?In the light of  Sputnik, ?life adjustment education? turns out to have been something perilously close to ?death adjustment? for our nation and our children?We have wasted an appalling part of the time of our young people on trivialities.  The Russians have had sense enough not to do so.  That?s why the first satellite bears the label ?Made in Russia.??

This was absurd.  In 1957, any ninth-grader taught under the aegis of life-adjustment education, invented in 1945, would have been barely out of engineering school.  

Still, pictorial proof that Russian students outshone ours arrived in the March 24, 1958 issue of Life.  On the cover: ?Crisis in Education? in red letters on black.  Two high school juniors looked out from the cover, stern-faced Alexei Kutzkov in Moscow and easy-smiling Stephen Lapekas in Chicago.  Inside, photos show Alexei conducting complicated experiments in chemistry and physics and reading aloud from Sister Carrie.  By contrast, Stephen is seen walking his girl friend to school, dancing in rehearsal for the school musical, and swimming.  

In one picture, Stephen retreats from a geometry problem on the blackboard.  The text tells us, ?Stephen amused class with wisecracks about his ineptitude.?  Seated at a typewriter, Stephen says, ?I type about one word a minute.?


Given the hysteria and the thunderous school bashing caused by Sputnik, we can ask why did that 1956 Jupiter-C pull its punch at the fourth stage?

President Edisenhower wanted deep space to be international and weapon free but no precedent for either doctrine existed.  The Jupiter-C was primarily a means to deliver intercontinental ballistic missiles and might thwart both doctrines.  So the Nacy?s Vanguard program had been given authority to launch first.  Vanguards carried small payloads that were obviously designed to be tools to explore space, not weapons.
The Vanguard program, alas, was behind schedule and would not meet with success until spring, 1958, generating such post-Sputnik headlines as ?Flopnik? ?Dudnik,? and ?Kaputnik.?

Although the public panicked, Eisenhower was pleased and Deputy Secretary of Defense Donald Quarles claimed that Sputnik had ?done us a good turn? by ?establishing the concept of freedom of space.?   Indeed, news of Sputnik?s launch arrived during a party at the Russian embassy celebrating the International Geophysical Year.  According to journalist Paul Dickson, American and Russian scientists alike cheered, vodka flowed and what was normally one of the most impenetrable mansions in Washington suddenly became an open house for reporters.

Educators might be forgiven if they perceive that the open space doctrine was bought at their expense.  Sputnik destroyed the public?s confidence in the public schools (this outcome quite mystified Eisenhower). Ten years later, schools were blamed for the urban riots sweeping the nation. Twelve years after Sputnik, Apollo 11 sent Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins hurtling to the moon.  No one mentioned improved schools as having anything to do with the mission?s success.  

?A Nation at Risk? in 1983, blamed the schools? ?rising tide of mediocrity? for our lagging competitiveness and the recession of the late 1980?s was laid in the schools? lap.  In the early 1990?s, the economy came roaring back starting the longest sustained economic expansion in the nation?s history.  No one credited better schools.

Three 2007 developments have set the schools up again.  Tough Choices or Tough Times predicts our obsolete schools will lead to falling competitiveness in the global economy.  Leaders and Laggards jointly from the Chamber of Commerce and the Center for American Progress declared that ?the measures of our educational shortcomings are stark indeed.?  And billionaires Eli Broad and Bill Gates have ponied up $60 million for a publicity campaign, ?EDin08? to ?wake up the American people? about the terrible state of their schools.  

It?s déjà vu all over again.

So, happy fiftieth, little orb. Za vashe sdoroviye. 
     

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