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F9Boupg Fo nvemg 


A Mayor’s Camouflage 


Among Our Allies 





“A Thing or Two” 


Democracy in Education 
Education for Democracy 





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The American Teacher 


if 


VLSTUVUSRTRESSTESSREERESTESESSSESSETSETTTTTCUCUSUSESSSESESTE SESE DEEDS 


Will the Teachers Ever Grow Up? 


do realize that the destiny of 
Teachers-in-Ordinary has been 
newly oriented. 
Not so many moons ago, we were 
timid underlings, office boys and 
serving girls in the personal employ 


of self-perpetu- 


[’: the name of uncommon sense, 


in the seats of the M ighty. 

The Teachers’ Union is Ours to do 
with as suits our developing pur- 
poses. 

The American Teacher (the most 
critical Magazine in the School 
World) is Ours to do with as our 


illuminating in- 


——— 





—— 





ating bureau- 
crats! 

Today, we are 
grown-up men 


and Women, Editorials 


Running Schools 


CONTENTS 


nobly self-con- 
scious, aggres- 
sive, _disillu- 
sioned, wise. 
Today we 
know ourselves 
as our official 
superiors do not 
know them- 
selves! 

We are group- 








The Schools in Politics 
The Symposium 


Our Hearty Congratulations 


A Mayor’s Camouflage 


Value of Teachers’ Union 


Pedagogical Portraits 


Education Among Our Allies 
Social Service in War Time 


The Solitary Profession 
Reflections 

Book Reviews 

A Thing or Two 


telligences_ di- 
rect. 

The Board of 
Education is 
ours (or will 
soon be) to do 
with as befils 
our deeper in- 
sight. 

The very ideals 
of our nascent 
social democ- 
racy are ours to 
do with as our 
dynamic _ phil- 














VASSSSSSSSSSSS SSS R5 


conscious, united, politically canny, 
evolving into a powerful force for 


ood. 

Le not foolish modesty tie our en- 
lightened tongues. 

We are on the threshold of great 
realizations. 

Let us but take our destiny seriously 
(and ourselves philosophically!) 
and we shall soon astound the 
Manipulators who sit and dawdle 


ES SPAVVAVAAVAAVAVAAPAVAAVAAVVV VB SS 


osophy of so- 
cial amelioration guides and ‘inspires 
us to do. 

We are on the eve of tremendous 
happenings. 

To achieve greatly we must be 
greatly informed. 

One Indispensable Organ of En- 
lightened Opinion among T eacher- 
Educators is our own---your own--- 
The American Teacher. 


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The American Teacher 








Vol. ‘VL, No. s 


“NOVEMBER, 1917. 


One “Dollar a “Year 








Democracy and the War 
HE world is full of enthusiasm about 
democracy. Some of it is genuine, 
much of it is cant, and more of it is 
uninformed, parrot talk. But however real 
or unreal the enthusiasm is, the sum total 
of gain for democracy, especially for grant 
Russia; wilkbe-vast indeed. —s- 

Althefete-aae talkingeer-thinking-about the 
chance"fer'the development of democracy in 
education, it will surely come into its own 
there as well as elsewhere. How much the 
teachers themselves will contribute to the 
end is a question, but probably very little. 
When all the warring peoples come to the 
point of reorganizing their governments 
after the war, they will have the dominant 
voice in the control, and their representatives 
must possess the ability and the integrity 
to carry out their demands. 

All down the line to the now feeble insti- 
tution of education democracy must have its 
way, and incapacity and selfishness must 
meet their doom. 


The Schools and the War 


HE danger that seemed to threaten the 
schools of the country in the first 
weeks after the declaration of war 

against the Central Powers is now over, let 
us hope permanently. In the State of New 
York at least it was clearly shown that the 
bill which provided for the suspension of the 
operation of the compulsory education law 
was inspired and fostered by the canneries. 

It was further shown that England after 
her early mistakes in the war in withdrawing 
her human resources from many of her in- 
stitutions, restored the schools to their accus- 
tomed conditions as far as the losses made 
possible, 


Manifestly it would have been the height 
of folly to go against the experience of our 
most resourceful ally. The National Board 
of Agriculture of England has said: 


The board concurs with the Board of 
Education in strongly deprecating the re- 
lease of children under the age of 12 from 
attendance at school for employment in 
agriculture, believing that at no time in 
the history of the country was the educa- 
tion of the rising generation of more im- 
portance. 


Exemption for Educational 


Service 
HERE may be few men teachers of 
conscription age who at the proper 
time claimed exemption because of 
their being engaged in educational service. 
Neither did the mechanical engineers or the 
mill workers of France try to avoid military 
service. But France returned these men to 
their vocations quickly enough when it dis- 
covered that their presence was more im- 
portant behind the lines than in them. 
England has not yet acknowledged her er- 
ror in taking men teachers and sending them 
over to the trenches, but the older men who 
are left in the schools there are complaining 
bitterly of the quailty of men who are now 
coming into the schools from the church. 
Altho our American men teachers in gen- 
eral will not claim exemption on account of 
their profession, the comparatively few men 
in the profession and the rarity of red blood 
there, are conditions which should weigh 
heavily with the National Council of Defense 
when it is considering the demands of future 
generations. 
REMEMBER! 


The shots being heard round the world today 
are fired for Democracy! 


123 





124 


The History Teacher and 
the War 


UR first duty is to teach pupils to 
O see things as they really are. This 
is peculiarly difficult at a time when 
many people believe that a slight distortion 
of fact is a patriotic duty, thus failing to 
realize that loyalty to country and loyalty to 
history are best served by looking facts 
squarely in the face. Our second duty is to 
encourage our pupils, and thru them their 
parents, to take an intelligent and active part 
in the decision of public questions. Space 
and time having been annihilated by modern 
inventions, America is no longer an isolated 
state but one of a family of nations. If our 
country is to reach an intelligent decision on 
such great questions as disarmament, peace 
terms, the establishment of a league to en- 
force peace, colonial policy, etc., all thought- 
ful citizens, regardless of the partisan label 
that attaches to them for the time being, 
must be encouraged to contribute their spe- 
cific wisdom to the collective enlightenment. 
The finest achievement of the emancipated 
historian is to convert Prejudice, by means 
of analysis, to the status of Reasoned Convic- 
tion. Hence the indispensable value of the 
most extreme, unfettered discussion. 


The War’s Awakening 
AR kills and war brings to life. 

W\ For years people meant nothing 

to administrators and statesmen 

and “leaders” and Big Businessmen except 

material to be exploited—workers whose 

labor yields profit, consumers whose pur- 

chases yield profits; pawns to move about 

and to pay the bills; voters to be hypnotized 
or colonized. 

But now the everyday folks are coming to 
have a new meaning. They are the ones who 
fight battles, and they must be well fed and 
clothed. If they cannot be treated respect- 
fully, they must at least be flattered. They 
are the ones who make munitions and sup- 
plies; they must not be antagonized. And 
the children of ordinary folks have taken on 
a new meaning. 


The American Teacher 


Vol. VI., No. 8 


We are very solicitous especially about the 
children. We have learned from those who 
entered the war ahead of us that the unusual 
conditions furnish unusual temptations to 
many kinds of juvenile delinquency. And 
unusual temptations to juvenile participation 
in “gainful occupations.” We have also 
learned that the school is something more 
than a glorified day nursery. That the school 
can really contribute to the present and fu- 
ture welfare of the country ; that children are 
better off in school—unsatisfactory as it is— 
than in the best of streets or alleys or work- 
shops. 

And we urge the labor unions and the wom- 
en’s clubs to.exert. themselves. to the end that 
so far as possible children be kept in-scheol. 
We began some years ago agitation toward 
the conservation of forests and fish. It is 
significant of the new day that the war has 
aroused us to the conservation of children— 
ordinary people’s children. 

This is something for the teachers of 
America to ponder. 


Stratified Autocracy 


[ is astonishing, it is amusing, it is exas- 


perating. But it is inevitable. You 
have noticed it yourself. The person 
who chafes and grumbles under the tyranny 
of an arbitrary official himself becomes a 
martinet when he is vested with a little 
brief authority. And on seeing this the auto- 
crats who have been in authority for a long- 
er period chuckle and say that they are jus- 
tified by human nature. And the cynic gets 
his say, too. But both the cynic and the 
autocrat are wrong. The grumbler who be- 
comes a tyrant is but a link in the vicious 
chain that perpetually drags its victims thru 
the same round of degradation. The tyran- 
nical teacher abuses the children abandoned 
to his mercy for the same reasons as deter- 
mine the conduct of the autocratic principal 
or the autocratic superintendent. When the 
child becomes of age he avenges himself in 
turn, when the teacher becomes clothed with 
power, he avenges himself in his turn. 
It is part and parcel of the whole miserable 
system which assumes that success is to be 





aN 


Ce OC Fe YS YS CY 


— 


November, 1917 


measured by the power to abuse the weaker. 
All who play the game must crook the hinges 
of the knee in one relation while they shake 
the bully’s fist in another. The teacher who 
merely chafes or grumbles does not change 
his spots when he is “promoted.” He con- 
tinues to do as he has always done—he licks 
the boot that kicks him and finds some weaker 
subordinate to kick with his own boot. 

Democracy contemplates the cooperation 
of men and women without the hierarchical 
distribution of authority and submissiveness. 
It contemplates teachers who can “control” 
without bulldozing ; it contemplates supervis- 
ors who can guide self-respecting fellow 
workers without pomp and pride, without the 
formalities of feudalism. 


Courage! 


OURAGE! 
( If you say it in the right tone of 


voice it sends a thrill down the spines 
of live people. 

It is necessary if you are to preserve your 
self-respect ; it is necessary if you are to re- 
ceive the respect of others. Look about you 
and you will see the homage power pays to 
courage. You will see that it is the brave 


The American Teacher 125 


men and women who receive recognition— 
even in the teaching business. 

But there is courage and courage. Cour- 
age does not mean that you are to assert your 
views on educational matters or on public 
questions when these views are at variance 
with the views of those higher up. It does 
not mean that you are to support a party or 
a candidate that is not approved by your su- 
periors. It does not mean that you may 
flaunt heresies or plead the unpopular cause. 
No; thrice and decidedly no! 

Courage means that you are to deal with 
those who are under you with a firm hand. 
That you are to pound the table with your 
fist and shake the rafters with your voice 
when laying down the law. That you are to 
denounce upstarts and innovators loudly and 
fearlessly. That you are to support what is, 
unflinchingly, and say your prayers on the 
street corners. That you are to send your 
amens without hesitation, in advance, to all 
that the authorities proclaim. 

Thus will you receive the benedictions of 
the wise and powerful. Thus will your cour- 
age be rewarded. Begin by showing your 
courage in the treatment you accord the chil- 
dren. Fearlessness and firmness will lead 
you to high places. 








RUNNING 


E know only too well that newspaper 
reports are not to be credited 
implicitly. The account of a hear- 

ing granted to high school students and teach- 
ers on the subject of a lengthened school day 
in a certain very large city is nevertheless 
too much in character to be dismissed as ex- 
aggerated or distorted. According to this 
account the Honorable Commissioner in 
charge of the hearing inquired, shortly after 
opening the meeting, as to which of the stu- 
dents had participated in the “strikes,” and 
which of them had protested to the Board of 
Aldermen. Had any of the students who had 
presented their grievances to the Aldermen 
first obtained the permission of the princi- 
pals? He appeared to be outraged that stu- 
dents should have the temerity to make pro- 


SCHOOLS 


tests, to voice grievances. He did not appear 
to be impressed by the plea that earlier at- 
tempts to obtain consideration by the Com- 
missioner and his Committee had been disre- 
garded. 

To this Commissioner, and to thousands 
like him, the world is made up of two kinds 
of people: those God made to give orders, 
and those God made to obey orders. Every 
indication of dissatisfaction with existing 
conditions is inspired of the devil; protest is 
of a piece with sedition, insubordination, an- 
archy. To these minds the natural resources 
and the institutions of the country are en- 
trusted by an inscrutable fate. To question 
their authority or judgment is treason to the 
country, and an invitation for a torrent of 
abuse or more severe penalties. 





126 


The Honorable Commissioner, according to 
the newspaper reports, concluded the “hear- 
ing” with the declaration that neither the 
pupils nor the teachers of the city would “run 
the schools.” Rather than have the boys 
protest against abuses in the only way that 
they knew, rather than have it said that the 
Board of Education withheld information 
from the public—he would have the schools 
closed. He did not say rather than permit 
pupils to be abused by administrative stupid- 
ity he would remove the principals or other 
guilty officials. No: rather than have stu- 
dents protest, he woulc close the schools. He 
did not say rather than have the Board of 
Education abuse its power he would resign. 
No: rather than have the people say that 
they are not treated fairly and courteously— 
he would have the schools shut up. 

o* ok * 

The strikes that have disgraced the larg- 
est city in the country for a long period 
during the fall school term are complex mani- 
festations of unrest and chicane. It is likely 
enough that the responsible leaders in the 
administration were quite helpless before the 
unscrupulous fellow citizens who sought to 
harass them and to make political capital out 
of school disturbances. The unrest of the 
high school students, however, could have 
been easily avoided or adjusted by a sincere 
and democratic application of common sense 
on the part of the authorities. Regardless 
of the merits of the contentions, it is not nec- 
essary either in industry or in education to 
treat people in the cavalier fashion that has 
been customary in many quarters. Students 
are like their parents and other people in that 
they are amenable to a candid appeal to their 
self-respect, their sense of responsibility, 
their idealism. Instead of appealing to 
these powerful agencies for democratic con- 
trol, the attempt was made to force upon 
them a new program that involved hardships 
and difficulties and frequently injustices. In- 
stead of attempting to make adjustments in 
accordance with actual needs and opportuni- 
ties, the arbitrary method was adopted, the 
method already obsolescent among the more 
progressive shopkeepers and construction 
foremen, 


The American Teacher 


Vol. VI., No. 8 


The Honorable Commissioner and many 
of his colleagues, in all parts of the country, 
still have to learn that the schools do not 
exist for the purpose of giving them an op- 
portunity to manifest their public spirit, or 
to exercise their lust for power. They exist 
primarily for the children, not for commis- 
sioners, nor for teachers, nor for contractors. 
The Honorable Commissioner has also to 
learn that both children and teachers must 
be taken into account in the running of the 
schools, whether he likes it or not. There 
are, it is true, many teachers who have not 
yet awakened to their power and to their 
duty in these matters. But they are awaken- 
ing. 

In justice to the Honorable Commissioner 
it must be said that he showed no discrimi- 
nation: that is to say, he did not treat the 
students any more arbitrarily than he did 
the teachers. 


The American Federation 


of Teachers 


PRESIDENT CHAS. B. STILLMAN of the 
American Federation of Teachers has sent 
to the thirteen local teachers’ unions of the 
country a “get-together” letter. 

Within the last few months charters have 
been issued to four new locals. These are the 
Manual Training Teachers’ Association, No. 
10, of Washington, D. C. (the third union in 
the capital city), the Punxsutawney Federa- 
tion of Teachers, No. 11, Punxsutawney, Pa., 
the Hamilton County Federation of Teachers. 
No. 12, of Chattanooga, Tenn., and the Bi- 
County Federation of Teachers, No. 13, of 
Fayette and Westmoreland Counties, Pa. 

The year has been a strenuous one for the 
A. F. of T., the most serious incident of which 
has been the forced retirement of the Chicago 
Teachers Federation. But the setbacks or 
even apparent failures of revolutionists 
never seem to discourage them permanently. 

The Teachers Union of the City of New 
York has sent to President Stillman a cordial 
invitation to hold the Annual Convention in 
New York. If the invitation is accepted, let 
every unionist among the teachers make al- 
rangements to visit the metropolis in the week 
of the Christmas holidays. 





November, 1917 


The 


OW can self-respecting men and 

H women support a political organiza- 

tion founded on the principle that 

public office is an opportunity for private 
graft and jobs for the faithful? 

How can self-respecting teachers support 
administrative policies that subordinate the 
welfare of the children to the greed and 
pecuniary advantage of professional ex- 
ploiters? 

There is confusion enough thru the effort 
to veil fundamental issues by means of 
beautiful bunting. There is confusion enough 
thru the tension and distraction of the war. 
But while the professional politician may 
legitimately enough take advantage of flag 
waving and smoke, why should those en- 
gaged in the business of education allow 
themselves to be confused and distracted by 
the politicians? 

The fundamental confusion lies within our- 
selves. It lies in our failure to ask ourselves 
what we conceive the purpose of the city to 
be. Is the city a business organization in- 
tended to protect life and property against 
fire and thieves and thugs, or is it a com- 
munity administration for the advancement 
and enhancement of human life and human 
values? Do schools exist t» give jobs and 
contracts, or are they intended to do some- 
thing for the children? Is a controller hired 
merely for reducing tax rates, or has he any- 
thing to do with making the city a better 
place for men, women and children to live in? 

If we cleared up our own minds on these 
and similar questions we should not be so 
readily corrupted into accepting as necessary 
a “choice of two evils.” 


* * * 


For the first time in the history of Ameri- 
can politics the voters of a large city—and 
the teachers of a large city—have before 
them fundamental issues, if they will but 
stop to face them. There is offered first of 
all the principle that “regularity” in party 
politics is sufficient guarantee of soundness 
and sanctity. If you are a “regular” repub- 
lican you have only to vote for the regular 
republican nominee, and let the machine do 


The American 


Teacher 


Schools in Politics 


your thinking and take the responsibility. 
They have next a combination of the prin- 
ciple that the alternation of parties in power 
is an adequate check upon incompetence and 
inadequacy, and the principle that a “party 
of the people” is a party that will corrupt 
and cajole the people. If you are dissatisfied 
with the Mitchel administration, vote for 
Tammany: you may be quite sure that a 
Tammany administration will be different. 
If you favor “the peeple,” vote for Tammany. 
You may be sure there is nothing high brow 
or finicky about Tammany. Tammany is 
none too particular. In the third place there 
is offered a business-like administration for 
the business interests, and those who do not 
like it may move elsewhere. If you want 
honesty and efficiency, vote for Mitchel. 
Finally, there is offered the unheard-of issue 
of the city for the people. We are asked to 
vote on the principle that the city is to be 
conducted for the people who live in the city, 
not for the people who make a business of 
dealing with those who live in the city. We 
are told that schools should be built to ac- 
commodate the children, not the need for 
paring the budget. We are told that health 
and recreation and protection against hunger 
and cold are the concerns of the city, no less 
than protection against fire and burglary and 
ignorance. If you want a city run for the 
human beings, you are asked to vote for 
Hillquit. 


* * * 


The war has put socialism on the calendar. 


The socialists failed to stop the war. Just 
as did the scientists, the Christians, the Jews 
and the financiers. 

The socialists have been severely de- 
nounced for their failure to stop the war. 
Just as they were previously denounced for 








There is danger that we shall find our own minds 
distracted and our long-cherished moral values dis- 
turbed by the events of the war, but there is greater 
danger that we shall fail to take advantage of the 
new values that are rising, that we shall be blind 
to opportunities for spiritual enrichment and in- 
dustrial renovations, that we shall go on living and 
teaching in a narrow, selfish, horizon when the most 
momentous days in the world’s history are coming 
to one eternity and going into the other—Jonn H 
FINLEY, Commissioner of Education, New York. 





128 


having made efforts to prevent all wars. 

But in every belligerent country, with the 
possible exception of Turkey, it is coming to 
be generally recognized that we must turn to 
socialism both for organizing a way out of 
the war and for reorganizing our civilization 
after the war. This does not mean that the 
socialists are actually the ones engaged in 
seeing us thru. It does mean, however, that 
those responsible for the conduct and conclu- 
sion of the war feel themselves dependent 
upon the thought and the inspiration of so- 
cialism. 

In the midst of the hysteria and hatred, in 
the midst of suspicions and jealousies, in the 
midst of corruption and bungling, we find no 
sign of clear thinking, we find no evidence of 
constructive programs, except in the socialist 
movement. 

> * ~ 


The teachers of America have been for the 
most part brought up on the individualism of 
the early nineteenth century. They have for 
the most part looked rather superciliously 
upon ideals and reforms imported from 


abroad—except purely academic ones. They 
have been content for the most part to accept 
a measure of democracy that assured the en- 
terprising individual a chance to carry on 
business. 

But these teachers have also been working 
directly for the public, and they have used 
the postal service and public libraries. They 
are quite prepared to project the principle 








We must look to the end of this great business. 
We at home must fight for democracy here as well 
as our armies for it abroad. In the midst of our 
military enterprises we must be equally loyal to our 
own political theories here. All this vast reorganiza- 
tion of industry must be made without the loss of 
the great physical and social gains, which we have 
achieved in last hundred years, mostly years of 
peace and fruitful effort and toil. 

We must not allow the hours and conditions of 
people who work in factories and workshops to be 
upset and interfered with. We must preserve the 
sweetness of our rights. We must agree in deeds 
of grace here, as our soldiers do deeds of grace on 
the Gther side: -*--*- *-- And when those heroes 
step off the boats and come ashore and tell us that 
they have won the fight for democracy in Europe we 
must be able to tell them in return that we have 
kept the faith of democracy at home and won bat- 
tles here for that cause while they were fighting 
there——NeEwTon D Baker, Secretary of War, July 
Fourth Address, 1917. 


The American Teacher 


Vol. VI., No. 8 


upon which they do their work to other types 
of necessary service. They are not going to 
be dragooned into a panic with the suggestion 
that “socialism” is the coming slavery. The 
last three years have been prolific of stimulus 
to thought: now if ever must we bring forth 
the fruit of our labors. Are we ready to ex- 
tend the ideal of the public school to the man- 
agement of all of the public’s affairs. We 
must either accept this principle or renounce 
our claims to respectful consideration as 


teachers. 
I inviting our readers to present their 
criticisms of THE AMERICAN TEACHER 
in a constructive way, and to present these 
criticisms from time to time as a symposium. 
If readers who are willing to help the cause 
of the paper in this way will write their im- 
pressions in convincing form, we shall be 
glad to print them. The American Teacher’s 
Job, the first of the series, appeared in the 
October number. This is Number II. 


THE MISSION OF THE AMERICAN 
TEACHER 
T°: teacher of to-day lives in his class- 


The Symposium 


N June, 1917, we announced the plan of 


room oblivious to the economic, so- 

cial, and political forces that are 
changing the history of the world. Whether 
these forces will result in the intellectual and 
economic emancipation of America or in its 
temporary enslavement depends on _ the 
teacher. He should welcome and guide these 
movements into proper channels thru his 
influence on the citizens of to-day as well as 
on the citizens of to-morrow. He should be 
the interpreter of the forces that overturned 
the greatest of modern despotisms, liberated 
millions from dynastic fetters and socialized 
monarchial Europe at an unprecedented rate. 
It is the duty of THE AMERICAN TEACHER 
to rouse the traditional pedagogs from the 
slough of despond and academic helplessness 
into which our misdirected and visionless 
educational institutions and autocratic boards 
of education have cast them, to show them 
the vision, its glorious possibilities and their 





November, 1917 


opportunity to inaugurate—a new educa- 
tional renaissance which will result in their 
liberation and that of the workers of 
America. 


Our Hearty Congratulations 


The following statement has been sent by 
seven associate superintendents of New York 
to City Superintendent Maxwell: 

You sent [your] statement to the governor 
of the state and to the president of the board 
of education, but you did not extend to your 
colleagues the courtesy of giving them a 
copy. If a president of a board of education, 
a chairman of a board of trustees, or any 
person related to an organization as you are 
to the board of superintendents should dis- 
tribute a statement like this affecting his 
associates, it would seriously impair his 
reputation for courtesy and fair dealing. 
The other members of the board of super- 
intendents are elected in the same manner 
as the chairman is, and in specified powers 
and duties are purposely given by statute an 
equal voice and responsibility in order that 
decisions upon important matters may be 
safeguarded from the individual dictation of 
one person. 

You charge the board of superintendents 
with the retention of inefficient teachers, al- 
though you are fully aware that the board 
of superintendents can not dismiss a teacher, 
that neither the board nor any one of its 
members can even prefer charges against a 
teacher. The charter and by-laws give the 
superintendent of schools alone the “power 
to direct a district superintendent to prefer 
charges against a principal or against a 
teacher for gross misconduct, insubordina- 
tion, neglect of duty, or general inefficiency.” 
In addition to this for fifteen years you alone 
have had the power to make a teacher’s 
license permanent or to revoke it before it 
is made permanent. Therefore, implication 
that the board of superintendents or the as- 
sociate superintendents have the power to 
remove a teacher or to initiate steps looking 
towards the dismissal of inefficient teachers 
is wholly without foundation. 

Your charge that the board of superin- 
tendents has advanced in salary teachers 
who have not earned it by efficient service is 
answered by the record of the action of the 
board of superintendents in approving teach- 
ers for merit and fitness under very rigid, 
uniform rules to govern all cases. These 
aa were made after most careful delibera- 

on. 


The American Teacher 


129 


You charge the board of superintendents 
with making injudicious selections of district 
superintendents and high-school principals. 
Such nominations are always made by a ma- 
jority vote of at least five members. By this 
course there is less liability to error in judg- 
ment than if one person had the power. Ac- 
tion on all these matters has always received 
careful consideration, and the decision ar- 
rived at is a consensus of opinion. Majority 
rule does not necessitate “compromises be- 
tween opposing opinions,” resulting in the 
selection of inferior candidates. It means 
that after a careful consideration of all the 
conditions involved an agreement is, arrived 
at that appears best to a majority participat- 
ing in the selection. This surely is a safer 
and saner course than to follow an arbitrary 
decision made by one man. 

oe =: &£ 2 6. 2's 

We keep prominently in mind the fact that the 
chairman of our board has suffered from a grievous 
physical misfortune, sufficient to impair the temper 
and judgment of almost any man. During your pro- 
tracted illness every member of the board has felt 
the fullest measure of sympathy for you and will- 
ingly shared your official burden in order to give you 
ample opportunity to regain your health and 
strength. If the action herein specified were of an 
impairment of health, it should be passed over with 
regret and forgotten. But there have come to the 
board of superintendents so many intimations of 
your loose condemnation of its members in your con- 
versation and communication with others, that it is 
difficult to consider the present instance an unusual 
case, due to extraordinary causes. In ob ecting to 
your present action we do not wish to lose sight 
of your honors, nor to seem unmindful of the respect 
due to the head of a great system of schools. We 
have in proper degree deferred to your desires and 
opinions; we have supported you when we have be- 
lieved you were right; we have been carefully cor- 
siderate of your views of school questions. In the 
present instance an acquiescence by us in your pub- 
lished statements would be detrimental to the cause 
of public education. 


Ge American Teacher 


in Education Education for Democracy 


Published th] i d A 
ublis! monthly, exc uly an 
THE AMERICAN TEACHER 00 MPANY. N0., 


70 Fifth Avenue, New Tork City 
GABRIEL R. MASON 
CHARLOTTE E. L 
JAY D. LESTER 

















Vice-President 








HENRY R. LINVILLE 
SS PERLMAN 


Edited b 
BENJAMIN GLASSOEE RG 
EDWARD MAYMAN 


BENJAMIN C. GRUENBERG 
FRANKLIN J. we 


SCHMALHAUS 
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A MAYOR’S CAMOUFLAGE! 


J. Epwarp MAyMAN 


There is not any group in New York that is bet- 
ter treated than the school teachers, and it seems to 
me that it ill becomes the teaching staff to try to 
wreck an experiment that means so much in the 
future lives and the future development of children 
because that experiment requires an hour or so 
more work on the part .of the teaching staff every 


day. 

Thus spoke the “best mayor New York 
City has had in the last fifty years,” when 
he addressed a group of citizens at a po- 
litical meeting. Need we adduce proof in 
support of his statement? No, not much, 
One or two instances will do. 

First, as to the better treatment that we 
are getting. At a recent hearing before his 
Honor’s (pledged) Board of Education, the 
Teachers’ Union presented indisputable evi- 
dence that the teachers were suffering on 
account of the high cost of living and the 
progressive decrease in the purchasing of 
their stationary salaries. None of the facts 
or figures was challenged. In fact, members 


of the Board of Education, in private con- 
versation admitted that the situation was 
alarming, and that something ought to be 


done at once. The special committee that 
was appointed to investigate and report on 
the matter of salary readjustment did not 
think the whole matter important enough 
even to hold a meeting before the lapse of 
three or four months. In this interim the 
most influential member of the committee, 
when asked whether due consideration was 
being given to the plea of the teachers, re- 
plied: “Yes, but not serious consideration, 
I hope.” Aren’t you ready to admit that 
the teachers are treated “better’’? 

Well, here is another instance. Late in 
August, about six months after the salary 
hearing, the Board of Education adopted 
its budget for 1918. Not a cent was in- 
cluded for increases| in teachers’ salaries. 
But before the meeting was over, the gen- 
erosity of the Board asserted itself. Said 
one member: “Owing to the extraordinary 
conditions confronting us in the present 


national crisis, I am sorry to state that we 
could not recommend a general increase in 
teachers’ salaries. We do recommend, how- 
ever, an increase in the initial salaries of 
elementary school teachers.” And, with- 
out a dissenting vote, the recommendation 
was adopted. The increase for the teachers, 
the great majority of whom have no vote, 
amounts to exactly (don’t let it stagger 
you) eight-tenths of one per cent. In num- 
bers it looks like this: 0.8%. Isn’t his 
Honor the Mayor right? Well, then here 
is the rest of the same story. A few min- 
utes before the meeting was adjourned, an- 
other member of the same board rose to 
this: “Owing to the extraordinary condi- 
tions confronting us in the present national 
crisis, which has caused considerable hard- 
ship to our janitors, I recommend that the 
Board of Education ask for an increase in 
the payroll for janitorial service of ten per 
cent.” The recommendation was adopted. 
The janitors, all of whom vote, were al- 
lowed an increase of ten per cent. In fig- 
ures it looks like this: 10%. 

Those of you who are mathematically in- 
clined, will not be prevented from doing a 
little figuring now. Need further proof of 
the correctness of the Mayor’s statement be 
given? But if you insist so strenuously, 
we shall have to let you in on this one: 
At a recent hearing before his Honor the 
Mayor, in the matter of ratings, one of the 
teachers tried to show that unjust ratings 
eventually hurt the children. The mayor 
was deeply moved. Interrupting the elo- 
quent speech, the mayor said, “I am inclined 
to view with suspicion the teachers’ regard 
and concern for the children.” The speech 
was cut short. The hearing closed. The 
teachers were again treated “better”. by the 
mayor himself. ; 

And do you now dare question the mayor’s 
sincere regard for the teachers? How can 
you challenge his statement that no group 
of employes is treated better than the 


130 





November, 1917 


teachers? It ill becomes you to show such 
ingratitude, even tho the teachers are pa- 
ternally shielded from the evil effect that 
is to come from an alleged increase of 10% 
to nearly all other city employes. 

The mayor “proves” that the teachers 
have not the best interests of the children 
at heart. He charges them with malicious 
intent to wreck an educational experiment 
just because they are required to put in an 
hour or more of service every day! He has 
the facts. He marshals them with consum- 
mate skill! But what are the facts? 

About two years ago it was decided to ex- 
periment with the work-study-and-play, or 
Gary scheme of education. A huge amount 
of money was appropriated, and buildings 
were put in physical repair for the working 
of the plan. Committee after committee 
went to Gary, Indiana, to study the scheme 
in actual operation. Glowing reports, and 
let it be understood, truthful reports, were 
made upon the wonderful work that was be- 
ing done there. The teachers read these re- 
ports with a good deal of interest and zeal. 
When the time came for the actual installa- 
tion of the plan, they were glad to have the 
opportunity to take part in a wonderful edu- 
cational experiment. They expected a beau- 
tiful school house situated on spacious 
grounds as in Gary. They expected to work 
in the print shop, the machine shop, the car- 
penter shop, the foundry, the plumbing shop, 








Degradation 


School teachers have in all ages been 


mediocre in intellect and incompetent. Leib- 
nitz is regarded as a dullard and Newton is 
considered as a blockhead. Never, however, 
in the history of mankind have school teach- 
ers fallen to such a low level of mediocrity as 
in our times and in our country. For it is 
not the amount of knowledge that counts in 
true education, but originality and independ- 
ence of thought that are of importance in 
education. But independence and. originality 
of thought are just the very elements that are 
suppressed by our modern barrack-system of 
education. No wonder that military men 
claim that the best “education” is given in 
military schools—Boris Sidis, in Philistine 
and Genius. ~ tic~ 


The American Teacher 


131 


the art room, the music studio, the zoo, the 
garden, etc., etc., as in Gary. They wanted 
the wonderful opportunity to enrich the cur- 
riculum so that school would have a deeper 
meaning to their children, as in Gary. They 
yearned for the professional freedom, and 
for the exercise of initiative, as in Gary (7). 
And they were even willing to work longer 
hours without further compensation, as in 
Gary. They really and truly wanted to con- 
duct an educational experiment in a scien- 
tific way, even tho it meant a sacrifice for 
them. It was an unprecedented opportunity 
and they wanted to make the most of it. 
Why not? They had nothing to lose, and 
everything to gain. ° 

The experiment was finally launched. 
About a dozen schools were to participate 
in the trial. It did not take long to dis- 
cover that New York was not to have the 
kind of school Gary has. Instead of the five, 
six, or seven shops that one finds in a Gary 
school, the New York school was to have 
two or three. With a single notable excep- 
tion none of the experimental schools was 
to have any grounds or increased play space. 
The studios and art rooms were conspicuous 
by their absence. In fact the Gary plan was 
not introduced at all. Only a part of it was 
adopted. And that part is by no means the 
most attractive or most desirable. 

The teachers allowed themselves to believe 
that they were to experiment with a system 
that seemed ideal. But instead they found 
a botched imitation of the Gary School that 
is neither new or old, neither Gary nor New 
York. It was something that ground them 
harder than ever, that tired them more than 
ever, that dampened their spirits, that 
worked them beyond the limit of human en- 
durance, that shattered their nerves. On 
top of all this they heard those responsible 
for the plan urging its further extension 
primarily on grounds of economy. Educa- 
tional considerations were subordinated or 
entirely ignored. The cry was “‘20 per cent 
more time for children—10 per cent less 
cost for instruction—40 per cent less cost 
for building and equipment.” Is it any won- 
der that the hard-headed business men in 
the Board of Education and in the Board 





182 


of Estimate were anxious to adopt the 
plan? They are not the educators. They 
are not the judges of an educational ex- 
periment. They did not even take the 
trouble to find out from the teachers, the 
only ones who really know. But the saving 
of dollars is something they could not re- 
sist. Hence orders went forth to extend 
and extend—what? The Gary plan? No. 
“There ain’t no such animal” in New York 
City. Extend the scheme that will save the 
building of new school houses and thus save 
money. Never mind the educational crimes 
committed. Never mind the overburdening 
of the teachers. They have no votes. And 
their protests can be easily pigeon-holed. 

At this writing it is planned to put the 
“travesty on the Gary plan” in operation 
in more than one hundred schools. What 
justification there is for such extension no 
one knows. The experiment that was so 
auspiciously started with the aid of the 
teachers two years ago was never completed. 
There is no pretense of ever completing it. 
The things that made Gary famous are only 
heard of in New York. It is not a Gary plan 
that is being introduced. It is an economy 
scheme that is being foisted on the innocent 
public. The children don’t derive any great- 
er benefits. The teachers are overworked. 
The parents are grumbling. The proponents 
make excuses and apologies. The opponents 
make political capital. 

But the Mayor says that the teachers are 
wrecking an educational experiment. But 
he fails to say that the teachers were at 
first willing and anxious to make sacrifices 
in order to carry out the experiment. It 
was they who said: “This is our opportunity 


The American Teacher 


Vol. VI., No. 8 


to do some real service to society, and bring 
a blessing to our children.” And they sacri- 
ficed. And they served. And they suffered. 
But all in vain. The wreckers of the experi- 
ment are not they who have so freely given of 
their labor and vitality. The wreckers of the 
experiment are those who perverted an edu- 
cational scheme that seeks to make concrete 
Dewey’s ideals into a sordid economy scheme 
—a brutal economy scheme that disregards 
the best interests of the children, mercilessly 
grinds the life out of the teachers, and 
evokes public suspicion. Is it conceivable 
that the mayor wants the teachers to be a 
party to this wretched piece of business? 
This in spite of the scornful and contemptu- 
ous treatment they received at his hands, or 
at the hands of his haughty associates. The 
teachers refuse to participate in a game that 
is not “on the level.” Furthermore, they are 
beginning to realize that the time has come 
for them to resist with all the power at their 
command all attempts to “jam things down 
their throats.” 


The awakening is coming. Nay, it is here. 
The teacher is about to take his rightful 
place in the social development. He knows 
the public mind. He is the curator of the 
public’s greatest and noblest asset. He must 
take it upon himself to protect the public 
thru the propagation and dissemination of 
ideals of wise living, and thru unconquera- 
ble opposition to all political tricks camou- 
flaged by insincere professions of “social 
justice” and “efficient management.” 

At present the teacher is a mere employee 
to be trifled with. But a newer and brighter 
day is dawning. Teachers, are you ready to 
make the most of your opportunity? 








The Value of the Teachers’ Union 


SAM SCHMALHAUSEN 
DeWitt Clinton High School, New York 


Everybody knows that the skilled workers 
of the world have finally revolutionized our 
autocratic industrialism by the institution of 
the technique known as Collective Bargain- 
ing. ; 

No employer in any of the skilled indus- 
tries would dare to mddify ever so slightly 


the conditions (wages, hours, etc.) under 
which the craftsmen labor according to 
agreement without consulting the wishes 
and expressed desires of the whole group to 
be affected. 

Collective Bargaining is the decent princi- 
ple of give-and-take that underlies all those 





November, 1917 


mutually helpful relationships which char- 
acterize the transactions of self-respecting 
men. 

The skilled workman knows his rights, 
knows how to assert, and if necessary, to de- 
fend them intelligently, knows in brief, how 
to win the respect and reward due to self- 
conscious, powerfully integrated, collective- 
ly-free men. 

Can we teachers—constituting one of 
the oldest (and most valuable) of the 
skilled industries—claim for ourselves a 
like prerogative, a like control over our 
collective destinies, a like respect and re- 
ward in proportion to our worth and our 
position in society ? 

Are we teachers of any importance? If, 
indeed, we are so esteemed by those in au- 
thority “over” us, why have they utterly ig- 
nored our counsel, our reactions, our judg- 
ment, our interest, our Say in so vital a mat- 
ter as the lengthening of the day? 

Think of the humiliating low level to which 
our school administration has fallen when, 
after a pre-arranged unanimous vote, with- 
out any discussion whatsoever, the Board of 
Education of New York was willing to go 
on record as sanctioning the longer day for 
the High Schools. The two most important 
groups to be affected, the pupils and the 
teachers, were not consulted ; only completely 
ignored. Are Teachers of any importance? 

* ae K 


Would an employer of the commonest sort 
of skilled labor venture on his own unassisted 
initiative to alter, to their disadvantage, the 
wage or time schedule of “his” employes? 
Would he so far forget himself as to ignore 
as of no intrinsic importance the opinions 
and rights of those who were to be most 
deeply affected by any drastic innovation? 

How account for the fact that the Board 
of Education and the Board of Superin- 
tendents hold us in so slight an esteem, in so 
frivolous a regard, as to consider it of no 
importance whether we teachers are favor- 
ably or unfavorably impressed by changes 
wholly disadvantageous to our professional 
interests, our professional welfare—changes 
mind you, superimposed by bureaucratic 
will? Are we Teachers of any importante? 


The American Teacher 


133 


If we are so deemed, why are we not con- 
sulted in matter of SERIOUS moment? Is it 
not about time that we were heard from? 

Do you know why the Real Estate interests 
are respectfully listened to—while we are 
utterly ignored? 

Do you know why Big Business is re- 
spectfully listened to—while we are utterly 
ignored? 

Do you know why Organized Labor is most 
earnestly attended to—while we are con- 
temptuously side-tracked ? 

Do you know why any Purposeful Group 
is more powerful than we teachers are? 

The answer is simple enough. We teachers 
lack a centralized, self-conscious Control. 
The only honestly socialized body now in ex- 
istence to which we can—and should—pledge 
our deepest support is The Teachers’ Union! 

Whatever apparent or real defects mar the 
idealism of The Teachers’ Union at present 
are easily remediable. At heart, as even its 
most unsympathetic critics are obliged to 
concede, The Teachers’ Union is a sincere or- 
ganization, genuinely democratic and open- 
faced, progressive and aggressive, a Force to 
be reckoned with in our autocratized school 
system! Remember that, if you please! 


There’s no time like the present time for 
joining The Teachers’ Union. You under- 
stand why... Between the “ordinary” 
teacher and the too-long-surviving Bureau- 
cratic Officialdom there is being brought to a 
consummation most devoutly to be wished 
for, an ancient irreconcilable conflict (of 
opinion, based upon a conflict of power) ; 
and the essence of that ancient conflict is 
plainly this: Shall the Few be Permitted to 
Continue to Use the Many as Tools for the 
Realization of Plans and Purposes Conceived, 
Not in the Minds and Hearts of the Teachers, 
But in the Obscure Brain of the Manipulat- 
ing Few-at-the-Top? 

There’s no time like the present time for 
joining The Teachers’ Union. You under- 
stand why... Your membership in- The 
Union gives you real power (in place of 
mere Influence). The growing strength of 
The Union means inevitably the growing 
strength of Democracy in Education. The 
Union represents Organized Intelligence. 





134 


The Teachers’ Union can gain for the social- 
ized teaching body every wholesome and 
righteous demand which the collective wis- 
dom of the members: may fashion. 

This is the most strategic moment in the 
history of our school system. Every teacher, 
be he conservative or radical, feels a throb 
of exhilarating might. Oh let us not commit 
the inexcusable folly of allowing that stra- 
tegic moment to slip by, untouched, unreal- 
ized, unachieved. 

The Teachers’ Union calls to you in a voice 
fraught with fine promise for the future of 
Democracy in Education! 

Come, awakened Teacher-Educator, join 


us! 


The Death of Concentration 


Who Killed Concentration? 


ONCENTRATION was dead, and all the birds 
C of the air and all the forces of the earth came 
to do him honor. 

“I,” said the Lady, “I did it with my social func- 
tions and my yearly trips to Europe. I killed Con- 
centration.” 

“TI did it,” said the Highbrow, “with my lectures 
and reading and my uplift, not to mention my phil- 
osophical systems and vague superiorities—I was 
the one who killed Concentration.” 

“Sorry to interrupt,” said the Parents, “but we 
really did it. We insisted upon having so many dis- 
tracting things in the house, not to mention putting 
on more style day by day, that we were the chief, if 
humble, instruments in the hands of an all-wise 
Providence who did away with Concentration—we 
are the proud authors of his dissolution.” 

“TI did it,” said the Tango, “with my restless mid- 
night spirit; of course I did it. I killed Concentra- 
tion.” 

“Which euniads me that I am the one,” remarked 
the Movies. “Yes, I did it with my cheap realism; 
how could Concentration live after I came on the 
stage? The mere suggestion is absurd. I accom- 
plished the demise.” 

“Pooh!” sang the Phonograph. “Wasn’t I before 
you? I started his death, all right. I guess I know. 
I killed Concentration myself!” 

‘And then they all bowed low, and took a back 
seat .as the real author came. 

“I did it, didn’t I?” said the School System, and 
Concentration, rising out of his coffin, remarked 
post-humously: 

“Believe me, it was you, all ‘Tight. a > Life, Sep- 
tember 27, 1917, 


The American Teacher 


Vol. VI., No. 8 


Pedagogical Portraits 
THE IRRATIONAL DETECTIVE 

KNEW him when I was a mere boy under 

I his teacher-tutelage. He was infectious- 

ly human then. We loved him because 
he seemed to be less concerned with the un- 
speakable Latin he was being well paid to 
inject into us than with the simple humanity 
of acting the big brother to a group of green 
youths. We loved him then, for he was our 
faithful friend. That affectionate epoch is 
buried in an almost completely forgotten 
past ... I recall, not without a sense of 
tears, how intimately tied he was to us in all 
those little momentous affairs of the soul 
which differentiate and exalt the finer con- 
fidence of men. We were perfectly at ease 
in his presence ; he was unaffectedly close and 
communicative in ours. Teacher and pupils 
were well mated. 

I remember most vividly the day on which 
he came into the class a touching sight, some 
unhappiness too heart-breaking to bear alone 
lying sadly on his lips, a broken man in need 
of consolation and fellowship. Intuitively, 
we went out to meet him in his woe. Our 
overflowing silence must have caressed his 
muteness eloquently, for suddenly the si- 
lence grew tenser, trembling with a deep 
anxiety. We were silent as the moonless 
night. Quietly he confided to us; he told us 
about his wife denied even twenty-four 
hours of life: she had undergone a terrible 
operation from the effects of which she had 
not the vitality to recover. The doctor had 
assured him in no indecisive terms that his 
wife had hardly one chance in a hundred to 
live thru that night. As he unfolded his 
story of tortured nights spent at her bed- 
side, the weary forced attempts to simulate 
gaiety in the class room, the agony of living 
without her, we, sad-eyed and heavily mute, 
ignorant of life and love and passion and 
pain (we were youngsters of sixteen) could 


‘only respond in our own visionless way, 


blindly, lovingly, re-assuringly. He_ broke 
down and wept like a little child. We were 
a pathetic dumb fellowship. .. We loved 
him in those tender days. 

Now he walks the neighborly halls an utter 
stranger to opr loves,‘a feeble victim of our 





November, 1917 


hates. Several of his students have becom? 
colleague teachers, remindful of the beloved 
instructor of other days, distrustful of him 
whom time and the poisonous power of pres- 
tige have transformed into the sycophant 
of now-a-days ... Life carves out cruel 
destinies for ambitious men. Men obsessed 
by the love of privileged status swiftly for- 
get the scrupulous respect for the civilized 
courtesies of more virginal days. The pas- 
sionate desire for authority over one’s fel- 
lowmen is the dread beginning of self- 
degradation. The ineradicable blindness of 
the aspiring mortal is the keenest tragedy of 
which the dramatic page holds the record. 
The foredoomed destiny of manipulating man 
is writ large in the broken wills, his heritage 
of evil-doing scatters among the resentful 
sons of men. The ambition of little men is 
the assassin of the joy of living. 


. . . Our proselyte-sycophant is a merci- 
less detective now. He specializes in vice- 
crusades. The beam in his own eye never 
offends him; the mote in the other fellow’s 
eye is endlessly fascinating. He has become 


an inquisition-expert. His most appetizing 
interest lies in detecting young sinners, 
frightening the scanty wits out of them, 
forcing their inexpert intelligence through 
a cross-examination equal in malicious in- 
tention to the murderous “third-degree,” 
punishing them hard-heartedly to the limit 


of the “law” in the distorted case. The ex- 
ercise of uncensored autocratic authority has 
soured his more generous impulses, stiffened 
his natural good will, depraved his sense of 
humor, unmanned his native humaneness, 
spoiled beyond rehabilitation his reputation 
for forethought and discriminating mercy. 
He behaves as though the cruel unpremedi- 
tated impulses congenial to childhood had 
been unappeased in playful boyhood pranks, 
deferred until a weazened maturity for un- 
alloyed satisfaction. The man whom we once 
loved in our innocence, we now pity and 
often contemn in our bitter knowledge of 
reality. 

Self-delusion never ran a more bizarre 
course. The Irrational Detective honestly 
thinks himself a savior of the race of adol- 
escents, He takes credit to himself for hav- 


The American Teacher 


185 


ing “broken” the “bad” boys of 'their crim- 
inal habits. His method is very, direct and 
theatrical. The accused boy (often a hard- 
ened first offender of fourteen summers) is 
ushered into a special room, usually in the 
consoling presence of veteran criminals (ages 
14 to 18), where callousness accumulates and 
children decay. The flustered juvenile is 
ripped open mercilessly that his heinous of- 
fense against man and God may smell the 
more offensively to high heaven. After the 
poison gas of ridicule, sarcasm, flint-edged 
abuse have done their putrefying work, the 
gangrene of self-humiliation sets in leaving 
the victim a poor, wretched, impotent thing. 
The most appealing aspect of this excru- 
ciating process is the startling simplicity of 
the theory of “justice” animating it. There 
is no jury of peers—the irrational detective 
is convinced of its superfluousness. There is 
no division of functions (to which the anglo- 
saxon jurisprudence has been accustomed for 
only about seven hundred years): He is the 
persecuting attorney, the imaginary jury, the 
chief witnesses for the defense, the most 
damaging witness for the prosecution, the 
learned Judge, the prison warden, the lord 
high executioner—He is the incarnation of 
all the seven plagues. In one of the largest 
(and most evilly managed) High Schools in 
America, this sinister caricature of justice is 
permitted, aye officially encouraged, to be- 
smirch the student sense of fair play. The 
partial personal “justice” of the days of the 
gude king Canute survives almost intact and 
unimpaired in the maleficent discipline pre- 
sided over by our irrational one. Grotes- 
querie could invent no mockery more offen- 
sive than this miscarriage of social justice. 
These star-chamber proceedings are never 
published in the minutes; they remain secret 
and unapproachable. They are a dark and 
untranslatable page both to pupils and teach- 








THE RAINBOW 
Is it too revolutionary to say that the chil- 
dren will not come into their own until the 
teachers do? No, but it may be truer to 
say that the teachers will not come jnto their 
own until the chiJdren do. 





136 


ers. No impartial person sits and notes 
down the judicial truth in the case. It ap- 
pears to be nobody’s business (but the irra- 
tional detective’s) what transpires; whether 
the demands of justice have been honorably 
and dispassionately fulfilled or whether they 
have been meanly disregarded. Who knows? 
(The reader may be interested in knowing 
that the gentleman in autocratic control of 
these high-handed proceedings—in that evil- 
ly-governed High School—is a physical and 
mental wreck. He is a pathetic sight: sev- 
eral times within a few years he has broken 
down, he is hysterical and uncontrollably vio- 
lent-tempered. To oppose his will is to invite 
for the boy-defendant an ungovernably fierce 
denunciation of his most innocent peccadil- 
loes. Our chief Persecutor—theoretically in 
charge of a Department, actually a free-will 
agent in charge of himself and of his mis- 
chief-making inquisition—recently boasted 
to a group of astounded pedagogs that he had 
heard Billy Sunday thirty-seven times!!!) 

There he stands, evilly-significant, a tribute 
to the life-forces of power and prestige, a 
revelation of the dastardliness of the human 
spirit unredeemed by social sympathy or by 
personal wisdom, a clinching proof of the 
irresponsible egotism of man unimpeded in 
his prejudicial sway over the destinies of 
simple creatures strangely unconscious of 
their human rights. 

Of all our institutions, only the School lags 
wilfully behind a naughty blockhead, opaque 
to shafts of enlightenment. The school is 
still the prison barracks. Individuality is 
blighted (how not?—the pedagog is rated on 
his success in automatizing the student-men- 
tality) ; curiosity is straight-jacketed; orig- 
inality is surveyed with book-wormy sus- 
picion; freshness and frankness and infor- 
mality and eccentricity are penalized as 
vagrants, unworthy of probation and the 
tolerance sprung from good-humored cordial- 
ity. Only the institution of the school de- 
fies rather too successfully the counsels and 
strategies of modernity. In no particular 
does the school so callously disclose its 
cramped mediaeval bias as in the degrading 
practice of its punishments: punishments at 
once unfair and unathieving. In relation to 


The American Teacher 


Vol. VI., No. 8 


the problem of punishment, our school system 
is only second to the prison house in respect 
of the petty vindictiveness, the unwholesome 
tyranny of its code of right and wrong. The 
school awaits its Social revolution. 

SOCRATES. 


Education Among Our 
Allies 


ARE is the day that we do not read 
R ina somebody is going over to France 

or England to study something or 
other so as to come back to tell us how it 
ought to be done. Much of our national 
policy has been the outcome of overseas ex- 
perience. If the war is to be won and mis- 
takes avoided, then such precaution is of 
enormous value; but there seems to come 
with it a curious twist that leaves all the 
advantage with the moneyed interests. Con- 
scription of men comes upon us quickly and 
surely, but wealth is whipped into service 
very slowly for fear of disrupting “busi- 
ness.” Food control for immediate military 
purposes is a rapid development, but regula- 
tion for the benefit of the small buyer is not 
yet with us altho English experience clearly 
pointed to its need and distress is aready 
upon us. Educators have been studying the 
schools ever since war was declared and 
have come back to tell us what to do. The 
net result so far as can be observed in actual 
changes seems to be summed up in the 
longer day, military training, pedagogical 
bond sellers, instruction in Red Cross sew- 
ing and a general damning of the previously 
much-lauded German educational phil- 
osophy. 

Well, what are the Allies doing? In 
August Parliament voted an additional sum 
of $17,000,000 for elementary education, 
which was to be used, as was made abso- 
lutely clear by Mr H A L Fisher, Presi- 
dent of the Board of Education, to raise 
the salaries of teachers. Think of it, after 
three years of war, when, in the final drive 
for victory, we should expect every penny 
to be put into ammunition, seventeen mil- 
lions are voted to increase the remuneration 





— DOD ke DO SAS 


— oD 


November, 1917 


of teachers! Nor is the disposition of the 
money to wait upon the formulation of 
elaborate schedules, but the government 
recommends that in the meantime some of 
it be paid on account, and (can it be true?) 
that the operation be made retroactive as 
regards any balance remaining on hand. 
We feel that we can do no better than quote 
Mr Fisher, warning you, in the words of 
The London Teacher, that “these are not 
the words of a debating society President 
of the Board of Education. These clear- 
cut, biting propositions are not comparable 
with the eloquent periods we used to listen 
to in the local Parliaments of twenty years 
ago. It is a great administrative officer of 
the Government who is talking.” 

We feel that no system of public educa- 
tion can be satisfactory which does not re- 
pose on the cooperation of a body of de- 
voted, capable and well-trained teachers, 
and that the first step towards educational 
reform is to attract good men and women 
into the teaching profession. The Govern- 
ment has come to the conclusion that the 
financial position of the teachers in our ele- 
mentary schools is unsatisfactory and that 
it should be improved, and to this end a 
large additional sum of money has been 
recently voted by Parliament for elementary 
education. We do not intend that this grant 
should be spent in relief of rates. We pro- 
pose that it should be chiefly spent on the 
augmentation of teachers’ salaries. It is 
sometimes urged that the education given 
in the schools is not good enough to justify 
higher salaries. That is a vicious circle. You 
cannot get good education without good 
teachers, and you cannot get good teachers 
unless you are prepared to pay for them. 
We have thought fit to indicate the min- 
imum salary which should be paid to cer- 
tificated and uncertificated teachers. We 
cannot allow teachers in our national schools 
to be exploited at a starvation wage. And 
here let me add that I shall not consider 
that I have placed the financial position of 
the teaching profesison on a satisfactory 
basis till I have succeeded in securing ade- 
quate pension for all classes of teachers. 

Speaking of the government recommenda- 
tions mentioned above, The London Teacher 
Says: 


Who, in their wildest dreams, ever ex- 
pected a Board of Education circular to be 


-addressed in such terms to Local Authori- 


ties? The “economists” of School Board 


The American Teacher 137 


days—we have no doubt some of them are 
still about—must have felt something like 
“shell shock” when they read this revolu- 
tionary circular. What will they say when 
they read Mr Fisher’s speech repeating 
with emphasis all that was said in his cir- 
cular and going beyond it? “We do not in- 
tend that this grant should be spent in relief 
of rates.” Poor old ignorant Bumble, who 
once tried to dominate the School Boards! 
That it should have come to this! His zeal 
for the ratepayer scorned and despised! The 
President of the Board of Education going 
about the country telling the people to have 
nothing to do with him! 

What can we add to that? After all, war 
has its compensations, and if only the lowly 
among us could hobnob with our allies and 
swap the ideas that have been the product 
of the economic stress which the war has 
brought about, we might import some radi- 
cal thoughts and make of the schools the 
throbbing human universities that they 
ought to be. 

In the meantime, when is Mr Fisher 
coming to see us? 


[VERY URGENT, 





Cut this out, sign legibly, and return to 
The American Teacher, 70 Fifth Ave., Room 909 


ie errr Ty 


LOYALTY PLEDGE 


I, the undersigned, a lover of ideas, do here- 
with gladly promise to contribute to the 
American Teacher the sum of $ 

month for 1917-1918. 


My initial contribution is $ 


This is oe ee Organ 


° e 
American Federation of Teachers 
(Affiliated with American Federation of Labor) 
OFFICERS OF THE A. F. OF T. 
CHas. B STILLMAN, President 
1225 Sedgwick St., Chicago, III. 
ETHEL E Beers, Vice-President 
3414 S. Paulina St., Chicago 
O C WiLuarp, Recording Secretary 
7218 Cornell Ave., Chicago 
MARGARET SNopGrass, Corr. Sec. 
1061 Dakin St., Chicago 
F G STEcKer, Financial Sec. 
1618 Lake Ave., Wilmette, II. 
JAMES A MEADE, Treasurer 
2628 Sayre Ave., Chicago 
TRUSTEES 
Henry R Linville George J Jones 
Anita Bailey Wm. T McCoy 
Lydia J Trowbridge 





138 


Why We Must Not Abandon Social 
Service During War Time 


The only way to save our empires from 
the encroachment of the people is to en- 
gage in war, and thus substitute national 
passions for social aspirations.—EM- 
PRESS CATHERINE II OF RUSSIA. 


In defeating autocracy, is it not our duty 
to explode this theory and to prevent its ap- 
plication to democracies? 

It used to be taught in school histories 
that kings and emperors and potentates 
usually met demands for social reforms at 
home by provoking foreign wars. In the 
excitement of battle, abuses at home were 
lost sight of and for a while the attention of 
the people was distracted by the more thrill- 
ing contests between national groups. We 
were led to believe that this sort of coup was 
part of the stock-in-trade of the European 
politician. 

There are now few people in this country 
who would care to connect this idea with the 
events of the last few years, and it is prob- 
able that the subjects of the kings and em- 
perors were also unconscious of any such mo- 
tive on the part of their rulers; otherwise 
they would hardly have lent themselves so 
freely to carrying out the scheme. This 
raises the question of how we can be sure 
that our high motives and idealism may not, 
in the light of later times, appear as sordid 
and selfish as do those of the war-makers of 
other days. There is apparently but one way 
to make sure that history will not fall into 
that error, and that is by making a real dem- 
onstration during the war era of better gov- 
ernment, more real service, more social jus- 
tice, more local democracy, more humanity, 
more decency, more skill in public adminis- 
tration. If we fail in doing that, we run 
grave risks of confirming the theory that a 
foreign war arrests social progress, and in- 
stead of making the world. safe for democ- 
racy, we may spread the belief that war 
makes the world safe for bad government.— 
Citizen’s Business, Sept. 27, 1917. 


The American Teacher 


Vol. VI., No. 8 


The Solitary Profession 
By Prof.— 
HERE are two solitary professions. 

One of them is sheep herding. | 

have watched a Mexican sit on a 
lonely upland mesa, and rivet his eyes on 
his flock for hours without batting an eye- 
lash. He wouldn’t talk when I went to him, 
and tried to get him to help break the 
oppressive silence. He liked the eternal 
solitude of the mountains so well that he had 
become part of it, and he would not leave 
it for a government office. 

I once knew an unlucky sheep herder who 
“came back.” Civilized noises, however, 
proved too much for a mind long accustomed 
to primitive peace. He went crazy before 
his first hundred was gone, and manifested 
his displeasure with humanity upon arriv- 
ing at his home town by shooting the mar- 
shal, two police, and himself before he re- 
tired for the night. 

The other solitary profession is teaching 
school in a rural community. 

I belong to this profession. 

It was a happy life at college! How I 
looked forward to the future! Enthusiastic 
volunteers were continually bringing in ex- 
periences that smacked of noble social serv- 
ice. Our venerable college president an- 
nounced these before assembly with beam- 
ing face. “Just from the firing line, you 
know,” he said, and there was a wealth of 
approbation in his words. 

I longed to be at the front. We colleagues 
were cheer to each other’s ambitions, and 
bantered one another at successes that ex- 
isted only in the day dreams of the future. 
How we worked! Oh, well, you’ve been 
there. 

The day came to part with friends. 
Underscore that word. I feverishly thrust 
my diploma into my pocket, and made for the 
nearest school board. On the firing line! 
Why, I could hear the peppering of muskets. 
Cornered! No quarter, surrender! Easy! 
Easy! 

I’ve been right there for several years, 
among some of the best boys and girls who 
ever had a hope for the future. And I am 





November, 1917 


helping to make that hope! 

Day in, and day out, the weeks pass, and 
I am every day with dozens of bright pros- 
pects for to-morrow’s day ; young Americans 
in whose veins pulses the indomitable ambi- 
tion which has made America, and will keep 
it going. 

And yet I am lonely. I looked three years 
for the first friend. Then I got married. 
Not friends with my pupils? Their bright 
faces no source of inspiration? Say, that 
makes “the firing line” easier. 

A few days ago it was my rather unpleas- 
ant task as superintendent to pass from one 
room to the other announcing that one of 
the supremest joys of the little folks was 
to be denied them—there was to be no 
Christmas treat. After the ordeal with the 
tiniest tots was over, and I had left the 
room feeling like a very criminal, one of 
the soul-inspiring hopefuls turned to his 
teacher, and said, “Say, Miss— ain’t he a 
good man!” 

Good, doing his worst! Surely youth is 
long suffering and endureth all things.” 
Some of the best boys and girls, I say, and 
yet I am lonely. 

The colored folks in my little town tip their 
hats to me, and some of the white folks do 
too. School teachers are not held in dis- 
repute nor disrespect. I say I am utterly 
lonely. 

In sickness, no neighbors could be more 
kind and thoughtful; in every business 
transaction, none could show more courtesy 
and respect. I am lonely. 

There is not one of my pupils I can un- 
burden my heart to. I cannot tell one single 
one of all my hopes and aspirations; how 
I have succeeded; how I have failed. I can- 
not share my views of politics, religion, or 
my philosophy of life with my wards. Even 
if I could do so, how much consolation could 
they offer for failure, or in what measure 
could they dispel doubts or help unravel the 
profound mysteries of life and its purposes? 

I am like all other men. I am incomplete. 
The riddles that come to all come to me. I 
must look within myself for solution, or 
search the musty pages of my near-friends, 


The American Teacher 


139 


books, for irrelevant and unsympathetic 
answers. 

I am too old for my associates in the class- 
room. I—sad thought—am too young to 
associate with their fathers. My wife and 
I are too old for young folks, and too young . 
for old folks—and I am a schooi teacher. 

The moral solitude of all leaders is great, 
but the utter desolation of the lonely soul 
of a leader of those who will live their life 
to-morrow is so complete that it is broken 
only by the ringing laughter that memory 


echoes from the past. 
* * oe 


Reflections 
NOTHER breakdown of the eternal 
A law of supply and demand. When the 
unutterable urge of the soul for ex- 
pression outpaces the production of ideas, 
the ideas do not thereby become more valua- 
ble. Under those circumstances the ideas, 
when they do come, should be gems of pure 
thought. The boy who in the classroom de- 
livers himself of words and words and words, 
does not do so from sheer exuberance of 
thinking, but more perhaps from the glow 
and exhilaration that come from the sense 
of activity and well-being that accompany 
speech. Another case of free speech gone 

wrong. Free and easy speech. 

Something might be said of school patriot- 
ism. The assumption of solidarity is always 
the cloak for individual weakness, or to 
change the figure, a kind of moral stimulant 
which sets one off on a glorious drunk of 
righteous self-assertion. One’s position is 
strengthened by the presence of company. 
Two cannot only touch glasses, but they can 
treat each other. They can lock arms and 
sing. Then who dares defy them? What 
of it who pays? What of the headache, of 
the moral, mental, physical degeneration? 
Every sober person must appear silly when 
one is happily inebriated. The thinking pro- 
cess must appear crude and hateful. The 
normal world must be dull and wearisome. 

So the boy learns to take refuge from the 
vexing maladjustments of the school life. 
He learns to shout the praises of the greatest 
school] in the city or the world, and by shout- 





140 


ing, to believe it. The process of education 
is effective, for when the opportunity for con- 
certed struggle against some alien body pre- 
sents itself, he is ready to sacrifice every- 
thing for victory. For fear of too personal 
revelation we do not ask him to clean his 
own house, we allow his dissatisfactions to 
vent themselves only when they are his very 
own, when they touch his selfish desire for 
comfort, when his rage is unconquerable be- 
cause his vanity is concerned. 

We somehow need to take a leaf from the 
note-books of the war-mongers. We talk 
about the moral equivalents of war, but we 
have not the common sense to use them. If 
fear and hate can be used to drive people to 
give up willingly all that they hold most dear 
in life, why can we not call in fear and hate 
to fight the battles of humanity, in the theo- 
logical phrase, “to fear God and hate the 
devil?” It remains for some genius to psy- 
chologize the crowd into the cohorts of right- 
eousness, to link boiling rage to cold analysis, 
to instill aching fear into piercing insight. 

We teachers take things too easily to hand, 
we think in terms of reverence instead of 
truth, in terms of authority instead of analy- 
sis, in terms of justice instead of mercy. We 
speak as if our virtues were all the special 
creation of Things As They Are; we act in 
our private life as if our vices would be as 
milk white were it not for the authorities. 
And now we look at our hundred million pu- 
pils and doubt that education functions! 

The teaching plutocracy speak in terms of 
holy righteousness, and the pupils make out 
a fair copy and learn it by heart. The 
Schoolmaster says we are making the world 
safe for democracy and we crowd the head 
of the class because of the proficiency with 
which we have learned our lesson. The home 
work for to-morrow consists of a disquisition 
upon the text, “Can you imagine, my fellow 
countrymen, a more inspiring thing than to 
belong to a free nation and make your way 
among men every one of whom has the right 
and opportunity to say what he thinks?” 

Our pupils are too apt. We should teach 
them to forget their memory gems and to 
listen at our keyholes. 


The American Teacher 


Vol. VI., No. 8 


Schools for Children 


A Schoolmaster of the Great City, by An- 
gelo Patri. New York: The Macmillan Co. 
By mail to teachers, $1.10. 


Youth, the knight of the morning sun, 
goes forth to meet life with dreams resplend- 
ent, with visions of service. Too often, as the 
dark of evening creeps upon him, it finds 
him worshiping at the shrine of “efficiency.” 
Success has hardened his soft, sensitive soul 
into adamantine rigidity, and the dreams and 
visions have forthwith fled once more to the 
coming youth. Then behold you, pedagogs, 
school-keepers, ‘routineers! the callow~ old 
man the victim of words and memoriter, who 
set out to get discipline, but whose heart mel- 
lowed in the love-light of children. As his old 
Italian father told him entrancing stories of 
revolt against political tyranny, so the son, 
unconscious, I think, of his tale-telling in- 
heritance, bewitches us with his chronicle of 
the revolt of his own soul against the tradi- 
tional educational dogma. There is some- 
thing of the engineer in many of us, we love 
the well-oiled, smooth-running machine. But 
to Patri the pleasant whirr is nothing so 
much as a danger signal. ‘My school” is not 
a mechanism but a dream. 


The father who has missed something out 
of life feels that his children must have it, 
and since life itself deprived him of joy, he 
naturally seeks it in books. Vain delusion; 
the answer is more and more life, life more 
abundantly. And this is the new education: 
life with the whole community, life with par- 
ents ; life with the children; life in the parks 
and in the city streets; life with play, song, 
and laughter. With the consummate charm 
of style that somehow always characterizes 
the lover of children he makes us feel once 
again that much-talked-of but extremely 
elusive nobility of the profession. Who can 
resist his prose poem to “The Children”? 


Yesterday the rain fell and the snow. I bent 
my head to the wind and went on. Then I met 
a boy, a very small boy he was, not big enough 
to be at school. He ran to me and took my hand 
and smiled, and I laughed and raised my head 
and walked on stepping lightly to the music of 
the rain and the snow. 


Each day and every day, to school and from 
school, I meet you, hundreds of you. You smile 
and the welcome in your eyes is wonderful to see. 
You meet me and as you go you take me with 
you, free and joyous as yourself. Surely my life 
is blessed, blessed with the smiles of countless lips, 
blessed with the caress of countless greetings. 

Do you feel that you have need of me? Know 
then, oh, my children, that I have far more need 





November, 1917 


of you. The burdens of men are heavy and you 
m them light. The feet of men know not 
where to go and you show them the way. The 
souls of men are bound and you make them free. 
You, my beautiful people, are the dreams, the 
hopes, the pm | of the world. It is because 
< u that the world grows and grows in brother- 
y' love. 

I look a thousand years ahead and I see not 
men, ships, inventions, buildings, » but 
children, shouting, happy children, I keep my 
hand in yours and smiling dream of endless days. 


Fight! 
The war is for Democracy. You can not 
have Democracy without Cooperation. You 


can not have Cooperation without inform- 
ing all concerned on the purposes of the 


aia Puigheand the Mehta mates — 
will be irresistible. 








READINGS 


In his Talks to young people on ethics, 
CLARENCE HALL WILSON reverses the more 
common method in that he makes his appeal 
to the courage and romance of youth, rather 
than to fear and narrow selfishness. The 
book is likely to appeal to the more thought- 
ful adolescents. Mr. Wilson is modern only 
in spots. He clings to the absolutism that 
permits one to speak confidently of “‘good”’ 
and “bad” men, or that assumes a possible 
choice between science and righteousness, be- 
tween virtue and happiness. However, the 
book is a long step forward. (Scribner.) 

* * * 








_The problems of race contacts and rela- 
tions, from the educational point of view, 
are discussed both scientifically and construc- 
tively in The education of the South African 
Native, by Dr. CHARLES T. LORAM, inspector 
of Schools in Natal. The social and economic 
factors, no less than the ethnic and psycho- 
logical are discussed in working out compre- 
hensive plans for administrative reconstruc- 
tion. The inferiority of the natives disclosed 
by various mental and scholastic tests, and 
the evidence of arrest of development at 
puberty do not daunt the author. ese mat- 
ters he considers to be largely dependent on 
training and opportunity, which it is the pur- 
pose of an educational system to adjust to 
the needs of the children. Even to those not 
specifically interested in the race problems, 
the book yields much suggestive information 
= meanaien problems. (Longmans, $2 
et. 


The American Teacher 


141 


The Bureau of Educational Experiments 
describes its plans and purposes in its Bulle- 
tin Number Three, which contains also an 
account of Miss Pratt’s Play School and of 
the children in this experiment; a list of ex- 
perimental schools in various parts of the 
country, and a short reference list on the re- 
lation of play to education. Bulletin Num- 
ber One is devoted entirely to the selecting, 
using and making of Playthings. Number 
Two is by Laura B. Garrett and tells of the 
educational value of living animals in the 
school, about methods for introducing the 
animals, and information on the care and 
feeding of school pets. Numbers Four and 
Five describe various experimental schools. 
In the former are the Children’s School con- 
ducted in New York by Miss Margaret Naum- 
burg; the Teachers College Playground and 
the Gregory School of West Orange, N. J. In 
the latter are accounts of the Hutchinson 
School at Stony Ford, N. Y., and one Home 
School of Mrs. John Collier and Miss Mattie 
B. Bates, at Sparkill, N. Y. No one who 
claims to be informed on current tendencies 
in education can afford to ignore these va- 
rious experiments ; and there is no more con- 
venient method for keeping informed than 
thru the cooperation of the Bureau. (Bul- 
letins, Ten cents each. 70 Fifth Avenue, 
New York.) 

a + - 

Bulletin Number Six of the Bureau of Edu- 
cational Experiments is a bibliography in 
three parts: The Binet-Simon Scale; Other 
mental tests; Vocational Psychology. The 
titles of Kohs on the Binet-Simon tests and 
those of Professor Hollingworth in his “Vo- 
cational Psychology” are included. The com- 
pilation is by Elisabeth A. Irwin, of the Pub- 
lic Education Association of New York. 
(The Bureau, 25c.) 

+ . . 

A convenient manual of measurements in 
Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, for the 
use of teachers, has been compiled by the 
Bureau of Educational Measurements and 
Standards of the Kansas State Normal 
School at Emporia, and issued as Number 5 
in the series of Studies issued by that bureau. 
An expansion of this material as a book for 
teachers is about to be published by Hough- 
ton Mifflin, under the title Educational Tests 
and Measurements. 

- * . 

The valuable work of the National Asso- 
ciation of Audubon Societies in developing 
an interest in bird study and bird conserva- 
tion is being expanded thru financial assist- 
ance furnished by Mrs. Russell Sage and 
others. The association is now in a position 





142 


to supply to all teachers in the United States 
and Canada the complete series of leaflets, 
colored plates and outlines at the rate of ten 
cents for the set, when ordered in lots of fif- 
teen or more. On organizing a Junior Au- 
dubon Class, the teacher receives consider- 
able additional material of assistance in bird 
study, including the magazine Bird Lore. 
The economic aspects of bird study have 
come to be of special significance recently 
because of the acuteness of the food conser- 
von problem. (1974 Broadway, New 
ork. 


* * * 


A most helpful and suggestive series of 
lessons in “civics” is being issued by the U. 
S. Bureau of Education in cooperation with 
the U. S. Food Administration, under*the 
editorship of Professor Chas. H. Judd of the 


University of Chicago. The Lesséns-in Cont efathe 


munity and National Life are prepared in 
three sections: A, for the upper classes of 
high schools; B, for the upper grades of ele- 
mentary and the first of high schools; and C, 
for the intermediate grades. Each leaflet 
contains material, with questions, for lessons 
of community and economic significance. It 
is planned to issue eight sets during the 
school year, and to sell them at a merely 
nominal cost. This is important not so much 
as an experiment in government publication 
of text books, as an indication of our sudden 
awakening to the danger of our neglect in 
the political and social education of our pros- 
pective citizens. The Food Administration’s 
Ten Lessons in Food Conservation is another 
indication of what a conscious nation might 
be doing without waiting for emergencies. 


* * * 


With a view to presenting to America the 
attainments and opportunities of French in- 
stitutions of learning and research, the So- 
ciety for American Scholarships in French 
Universities has issued a sumptuous volume 
under the title of Science and learning in 
France. This is a compilation of articles 
written by specialists in various fields— 
among them John Dewey, Paul Hanus and 
Charles H. Judd in Education; James R. 
Angell in Psychology; Giddings, Ross and 
Carver in Sociology, and other eminent 
scholars. There are portraits of leading 
French thinkers, pictures of institutions and 
descriptions of achievements and opportuni- 
ties, and information of value to those con- 
templating the pursuit of advanced studies 
in France. (Society for American Scholar- 
ships, etc. McClurg, Sole Agents, $1.50; 
paper covers, $1.) 


The American Teacher 


Vol. VI., No. 8 


Statement of the Ownership, Management, Circulation, etc., 
required by the Act of Congress of August 24, 1912, of 
THe American Teacher, published monthly (except July and 
August) at New York, N. Y., for October 1, 1917. State of 
New York, County of New York, ss. - 

Before me, a Notary Public in and for the State and county 
aforesaid, rsonally appeared J Edward Mayman, who, hav. 
ing been duly sworn according to law, deposes and says that 
he is the Business Manager of Tue American TEACHER, an 
that the following is, to the best of his knowledge and belicf, 
a true statement of the ownership, management (and if a daily 
paper, the circulation), etc., of the aforesaid publication for 
the date shown in the above caption, required by the Act of 
August 24, 1912, embodied in section 443, Postal Laws anid 
Regulations, printed on the reverse of this form, to wit: 

That the names and addresses of the publisher, editor, 
managing editor, and business managers are: Publisher, Amer- 
ican Teacher Co., 70 Fifth Ave.; Editor, Henry R Linville, 
70 Fifth Ave.; Managing Editor, Benjamin C Gruenberg, 70 
Fifth Ave.; Business Manager, J Edward Mayman, 70 Fifth 


Ave. 

2. That the owners are: (Give names and addresses of 
individual owners, or, if a corporation, give its name and the 
names and addresses of stockholders ouaing or holding 1 per 
cent. or more of the total amount of stock!) The American 
Teacher Co., Inc., 70 Fifth Ave.; H_ R Linville, 70 Fifth Ave.; 
B C Gruenberg, 70 Fifth Ave.; J_E Mayman, 70 Fifth Ave.; 
GR 70 Fifth Ave.; Mark Hoffman, 70 Fifth Ave. 

bondholders, mortgagees, amd r se: 
owning or holding 4 per cen, oc_mare. of total 

mortgages, ‘or~ . one. 

a . if any, con- 
tain not of stockholders and security holders as 
they appear uw the books of the company but also, in cases 
where the stockholder or security holder age upon the books 
of the company as trustee or in any other fiduciary relation, 
the name of the person or coagemtee for whom such trustec 
is acting, is given; also that the said two paragraphs contain 
statements embracing affiant’s full knowledge and belief as to 
the circumstances and conditions under which stockholders ani 
security holders who do not appear upon the books of the com. 
pany as trustees, hold stock and securities in a capacity other 
than that of a bona fide owner; and this affiant has no reason 
to believe that any other person, association, or corporation 
has any interest direct or indirect in the said stock, bonds, 
or other securities than as so stated by him. 

5. That the average number of copies of each issue of this 
publication sold or distributed, through the mails or otherwise, 
to paid subscribers during the six months preceding the date 
shown above is: (This information is required from daily pub- 
lications only.) 


3. it 


amount 
tat 


J. Epwarp Mayman, 
Business Manager. 
* Sworn to and subscribed before me this 10th day of (c- 
tober, 1917. 
{seav.] 
(My commission expires March 30, 1918.) 


THE RUT 


Nothing is harder than to abandon the com- 
fortable home (whether one’s own or of some 
conventional design), built of prejudices, as- 
sumptions, fixed beliefs, habits of thought 
standards of value, rules of life, in which one 
had looked forward to living in peace for the 
rest of one’s days. Yet the sacrifice must be 
made, or the comfortable home will become a 
prison, and may at last become a tomb.— 
Edmond Holmes, In Defence of What Might 
Be. 


Mary Ut ey. 











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PRIMARY 

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one of the most helpful in 
your work, 3 mos. for 15c. 
$1 a year. juthistce, Mich. 














November, 1917 


\ THING ox TWO 


The Great Conundrum 


How did he manage to feel 
The tug of the Great Ideal? 
How did he manage to keep 
His soul from falling asleep? 
The system 
Missed him. 








Here is a True Story 

I was talking to a very intelligent man a 
few weeks ago, and what do you think? He 
turned out to be a school principal. 

“How are your teachers?” I asked. 

“Rotten!” he answered. 

“Why do you say that?” I asked. 

His reply gave me a taste of Hope Eternal. 
He said: 

“They’re all so all-fired submissive. I’m 
sure if I ordered them to jump thru the 
window, they’d jump, and no questions. 
Gosh, how I hate human sheep. I like an in- 
telligent questioning, an objection, a resist- 
ance—yes, even a scrap.” 

Proving, you see, that there are men prin- 
cipals. 


Laugh, and the World... 
But laughter! Laughter! What about 
laughter? Have we forgotten the educa- 
tional value of laughter? To season Lessons 
with Laughter * * * it’s an art. This 
business of making grave automata of boys 
and girls will end in making grave diggers 
of them. Oh, but I love the sound of an ex- 
uberant class * * * noisy, turbulent, 
rocking to its very foundations with laughter. 

All this I told to a teacher-friend of mine. 
His alibi was perfect. 

“But, dear boy,” he said, “I never laugh 
myself.” 


Father Goose 
A diller, a dollar, 
Dear teacher, why holler? 
Now where did you get that tune? 
You storm and rage 
For aliving wage * * * 
Why, next you'll want the moon.* 


*See Ibsen’s Ghosts. 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


To the New Mayor 


Whoever you may be, Mr. Mayor, our con- 
gratulations and felicitations, and won’t you 
consider, for a change, the true principles of 
educational democracy and progress? God 
never could have intended to endow only gold- 
getters with insight into the educational 
needs of the people! And surely not only 
legal lights are gifted with the faculty of 
understanding how arithmetic should be 
taught. 

Here’s an idea for you, Mr. Mayor, whom 
the people elected to be their servant. Ap- 
point to the Board of Education men and 
women of the people, the parents of the chil- 
dren. Appoint plumbers (let the sightless 
laugh), mechanics, social workers, printers, 
and * * * no offense meant * * * 
some real live teachers. There’s an idea for 
you. 


These are burning days. 
Even the pedagogs are all agog. 
Conditions are making them demagogs. 


Economy 

Already the promise of horse-sense in 
matters of discipline that the Gary idea of- 
fered is proving vain. More and more, re- 
pression is creeping in. 

So in other departments of promised prog- 

ress. 
_ More and more the real motive for bring- 
ing Gary to New York, business economy, is 
the only element of difference between the 
old schools and the new. A disgraceful dif- 
ference! That’s what is meant by a “busi- 
ness administration”; the children and the 
taxpayers playing “horse,” with the tax- 
payer as horseman, and the child as beast of 
burden. 

Save money for the taxpayer, who can’t 
lose anyhow. When taxes are low, he pays 
less; and when taxes are high, he makes the 
poor man pay them. 

Save money for the taxpayers. That will 
help our kiddies. Yes! It’s great to be an 


comrneet. It must be great to be cross-eyed, 
00. 


Have you a little Gary in your home? 


An Exhortation to Ironists 


If you will mail your jottings, your jeremiads, 
your jests, and your jingles, to Jess Perlman, c/o 
THE AMERICAN TEACHER, he’ll publish them 
provided they’re good. 





The American Teacher Vol. VI., No. 8 


Educational Issues 
of a Municipal Campaign 





Submitted by the Teachers Union 
To the Mayoralty Candidates of 
the City of New York, October 23, 
1917—Suggested for Discussion by the 
Candidates at the Mass Meeting to 
be Held in Washington Irving High 
School, October 27, at 10:30 A. M. 


The Gary or Duplicate Plan of School Organization. 
An adequate number of school rooms for all the children. 
Well lighted rooms and sanitary conditions in every school. 


A school clinic in a special room, with a nurse and a regular visiting 
physician for every school. 


School lunchrooms managed by the Department of Education in co-opera- 
tion with the Department of Health, food being furnished at cost. 


Free education for the young from kindergarten to industrial school to 
continuation school, or to college. 


The extension of recreational activities. 


A flexible course of study adaptable to the needs of every child during his 
preparation for life. 

The longer school day. 

The adjustment of teachers’ salaries in relation to the cost of living. 

The Democratic Administration of the Schools. 


a A larger share in the management of the school system by teachers 
and others experienced in the work of education. 


b The election or the appointment of teachers in service to member- 
ship in the Board of Hdacation, as in England and Switzerland. 


c The improvement of the service by the elimination of unfit school 
officers and teachers. 


The election by the people of members of the Board of Education. 
Salaried or non-salaried membership in the Board of Education. 
The autonomy of the Board of Education.