As the years passed I have found that the facts of life did conclude if only I would let them. I was brought to recognize this by an exciting and profound body of Americans who had succeeded in doing that very thing. These I have called the Men of the Consensus and to their leaders I have dedicated my book. Throughout the story of their work we can marvel at their traits. Certainly they were neither Liberals nor Conservatives. Not one was of any Party. Partisan politics was not their business and they eschewed all soapboxes, those of the die-hard Right or Left or of any straddling Liberal party. They were Radicals in the truest dictionary sense “from the roots thereof”; that is, they were students of the foundations of man and his culture. One by one these men -most of them working alone, most of them afraid yet naively brave – confronted the facts of modern life and, even against the loyalties and taboos of their people, let their minds conclude what the facts of life conclude.

Download Foundations For American Education-Harold Rugg-1947