Chapter 7 documents the emergence of the modern American secondary school—the comprehensive high school—in the post-World War II period of the United States. The analysis is grounded in the political-economic and ideological context of the Cold War, but the components of modern liberalism remain explicit. Thus, the fundamental objectives of school reform that emerged in the Progressive Era—employable skills, social stability, meritocracy, and equal educational opportunity—remained central to the thinking of the Cold War era reformers. Chief among these was Professor James B. Conant, president of Harvard University and later U.S. high commissioner to Germany. Conant provides a lens through which the nationalism of the social and educational thinking of his day is examined. To contrast Conant, the chapter presents a primary source reading by Mark Van Doren, who provides students with a different way to think about the central role of education in modern democratic society. This contrast suggests parallels with similar contrasts elsewhere in the book: Dewey versus Eliot, Washington versus Du Bois, Mann versus Brownson, among others.