&quot; or who didn’t intend to go into engineering or hard science (these students being invariably female).&quot;<p>Were there no male liberal arts majors in those days, or does the author mean &quot;female students invariably being counted among those not needing advanced math&quot;? If the latter, can we blame it on W.H. Kirkpatrick?<p>Kirkpatrick was an interesting example of what someone with an anti-intellectual bias can do in a prominent educational post. Diane Ravitch has an interesting essay on the history of the progressive education movement in <i>The Troubled Crusade: American Education 1945-1980</i>.