American educator and educational sociologist George S. Counts (1889-1974) was an authority on Soviet education and a leading spokesman for the social reconstructionist point of view in American education.

George Sylvester Counts, son of James Wilson Counts and Mertie Florella (Gamble) Counts, was born on a farm near Baldwin City, Kansas, on December 9, 1889. His introduction to formal education consisted of two years spent in a one-room school house. Counts managed to complete the work of four grades in those two years, and the experience left him convinced of the merits of ungraded schools. He completed his education in the conventional public schools of Baldwin City, nevertheless, and graduated from high school in 1907.

Counts attended college at Baker University, a Methodist institution located in Baldwin City, and graduated at the head of his class with a B.A. degree in 1911. He then taught science and mathematics for a year...