Collections in the Classroom
Download Collections in the Classroom: A Measuring Rod by Mildred L. Rutherford (pdf)
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS
CONTEXT
United Daughters of the Confederacy historian, Mildred L. Rutherford wrote A Measuring Rod in 1919 as a way to spread the Lost Cause ideology through textbooks in schools. She developed guidelines for school committees and Boards of Education to use to ensure that they were teaching what the U.D.C. considered the correct history about the American Civil War and about the South’s role in particular. Rutherford published lists of books that were approved and ones that were condemned. These guidelines influenced what was being taught to students for decades and used education as a means to spread the Lost Cause myth.