Adam Scrupski, a founding member of the National Association of Scholars, and one of its former board members, passed away after a lengthy illness on May 2nd at the age of 88. A big burly man with a hearty laugh, his letter-winning experience as a Rutgers lineman and wrestler prepared him for even tougher scrimmages in America’s great school wars.
Adam fought these first as a teacher and principal in the New Jersey public system and then, after getting a PhD in sociology, as a professor in the Rutgers School of Education. There he stood virtually alone in championing high academic standards and a civic education worthy of a free society.
He brought to the NAS an insider’s knowledge of K-12 education that few others of its members possessed. This paid immense dividends for the organization when, year-after-year, it competed successfully for massive grants from the U.S. Department of Education’s Teaching American History Program. Without Adam, the NAS’s grant proposals could never have been written nor effectively implemented. Teachers throughout New Jersey and New York were thus exposed, in many instances for the first time, to a serious and balanced account of America’s past. They, and we, are in his debt. RIP.
Image Credit: Public Domain.
