JANUARY, 1927 VOL. XI—No. 5 


Democracy in Education Education for Democracy 


: The 
American Teacher 


THE ORGAN OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 














A Nation’s Songs 


Ae |AUSE ere those half-remembered echoes die, 
ke Ballads and stories, hymns and childish rhymes, 

Sweet, lisping ditties like old English chimes 
From neighbor spires—a sacred minstrelsy 


That haunts the household, falling from the sky, 


As if the very soul of distant climes 
Lived in each legend of the olden times 
That heroes muttered in their infancy. 


What if the pith and fibre of the race 

Were nourished only thusP What if there dwells 

Immortal ardor, manhood, courage, grace 

In such old echoes— mystic syllables 

That do not die, but float upon the wind . ~ 

Through nursery windows to preserve mankind? 
—Fohn Fay Chapman 








See 


Published by 
AMERIC i 
oc TBACHERS ON ESD 20 327 So. La Salle St., Chicago 
Single Copy 15c—Yearly Subscription $1.00 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 





sa 
—_— 








DUCATION is our biggest business and worst managed. It occupies 
twenty-six million of our population. ; 


Germany and Denmark have only two illiterates per THOUSAND 
population. 


The United States has SIX illiterates out of every HUNDRED population. 

Nine leading European -nations are less illiterate than the United States. 

Half of our school teachers are without normal school training. 

Three out of four criminals come from the ranks of the uneducated. 

Backward school children, wrongly handled, are a further source of criminals. 

Fifteen million American voters cannot read the English language. 

Secretary of the Interior, Lane, estimated that illiteracy costs the United 
States $825,000,000 a year. 

The census showed 1,400,000 children from seven to thirteen years getting 
no education at all. 

The education bill provides a federal department of education with a secretary 
in the President’s Cabinet. 

It proposes for the department to teach the states how to teach efficiently. 

President Coolidge, the Republican party and twenty-seven national organiza- 
tions favor the new department of education. 

—Herald-Examiner, Chicago. 




















CONTENTS 


A Neglected Aspect of the Problem of Education 
Joseph Jablonower 


Teachers’ Unions in Other Countries— Austria 
Dorothy P. Gary 


An Illustration of Democratic Tendencies 
J. E. Kirkpatrick 


May Teachers Think? 
Selma M. Borchardt 


International Educational Conferences 
Legislative Notes 

Editorials 

Book Reviews 

Our Locals. 

















The American Teacher 


Entered as second class matter October 20, 1926, at the post office at Chicago, Illinois, under the Act of March 3, 1879. Acceptance 
for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in section 1103, Act of February 28, 1925, authorized November 3, 1926. 








Volume XI, No. 5 


JANUARY, 1927 


One Dollar a Year 








A Neglected Aspect of the Problem 


of Academic Freedom 


Joseph Jablonower, N. Y. School of Ethical Culture, 
N. Y. Teachers’ Union, Local No. 5 


It is my thesis that the teaching profession, 
more than any other agency, is responsible for the 
manner in which the thinking, the writing, and 
the speaking of teachers is made subject to con- 
siderations other than that of discovering and 
revealing truth. Teachers have committed overt 
acts in efforts to punish teachers who entertained 
ideas that are not along accustomed patterns, and, 
more generally and no less effectively, they have 
helped in this direction by. acting as silent part- 
ners, through their readiness to accept places of 
teachers who were singled out for punishment. 
The Teacher as an Out-and-out -Accomplice 

The November number of the American 


Teacher reports the cases of three teachers in 


the City of New York who have passed the regu- 
lar tests and have earned for themselves places 
high on their respective lists for promotion, but 
who have been denied promotion because they 
held or expressed views which are distasteful to 
the Board of Superintendents, or to a majority 
of that Board. These superintendents were all 
at one time teachers in the same school system. 
The material on which they based their objection 
to at least one of the candidates was furnished 
to them by the Teachers Council of the City of 
New York. This material purports to give the 
records of a number of teachers, in the school 
system of New York, whose views are not ma- 
jority views, at present. At no time were the 
teachers whose records are thus assailed given an 
opportunity by the Teachers Council or by any 
other group to meet the charges contained in the 
Teport. The report has never been accepted offi- 
cially by either: the Board of Superintendents or 
by the Board of Education. Yet the Board of 
Superintendents deems it proper to use this re- 
port as the basis for its action in withholding 
Promotion from a candidate. 


This same Teachers Council was conspicuous 
in efforts of vigilance committees to have the 
Lusk Laws, now unlamented, applied against 
teachers whose political views are not politic. 

The City of New York is not exceptional in 
the fact that in its school system there are the 
self-righteous among teachers, who are ready to 
co-operate with “law-and-order” groups that 
would, and sometimes do, make short shrift of the 
school careers of non-conformists who happen to 
find their way into the school systems. During 
the war period and the years immediately follow- 
ing it, what school system or faculty did not have 
its own little “intelligence bureau ?” 

The Teacher as a Silent Partner in the Work 
of Enforcing Conformity 

The issue of the American Teacher to which | 
have already referred reports the case of Pro- 
fessor J, E. Kirkpatrick. Professor Kirkpatrick 
was dismissed from Olivet College because he 
wrote a book called The American College and Its 
Rulers, a book which apparently the Board of 
Trustees of that college did not like. Olivet Col- 
lege needs money, and people who have it are not 
likely to part with it readily on behalf of a college 
which harbors the author of such a book. The 
president of Olivet College has not protested 


audibly against the arbitrary dismissal of Dr. 


Kirkpatrick. The Faculty of the College has 
made no noticeable stir about it. The record does 
not show that the Board of Trustees experienced 
any difficulty in finding a teacher willing to take 
the offender’s place on the Faculty. 

The teacher who will accept a job of which 
another teacher has been unjustly and unjusti- 
fiably deprived is a silent accomplice in the as- 
saults against the intellectual integrity of the 
teaching profession. 

Consider the case of President Suzzallo, re- 





4 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


cently ousted from the Washington State Univer- 
sity by the Governor of the State. Governor 
Hartley did not like Dr. Suzzallo’s activities in 
the legislature on behalf of educational measures. 
What are the teachers of the University or of the 
State going to do about it? It is too soon perhaps 
to expect an answer to this question. President 
Blair of the National Education Association has 
issued a statement in which he pays tribute to the 
personal worth of Dr. Suzzallo and in which he 
declares that the National Education Association 
will not accept in dumb acquiescence this high- 
handed treatment of one of its distinguished mem- 
bers. 

But if the issue is fought out merely on these 
lines, what is the net result? If President Suz- 
zallo secures reinstatement as the head of the 
University, he and his group will have proved 
themselves better strategists than their opponent, 
and education is neither the better nor the worse 
for the incident. But if he loses out, what then? 
Is it reasonable to suppose that the Board of Re- 
gents of the University will experience any seri- 
ous difficulty in finding an acceptable successor 
to President Suzzallo? Will educators to whom 
the position is offered scrutinize too carefully the 
treatment which the Board meted out to Dr. Suz- 
zallo? 

Instances are not wanting where boards had 
negotiated with candidates before they created 
the vacancy. Dr. John L. Tildsley, Associate 
Superintendent in the City of New York, failed 
of re-election, not on professional grounds but on 
issues that were petty-political in nature. The 
leader of the majority in the Board of Education 
assured his fellow at, the meeting of the Board 
that Dr. Edgar Dubs Shimer was ready to take 
the job. Dr. Shimer took it, and explained in a 


statement to the press that he had been told 


definitely that Dr. Tildsley would in no event be 
re-elected. He leaves to be inferred the question: 
Who. wouldn’t take the job, under the circum- 
stances? 

A number of years ago Rev. Dr. John Haynes 
Holmes thrilled an audience of teachers in New 
York City with the challenge that the way to 
defeat the intent of the Lusk Laws is for teachers 
to refuse to take the jobs that are made vacant 
through the dismissal of teachers under the pro- 


r 


visions of the laws. The laws were repealed. We 
can only guess how many teachers would have re. 
sponded to the appeal of Dr. Holmes, had the 
occasion arisen. 

Among wage workers it is morally reprehen- 
sible for a worker to take a job which has been 
vacated by another worker as the result of a 
lockout on the part of the employer, or of a move 
on the part of the worker to improve the condi- 
tions of his employment. No such stigma attaches 
yet to the teacher who accepts a position without 
giving thought to the manner in which a fellow 
teacher may have been deprived of it. 

Employers of wage workers are mindful of 
the conditions of the labor market. when they con- 
sider the advisability of a labor turnover. Em- 
ployers of teachers can afford to be unmindful 
of the conditions of the teacher market. For 
every job there are more than enough aspirants, 
indifferent, so far as outward signs indicate, to 
the conditions of employment and to the manner 
in which the vacancy has been created. The 
consciousness that a long line of aspirants is 
waiting, keeps the job-holder in his intellectual 
place. He is in no position to raise or to face 
issues. 

This is the silent and effective partnership of 
teachers in the enterprise of keeping the teachers 
disciplined and regimented. This partnership is 
insidious, and pervasive. It is more menacing 
for the intellectual integrity of teachers than the 
out-and-out enlistment on the part of some 
teachers with forces of reaction. 

The American Association of University Pro- 
fessors has done heroic work in the direction of 
exposing acts of arbitrary treatment of professors 
by college boards and presidents. The Amefi- 
can Federation of Teachers has done a good deal 
in the same direction, especially where teachers 
in public school systems were involved. It should 
be one of the major tasks of the American Feder- 
ation of Teachers to make teachers of the land 
sensitive to this high professional obligation: te 
accept only those positions which have beet 
created in order to satisfy hitherto unanswered 
or unfelt public needs, and to fill only those v@ 
cancies which have ‘been created under conditions 
that receive approval from committees of teachers 
after most thorough investigation. 





Teachers’ Unions in Other Countries 
Dorothy P. Gary, Minneapolis, Local No. 59 


AUSTRIA. 

In America the union teacher is still the ex- 
ception, in Austria he is the rule. Unionism is 
“the thing,” and no more to be questioned than 
the blueness of their Danube, the permanency 
of their Alps, the universality of Freudian com- 
plexes, five o’clock coffee or the immortality of 
Vienna sausage. It is just as queer not to belong 
to a union as it is to admit that you’ve not a 
Freudian complex and don’t drink coffee. What 
a strange but what a charming world for an A. F. 
of T-er to drop into! 

My replies to their questions concerning union- 
ism among American teachers caused these Aus- 
trian teachers to look politely incredulous. Fi- 
nally, when they were convinced that I was really 
stating facts, one of them exclaimed, “Is it pos- 
sible! We suspected this, as we suspected your 
anti-evolution law, of being one of your Ameri- 
can jokes.” 

While the Austrian teachers are generally 
agreed on the correctness of unionism, they are 
unfortuately not so well agreed on the form 
which the union should take. The teachers are 
divided between the Free Teachers Union (Freie 
Lehrer Gewerkschaft) with a membership of 
5,300, the National Union of Austrian Teachers 
(Reichsverband des Gesterreich Lehrerbundes) 
with 10,000 members, and the Austrian Chris- 
tian Teachers Union (QGesterreich Christlichen 
Reichsgewerkschaften) with a membership of 
8,000. The private school teachers have their 
own union, the art teachers, theirs, etc., bringing 
the total number of unionized teachers beyond 
the 75% mark. The National Union of Austrian 


Teachers and the Austrian Christian Teachers . 


Union are both conservative, sectarian unions, 
the first being composed largely of Austrian Na- 
tionalists, and the second orn controlled by the 
Catholic Church. 

The Free Teachers’ Union corresponds to our 
A. F. of T. being composed largely of public 
school teachers, and affiliated through the Gov- 
ernment Employees’ Union to the National Trade 
Union Movement of Austria. It couples its pro- 
gram dealing with the economic needs of the 
teachers with a program of educational teform. 
The union demands a freeing of the schools from 


clerical domination of the educational system. 
and compulsory religious instruction in the 
schools. (The Nationalists and Catholic party 
have been in control of the state government 
since 1922, and according to the Free Teachers’ 
Union and Social Democrats, these two parties 
have been using their power to make political use 
of the schools.) The union has also shown an 
active interest in experimental education, and has 
a well-worked-out program to advance. 

Tenure is not a problem with the Austrian 
teachers, but partisanship in school administra- 
tion, unemployment and “hunger-ration salaries” 
are Economic Distress of Austrian Teachers. 

Under the caption, “Hunger-rations of Aus- 
trian Teaching Profession until 1927,” the Free 
teachers’ Voice (Freie Lehrerstimme), official 
organ of the Free Teachers’ Union publishes the 
following schedule of salaries (salaries fixed by 
law): 


(Han- 


dar beitlebrerin- 


(Volk- 
nen) Vienna 


Teachers 


( Burgerschulleh- 


School 
rer) Vienna 


Citizens’ Elemen- 
ry 

Teachers 

schullehrer) 

Vienna 

ppd Higher 
lementary 

Teachers 

Secondary School 

Teachers (Mittel- 

schullehrer) 


Years of Service 
School 


SSA 
nu 


and 
and 
and 
and 
and 
end 
and 
and 
and 
and 
and 
and 


—— Handcraft 


th Be 
onwmn 


377.5 


retired retired 399.5 582 


on pension on pension 


Government family minimum subsistence budget 


for Vienna,* 200 shillin ings (one shilling=14c). 
wet probably should be sta’ that the ratio of men to women 
1 teachers is the reverse of that in this country, the men 
Sebee in substantial majority. Hence, the family budget com- 
parison has real significance. 


Vienna—Private school teachers earn from 80 
to 100 shillings a month! Public and private 
school teachers in the rest of Austria earn much 
less than those in Vienna. 

The Free Teachers’ Voice estimates that the 
real wages of an Austrian teacher are just half 
that of an American teacher. 

These are the salaries earned when the teacher 
has work. Unemployment is a serious problem 
with the Austrian intellectual workers, and is 








6 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


constantly becoming more so. There are hundreds 
of teachers without work, for the simple reason 
that there are not enough jobs to go around. 
Many of the younger teachers who have com- 
pleted their training and received their certifi- 
cates two years ago have never had a post. (In- 
terest on the American Morgan’s loan must be 
paid, and one place the government is economiz- 
ing is in the schools.) 

This unemployment extends to all classes of 
workers, the industrial workers being naturally 
the most seriously affected. In August, for ex- 
ample, in Austria’s population of six million, 
nearly one quarter of a million were unemployed. 
The situation has been steadily growing worse 
since 1921. The war bled Austria economically, 
the Versailles treaty carved out her economic 
heart, and Morgan’s loan and the “stabilization” 
which followed have completed what the war be- 
gan. No-one could live in Vienna a week with- 
out being convinced of the economic and social 
disintegration of the present social order of Aus- 
tria, and the inevitability of some far-reaching 
social change. 

Wherever you go men and women who are 
without work come frankly begging, or hawking 
' their pathetic wares of tarnished shoe strings and 
lightless matches. These men and women are 
often in the prime of life, and while pale from 
lack of food, still hawe the vigor in them for 
work. But there is no work, so they must*beg 
or starve (and perhaps both). Among these beg- 
gars are many ex-professionals, including private 
school teachers, music and art teachers and pri- 
vate tutors. Policemen have been stationed along 
the Danube to prevent the growing number of 
suicides in its swift, blue waters. 

The Labor Movement was strongly enough or- 
ganized to get an unemployment insurance law 
passed, but the technicalities of the law are such 
that hundreds of the unemployed are not bene- 
fited by it. Those who do receive the unemploy- 
ment dole of 72 shillings a month find it quite 
inadequate. 

This is the situation in which the teachers 
union and other unions must function. The Free 
Teachers’ Union, as a section of the Public Em- 
ployees Union took part in the great struggle in 
1924-25 for a salary increase to all grades of 
public employees, and for the elimination of 


partisanship and deception in the administration 
of public institutions. The teachers did not suc- 
ceed in winning their demands, and they plan to 
present them again in 1927. Many of the teachers 
are beginning to recognize that the division of the 
teachers into the various unions is a source of 
weakness, and one catise of their failure in 1925, 
These teachers have raised the slogan, of trade 
union unity of the Austrian teachers, both within 
Austria, and with the other teachers’ and workers’ 
unions of the world. 


LOCARNO WORLD CONFERENCE ON NEW 
EDUCATION 
The True Meaning of Freedom in Education 

The subject of the Fourth World Conference on 
New Education organized by the New Education Fel- 
lowship, 11 Tavistock Square, London, W. C. 1, Eng- 
land, is one that will appeal to every forward-looking 
teacher and educationalist. From 3rd to iSth of 
August, 1927, members of the Conference will gather 
at Locarno, in the loveliest surroundings, to discuss 
“The True Meaning of Freedom in Education.” 

Among the speakers will be M. Pierre Bovet, Profes- 
sor at the University of Geneva and Director of the 
International Bureau of Education; Dr. Alfred Adler, 
author of “Individual Psychology”; Professor Lom- 
bardo-Radice, Editor of “L’Educazione Nazionale”; Dr. 
Ovide Decroly, Director of “L’Ecole Pour la Vie Par 
la Vie,” and Professor at the University of Brussels; 
Dr. Carson Ryan, Professor of Education at Swarth- 
more College, Pa.; Dr. Carleton Washburne, Superin- 
tendent of the Public Schools of Winnetka, Illinois; 
Dr. Lucy Wilson, Principal of the South Philadelphia 
High School for Girls; Dr. Adolphe Ferriére, Founder 
of the International Bureau of New Schools; Dr.. Eli- 
sabeth Rotten, Director of the German Bureau of the 
New Education Fellowship; Mrs. Beatrice Ensor, 
Chairman. of the New Education Fellowship. 

Study groups, led in each case by an expert, will 
inquire into such specific problems as Co-education, the 
Problem Child (Fear, Lying, Stealing, etc.), Sex Edu- 
cation, the Psychological Freeing of the Teacher, Indi- 
vidual Methods (such as the Winnetka Technique, the 
Project, Mackinder, Decroly, Montessori Methods, Dal- 
ton and Howard Plans, etc.), Progressive Methods @ 
Secondary Schools, History Teaching from the Interna- 
tional Standpoint, the Pre-School Child, the Post- 
School Adolescent, New Ways in Art Teaching, Intelli- 
gence Testing and Vocational Guidance. An exhibition 
of children’s work and various educational materials 
will add greatly to the prattical value of thé Confer- 
ence. 

Recreation is an important part of the programme. 
Full advantage will be taken’ of the ideal surroundings: 
there will be excursions, rowing, bathing in the lake, 
sunbaths. 

Further details of the Conference can be obtained 
from the offices of the New Education Fellowship. 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 7 


AN ILLUSTRATION OF DEMOCRATIC 
TENDENCIES 

Very notable changes in the government of 
Vassar College have been proposed recently. 
These were formulated by a joint committee of 
six persons, two each from the trustees, the 
faculty and the alumni, Five of the twenty-one 
truteees were to be nominated by the alumni. 
This of course is not an unusual proportion but 
three additional members were to be nominated 
by the faculty. Moreover, the faculty was to 
choose members to sit upon each of the seven 
committees of the board. On the important edu- 
cational committee, the faculty was to have three 
of the seven members, with the president ex- 
officio. Also, and still quite unusual, the faculty, 
it was proposed, might nominate for the presi- 
dency of the college or appoirit a committee to 
act with the trustees when a president was to be 
chosen. A majority vote of the faculty was re- 
quired for the nomination of a dean before ap- 
pointment could be made by the board. All 
actions of the board were to be given to the 
faculty as early and fully as possible and were 
to be published in the next ensuing number of 
the Alumni Quarterly. 

It is hardly necessary to call attention to the 
importance of this proposed recognition of the 
faculty as a part of the law-making body of the 
institution, and the publicity to be given to all 
acts of the board. Its significance in contrast 
with the usual procedure is only excelled by its 
novelty. But there is another feature of Vassar’s 
proposed changes still more novel and perhaps 
more significant. Provision,was made for a com- 
munity executive committee or senate to be 
known as the joint committee. It was to be com- 
posed of the president, representatives of the 
trustees, faculty, alumni and students. It might 
be called together by three members and might 
consider and report upon amy matter affecting 
the general welfare of the college. 

It is to be carefully noted, however, that these 
thoroughgoing democratic measures have not got- 
ten beyond the stage of proposals. They were 
made, indeed, by a responsible committee, after 
the board had committed itself to the “principle 
of reorganization.” The findings of this com- 
mittee are important only as showing present 


‘ 


tendencies toward a more liberal and responsible 
type of college government. Neither the faculty 
as a whole nor the board accepted the more 
unique and democratic provisions of the plan. 
However, Vassar has worked out a system of 
co-operative committees which, makes possible 
an unusual degree of communication between 
faculty and trustees and faculty and students. 

(The American College and Its Rulers—J. E. 
Kirkpatrick. ) 

At our request for further light on the demo- 
cratic tendencies at Vassar College and for some 
statement regarding the number of reforms sug- 
gested ‘which have actually been carried out, 
President MacCracken sent us the following 


letter: VASSAR COLLEGE 
PoucHkKeepsie, N. Y. 
° President’s Office 
November 4, 1926. 
My dear Mrs. Hanson: 

Under another cover I am forwarding to you a copy 
of the By-laws of the Board of Trustees of Vassar 
College. 

In Article IV, Section 1, Paragraph 2, it is stated 
that the President shail have final authority in the in- 
ternal affairs of the college. This sentence, while 
somewhat absolute in wording, is intended to provide 
the authority necessary in cases of emergency. This 
authority has never been exercised. 

I am also forwarding the Statute of Instruction 
which, though modified by recent events, remains sub- 
stantially the same. Your attention is specifically called 
to the fact of the absolute uniformity of the salary 
agreements, publicity with regard to grades and the 
right to freedom of instruction. The direction of the 
faculty by educational policy and similar points are 
now at issue. 

Professor Kirkpatrick calls attention to the fact 
that at the present time no members of the faculty are 
elected to the Board of Trustees. This step was recom- 
mended by me to the Board of Trustees, but failed 
of approval. It was also vetoed in the faculty meeting. 
Members of the faculty did not wish, at that time, to 
elect members to the Board of Trustees, preferring a 
plan by which a faculty committee on appointments 
should make its wishes known in the matter of academic 
tenure. The real ground of objection to representation 
on the Board is that such representation would tend to 
diminish rather than to increase the absolute autonomy 
of the faculty in the direction of educational policy. 

The principle of conference established under the 
Statute of Instruction has been carried further in recent 
years by the trustees in holding conferences not only 
with the faculty, but with the student group. The 
recent adoption of voluntary attendance at chapel took 
place after extended meetings with committees of both 
faculty and students. 





8 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


The faculty has adopted the same principle of dis- 
cussion with regard to the curriculum. A faculty com- 
mittee on the curriculum consisting of nine members 
has met several times with the students’ committee on 
the curriculum. Conference exists at every point in 
the student’s life between the departments, such as art, 
music, physical education, drama, journalism, poetry, 
criticism and the like—wherever instruction in theory 
is paralleled by practice in extra curriculum activities. 

There is also being forwarded to you a copy of the 
Students’ Handbook which shows that our social rules 
are somewhat elaborate. They were adopted in con- 
ference between the students and faculty. It is their 
purpose to maintain the college primarily as a place 
of learning and to deter the young woman who seeks 
merely social pleasure from thinking of Vassar as a 
place of residence. 


An excellent illustration of reform in the or- 
ganization not mentioned: in Dr. MacCracken’s 
letter is the manner in which the trustees favored 
the principle of voluntary attendance at chapel, 


.their vote being the result of a recommendation 


of a committee of the trustees whose delibera- 
tions were the outcome of a joint session with 
appointed representatives of the faculty and 
students. Especially noteworthy are these points 
in the tentative plan of arrangement, 
Direction of Educational Policy 

“The faculty of Vassar College is entrusted with the 
direction and control of the educational policy of the 
college. The initiative in educational matters may arise 
in the faculty or in the Board of Trustees, but the 
trustees will not establish new departments or change 
existing departments except after full conference and 
discussion with the faculty or its representatives. The 
trustees will not accept gifts upon terms which would 
alter the status or tenure of any members of the faculty 
without conference in advance with the faculty. 


Conference System 
(a) The principle of conference between the faculty 


and the Board of Trustees is adopted. All trustees, 
committees concerned with recommendations upon the 
administration of educational trust funds are requested 
to hold conference with the proper officers of the 
faculty. 

(b) Conferences upon any questions of educational 
character may be requested by either body through the 
appropriate committees. 


Academic Freedom 
(a). Within the limits of national and state law, all 


teachers in the service of Vassar College shall enjoy 
complete liberty of research, of instruction and of 
utterance upon matters of opinion. The teacher’s exer- 
cise of the rights and obligations of a citizen and of a 
member of the community shall in no way be affected 
by academic tenure. 

(b) No gift shall be accepted by the trustees the 
terms of which would come in conflict with this statute. 

(c) Utterances and discussions in the classroom shall 


be regarded as privileged, and may not be published by 


anyone without the authority of the officer concerned,” 
—Vassar College Statute of Instruction Tentative Play 
of Arrangement. 





ME’S FOR I’S 
The College Entrance Examination Board has de. 
cided, it appears, that “it is me” is good English, making 
its decision on the ground that “it is I” is affected, 
Where, asks critical opinion, are we going to stop if 
we yield to the mistakes of the ignorant or the care- 
lessness of the indifferent? Who is to say us nay if we 


prefer “he don’t” to “he doesn’t,” or “different than” 


to “different from”? Who are to be the arbiters of 
language, the masses or the scholars? 

Precisely because nicety of speech is so prevailingly 
looked upon as affectation is the ordinary run of 
American conversation so little pungent. It is not that 
Americans have not the ability to use words effectively 
but that they do not choose so to use them. 


The American child grows up with the idea that to 


pick and choose his phrases is to make himself a target 
for the ridicule of his companions. The American man 
believes that to be discriminating in speech is to be 
high-brow, and to be high-brow is to be read out of 
the fellowship of democracy. In speech as in dress. the 
conventional is the desirable. 

Only a few years ago slang travelled slowly; it 
was growing stale in the east when it reached the mid- 
dle west, and had been relegated to the dust-heap on 
the Atlantic seaboard before it had arrived at the 
Pacific coast. But today with the radio braying forth 
every new phrase that has caught the popular fancy in 
one corner of the country to every other, we shall all 
be using the same slang simultaneously, and all be 
matching wits in coining substitutes for it the day 
after it has been born. The language of the masses 
will be full of vulgarisms, and if to boot we are to 
allow the speech of the more critically educated to 
yield precision to a charge of affectation where then 
will our American English be? No, we don’t agree 
with the honorable members of the College Entrance 
Examination Board. Since the masses won’t, the schol- 
ars should preserve the distinction between their “I's” 
and “me’s.”"—The Satutday Review of Literature. 


GOD’S WORLD 
By Edna St. Vincent Millay 

O World, I cannot hold thee close enough! 

Thy winds, thy wide grey skies! 

Thy mists, that roll and rise! 
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag 
And all but cry with color! That gaunt crag 
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff! 
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough! 


Long have I known a glory in it all, 

But never knew I this; 

Here such a passion is 
As stretcheth me apart. Lord, I do fear 
Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year. 
My soul is all but out of me—let fall 
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call. 





$2,00 
A 
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forut 
comt 
The 
patris 
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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


$2,000,000 SOUGHT TO SPREAD BLACKLIST 

A blacklist to be spread throughout. the country to 
bar liberal, radical and labor speakers from churches, 
forums, women’s clubs, and lecture courses is being 
compiled by the American Citizenship Foundation. 
The Foundation has been formed by a fusion of two 
patriotic societtes, the American Sentinels and the 
United Americans. It is now seeking $2,000,000 for its 
program, which includes, besides the blacklist, the issu- 
ing of literature, a monthly called the American Citi- 
zen, posters, and a textbook on “citizenship training.” 

The Citizenship Foundation also plans to keep close 
tab on such persons as Jane Addams, Roger Baldwin, 
Morris Hillquit, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Sherwood 
Eddy, William Z. Foster, Norman Hapgood, Oswald 
Garrison Villard, Scott Nearing, Robert Minor, H. L. 
Mencken, Madeleine Doty, Mrs. Robert Morss Lovett, 
Kirby Page, Mary McDowell, Victor L. Berger, and 
Mrs. Meta Berger. Among the organizations on the 
blacklist are the League of Women Voters, the League 
for Industrial Democracy, the Socialist, Farmer-Labor, 
and Workers Parties, the American Civil Liberties 
Union, the Vanguard Press, the Federated Press, the 
American Fund, for Public Service, the Fellowship for 
Reconciliation, the American Association of University 
Women, the International Student Forum, and the 
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. 
Jane Addams was recently barred from speaking at a 
woman’s club near Chicago on the ground that she was 
listed on the Foundation’s blacklist as “the third most 
dangerous person in America.” 








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MAY TEACHERS THINK? 
Selma M. Borchardt, Washington Local No. 8 


Major General Amos Fries, Chief of the 
Chemical Warfare Section of the United States 
Army feels that teachers should have no personal, 
religious, political, or social convictions unless 
those convictions are similar to his. In fact. this 
self-appointed custodian of the Washington Pub- 
lic School System opened a vituperative attack 
upon Mr. Henry Flury, a biology teacher in one 
of the Washington high schools, and demanded 
his dismissal because Mr. Flury had ventured to 
define a political movement of today, of which 
Geheral Fries does not approve. 

The Forum had asked for definitions of “So- 
cialism.” Mr. Flury had submitted his definition. 
and it was published. A simple, academic state- 
ment, it was. 

The statement appeared and very little com- 
ment ensued. Then, suddenly members of the 
Teachers’ Union heard that Mr. Flury had been 
asked to appear before the Superintendent of 
Schools and explain his conduct. It was later 
learned that General Fries, the flame-throwing 
general, had written to the Superintendent of 
Schools of Washington and demanded that this 
teacher, whose thoughts were “warped” (he did 
not agree with General Fries) should be immedi- 
ately dismissed. 

Mr. Flury, recognizing his legal rights as a 
citizen to his political views, and his legal rights 
as a teacher to tenure of office so long as he per- 
formed his professional duties satisfactorily, sub- 
mitted a dignified simple statement to the Super- 
intendent, setting forth that he felt that it was 
not only his right but his duty to interest himself 
in the social and political movements of the day ; 
that he had at no time given expression in the 
classroom to his personal political views; that 
quite unlike the attacks on his personal character 
and patriotism waged by the gas-supplying gen- 
eral, he was a patriotic American citizen who had 
served his country ‘in keeping with his ideals both 
in peace and in war. 

The case came before the Board of Education 
of the District of Columbia. They were.told by 
Mr. Flury’s superior officers in the school system 
that Mr. Flury had in the past and is at the pres- 
ent time satisfactorily performing his professional 





10 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


duties, that he had never in the course of his 
biology teaching advocated any particular political 
creed or dogma, that he was an American citizen 
of good calibre, and hence quite qualified to teach 
high sehool students in Washington. Many of 
the members of the Board of Education no doubt 
held political views quite different from those 
which Mr. Flury may hold. Many of them may 
hold religious views which are quite different 
from his, but unlike the Commander of the 
Chemical Warfare Section of the United States 
Army, they felt that those views were Mr. Flury’s 
views, and that they would be quite unpatriotic 
if they attempted to deny him a right to his views, 
or an opportunity to express those views outside 
of the classroom. The Board, therefore, voted 
that it could not and would not take any action 
against Mr. Flury. 

But this did not close the case so far as the 
active general was concerned. He gave lengthy 
articles to all of the newspapers, stating that Dr. 
Ballou and the Board of Education will hear 
more of this case; that he, as Commander of the 
American Legion of the District of Columbia, 
would not permit so drastic an affront to go by 
unpunished. He spoke much and often. Through 
the speeches of this general, the War Department, 
the American Legion, particularly the Press Club 
Post thereof, were a party to this dispute. 

Was this militarism in our schools? Was this 
an insidious influence of the United States War 
Department, attempting to determine the policies 
of the public schools of the nation’s capital? 
There were those who felt that this was the case. 
However, Secretary of War, Dwight Davis, was 
quite anxious that the War Department should 
not be a party to this dispute, and announced 
through the press that Major-General Amos 
Fries, Chief of the Chemical Warfare Section of 
the United States Army, was not speaking for the 
War Department when he was attacking Mr. 
Flury’s political views. Secretary Davis felt that 
General Fries was probably speaking as Com- 
mander of the District of Columbia American 
Legion. 

As General Fries was a member of the Press 
Club Post of the American Legion, members of 
the Press Club as well as members of the Ameri- 
can Legion wanted it to be definitely understood 


that General Fries was not speaking authorita- 
tively for either the American Legion or the 
Press Club. The Washington correspondent of 
the St. Louis Post Dispatch expressed his views 
to the President of the Press Club in no uncer- 
tain terms: 

“Mr. Ulric Bell, 

President, The National Press Club. 

My dear Ulric: 

“No doubt you have seen newspaper accounts of 
the attempt made by Major-General Amos Fries to 
obtain the dismissal of a biology teacher from the 
faculty of a local high school because the teacher 
had submitted a definition of Socialism in a national 
prize contest conducted by the Forum. 

“It appears that the good General made his com- 
plaint as an officer of the American Legion, and not 
in his capacity as director of poison gas warfare—as 
might have been supposed. I am told that his status 
in the Legion derives from his membership in the 
Press Club Post. As a member of the Press Club, I 
am extremely curious to know whether the name of 
the Club has been used in connection with this gas 
attack. My curiosity is perceptibly deepened by 
observing a threat which the estimable General 
seems to have directed against the Board of Educa- 
tion: to wit, that unless the professor’s scalp was 
delivered to him forthwith, he would cause “a good 
newspaper story” to be made of the affair. 

“The propriety of an army officer, in the public 
pay, attempting to get the job of a school teacher 
because the teacher has displayed an_ intelligent 
understanding of the meaning of an important politi- 
cal movement, needs no characterization among civi- 
lized men. However, it is not our duty to prevent 
Major-Generals from making public spectacles of 
themselves, and in the case of one so singularly 
gifted for the part as the intrepid Fries appears to 
be, I doubt if it would be possible, anyhow. Yet | 
am sure you will agree that it would be a calamity if 
the name of the Press Club, or its members, or the 
newspapers which they represent, should become 
involved, even indirectly, in a persecution of this 
sort, and that if it has become involved, without the 
knowledge or consent of the officers and members, 
measures should be taken, which would effectively 
prevent a recurrence. 

“I have made some inquiries among members of 
the Press Club Post, and have been informed that 
they had no knowledge of the gallant General's 
intentions until they saw the fruits of the public 
prints. From my acquaintance among them, I am 
sure this is true. Incidentally, I have not examined 
the roster, but I assume Fries does hold some sort of 
associate membership in the Club. «Is that correct? 

“Any information which you have on this subject, 
as it affects the club or its members, will be appreti 
ated.” “Cordially, 

(Signed) PAUL ANDERSON.” 





—S DB eee o we we 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER iL 


The whole incident would be amusing were 
there not a very serious significance back of it. 
First, why should the Commander of the Chemi- 
cal Warfare Section of the United States Army 
take it upon himself to run the public schools of 
the nation’s capital? This by no means is his 
first attempt to interfere with the professional con- 
duct of the teachers of the schools, or -with the 
educational policy of the schools themselves. 
Only a few months ago did this inflammable gen- 
eral state that unless the children of the Wash- 
ington schools were made to stay in the schools 
until 4:30 and were given no home work, that 
the American home would break down. When 
the District Appropriation Bill had been reported 
to Congress by the Appropriations Committee 
with the objectionable Summers’ Amendment, 
which sought to prohibit the teaching of evolu- 
tion and of comparative government, stricken 
from the Bill, it was then that this same General 
Fries actively interested himself in having that 
notorious section put back into the Bill. Of 
course, General Fries was defeated in his efforts 
in this undertaking, as he was in all of his pre- 
vious attempts to determine educational policy. 
But isn’t it time that the War Department, on 
whose stationery the General writes, whose time 
he takes to have formulated maliciously inaccur- 
ate statements of women’s organizations through- 
out the country, and whose prestige is continually 
involved in the conduct of so important a rep- 
resentative of the Department, should quite form- 
ally and officially indicate to General Amos Fries 
that his field is the field of poison gas in war- 
fare, that his bombs should be restricted to use 
in warfare, and that even in warfare, the United 
States War Department does try to maintain a 
sense of honor and truthfulness, which is so often 
lacking in the attacks which the General launches 
in civil life? . 

NOTE. It was in the office of General Amos 
Fries that the notorious spider-web chart was for- 
mulated and it was from his office that it was sent, 
under government to all parts of the country. This 
was the chart which by gross and malicious misrep- 
resentation sought to prove that all women’s organi- 
zations which are supporting the Child Labor 


Amendment are under the control of Moscow. 
S. M. B. 


INTERNATIONAL EDUCATIONAL CONFER- 
ENCES TO BE HELD DURING THE 
SPRING AND SUMMER OF 1927 . 

. Toronto Conference 

At a recent meeting of the officers of the World Fed- 
eration of Education Associations with the Canadian 
Committee on Arrangements, final plans were. made for 
the World Conference on Education, which will be 
held at Toronto, Canada, August 7-12, 1927. The pros- 
pects for this Conference are very fine indeed. The 
Canadian committee is doing most excellent work in 
making all local arrangements, and ample accommoda- 
tions will be available for more than five thousand visi- 
tors. Assurances have been received of large delega- 
tions from a number of foreign countries and of 
smaller delegations from most countries of the world. 
The British Isles alone will send a delegation of four 
hundred teachers. The attendance from Canada will 
doubtless be the greatest at any educational meeting in 
her history. The attendance from the United States 
should also be very large. Final arrangements have 
already been made for a number of the most distin- 
guished educators in Europe, Asia and America to 
appear upon the program. 

Detailed information concerning the meeting can be 
secured from President A. O. Thomas, State House, 
Augusta, Maine, from Mr. C. H. Williams, 101 Jesse 
Hall, Columbia, Missouri, and from Dr, E. A. Hardy, 
Simcoe Hall, Room 220, University of Toronto, 
Toronto (5), Canada. 

Prague Conference 

The International Bureau of Education at Geneva 
has arranged to convene an international educational 
conference to be held at Prague, Czechoslovakia, on the 
18th and 19th of April, 1927. The object of this con- 
ference is to discuss the promotion of peace through 
the schools of the world. The main theme which will 
run through the discussion is: What the School Can 
Do for Peace. Numerous educators in Great Britain 
(notably in Wales), France, and Germany have been 
giving particular attention to this subject and it was 
made the theme of a remarkable conference at Geneva 
last summer. It is expected that the Prague Confer- 
ence will be’ attended ky delegates from every country 
of western and central Europe, and possibly from the 
United States and other countries. 

Locarno Conference 

The Fourth International Conference of the New 
Education Fellowship, a progressive educational organi- 
zation with branches in England, Germany, Switzer- 
land, Bulgaria, Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, 
and the United States, will be held in Locarno, Switzer- 
land, from August 3 to August 15, 1927. The main 
topic of discussion will be: The True Meaning of 
Freedom in Education. One of the questions which 
will be discussed under this theme concerns closer edu- 
cational relations of Europe and the United States. All 
American educators traveling in Europe during the 
summer are cordially invited to arrange to attend this 
meeting. 








12 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


Further information concerning both the Prague 
Conference and the Locarno Conference can be secured 
by writing to Professor Pierre Bovet, Director of the 
International Bureau of Education, Geneva, Switzer- 
land. Professor Bovet is calling the Prague Confer- 
ence and will be present at the Locarne Conference. 
Information concerning these meetings can also be 
secured from Mr. C. H. Williams, Secretary of the 
World Federation of Education Associations, 101 Jesse 
Hall, Columbia, Missouri. Persons, wishing to register 
for the Locarno meeting should write to Miss Clare 
Soper, Secretary of the New Education Fellowship, 11 
Tavistock Square, London, W. C. 1, England. 


LEGISLATIVE NOTES 


Word has been received that three of our 
western states, Montana, North Dakota, and 
Minnesota will this year introduce in their legis- 
latures bills which will seek to prevent the teach- 
ing of the theory of evolution. What has hap- 
pened to our great northwest? We have appealed 
to the state federation of labor in each of these 
states to stand by the teachers in their fight to 
prevent the enactment of such laws. 

The House of Representatives last year by a 
very large majority passed the so-called Shep- 
pard Towner bill for the promotion of infancy 
and maternity welfare. The measure was also 
favorably reported, out of committee in the Sen- 
ate. In the Senate, however, their seems to be 
a group of men who are not in favor of the prin- 
ciple of this measure. So far this very small 
minority of Senators has been successful in 
keeping the measure from coming up. They 
know that if the measure were called up it would 
pass by a very large majority. Let your senator 
know that you are interested in this measure and 
that you want early action on it. P 

Last year the Poison Gas treaty was favorably 
reported out by the Foreign Relations Committee 
of the Senate. Certain selfish interests started 
the usual campaign of misrepresentation with the 
result that the measure was referred back to 
Committee, to die. It is significant to note that 
General Pershing, who commanded our forces 
on the other side, earnestly desires the enactment 
of this treaty, and that apparently his position 
has been quite misrepresented on this question. 

There seems to be no chance that the Curtis 
Reed Bill providing for the establishment of a 
federal Department of Education will be reported 
out of Committee at this Congress. On the other 


hand we are very happy to note that there seems. 


no chance of having the Phipps Bill enacted by 
this Congress. This bill while claiming to en- 
large the Bureau of Education in reality gives 
the Bureau no power which it does not already 
possess, but does make possible the control of 
public education in this country by private or- 
ganizations, ,and also the spread of any sort of 
propaganda by a government agency. It is a 
dangerous measure and should be fought. 

The Child Labor Ameridment is still before the 
public, and will again be considered by a num- 
ber of the state legislatures which meet this year. 
Locals: desiring any information on this question 
will be supplied with the latest literature on the 
question. ; 

The U. S. Congress is going into text book 
writing. Congressman Connery of Massachusetts 
has introduced a bill that Congress shall examine 
the contents of history textbooks. If, Mr. Con- 
nery will produce the trained historians who are 
members of Congress, who will make this study, 
we certainly should welcome ‘it—except, isn't 
education a state function ?—Selma M. Borchardt, 
Legislative Representative. 


A WEEK-END SCHOOL ON ARBITRA- 
TION, SECURITY AND 
DISARMAMENT 
On January 22 and 29, Arbitration, Security 
and Disarmament will be discussed at the Week- 
end School of Foreign Affairs. A number of 
other organizations are co-operating with the 
State Committee on International Co-operation to 
prevent war of the Illinois League of Women 
Voters and the Chicago League of Women Voters 

Forum at these sessions of the school. 

That it is of the utmost importance that public 
opinion in the United States be educated to favor 
the settlement of international disputes by ar- 
bitration is indicated in the two following quota- 
tions from a book entitled “International Law 
and Some Current Illusions and Other Essays” 
by Justice John Bassett Moore, the American 
member of the World Court: 

“So far as the United States is concerned, it is now 
in actual practice more difficult to secure international 
arbitration than it was in the early days of our inde 
pendence. Although this statement may occasion some 
surprise, its absolute correctness may easily be demon- 


strated” (page 86). 
“As we are somewhat prone to boast of leading the 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 13 


van in the cause of peace, it may be worth our while to 
consider whether we should not gain a position far in 
advance of that which we now hold if we were to recur 
to the practice we followed one hundred and twenty 
years ago” (page 89). - 

Prof. Quincy Wright of the University of 
Chicago will give the lectures. As usual there 
will be two sessions each day, 10:30 a.m, and 2 
p.m. at the Congress Hotel. The registration 
fee of $1.00 covers all the sessions. 





TEACHERS’ ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 
IN CANADA 


Reports of provincial secretaries show increases in 
membership and echo a spirit of enthusiasm and har- 
mony. 

Ontario Women Teachers’ Federation: “An increase 
of membership of 355 over that of June 30th, 1925.” 


Ontario Secondary Teachers’ Federation: “The 
total number of fees paid for the last session was 2,112, 
an increase of 178 over last year’s figure, which was 
then the high record.” 

Prince Edward Island Teachers’ Federation: “The 
number of members to date this year is 540. The 
number of teachers eligible for membership is approxi- 
mately 600. In other words the percentage is 84.” 

B. C. Teachers’ Federation: “An amendment to the 
school law of the province has provided a practical 
avenue of appeal for every teacher who felt that he had 
been unjustly or unfairly dismissed. Every teacher 
who feels that an injustice has been done may appeal 
to the Council of Public Instruction, who may appoint 
some responsible person to take evidence on the matter 
and report to the council. Also school boards are now 
required to give reasons for a dismissal.” 


Alberta Teachers’ Alliance: “This has been our 
banner year. The total membership to date is 2,508. 
All facts point to increased solidarity on the part of the 
teachers of the province. In the case of the Blairmore 
School the enormous sum of $11,670.54 has been con- 
tributed and handed over to the Trust Committee who 
in turn have disbursed practically the whole of the 
amount to the teachers concerned, who have thus 
received in amount practically 90 per cent of their sal- 
ary.” 

Manitoba Federation: “The short term normal 
school has disappeared from our province. Salaries 
have been well maintained in spite of the various diffi- 
culties which various communities encounter in financ- 
ing their public service.” 


THE Y. W.C. A. AND WORKERS’ EDUCATION 


From an article by Ethel M. Smith in The Life and 
Labor Bulletin of Nov. 2, we get a comprehensive view 
of the work attempted by the “Y. W.” in five industrial 


conferences in as many summer camps established in 
woodsy spots of New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, 
Iowa and North Carolina. While vacations for the 
girls, with swimming, hiking, dancing, singing and all 
the other delights of a camp, these gatherings were 
also centers for serious thought. Lectures and discus- 
sions and informal chats on industrial themes were 
clinched by written papers. 


Many Girls from Many Trades 


“It was my particular good fortune,” writes Miss 
Smith, “to be a discussion leader at the conference 
held at Camp Caledon, in the northwest corner of 
Pennsylvania, on the shores of Lake Erie. Here we 
had about seventy girls, fewer than some of the other 
camps, Camp Gray, for instance, having over 200; and 
while our group at Camp Caledon came from three 
states, the girls at Lake Junaluska, in North Carolina, 
came from nine states. Our 70 girls were a varied 
group, however, ificluding hosiery workers, silk weav- 
ers, candy workers, garment workers, cigar makers, 
shoe workers, electrical workers, a _ collapsible-tube 
maker, paper box makers, retail clerks, office workers, 
elevator operators, cafeteria workers, waitresses, cooks, 
laundresses, domestic workers, a photograph finisher, 
toy makers, and others the list of which fails me. 
Most of them had not attended any such conference or 
had any economic teaching before. Not half a dozen 
had been to high school. Most of them had gone to 
work at 12 to 16 years of age, and all but a few are 
now under 25. With but few exceptions they were 
American born and Protestant. Seven were colored, as 
many more were Slav, and five were Catholic girls. 
They were delegates, all of them I suppose, from their 
Y clubs at home, and they came from a dozen different 
localities in, chiefly, Pennsylvania and New York. 

From one angle or another, each of the five confer- 
ences dealt with the girl’s economic situation in her 
job and her economic status in the community, as dis- 
tinguished from the abstract moral or religious view of 
her “lot” in life. Not the virtues of “Christian forti- 
tude” and “endurance of the will of the Lord,” but the 
Christian obligation to intelligent understanding of the 
conditions of’ life and the ethical responsibility for 
remedy of the ‘distortions produced by man-made con- 
ditions—this was the spirit of the Y leadership in the 
conferences everywhere. So the lecturers told in sim- 
ple phrase, the story of the industrial revolution and 
the development of industry to its present-day form. 
They diagrammed the proportions of that vast system 
and the place of the individual girl within it. They 
told her what regulates it, so far as it is regulated— 
individual ethics, public opinion, legislation, collective 
bargaining. They described the machinery set up by 
different groups for solving its varied problems—set up 
by employers on the one hand, and by the workers on 
the other. They defined the individual bargain, the 
welfare program, the company union, the trade union. 

No one who has followed the labor movement 
among girls can fail to recognize the growing influence 
of the Y. W. C. A. in workers’ education. 





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The American Teacher 


Democracy in Education Education for Democracy 
Published monthly, except July and August, by 
THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 
327 South La Salle Street, Chicago 
FLoreNce Curtis HANSON 
Sec.-Treas. and Editor 











At the time of expiration, a bill will be found in the 
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EE 20 


“This movement they call organized labor is the um- 


versal, vital problem of the world.” 
—Thomas Carlyle. 




















THE SINGLE SALARY SCHEDULE FOR 
THOSE HAVING EQUAL EXPERI- 
ENCE, PREPARATION AND 
OTHER QUALIFICATIONS 
A. F. T. Program of Action 

The Fifth Convention of the A. F. T. adopted 
the following resolution. 


Resolved, that the Convention adopt as one of its 
educational principles the principle of equal pay for 
equal professional preparation and experience regardless 


of the grades or classes taught. : 
This change, we realize, cannot be brought about with 


satisfaction unless conditions of work in all grades are 
equalized to the greatest possible degree by the demo- 
cratic effort of the teachers. 


This expresses the undeviating position of the 
American Federation of Teachers. There are 
still some communities, mainly in the east, that 
maintain a salary distinction on the basis of sex. 
New York has passed through a severe struggle 
and has had this discrimination removed. Boston 
and Cambridge are still struggling. Periodically 
the monster raises it head and has it lopped off 
by the ever-watchful teachers’ unions. St. George 
is ever watchful for the Dragon of Injustice. 
There is but one standard—teachers of character 
and proper cultural equipment, qualified to teach 
children to function in a democracy. Such 
character and cultural equipment are not con- 
fined to nor do they exist in a greater degree in 
the male sex. The salary in each instance is de- 
termined by the position, regardless of the in- 
dividual who occupies it. The whole salary 
scheme is entirely impersonal. 


Not Enough Men Teachers Now 

There are too few men teachers in most of our 
schools now. If the men had a higher pay sched- 
ule, women would be selected more than ever 
(as a saving in expense) to fill vacancies. To 
obtain the service of the best women teachers as 
well as of the best men teachers, the salary sched- 
ule for both should be so attractive as to bring 
them into the educational field. Such a re 
actionary measure as separate salary schedules 
produces friction, tends to disrupt the teaching 
force and to destroy unity and co-operation 
among teachers. 

We want all teachers to have equal rights and 
opportunities, and to possess the highest possible 
qualifications through education and experience. 

This position is but a reiteration of the posi- 
tion which the American Federation of Teachers 
has held since its organization. In fact, the 
principle of equal pay for equal professional 
preparation and experience was one of the 
original causes of the formation of the American 
Federation of Teachers. 

The solution of this serious problem must be 
given careful attention if the American school 
is to be placed on the basis which is indispensable 
in our national life. In its policy of equal pay 
for equal service, the American Federation of 
Teachers does not feel that its actions are based 
upon mere sentiment. As a matter of abstract 
justice the- proposition stands without opposing 
argument. It is a well known fact that the train- 
ing necessary for the teaching profession is as 
expensive for women as for men. Neither is 
there discrimination in the economic conditions. 
The only reason ever advanced for higher pay 
for men is one based upon the so-called law of 
supply and demand which at first appearance does 
seem to justify a salary discrimination. But a 
careful analysis removes these appearances if the 
proper standards are observed. Even though 
there may be five or more women to one maf 
who qualify for a given position it does not neces- 
sarily follow that there is equality among all the 
qualifying candidates or that all the candidates 
should be accepted as desirable rather than to 
raise the minimum requirements which would 
not only induce more men to present themselves 
as candidates but would also attract more and bet- 
ter qualified women. When the conditions are 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 15 


such as to attract an undue proportion of the two 
sexes, it is a serious reflection upon the minimum 
requirements. It is this standard of minimum 
requirements that the American Federation of 
Teachers with the support of the American 
Federation of Labor seeks to elevate. If the 
requirements are merely academic a considerable 
number of women can qualify who do not possess 
the personality and general knowledge which 
should be demanded of the teacher. It is not so 
much a matter of competing against the men in 
the schools but rather a matter of inability to 
compete in the commercial field which allows 
them to accept the economic conditions of the 
teacher. This is merely another way of saying 
that the minimum requirements are too low, and 
too narrow. 

To put the case concretely let me refer to Chi- 
cago experience covering many years. In pre- 
vious administrations members of the board were 
fond of meeting at dinners with high school men 
whom they toasted as the finest group of men 
teachers in the world, a group of which the 
board members were justly proud and which in 
their opinion was worthy of much higher sal- 
aries. As nothing was ever done and as these 
occasions carried an atmosphere of increasing 
insincerity the men tired of all this and saw its 
falseness. Out of these dinner groups with their 
inactivity, indirection and unorganization sprang 
the Chicago Federation of Men Teachers affili- 
ated with the American Federation of Labor. 
Out of this came organization, leadership, acti- 
vity and increasing achievement. The idea of 
higher salary for men has never found a voice, 
partly because all realized that it had never been 
sincerely advanced, partly because the movement 
was forwardlooking and sympathetic with the 
modern trend of social development and partly 
because it was felt that there must be a future 
to the welfare of the schools as well as of the 
individual teachers. Today there is no sentiment 
in Chicago on which to base a demand for dis- 
criminating salary schedules. 

If the public is unwilling to pay such salaries 
and maintain such schools as will induce high 
grade men and women into the service, then it 
must be content with such teachers as will present 
themselves under the conditions established. 
Should it turn out that only women accept the 


/ 


positions then the situation as a whole cannot be 
permanently relieved by any temporary expedient 
such as a discriminating salary. The problem is 
one of general education of the public to see the 
need of better schools and to demand that 
teachers have in addition to the academic re- 
quirements a knowledge of thé world, of human 
nature and of the significance of training for 
citizenship. When these requirements are es- 
tablished it will be found that men and women 
of the same degree of qualification and person- 
ality can be found in about equal numbers and 
the problem will be eliminated. To ask that 
men receive higher salaries is to accept standards 
as they are without protest. This causes a great 
weakening in the process of education of the 
public to the new standards to fit the new con- 
ditions of American life. Nor can this work be 
carried on by the women teachers alone since 
their ranks will be increased by those where ad- 
mission is made possible by the existing require- 
ments. It is not unlikely that the process of 
bringing our schools to the desirable’ standard 
will be more rapid if no measures of expediency 
are adopted. If salary schedules will not call in 
men then the absence of men from the school 
system will be a striking lesson to the public and 
will serve to arouse some long needed thinking 
on this subject. To keep a small percentage of 
men by artificial inducement is to give the public 
an opiate from which it may take years to re- 
cover. 

The American Federation of Teachers is based 
upon the recognition that the American school 
system is sadly defective in many respects and 
upon the hope that organized teachers through 
an appeal to democratic and civic organizations 
can take part in alleviating these conditions. 
When the American school is what it should be 
it will recognize the merit of mind and»character 
of the teacher and offer the proper compensation 
in salary and promotion. 





CHILD LABOR 
That the National Association of Manufac- 
turers is opening the way for a campaign to 
deprive a large number of American children the 
benefits of the public schools, is the answer of 
the National Child Labor Committee to the report 
of the committee on Junior Education and Em- 





16 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


ployment of the Manufacturers Association, 
which advocates that children should be allowed 
to leave school and go to work at 14, claiming 
that this is the conclusion of modern educational 
research. 

The National Child Labor Committee asserts 
that, on the contrary, recent scientific investiga- 
tions justifies the position they have always taken 
that children should remain in school until 16. 
In support of this view, they quote Mrs. Helen 
Thompson Woolley, Ph. D., formerly director of 
the Vocation Bureau of Cincinnati, and at present 
director of the Institute of Child Welfare Re- 
search, Teachers’ College, Columbia University, 
whose recent book “An Experimental Study of 
Children.” is the chief source on which the Na- 
tional Association of Manufacturers bases its 
report. 

In a personal interview with a representative 
of the National Child Labor Committee, Mrs. 
Woolley stated that she does not share the view 
of the National Association of Manufacturers, 
which seems to advocate a 14 year age limit for 
compulsory school attendance. “Although recenr 
educational studies and our growing knowledge 
regarding differences in mental ability have revised 
my former attitude with respect to many of the 
problems of the child who leaves school for 
work, I have not altered my fundamental belief 
that children should continue their education until 
they have reached the age of 16. 

“It is true that the majority of children who leave 
school under 16 are the mentally inferior group, and 
failure in school is a more compelling motive than eco- 
nomic pressure in sending them into industry. But the 
conclusion to which this points is that our school sys- 
tem must be re-organized, not that these children should 
be allowed to work. If the school as at present con- 
stituted has nothing to offer this large group of children 
between 14 and 16, who cannot profit by the usual 
academic work, then it must introduce a new type of 
education that will give them something of value. In- 
ferior children mature later than do normal and su- 
perior children, and it is doubly important to protect 
them from undue strain and responsibilities during this 
period of their most rapid physical and mental growth. 
No educator really believes that allowing the inferior 
children to leave school, after the required number of 
years of academic failure, is a good educational policy. 
It has been allowed to go on merely because the school 
has not known how to meet the situation. 

“The report of the National Association of Manu- 
facturers also seems to suggest that I do not regard 


employment as physically harmful for children under 
16,” continued Mrs. Woolley. “It must be remembered, 


however, that my study, which showed little correlation 
between physical abilities and employment, was based 
on the city of Cincinnati alone, where for years there has 
been a very strict child labor law, rigidly enforced, which 
controlled the conditions under which children worked. 
There was also in Cincinnati, when this group of work. 
ing children left school, a comprehensive system of 
school medical inspection and before entering employ- 
ment children were required to have a physical examina- 
tion and secure a certificate of physical fitness. These 
were important factors in détermining the relatively 
satisfactory physical showing of these children during 
the years of their employment. Furthermore, as stated 
in the study, the results seemed to indicate that school 
life favors general physical vigor and energy more than 
working life.” 

With one other assumption of the report of the 
National. Association of Manufacturers, Mrs. 
Woolley takes issue, namely, that since staying 
in school does not seem to mean higher wages, 
it therefore follows that this group of retarded 
children, who ultimately go into routine factory 
work, gain nothing by remaining in school. “This 
is a limited view of the function of education,” 
she says. “It would be more correct to say that. 
because of the very fact that these children are 
destined for routine factory work and will prob- 
ably never reenter school, it is more important 
that they continue their education. I do not mean 
vocational training. As a matter of fact, the 
simple processes of routine jobs can be learned in 
a few weeks in the factory more satisfactorily 
than in a schoolroom, even a vocational workshop. 
But I do mean a type of education that will give 
them a right attitude towards and interest in their 
job and that will enable them to enjoy the leisure 
hours not occupied by the drudgery of earning a 
living. : 

“The manufacturers regard the child primarily 
as a wage-earning unit. To the educator he is 
very much more than that. His ability to earn 
a living is but a small part of his preparation for 
life and one that for children of limited mental 
capacity requires little or no training. It’is ability 
to live harmoniously, to be a good member of a 
family, to take his enjoyment wholesomely, to 
contribute to community progress, that requires 
the training. Herein lies the real function of 
education. If education has failed up to this time 
to accomplish this result for some group, the 
remedy js not doing away with education. It 
is in making it more efficient. 


“One thing is obvious. With this new and 











THE AMERICAN TEACHER 

















- 


| Saint Paul— 


The Ideal Vacation and Convention City 








extends a cordial invitation to you to enjoy your summer vacation in 
the heart of the Nation’s Premier Outdoor Playground—the famous 
Minnesota Ten Thousand Lakes region. 


for the 1927 Convention of the American Federation of Teachers. 
A $60,000 pipe. organ, played by an artist, is but one of the many 
advantageous features of the Municipal Auditorium with a seating 
capacity of 9,000. Adjacent halls and hotels provide ample addi- 
tional convention facilities. And all roads—railway, highway, water- 
way and airway—lead to Saint Paul—Port of the Great Northwest. 


Write to the Convention Bureau, Saint Paul Association, 
Fourth and Cedar Streets, Saint Paul, Minnesota, for 
illustrated booklets, maps or other information. 


Saint Paul is just the place 

















individualized education that seeks to adapt the 
school program to the varied capacities of school 
children, the task of education will become more 
complex, and its cost will become greater. As 
far as the child destined for work is concerned, 
it implies a longer period of supervision and ‘co- 
operation on the part of the school before the 
young worker is thrown completely on his own 
resources,” 





PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION, WITH 
PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE, ESSENTIAL 
TO TEACHER 
By Dr. Elmer B. Bryan, President Ohio University 
A philosophy of education commensurate with a 
Philosophy of life is essential to the profession of 
teaching. We must have an attitude toward life. 
We must believe certain things and realize that we 

are making contributions to life. 
It is the business of the school to help the younger 


generation to run up and come abreast of the race. 


No other institution has been founded with the 
avowed purpose of helping the young to catch up. 

The track of humanity runs upward, slow and dif- 
ficult though it is. The world is better today than 
it has ever been before, and, though we logk through 
the keyhole and the wheels seem to rtin backward, 
the wagon is still moving on across town. 


In Support of Workers’ Education 


(By James Wilson, President Pattern-makers’ League 
of North America) 


There is a case which has come under my personal 
observation which illustrates the great service of the 
Workers’ Education Bureau to the American Federa- 
tion of Labor and to the American commonwealth as a 
whole. 

A young‘man with some ability whom I know, 
under the influence of radicalism, was himself rapidly 
becoming a dangerous element in the community. Two 
years ago he came in touch with the educational work, 
as promoted by the Workers’ Education Bureau, in one 
of our large industrial centers. He begari to study 
economic and industrial problems from the educational 
instead of the propaganda point of view. He was an 
alert student; rapidly he became more closely associ- 
‘ated with the workers’ educational classes. One of the 
instructors in these classes, who was a professor in a 
nearby university, was so struck with the native ability 
of this worker that he encouraged him to take regular 
work in the university. As:a result this young man is 
now continuing his work at the university and has 
become as a result of this work an asset to the city in 
which he lives and to the trade union of whith he is a 
member. He thinks clearly and can analyze any propo- 
sition presented to him and no longer jumps at conclu- 
sions. 





Mas! SPE ye 


353 + aX, 
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18 THE AMERICAN -TEACHER 


EDUCATION FOR TRADE UNIONISTS 
By William Green, President A. F. of L. 

Education, the spiritual growth of every individual, 
has always been a fundamental aim of the labor move- 
ment. We have worked for higher wages and shorter 
hours because these things meant time and opportunity 
for greater richness of life—culture, art, study. And 
above all we have worked for a greater growth of 
mind that would fit us to master the problems rising 
out of every-day life and work. 

Labor has come through a period when progress de- 
pended on industrial strife. The strife was necessary 
to establish our unions. But now that our unions are 
widely recognized and collective bargaining is more and 
more accepted,-our progress depends less on the use of 
force and more on the policies carried out through 
regular union channels. It is the wisdom of these pol- 
icies that will determine the future growth of our 
movement. 

‘How, then, are we to acquire the wisdom to guide 
and direct our organized forces? The surest way is 
through education, and education not only for our 
leaders, but for all our members. But a busy man 
will ask, “How can I find time for education?” This 
seems a hard question, but the answer is quite simple. 

Education is not something separate from life and 
work, but rather a process of learning and training 
one’s mind through every-day experience. The union 
member who studies the trade agreement of his union, 
watches how it works, and sets his mind to think out 
how it could be improved—that man has found the way 
to educate himself and to bridge the chasm between 
work and culture. And if he goes farther and studies 
the problems of his trade, thinking out methods of 
production that would be more efficient—better tools, 
better system of handling materials, better prevention 
of waste, and ways in which his union can become a 
constructive factor for efficiency in the industry, then 
he is training his mind to a still larger understanding 
of the forces that influence his daily life and work, and 
is working toward that wisdom which will help to 
direct union policies to a goal of constructive ac- 
complishment. 

The next step in this process of mind training is to 
discuss one’s ideas and questions with fellow union 
members, for there is no keener whetstone for the 
sharpening of wits than the contact of one mind with 
another. When this comes about in a union meeting 
or a study class under the Workers’ Education Bureau 
there is the added advantage of discussion with ex- 
perienced leaders. Books that give essential economic 
facts, such as the Workers’ Education Bureau series, 
labor papers and the journal’s of one’s own and other 
unions, all help to explain the complicated problems 
and processes of modern industry and to suggest tactics 
that may be useful in unions. All these are factors in 
real education, but the first essential is a searching 
mind, a mind that will come to every problem de- 
termined to think it through until a constructive an- 
swer is found. 

It is to minds like this among our rank and file 


members that we must look for wisdom to guide oy 
future policies. For in our union organization every 
member has a share in union action, and our policies 
do not come from one source, but grow out of th 
ideas and experiences of our members. It is their 
minds trained by constructive thought and action that 
must lead us on to ever greater growth and development 


WHAT DOES YOUR DAUGHTER THINK? 

The Department of Sociology at the University of 
Washington has just conducted an investigation on 
what college students think about modern affairs, 
The women students of the University, the majority 
of whom come from the homes of working people, 
showed an alarming ignorance about trade unionism 
and industrial affairs. Only 31.4 per cent of the 
women students believed that the strike isa legiti- 


‘ mate method of bettering working conditions, while 


67.6 per cent of the college men approved it. Some 
72 per cent of the women thought scabbing perfectly 
proper, while only 47.1 per cent of the men approved 
of taking a job away from union workers. Industrial 
radicals or “disturbers” of any kind should be im- 
prisoned thought 32.8 per cent of the women, while 
only 13.2 per cent of the men favored such a medieval 
solution for industrial injustice. 

How many daughters of the members of this 
Brotherhood are conversant with the aims and ideals 
of labor unionism and intelligently able to espouse 
its cause? If any fail, whose is the fault?—Loco- 
motive Engineers’ Journal. 








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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


Book Reviews 


A NOTABLE REFERENCE BOOK 

Ida Clyde Clarke, editor of Women of Today, 
“a book of ten thousand facts,” deserves the 
_thanks of both men and women for this com- 
prehensive yet compact survey, not only.of em- 
inent women, but of the activities in which women 
are especially interested. Perhaps the best re- 
view is a summary of its varied contents, which 
deal with matters of the home, such as birth con- 
trol; of industry, such as child labor; of govern- 
ment, such as women in public office and federal 
bureaus for women and children; of women in 
education, in business and the professions, in 
science and the arts; of honors bestowed upon 
women. Following is a chapter on woman’s 
progress in foreign lands. 


The second section of the book deals with ° 


women’s organizations, national and international, 
political, fraternal and others ; women’s exchanges 
and periodicals, and their legal status by states. 

The third section is a short Who’s Who of 
noted women, past and present, and of promis- 
ing young women, closing with a necrology of 
those who died in 1924 and 1925. There is an 
excellent index. This is, indeed, a valuable com- 
pendium of its kind. 


The American Library Association has selected at 
the request of the American National Committee on 
International Intellectual Cooperation of the League of 
Nations the thirty-seven outstanding books of the year 


1925. Although the United States is entitled to name 
forty books the American Library Association pre- 
ferred an incomplete list in which every title had an 
undisputed place to a padded one which could be ques- 
tioned. The divisions of the list have been fixed arbitrar- 
ily by the International Institute on Intellectual Coop- 
eration and do not include fiction or children’s books. 

In the world list of 600 titles to be published under 
the auspices of the Institute, countries publishing 10,000 
or more new books annually will be represented by 
forty bogks and other countries by a proportionate 
number, 

History 

eA C. G. Bowers, “Jefferson and Hamilton” (Hough- 

2. Edward Channing, 
States,” Vol. VI, 
dence” (Macmillan), 

Social Science 
tal Samuel Gompers, “Seventy Years of Life and 
r” (Dutton). 
2 Hughes Mearns, “Creative Youth” (Doubleday). 


“History of the United 
“The War for Southern Indepen- 


5. Charles Warren, “Congress, the Constitution and 
the Supreme Court” (Little). 
Religion 
6. Lewis Browne, “Stranger than Fiction” (Macmil- 
lan). 
7. Kirsopp Lake, “Religion of 
Tomorrow” (Houghton). 
8. Ludwig Lewisohn, “Israel” (Boni & Liveright). 
Philosophy 
9. John Dewey, “Experience and Nature” 


Court). 
10. A. L. Gessell, “The Mental Growth of the Pre- 


School Child” (Macmillan). 
11. George Santayana, “Dialogues in Limbo” (Scrib- 


ner). 


Yesterday and 


(Open 


Belles Lettres and Art 

12. John A. Brashear, “Autobiography of a Man 
Who Loved the Stars” (Houghton). 

13. Harvey W. Cushing, “The Life of Sir William 
Osler,” 2 volumes (Oxford). 

14. Robinson Jeffers, “Roan Stallion, Tamar and 
Other Poems” (Boni & Liveright). 

15. James W. Johnson, ed. “Book of American 
Negro Spirituals” (Viking). 

16. Wm. E. Leonard, “Two Lives” (Viking). 

17. Amy Lowell, “John Keats,” 2 volumes (Hough- 
ton). 

18. Joseph Pennell, “The Adventures of an Illustra- 
tor” (Little). 

19. Herbert Quick, “One Man’s Life” (Bobbs). 

20. E. A. Robinson, “Dionysus in Doubt” (Macmil- 


lan). 
Geography and Travel 
21. * William Beebe, “Jungle Days” (Putnam). 
22. Joseph R. Smith, “North America” (Harcourt). 
Philology and Literary History 

23. G. P. Krapp, “The English Language in Amer- 
ica,” 2 volumes (Century). 

24. R. L. Rusk, “Literature of the Middle-Western 
Frontier,” 2 volumes (Columbia). 

Natural Science 

25. G. A. Bliss, “Calculus of Variations” 
Court). 

26. G. A. Dorsey, “Why We Behave Like Human 
Beings” (Harper). 

27. Carleton Ellis and A. A. Wells, “Chemical 
Action of Ultra-violet Ray” (Chemical Catalog). 

28. D. W. Johnson, “New England-Acadian Shore 
Line” (Wiley). 

29. A. J. Lotka, “Elements of Physical Biology” 
(Williams & Wilkins). 

30. C. P. Oliver, “Meteors” (Williams & Wilkins). 

31. C. B. Payne, “Stellar Atmospheres” (Harvard). 

32. M. V. Walcott, “North American Wild Flow- 
ers,” Vol. I (Smithsonian). 

33. A. N. Whitehead, “Science and the 
World” (Macmillan). 


(Open 


Modern 





20 


34. S. W. Williston, 
(Harvard). 


“Osteology of the Reptiles” 


Applied Science 
35. T. F. Carter, “The Invention of Printing in 
China” (Columbia). 
36. Alice Hamilton, “Industrial 
United States” (Macmillan). 
37. Raymond Pearl, “The Biology, of Population 
Growth” (Knopf). 


Poisons in the 





EDUCATION FOR WORLD 
CITIZENSHIP 

On Saturday, March 12, an all day conference 
on Education for World Citizenship will be held 
under the auspices of the League of Women Vo- 
ters Forum, the Association for Peace Education 
and other educational organizations. The con- 
ference will be similar to the conference on “The 
Teaching of History” held two years ago. 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


Three speakers for the March 12 Conference 
have already been secured: Prof. J. Paul Goode, 
on the teaching of geography; Prof. Harold 
Rugg, of the Lincoln School in New York, on the 
construction of the cufriculum and the develop- 
ment of international understanding, and Prof.. 
Harry A. Overstreet, of the College of the City 
of New York, on psychological factors entering 
into the development of the international mind, 

It is hoped teachers will mark this date on 
their calendars and help make this Conference a 
great success by coming in large numbers and 
taking part in the discussion. This is the day of 
the inter-dependence and not the independence 
of nations. It is hoped that as a result of the 
Conference we may see more clearly what we 
can do to promote a better understanding among 
the nations of the world. 





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eS ee, a i! ew Caw: Se. ee ee ee ee, 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 





—<———— 











WOMEN OF TODAY 


The International Book of the Day—5th Edition 1927 
“A Book of Ten Thousand Facts” 
Woman’s World Year Book Ida Clyde Clarke, Editor 


YOUR SCHOOL LIBRARY INCOMPLETE WITHOUT IT 
7 Bouquets on WOMEN OF TODAY] 





“Women of Today” of great value in my work 
at the University.—G. R. Hebard, University of 
Wyoming. 


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The Wall Street Woman’s Club wishes to go on 
record as being fully in accord with the work 
being. done in bringing out the _ publication 
“Women of 1923."—Mary R. Frazer, Secretary. 





Please accept my compliments on the excellence 
of this valuable publication—Dr. A. Z. Stangler, 
Szechoslovak Legation. 


“Women of 1923” is a pioneer work of which all 
women may be justly proud.—Thyraa W. Amos, 
Dean of Women, University of Pittsburg. 


If “Women of 1923” is an annual publication, 
please enter our order for all subsequent editions. 
—C. L. Cannon, Chief of Acquisition Department, 
New York Public. Library. 


“Women of 1923” has come—an astonishing 
piece of work! Hearty congratulations.—Helen 
M. Winslow, Editor, The Annual Register of 
Women’s Clubs. 



































This Book is More than a “Who’s Who’. It isa 
“What's What” about Women 


It contains complete data relative to the progress, status, and activities of women in 
all fields and professions. 

If you want to lecture, write or debate on any subj 
woman’s especial part in that progress. 


You will have to have this Book 


In no other volume in existence will you be able to find so concise and clear a presenta- 
tion of such questions as Child Labor, Birth Control, Women in Government, Politics and 
all branches of Public Life, Art, Music, Literature and other Professions, Business Op- 
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Are you or any of your friends eligible for any of the Awards, Scholarships, etc., 
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22 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


SPREADING EDUCATION TOO THIN 

John W. Carey in Rock Rapids Review: Not being 
a school teacher or a member of a board of education 
or even a college graduate, naturally we know all about 
how to run the schools. At that, we have at least one 
well-defined notion regarding our modern system of 
education, and that is that it attempts to teach too 
many different things, with the natural result that it 
teaches no one thing nearly as well as it might do if 
it did not try to take in too much territory. Probably 
this is truer of college and high school than it is of 
elementary schools. As for children in whom we are 
especially interested, we would rather have them well 
versed in a few elemental branches than to have them 
educated smatteringly in many branches. We have long 
cherished the idea that the modern school undertakes 
to do too much. We have no particular schools in 
mind—just the 1926 system of education. We believe 
this to be true in Rock Rapids, in Sioux City, in 
Chicago—practically everywhere. We believe school 
children are given too much to do—that they have more 
on their little minds than is good for them. We believe 
they would be better off, intellectually as well as phys- 
ically, if there was less of a tendency on the part of 
teachers to load them down with work. We believe 
it would be a lot better for a student to get a few 
paragraphs of Caesar or Cicero or Vergil down pat than 
to get two or three pages in a sort of a way. We be- 
lieve it would be more profitable to a student if he thor- 
oughly mastered a few problems in algebra or geometry 
than if he solved a dozen or so problems under duress 
with only a hazy idea of what they were all about. It is not 
going to make a lot of difference, after graduation, how 
many pages of Latin a boy or girl can translate or 
how many rules of higher mathematics he can recite, 
if he is incapable of going out and making a living. 
Time will come when it will be a lot more important 
to know where to go for certain useful facts and how 
to go about locating them, than it will be to have one’s 
head cluttered up with a lot of unessential information. 
In many -schools the mistake is made of allowing too 
many social and athletic distractions ; in nearly all schools, 
the mistake is made of giving students a lot more work 
to do than is advisable for their own welfare or that of. 
the school. We know how hard it is.in our business to 
think clearly and effectively along any one line when 
our mind is on fifty-seven varieties of subjects at one 
and the same time, and we sympathize with youngsters 
at school who are expected to make a showing when 
overdraft is being made on their mental energies in 
just about the same proportion. 


Public desire to learn the English language has 
caused the establishment of classes in English in the 
Gimnasio Paraguayo, the public forum of Asuncion. 
English classes have been inaugurated generally in the 
schools and colleges of Paraguay. 

Expenditures for public education in Basel, a city 
which constitutes a canton in itself, were 10,636,610 
francs in 1924, or about $2,000,000. The population is 
142,574 and the expense of education amounts to an 
annual tax of more than $14 upon every inhabitant of 
the city. 


THE WISCONSIN UNIVERSITY SUMMER 
SCHOOL FOR INDUSTRIAL GIRLS 
The Wisconsin University Summer School for Ip. 
dustrial Girls will hold its third regular session ip 
1927. This is a part of the regular summer session of 
the University of Wisconsin, and consists of a group 
of special classes in English, economics, and physical 
education conducted for girls who “work with the 


-tools of their trade,” and who would not be eligible for 


regular university work because they could not meet 
the entrance requirements. The plan was initiated in 
1924 through a joint project of the University Y. W. 
C. A. and the Madison Y. W. C. A., whereby eight 
industrial girls from the city of Madison were enabled 
to attend the regular summer session classes by scholar- 
ships raised through the Y. W. C. A. The success of 
these girls led the university to undertake the provision 
of special classes and a special director for a group of 
industrial girls. In 1925 there were 42 girls in the 
group from various middle western states, and in 
1926 there were 34. Plans for the 1927 session have 
not yet been announced, but it is probable that there 
will be facilities for a larger attendance, and perhaps 
for a “second year” group open to girls who have al- 
ready attended one session. 

The girls who apply for admission to this summer 
school should be girls interested in industry and girls 
who habitually make the most of their opportunities. 
Scholarships may be raised by organizations interested 
in the girls or in the project. The expense for each 
girl for the six weeks is $100, and it has been customary 
to provide each girl about $25 additional for railway 
fare and incidental expenses. The girls are lodged in 
groups, in houses with other university students, and 
are in every way a part of the general student body, but 
their class work is planned to meet their personal needs 
and to organize their experiences in the industrial 
world. In this. sense it is a true experiment in Work- 
ers’ Education. 

Baltimore Labor College 

Through its education department, the Baltimore 
Federation of Labor undertakes to offer short courses 
of study in subjects of interest to the members of 
organized labor, their families and friends. These 
courses consist of ecoriomics, public speaking, labor and 
law, psychology, practical English, parliamentary law, 
mathematics, fine arts and blue print reading. The 
teachers are selected, primarily because of their special 
ability, but consideration is also given to their sympa- 
thies with the aims of organized labor, without which 
effective work cannot be done. The courses selected 
are such as will help the members of organized labor to 
understand more clearly the modern complex industrial 
society, and lead to a more clear and full understand- 
ing of the mighty economic forces that so vitally affect 
us in our every day life and yet are beyond the control 
of legislation, laws and collective bargaining. The 
Baltimore federation believes that a clear understand- 
ing of the aims and purposes and ideals cf the Amert 
can labor movement can only serve to fit its member- 
ship for a more active and valt .ble service to the labor 
movement. 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 23 


Our Locals 


The Cambridge Federation of Teachers has affiliated 
with the American Federation of Teachers as Local 
195. Miss Bernice Rogers is President and Miss Mary 
Macklin, Treasurer. Equal pay for men and women is 
the immediate problem in Cambridge and other Massa- 
chusetts cities. 
can Federation of Teachers can do more to bring about 
the just solution of this problem than can unaffiliated 
groups or individual teachers. We are happy to wel- 
come the new Cambridge local and regard it as an 
occasion for mutual congratulation. 


The locals of St. Paul and Minneapolis, St. Paul 
Men No. 43, St. Paul Women No. 48 and Minneapolis 
No. 59, in co-operation with the Minnesota Labor 
organizations and other progressive organizations are 
actively engaged in the campaign against the anti-evolu- 
tion bill to be introduced in the Minnesota legislature. 
The A. F. T. position is that adopted at its convention 
in 1925, “anti-evolution law is a menace not only to 
educational and to religious liberty, but to political lib- 
erty as well.” The A. F. T. proposes to do its full 
share in combating this menace. 


At a luncheon on Saturday, Dec. 18, given by the 
Portland Teachers Union, Local No. 111, Mr. Norman 
Thorne, Assistant Superintendent of Portland Schools, 
was the principal guest and speaker. His topic was 
“The Administration and Teachers’ Organizations.” 
This was the first time in the history of the union that 
a superintendent of the Portland schools had met with 


it The Portland Teachers Union is considering the, 


project of promoting a Pacific Coast conference on 
educational objectives. It is a ‘big undertaking but 
undoubtedly can be done by the Portland Union, many 
of whose members are seriously interested in searching 
for a new basis for the activity called “teaching.” 


The Committee on Academic Freedom and 
Tenure, R. W. Everett, Chairman, is actively 
functioning. The following letters have been 
sent out. . 

The Committee of Academic Freedom and Tenure 
has been created by the National Body. In order to 
have some data to work on, in case of need, we are 
asking each Local for an account of any cases of 
teachers or school administrators who have been dis- 
missed for personal or political reasons. What course 
did your Local pursue and with what results? 

Also, please give us.a statement of the legal status 
of Tenure, or the efforts that are being made to make 
it a law, in your State. In the States where there are 
no Locals we shall appeal to the State Branch of the 
N. E. A. 

Please favor us with an early answer, even though 
you have no cases to report, so that we may tabulate 


results. We hope to make our findings available for 
all. 


Cambridge recognizes that the Ameri- 


Dear Sir: 

After a careful survey, we find that among others, 
your State is without Teachers’ Tenure laws. As your 
Legislature is to meet this coming year, it would be an 
opportunity for Labor to take some action in this mat- 
ter. 

Many teachers’ organizations are run by the Superin- 
tendents, who are secretly opposed to Tenure, with the 
result that they make little effort and less progress in 
this -direction. And in any case they are not well 
enough organized to accomplish much. We have 
found it very difficult to organize the teachers, one rea- 
son being that it is too easy to “fire” any teacher who 
has temerity enough to try to organize without the 
leadership of the Superintendent. It is for this reason 
that we write to you instead of the teachers. 

I am sure that you agree with us that it is to the 
advantage of Labor and Society to have the teachers 
organized and affiliated with Labor. If Labor would 
make a gesture in this direction I feel that it would 
improve the attitude of the teaching profession toward 
Unionism. 

We shall be glad to furnish you with copies of Ten- 
ure Laws now in operation in several States, or aid in 
any other way you may suggest. 

As Chairman of the National Committee on Aca- 
demic Freedom and Tenure, I am very anxious to 
cooperate with the forces of Labor in cases where 
teachers are removed for their political or economic 
ideas. I trust that I may hear from you as to the pos- 
sibilities in these matters. If it is too late this year, 
would you be interested next? 


Dr. Henry Suzzalo has written thanking us 
for our resolution and offer of assistance, but says 
to tis as he has to all others that it is a state affair 
and outsiders cannot help any. 


LOCAL 5 ORGANIZES A TRAVEL BUREAU 
The Teachers Union of New York has arranged to 


meet another need of teachers. This time it is the need 
for advice and assistance which members feel when 
they plan to travel. -The Travel Bureau is the instru- 
ment toward this end. Fhe Bureau has been in exis- 
tence for only a few weeks, yet it has succeeded in 
serving quite a number of members of Local 5. 

There is no reason why the services of the Travel 
Bureau should be lifnited to members of the New York 
local. The Bureau is in a position and it is eager to 
serve all members of locals in the American Federa- 
tion of Teachers. It is prepared to advise as to itiner- 
ary, to arrange for passage and hotel accommodations 
for, and to give help in procuring passports and visés 
to, all who wish to avail themselves of its services. 

The Travel Bureau will meet the needs of those who 
wish to prepare for long or for short trips, for long or 
for short stays, in the United States or abroad. 

The Travel Bureau may be reached by addressing 
The Travel Bureau of the Teachers Union, 70 Fifth 
Avenue, New York, N. Y. 








THE AMERICAN TEACHER 














Buy Union Stamped Shoes 


We ask all members of organized labor to pur- 
chase shoes bearing our Union Stamp on the sole, 
inner-sole or lining of the shoe. We ask you 
not to buy any shoes unless you actually see this 
Union Stamp. 


Boot @ Shoe Workers’ Union 


_ Affiliated with the American Federation of Labor 


246 SUMMER STREET, BOSTON, MASS. 
COLLIS LOVELY CHARLES L. BAINE 


General President General Secretary-Treasure 














American Federation of Teachers 


327 SOUTH LA SALLE STREET, CHICAGO, ILL. 
Affiliated with the American Federation of Labor :: Organized April 15, 1916 


caleS Ze 20 

The American Federation of Teachers desires to establish an intimate contact and an effective 
cooperation between the teachers and the other workers of the community. 

The American Federation of Teachers desires to co-operate with all civic organizations for im- 
proved civic life. 

Groups of seven or more public school teachers are invited to affiliate with this National 
Organization of Classroom Teachers, for mutual assistance, improved professional standards and 
the democratization of the schools. 




















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