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' APRIL, 1927 VOL. XI—No. 8 


Democracy in Education _Education for Democracy 


The ) 
American leacher 


THE ORGAN OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 

















T 


CHICAGO 
NUMBER 


A 





























Published by : 
MERICAN FEDERATION EE 20 327 So. La Salle St., Chicago 
Single Copy 15c—Yearly Subscription $1.00 

















THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


— —o— 








mth 5 aA” | 


The American Teacher is inaugurating with this issue a new policy. This policy, it is 
hoped, will-bring into closer relationship the locals and the national office, and give assistante 
in. working out our aim of. solidarity and national thinking on educational problems. 

The proposed plan is that locals in sections of the United States publish, from time to 
time, their material in special numbers of the. American Teacher. Their: problems.and*con- 
structive programs will thus reach a much larger group than when given by local bulletins, 
and the value and interest of the American Teacher will be increased. 

Each of us has a local situation to explain, which will be illuminating to other teacher 
groups and to the public generally, Each has a story of its attempts to apply progressive 
educational policies to that local situation and the story of the reactions to those attempts. 
Thus, educationally, the plan will allow the presentation of reports of continuous laboratory 
experiments in public education carried on by class room teachers. Thus the American 
Teacher will come to mean more professionally to our members, and at the same time 
make them realize how completely it is thew magazine. 

The April number, the first to appear under this plan is The Chicago Newlin, published 
by the Chicago Federation of Men Teachers, Local No. 2 and the Chicago Federation of 
Women High School Teachers, Local No. 3, George W. Tanner and Dorothy Weil, Editors. 
The Chicago situation from the point of view of these groups is given to the public. 

‘The May issue will be a Twin City number. Later there will be a New York number, 
a Pacific Coast number, a Southern number, a New England number, and others, it is hoped. 
May we have an expression of opinion from you on this policy? 

t —Florence Curtis Hanson. 


——— 





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CONTENTS 1 | Toward the New Education 


Page " ‘ . 
A summer school will be established in 
Greetings—Presidents Federations of Men ‘ hich th a ue dee of om 


and Women High School Teachers..... : : 
The Chicago Situation—Some Lost Spirit- will be carried out for students and pro- 


GETS cd equdpocecsecsncepassceseys gressive teachers as well as for children. 
Marian C. Lyons i fi 
Democracy in TN SPR ora 8 Manumit Summer School 


William J. Bogan 


—— <* eg ri for Effective Teaching. 10 Pawling, New York 

. B. Vest : ; i 

re neat as ae of Failures... 13 | in the foothills of the Berkshires 
Thomas 

No High School of More Than 2,000.... 17 July 8 to August 31, 1927 
Mabel Blasier to consist of an upper school of student 


The Tax Suits of the Chicago High School 
Teachers’ Federations 18 
Charles B. Stillman ; 
Emeritus Service in the Chicago Schools.. 20 


eee eee eee eeeeee 


teachers and a lower laboratory school for 
| dhldven. Competent teechere tn tha new 
creative education for all. 














J. E. Armstrong * DR. HENRY &. LINVILLE, Director 
eae ot ee proiich Education........ 21 m ope qouaere .. 
ew 
History of the Chicago High School Teach- PROF. JOSEPH K. | Associate 
Gee ME 0.6 ob owe vice ces cass Ona deee 22 fiise C ELIZABETH CO LDsMITH Directors 
Ann L Associate Director of the Walden School 
bis by gee ih WGC Cross vitieten tenes 26 “THE TEA 4 aERS BIN ON 
Pee Sean nnd phe Toons Lend 2 | 70 Fifth A New York City. 
‘, Telephone Chelsea 8658 - 











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Entered as second class 
for mailing at special rate of postage prov 


The American Teacher 


matter October 20, 1926, at the t office at Chicago, 
. ided for eae 1103, Act of 


Heels. under the Ant of Moreh 5. 30th Acceptance 
28, 1926, authorized November 3, 1926. 











Volume XI, No. 8 


APRIL, 1927 


One Dollar a Year 








Greetings 


James A. Meade, President, Chicago Federa- 
tion of Men Teachers, Local No. 2 





The Chicago Federation of Men Teachers ap- 


preciates the opportunity presented by this Chi-’ 


cago number of The American Teacher to extend 
fraternal greetings to the organized teachers of 
America. 

In common with all real teachers we recog- 
nize that our first duty and greatest privilege 
is our daily service to the children committed to 
our care by trusting parents; and we are cer- 
tain that the classroom teachers who realize most 
keenly their great privileges and obligations are 
precisely those who have associated with their 
fellows in unions, and have affiliated with other 
organizations of workers in the American Federa- 
tion of Labor. They have done this, not in 
the spirit of self-seeking, nor of taking part ‘in 
a class conflict, but simply as a means of func- 
tioning better as American citizens. 

In former times it was believed generally that 
teaching was something which could be done 


Im satisfactorily by almost anyone; and to this day 


that notion prevails to a certain extent among 
thany people. The organization of The Ameri- 
can Federation of Teachers in 1916 was inspired 
by a determination to raise the standards of 


education in America and so make teaching a 


teal profession. Teachers began to realize that 
there is no virtue in mere weakness, and ‘that 
only in organization may be found the ways of 
strength and dignity and self-respect which are 


® characteristic of a profession. 


The Chicago” Federation of Men Teachers 
has striven consistently to overcome the many 
obstacles which lie in the’ way of stich effective 
daily service as America demands of her teachers. 
Those of us who for many years have experi- 
enced the joy of association with our’ fellow 


teachers in the attempt to solve some of our 


dificult educational problems know that at least 
(Continued on page 4) 


Beulah Berolzheimer, President, Chicago Fed. 
of Women High School Teachers, Local No. 3 

In these days of unrest, the refuge of the 
ivory tower, with all that it connotes of seclusion 
and serenity, has been taken from teachers as it 
has from almost all other professional workers. 
To teachers affiliated with organized labor the 
closing of that door of scholastic sancutary has 
been especially sharp. No longer can they look 
at John and Mary as mites about to receive a 
blessing from on high, a blessing which will 
cover each student so completely that henceforth 
sweetness and light will be. his portion forever. 
Instead, these teachers have been forced to scru- 
tinize each student in the class, each subject in 
the curriculum, each action of the Board of Edu- 
cation, each statute of the city, and each law of 
the state, in order to weigh and determine both 
its structure, and its influence on the social 
fabric. : 

The, teachers of today have become an in- 
quiring instead of an accepting group. When 
teachers | first discover that. the boy whose keen 
appreciation and fine understanding have made 
the literature class.a joy is. to graduate into the 
steel mills where he will work twelve hours on 
the day shift and fourteen on the night, they 
take one long step into the realities of an eco- 
nomic society. That.the steel mills are flow on 
an eight-hour basis helps them. to recognize the 
possibilities’ of social adjustment... Therefore, 
when the eight-hour law, for women is proposed, 
teachers test it not in and for .itself, but for its 
potential effect on the children’ they teach. If 
mothers work shorter hours,. properly safe- 
guarded, will their children be stronger, more 
alert, better able to assume the duties of citizen- 
ship? In the sarne way, they investigate the city 
ordinance regulating street trades, to discover 
how that will affect the hours and the associates 
of the children for whose education they and 

































4 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


the city are jointly responsible.. When the Board 
of Education increases classes to such size that 
only the energetic, voluble child gets opportunity 
for self-expression, the teacher must present 
publicly the cause of the diffdent, slow, self- 
conscious student. To search for a knowledge 
of actual conditions first, and then to base in- 
struction on that knowledge is more than ever 
the task of the conscientious teacher. 

The barriers between the surging tide of our 
industrial civilization and the quiet back waters 
of scholastic isolation are thus crumbling. For 
the community, that means an analysis of con- 
ditions and motives to make possible more humane 
solutions of the conflicts between group and 
group. For the teacher, it means a tasting of 
life from many sources, a broadening of horizons, 
and a sharper and more complete comprehension 
of the problems which her students must face. 
For the child, it means better preparation from 
both community and teacher, so that, unafraid, 
he may leave the shelter of the school to face the 
realities of life, and shape them into a stronger 
and finer citizenship. The days of detachment 
from life are ended. 

Those of us interested both in constructive 
education and in the purposes of labor must 
take the problem boldly in our hands. It is ours 
to solve. 

EDUCATION AND BUSINESS 

What makes for efficiency in business, makes 
for inefficiency in education. Take the demand 
for results. In business you know what you 
want and you know when you have got it. Not 
so with education; there, we cannot ask for im- 
mediate results, or results that can be measured 
in any definite way. We can test whether the 
student has learned his lesson. not whether his 
mind has grown. Intelligence is too elusive to 
bé pinned down in such an obvious manner. Only 
a lifetime can measure the success of an educa- 
tion, and sometimes even that is not enough, for 
ideas may not bear fruit until a generation or two 
have elapsed—Raphael Demos, in the New 
Haven Yale Review. 








“The most effective way to make it possible to trans- 
late policies into class room habits and technique is to 
have the teachers assist and cooperate in the formula- 
tion of program or policy.”—Dr. E. A. Fitzpatrick in 
“The Teachers’ Responsibility to the Board of Educa- 
tion,” School and Society. 


(Continued from page 3) 
one important result achieved has been the 
broadening of our sympathies and a real intellec- 
tual quickening. Certainly, teachers more than all 


others need to rise above the limitations imposed 


upon them by the necessary daily routine of 
their jobs, and one way to accomplish this is 
to take an active part in the social, intellectual, 
and political life of their communities. 

The sums spent on public education in the 
United States are justified solely by the necessity 
of providing for our country, sovereign citizens, 
capable of thinking straight on public questions, 
of discriminating between truth and propaganda, 
and having the character and courage to resist 
corruption and usurpation in high places. 

How can this result be achieved with a teacher 
personnel cowed and ignored, and helpless be 
fore the arbitrary and often ignorant demands 
of those who are endowed with a little brief 
authority? There is but one answer—organiza- 
tion, and self-discipline, and the scientific ap- 
proach to all our problems. 

Because of a system of taxation obsolete as 
an ox-cart, administered with very little regard 
for law or justice, but remaining unchanged be- 
cause it is profitable to powerful commercial 
interests, the schools of Chicago continually are 
starved for lack of revenue. This situation ac- 
counts for the propaganda seeking to convince 
the public of the educational validity of enormous 
school buildings, large classes; and. other teach- 
ing conditions which every sineere lover of chil- 
dren knows to be impossible and wrong. 

The. answer of the high school teachers of 
Chicago has been to institute mandamus suits 
against the State Tax Commission and the Cook 
County Board of Review, in order to compel 
obedience to law, and thereby secure needed funds 
for the schools, 

The school engineers of Chicago have a ome 
hundred per cent union and because of this fact 
have secured remuneration and working condi- 
tions which are highly satisfactory. Are the 
teachers intelligent enough to profit by this ex 
ample? 





“A nation which lets incapables teach it while the 
capable men and women only feed it, clothe it # 
amuse it, is committing intellectual suicide.”—Edw. 
Thorndike, “The Bulletin” of the Milwaukee Teachet! 
Association. 








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The Chicago Situation: Some Lost Spiritual Values 


Marian C. Lyons, Chicago Federation of Women 
High School Teachers, Local No. 3 


Scope of the Article 

This article presents primarily the local school sit- 
uation in Chicago as it affects the high schools and 
their work, since that is the phase of the situation 
best known to the Federation of Men Teachers and 
the Federation of Women High School Teachers, 
the two Chicago organizations affiliated with the 
American Federation of Teachers. It will not go 
into detail in regard to important matters treated 
elsewhere in this bulletin, but will show how, con- 
trary to the many published statements, concerning 
the present great efficiency of the Chicago schools, 
these matters havé contributed to the loss of many 
imponderable values of far greater importance than 
mere mechanical efficiency. 

History 

In order to understand the attitude of the high 
school teachers at the present time, the reader must 
know something of the events occurring in the last 
few years. School conditions here are greatly 
affected by the rapid growth of Chicago, with its 
attendant enormous increase of pupils in the high 
school, and by the fact that during the years of the 
war and those immediately following it, there was 
an almost complete cessation of the building pro- 
gram of the schools. In order to handle the crowds 
of pupils, the “shift” system was adopted as suppos- 
edly a temporary measure. By this plan, groups of 
pupils and teachers arrive at various hours in the 
morning and leave at corresponding hours in the 
afternoon, so that the building is in constant use 
from 8 a. m. until 5 p. m. with evening school 
beginning at 7 p. m. 

Such a system naturally presents difficulties in 
program making, as every room has to be used as a 
class room almost every hour of the day to accom- 
modate the pupils. Two or more teachers occupy 
the same room and often use the same desk, thus at 
some periods of the day a teacher does not have 
access to her own records and other working mate- 
rial. The program presents such complexity and 
such constant use of rooms that often neither space 
nor time is available for conference between pupils 
and teachers. Principals who have been able in the 
past to keep classes down to an dverage of thirty or 
thirty-three find this impossible, and classes of forty 
and fifty are made. Fearing that these conditions of 
big schools and big classes, necessitated by the war 
and by post-war deflation, would become permanent, 
the teachers formed speakers’ bureaus and sought 
opportunities to present before labor and civic 
Organizations the teachers’ views on a score of edu- 
cational matters, among them the bad effect of this 
overcrowding. They worked constantly for the 
class of twenty-five and the school of 2,000 or less. 
Friendly associations with many groups were 
formed and the teachers gained ‘a higher position in 
the esteem of the community. 


This was the more readily accomplished as the 
campaigning was done with the approbation of the 
superintendent of schools, Mr. Peter A. Mortenson, 
who felt that the public must be aroused to the grav- 
ity of the situation. A spirit of unusual harmony 
and good-will prevailed between the teachers and 
the superintendent, and teacher morale was high. 


Councils 
Another cause of this excellent morale was fur- 
nished by the system of teacher councils, meeting on 
school time. [See article on Councils.] 


_ Contact with Superintendent Broken 

About this time a change was made in the super- 
intendency, and before the end of the semester the 
councils were abolished. No adequate agency for 
pooling the combined experience of the teaching 
force has been substituted. 

Another change instituted related to conferences 
between teachers and superintendent. A hierarchy 
of officials was established, whereby a teacher or 
group of teachers who wished to present an educa- 
tional matter to the superintendent could no longer 
address him directly but must first discuss this mat- 
ter with their principals. If favorably inclined to 
the project under discussion, the principal would 
relay it to his immediate superior, and so, through 
various officials, it might eventually reach the super- 
intendent. Now, no person is a transparent medium. 
No superior can in an unbiased and accurate fashion, 
transmit the ideas of his subordinates, particularly if 
these should question features of his own policy. 
Furthermore, this method made no provision for 
ideas which were the result of teacher consultation 
in an organization. Communications from teacher 
organizations were, however, intended to follow the 
same route. In two cases, such communications on 
matters of general school interest sent to the super- 
intendent, were returned to the principals of the 
presidents of those orgattizations. Certainly teach- 
ers value direct contact with their principals, but 
feel that public education is today so vital and so 
complex a task that they wish to preserve all. oppor- 
tunities for inspiration and enlightenment to be 
gained by direct contact with their superintendent. 

Another device for securing contact and unity in 
the system was shut off by the discontinuing of the 
all-day conferences established by Mrs. Ella Flagg 
Young. These had met twice-a year on school time 
and afforded the teachers opportunity to hear an 
address from their superintendent, and to come 
together from various schools to discuss ‘the prob- 
lems and unify the procedure of the several depart- 
ments such as English, Social Science, Physics, etc. 
The net result of breaking these established lines of 
contact was a general and definite lowering ‘of 
teacher morale. All connections, except that with 
the Chicago Federation of Labor, made by teachers 











tion,” School and Soctety. 


SRE THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


with outside organizations languished. Any public 
discussion by teachers which did not extol the pres- 
ent situation with its overcrowding and large classes 
was frowned upon. 


During ‘these months there appeared to be a 
concerted effort on the part of some prominent local 
newspapers to give the public the impression that 
the Chicago schools were at the time in a very bad 
way, and that the teachers generally were unprofes- 
sional in attitude and unprogressive in pedagogical 
practice. Very soon afterward came the announce- 
ment that a few. junior high schools would be estab- 
lished in elementary schools revamped for the pur- 
pose, that several new junior high schools were to be 
built, and that several elementary schools were to be 
platooned. Newspaper reports of | remarkable 
improvements, due alone to the new administration, 
then followed, and the public generally must have 
gained the idea that the inadequate Chicago princi- 
pals and teachers had been galvanized over the 
week-end, as it were, into industrious, intelligent, 
obedient disciples of new methods, unknown here 
before. 


Now it is entirely probable that some improve- 
ment did need to be made, especially as the cessa- 
tion in building had left the schools laboring under 
serious overcrowding caused by absorption in the 
war. Yet surely these changes could have been 
made in a manner to arouse the interest and elicit 
the ‘support of the very people who must be trusted 
to carry out the new plans. System is not incom- 
patible with good will. In the case of inaugurating 
new methods, enlightened business today calls upon 
the combined experience of its workers. In Chicago 
the innovations were accompanied by the constant 
suggestion that teachers were obstructionists. In 
some important details, the new methods determined 
upon, such as increase in number of pupils per 
teacher and in thé use of standardized tests as the 
sole evaluation of pupil-progress, teachers felt that 
the ‘changes were away from the best pedagogical 
practices and toward mass instruction and mechani- 
zation. Surely teachers owed it to their professional 
self-respect to say so. 


Registration Introduced 

Another innovation which aroused much antago- 
nism and lowered teacher ideals was the introduction 
of the double daily registration. An efficiency firm 
hired by the Board of Education to suggest means of 
cutting down expenditures declared that much 
money was lost because absent teachers were not 
accurately checked up. 

Teachers, as professional workers, objected to the 
practice and contended: that it was entirely unfair to 
punish thousands of honorable people for perhaps 
forty dishonorable ones. The claim that the practice 
has saved thousands is somewhat discounted by the 
fact that a great amount of substituting has been 
done by, supernumerary teachers already on the pay 
roll, The registering. system is the more irritating 


JISSOCIAHON,. 





to the teachers since they are sure that other sug- 
gestions made by the same efficiency firm, but 
directed at waste involving other employees of the 
Board, have never been put into operation. 
Supernumeraries 

Through the rapid establishment of junior high 
schools, attendance in the senior high schools 
decreased. Some of the latter were found at the 
beginnings of semésters to have more than their 
quota of teachers. These supernumeraries as they 
are termed, had to be shifted to other schools or to 
substitute work traveling about the city from school 
to school. Among these teachers were some who 
had been regularly assigned to the school which 
later had no place for them. The number dismissed 
was increased by orders coming to the principals 
that the number of pupils per teacher was to be 
changed from 33 to 35. This order caused much 
added labor, as it came after principals had arranged 
their program on the old quota of teachers. 

Larger Classes 

To justify this increase in size of classes, the 
assertion was made that teachers can teach forty- 
five or fifty as well as twenty-five. Results of tests 
in spelling, penmanship and arithmetic were quoted 
to substantiate this claim. Now both children and 
grown people in large numbers can be drilled, but, 
as Professor Dewey says, that training is not educa- 
tion. If the results are to be uniform, then numbers 
are not very important, but numbers do militate 
against progress most effectively in those studies im 
which variety of results is sought. Again, numbers 
count against good results if the subject matter 
demands individual performance by the pupil, 
teacher comment, and further effort by the pupil to 
secure better performance. 


Economy Program é 

At about the same time, a program of economy 
was ordered, by which various courses in different 
schools, largely shops and crafts, and their equip- 
ment were transferred to other schools; it was 
charged in some cases even to schools in which 
fewer pupils had registered in the classes than 
in those in which classes were discontinued. This cut- 
tailment again threw some teachers out of theif 
immediate positions, made it necessary for others 
prepared in shop teaching to handle academic 
classes, and added to the anxiety of many of the 
younger ones who wondered more and more just 
what their appointment meant. Finally, this econ 
omy program was unpedagogical, since many dis 
continued classes had been put in because they 
answered a real desire on the part of the pupils. 
Thus they were in harmony with modern theory 
which puts the pupils’ own interests and activities at 
the foundation of curriculum making. 

School Finances 

The matter of the finances of the Board of Educ 
tion has also presented much perplexity to the citr 
zens of Chicago this year. First there was a state 








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ment that there would be a deficit of $3,500,000 ‘in 
the educational fund Jan. 1, 1927, and that an 
increased tax rate would be required to keep the 
schools open. Later Miss Margaret Haley proved, 
and the Board later acknowledged that, instead of a 
deficit, there would be a surplus of $4,500,000 at that 
date. The Federation of Women High School 
Teachers at once petitioned the Board to restore the 
old quota of pupils per teacher, since there was evi- 
dently no special occasion for retrenchment. Noth- 
ing was done however and some classes of forty-five 
and fifty continue to exist. [See article on Teacher 
Load.] 
; Clerical Work 

In addition to the strain of big classes there is the 
irritation produced by an increased miass of clerical 
work, all of which takes time from the work for 
which the teacher was trained—teaching. (See arti- 
cle on “Effective Teaching.”) 


New Tests 

The clerical work is increased by the greater use 
of tests of different kinds. The classes being too 
large for the teacher to know the pupils’ grasp of 
the lessons, the teacher must resort to weekly or 
bi-weekly tests. Often there are departmental diag- 
nostic tests. Other tests are sent out from the 
superintendent’s office. One - discouraging feature 
about most of these tests is that so often nothing 
constructive comes from them. Although the 
results of any diagnoses may show which pupils need 
special help, almost no teacher has time or strength 
to apply the individual remedy needed. 

An objection to any over-emphasis on tests is that 
some teachers may make preparation to pass such 
tests the main objective of a course. In Dr. Hart’s 
article in the March Survey Graphic on the Chicago 
situation called “What Price System?” he says the 
new use of tests “seems to many teachers a deliber- 
ate attempt to secure order by mechanizing instruc- 
tion, reducing the teacher to an automaton, and the 
pupil to a memory machine.” 

Pupil Failure 

On several occasions there have emanated) from 
the superintendent’s office suggestions to the effect 
that pupil failure should be reduced to the vanishing 
point. As if in obedience to this suggestion, there 
has been an increased number of pupils passing this 
year. A questionnaire sent recently to high schools 
showed practically all of the teachers agreeing that 
this higher rate was due to lowered standards, in 
several cases to decrease in amount of work, or to 
dropping, before the close of the term, the pupils 


sure to fail. 
Gifted Pupils 

Special classes are often arranged for the poor 
Pupils, but for the best ones, those who ought to be 
receiving extra assistance to prepare them for lead- 
ership in the community, little ig done. Mass 
instruction and concert recitation are used much; 
little individual care can be used in big classes. 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


7 


Teacher morale is hit hardest by this condition—the 
impossibility of doing what ought to be done for the 
pupils. Emeritus Service 

The passage of the Emeritus Service Rule was 
another disturbing factor in the Chicago situation. 
[See Emeritus Service.] 

Lack of Courtesy for Deceased Toners... 

Another departure from established custom has 
aroused deep indignation. For years schools have 
taken sympathetic notice of the demise of a memniber 
of the faculty. At present this courtesy has seemed 
to be regarded as unwise since it may, interfere with 
the regular conduct of classes. In the case of a pro- 
posed memorial for a much-beloved principal, such a 
line of reasoning was used with the committee of 
teachers that they felt they must hold the exercises 
at lunch time when classes would not be disturbed. 
In the case of the funeral of an assistant. principal, 
who had served his school for thirty-five years, the 
directions were that no one, not even the principal, 
could attend the funeral, held in school time, with- 
out loss of salary for the time missed. Surely no 
business firm which desires to arouse and to keep good 
will in its employees, uses this hard regime with 
them. Yet in Chicago, teachers who retire with even 
thirty-five years of continuous service are given a 
mimeographed acknowledgment of their resigna- 
tion without a single word of appreciation of their 
effort. The purpose with the teachers is evidently to 
keep them at the job all the time. But is the “iron 
hand” really effective? Do educated people do. their 
best at a work which has definite spiritual aspects 
when they feel that they are being driven? 





VACATION 

You cannot do better if you are going east, to 
Washington, Philadelphia, Gettysburg, than to plan 
a stop at Deer Park, Md., 100 miles east of Pittsburg 
and 200 miles west of Baltimore in the heart of one 
of the wonderlands of America. Forest, woodland, 
mountain streams, shady dells, walks and drives in a 
cool, bracing, invigorating atmosphere are the good 
fortune of the vacationist in this delightful spot. 

Here you will find the Deer Park Hotel,.an ideal 
mountain resort. The management - offers a very 
attractive rate to the members of the American Fed- 
eration of Teachers. Cottages may ‘be rented for 
the season. 

Golf in charge of a well known professional is the 
outstanding feature among the sports at Deer Park. 
A swimming instructor teaches the newest meth- 
ods of swimming and diving. Tennis matches, base 
ball games, field day sports, archery, trap shooting, 
rifle shooting are other interesting sports, The 
Deer Park Hotel provides a fine string of saddle 
horses, with a compeéent riding master in charge. 
Dancing, moving pictures, radio—what.more do we 
want? 

Shall we motor down or go by way of the “Union 


Road,” the Baltimore & Ohio? 











Democracy in Education 


By William J. Bogan, First Asst. Supt. 
of Schools, Chicago 


Democratic government presupposes an educ- 
ated people, a people imbued not only with knowl- 
edge and civic virtue but with ideals of liberty, 
equality, fraternity, and the desire to apply this 
knowledge, this virtue, and these ideals in every- 
day relations. 

These virtues cannot become practical by 
merely taking thought. They must be worked 
into the fabric of our hopes, our fears, our acts, 
our dreams. No‘pupil can hope to become a good 
citizen until he has served a long apprenticeship 
in citizenship. He must be introduced gradually 
to the responsibilities, privileges, rights, and 
duties of the citizen and in his s¢hool life he 
should be given opportunities to acquire experi- 
ence in governing himself and in governing his 
fellows, for today he is a child, a pupil; tomor- 
row he is a man, a voter, with the destinies of 
the people in his hand, in his ballot. If, when 
he is given the franchise he lacks the knowledge 
necessary to its use and the idealism which should 
accompany knowledge, the nation can expect little 
aid from him. 

To teach citizenship, character, independence 
and idealism to pupils in a democracy we must 
have teachers of courage, with faith in democracy 
and willingness to suffer if necessary in this 
righteous cause. That sacrifice may be necessary 
is shown again and again as the heavy hand of 
privilege descends upon the teacher who ventures 
to discuss the questions of economics that have 
been labeled taboo by those in the seats of the 
mighty. To secure the best instruction in citizen- 
ship the schools need teachers with a scientific, 
a professional point of view—teachers willing to 
face facts and be guided by them, whether the 
facts prove or disprove pet theories or tradi- 
tional beliefs. Without this detached, impersonal 
attitude the teacher is unable to develop clear, 
unbiased thinking on civic problems. He is likely 
to appeal to the emotions rather than to reason. 
If he lacks a scientific background he is at the 
mercy of every educational quack with nostrums 
for sale. His natural endewment and teaching 
experience may give him a beautiful educational 
background but this equipment the educational 
theorist is sometimes inclined to ignore. The 


teacher usually finds it difficult to present his 3 


views because, particularly in secondary schools, 
he is so individualistic that he will not work well 
with the group. He dislikes to bend his will to 
the yoke of organization and yet he knows that 
as an individual his plea for what he thinks 


best for the pupils will in all probability prove | 


ineffective. The public is strongly inclined to 
sympathize with the teacher, but directors of 
research and statistics emphasize the need for 
facts. They resent mere emotional appeals. The 
teacher should meet them on their own ground. 

The differences in these points of view are 
illustrated by the manner in which proposals (1) 
to establish platoon schools, and (2) to increase 
the size of classes in elementary and high schools 
have been received. 

Many teachers, feeling that the principle of the 
platoon school was wrong, attacked it viciously 
and unscientifically and thereby created consider- 
able favor for it, whereas a scientific appraisal 
would doubtless show that the advantages of the 
platoon school have been greatly over-rated and 
its serious disadvantages minimized. In edu- 
cation there is a tendency to run to extremes and 
to ascribe merits to the new that are partly 
imaginary. The platoon school seems to be 4 
case in point. Many educators seem to regard 
is as a panacea for the ills that education is sup- 
posed to overcome but the educational world has 
not yet accepted it as a substitute for the tradi 
tional type of school. In fact, some educators 
maintain that the older type with simple modifica- 
tions is superior to the platoon school. A sci 
entific appraisal is needed to end the controversy. 

The history of the fluctuation in the size of 
classes, for the past century should cause evel 
the scientist to hesitate before giving his approval 
to the idea that the teacher can do as effective 
work with large classes as with small ones. In 
days of old the large class was an economic 
necessity. Hence bright pupils monopolized the 
time and attention of the teacher. The dull ones 
were out of luck. Those who had a strong de 
sire to learn received some education; the others 
left school. For years the public accepted this 
condition as a matter of course but slowly a new 








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idea began to leaven educational thought and prac- 
tice. Someone discovered that not all individuals 
were alike. Individual differences became sub- 
jects of discussion in teacher institutions, but 
everyone recognized that to provide adequately 
for individual differences small classes were 
necessary. John Dewey in his School of Edu- 
cation at the University of Chicago attempted to 


-prove that six in a class is comfortable but twelve 


is a crowd. The idea spread rapidly through 
the private schools and in time affected the public 
schools. “Reduce the number of pupils in the 
classes” became an educational slogan. All over 
the country, hamlet and city took up the cry 
and the place with smallest number per class be- 
came the educational center of the world. Slowly 
but surely the numbers were reduced in nearly 
every part of the United States until one of our 
periodic waves of economy began to wash the 
sands from beneath our educational foundation. 
Economy became the watchword. Then the 
scientist came to the front and said that his 
investigation showed that classes of 45 were quite 
as efficient as classes of 25 under similar condi- 
tions. In fact he regards 45 in the elementary 
school as an ideal number. He is supported by 
some principals and superintendents who say, “It 
is as easy to teach a class of 45 as it is to teach 
aclass of 25.” But you will not hear them~say, 
“I should prefer to teach 6, 7, or 8 classes of 
45 to the same number of classes of 25. “If 
the large class is as efficient as the small one 
the private schools should increase their numbers 
and advertise the fact. Instead they continue to 
advertise small classes and individual instruction. 
They advertise their facilities for athletics but 
they never offer large classes as a bait for the 
wavering parent. Apparently, however, the so- 
called scientist will have his say and from now 
on we may expect to see the educational King 
of France marching his men down again to the 
standards of the Middle Ages. 

If teachers will provide a scientific appraisal 
of the benefits of the large class they may learn 
that the so-called benefits are a delusion. Thou- 
sands of educators with sanity, good judgment, 
and respect for the professional look upon the 
acceptance of the large class as a repudiation of 
the lessons of experience. 

Our schools will never be truly democratic 
until education is provided for all, regardless of 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


9 


economic conditions. Victor Olander, John Fitz- 
patrick, Margaret Haley and many others who 
fought. valiantly against the demand that in order 
to secure efficiency vocational education should 
be carried out under a separate system, can testify 
that the most difficult argument te meet was con- 
tained in the request from big igterests to the 
Illinois educators : “Let us take your public school 
discards and try to give them more education. 
You have done your best with them and have sent 
them into industry with your blessing. They are 
lost to your school. Why do you refuse to let 
them céme to us?” The only answer that could 
be made was that the schools should and would 
take care of the unfortunates doomed to leave 
the regular school at an early age to enter in- 
dustry. The public school system of Chicago 
through its Continuation Schools is trying to carry 
out this promise, but it finds opposition from 
many sources. Employers do not all recognize 
the value of this type of education and the tax- 
payer seems to think that his duty has been 
performed when he has provided high school 
and college and professional education for the 
children of the wealthy and well-to-do.. What a 
queer type of democracy that would bar children 
from education because of poverty! With a 16 
year law for all, and strong pfevocational and 
practical arts courses as part of the scheme of 
general education, real vocational education for 
those who wish it and ate fitted for it might be- 
gin at 16 years. Specialized vocational education 
should not begin before that age except in cases 
of emergency. With a foundation of general 
education such as might be obtained before the 
age of 16, the criticism of premature specialization 
would no longer hold against vocational educa- 
tion. The work of the Continuation Schools 
should be extended at once to every worker in 
industry up to 17 years of age, for the iriterests 
of democracy demand this. As a result of our 
present type of teaching many pupils leave school 
to go to work while many continue in school to 
avoid work. Thousands leave school ‘as soon 
as the law permits and hence receive little bene- 
fit from school during their most plastic period. 
Unless they attend continuation school the teach- 
ings of democracy will never reach them and as 
voters they may sail the ship of state into un- 
charted seas without rudder or compass or cap- 
(Continued on page 12) 





What Is N ecessary for Effective Teaching? 


By C. B. Vestal 
Given as a sadid talk from Station WCFL (Chicago Federation of Labor). 


For nearly 20 years I have been a teacher of 
young people, boys and girls between 14 and 18 
years of age, in public high schools. For almost 
16 of those years I have been where I still am, 
in the Carl Schurz High School, Chicago. I 
believe that it is now the largest high school in 
Chicago. and probably one of the largest in the 
United States. Its enrollment is about 6,500 
pupils, in 4 grades only—the ninth, tenth, 
eleventh, and twelfth. I have also taught in 
smaller high schools before coming to Chicago. 
So that when I talk about the problems of high 
school teaching I am not merely theorizing about 
them from a comfortable distance or elevation. I 
meet them face to face every day. 

In many respects our public schools of today 
are superior to any which the world has yet 
seen. They are better equipped, are housed in 


more comfortable and more sanitary and safer 
buildings, are better organized, have a richer 
course of study, and a more able teaching staff 


than has ever been known before. But with the 
recent enormous growth of popular education the 
problem of taking care of large numbers of school 
children has brought gray hairs to many a super- 
intendent and principal. The resulting congestion 


has made unavoidable a certain lowering of stand- . 


ards, and is by way of obscuring our ideals of 
what real education should be. It is a certain 
phasé of this situation that I_ wish to deseribe 
to you, a phase of it that the teacher is up against 
every day, because I believe that if you under- 
stand the situation you will hesitate to blame the 
teacher or the school when your boys and girls 
do not do quite as well in school, or take quite the 
interest in it, as they do and take in their sports. 

You do not need to be a teacher to understand 
that the. boys and. girls of high school age today 
are not much interested in learning for its own 
sake, There is nothing unwholesome in this, but 


from the personal interest side of education the 
more emphasis we are obliged to lay on the re- 
wards and penalties. 

It should certainly be part of the function of 
the teacher to take this personal interest and to. 
supply this inspiration, and good teachers make 
a conscientious effort to do it. But suppose 
classes are so large that this becomes very diffi- 
cult? In that case you who have children in these 
classes are likely to experience some disappoint- 
ment at the lack of interest taken in those children 
as individuals. This is exactly the situation now 
in most of our high schools. Classes are so 
large that the opportunity for direct contact be- 
tween teacher and pupil is very slight. To make 
it possible, classes should not be larger than 25 
pupils. But classes under 30 are unusual,in our 
high schools while classes of 35 to 40 or 45 are 
common, and classes of 50 and even 60 are not 
unknown. 

Now perhaps there are people who will tell you 
that just as good teaching can be done in the 
large classes as in the small ones. I do not be 
lieve that this is true. Of course there are in 
the teaching profession—just as in other pro- 
fessions, persons who are incompetent or lazy, 
and who would therefore not do good work even 
under ideal conditions. But you may take it 
for granted that the great majority of the Chi- 
cago teachers are conscientious and hardworking. 
They are no more anxious to “flunk” your boy 
and girl than you are to have them do so. But 
if classes are so large, and each teacher has $0 
many classes, that little personal attention can be 
given to the individual pupil, the result may be 
indifference and carelessness and discouragement 


-on the part of the pupil—and from that, of 


it is-a great primary fact with which the teacher . 


has te -deal directly, . The. children’s incentives 
to learn do not come.from the subject matter, 
but they come either from rewards and penalties, 
or from. personal interest and help and. inspira- 
tion from someone they look up to—parents or 
teachers or older friends. The farther we get 


10 


course, comes poor work, and red marks on the 
report cards. 

Now, of course, if all our high school boys 
and girls were acutely eager for the kind of edu- 
cation we offer, if they were all mentally alert 
and quick, if they were all able to concentrate 
entirely on the matter before their minds, if all 
teachers had pleasing personalities and were ex 
perts. at clear and interesting explanations, if 
weariness and monotony never entered into the 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 11 


day’s activities—in short, if human nature could 
be entirely remodelled nearer to our ideals, then, 
and only then, there would be no objections to 
classes as large as could get within hearing dis- 
tance. In fact, a few hundred: teachers could 
serve the whole nation by simply having pupils 
assemble in large halls equipped with good radio 
receiving sets, and tune these in on some central 
broadcasting station at which the lecture was 
going on. In fact, we might even substitute talk- 
ing machine records for the teacher, just as we 
substitute them for the musical performer. But 
it is safe to say that, so long as education is a 
human thing, a spiritual thing, if you please, 
just that long the personal relation between 
teacher and pupil will be the most important thing 
in it. Education cannot be poured. into the mind 
of youth. The minds of your boys and girls 
are not mere cavities to fill; they are living or- 
ganisms to build, and the pupil himself must 
take an active and interested part in the process, 
or it will not occur. But a class of more than 


25 pupils greatly diminishes the opportunity of 
each member of it to take that active part. 
Then there is another group of circumstances 


which interferes to a considerable extent with 
satisfactory teaching in the high school. I won- 
der how many of you have any’ notion of the 
amount of record making and clerical work 
which is required af the high school teacher in 
Chicago? Let me try to give you a rough idea 
of it. 

First, Of course, each teacher has to keep a 
careful record of the attendance and tardiness in 
his or her own classes. Also there must be kept 
a careful record of what the teacher thinks is 
the quality of the work being done by each pupil 
—the pupil’s mark, as ‘taken from time to time. 
You can easily see that when a teacher has charge 
of from 125: to.200: or »more; pupils ;a day this 
record keeping alone is a considerable distraction 
from straight teaching. These records, however, 
must be made originally by the teacher. No one 
else is competent to do it. 

But if this were all there would be little room 
for objection on the part of the teacher or 
Parents. In addition to their. classes, however, 
most high school teachers. have .to , charge 
of the final records.of.a. group of from 30 to 
50 or mote pupils, usually not in her own ‘classes, 
Which is_known.as.a.division... She meets. these 


pupils every day for a period of 10 to 15 minutes 
for the purpose of taking attendance, collecting 
excuses, etc. But the chief purpose of the di- 
vision is to distribute among the teachers some 
of the enormous amount of clerical work which 
is demanded in the large high school. Perhaps 
I can most easily give you an idea of the things 
the teacher in the high school is expected to do 
besides teach, by reading to you a miscellaneous 
list of those which come up in the course of a 
half year. Some of these duties are routine and 
some are irregular. Well, here goes: 


Taking class attendance, taking division attendance, 
collecting excuses, recording tardiness, making out sum- 
mary sheets, making out exchange sheets, making out 
class grades, making out report cards, making out 
scholarship sheets, making out final record cards, mak- 
ing out semester membership average, making out 
semester attendance average, (these last two items to 
three places of decimals), making promotions, making 
out subject failures, giving pupils advice on programs, 
supervising the making out of these programs in dupli- ~ 
cate, checking up on the correctness of these programs, 
signing one copy of each and sending it to the school 
office, making out and sending in to the office a report 
on division enrollment by courses, checking up on 
pupils out of the district, checking up on non-residents, 
sending to office an alphabetical list of pupils in the 
division along with two or three other items of informa- 
tion about each, making out in duplicate and sending to 
the office the teacher’s schedule of classes, making out 
in duplicate and sending to the office a card of private 
information about the teacher, making out and sending 
to the office reports on sizes of classes and divisions, 
sending out absence notices to parents, making out and 
posting absence slips, checking up on absence slips 
received, assigning lockers, issuing locks and keys, col- 
lecting locker fees, making and filing a record of locks, 
lockers, keys and fees, getting new keys made to re- 
place lost ones, collecting charge for these keys, seeing 
to replacement of damagéd locks, seeing that lockers 
are kept in repair, looking out for disorder in the halls, 
answering telephone calls from the office. (usually in- 
terrupting a class to do this), having class interrupted 
to read a bulletin from the offiée, having classes inter- 
rupted by tardy pupils bringing admit slips, having 
classes interrupted by janitor coming in to get waste 
baskets or to inspect lights or to replace a lamp or to 
read thermometer or to wash windows, making out list 
of locks for lock custodian, sending list of lockers to 
the office, lending extra key to pupils who have lost or 


_ forgotten their own, issuing free text books, filing a 


record of these books, collecting these books and ex- 
amining same for condition, collecting and turning in 
fines on. damaged books, checking up on due library 
books, issuing instructions about lunch periods, also 
about study periods and places, making up division 
honor roll, appointing division delegate for school 








12 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


paper, appointing division delegate for school semi- 
annual, supervising collection of subscriptions for the 
semi-annual, taking up benevolent collections and ac- 
counting for same, collecting locks and keys, returning 
locker fees, watching office bulletin board, signing in 
and signing out. 


- I doubt whether that is all, but it is enough 
to give you some idea of what the teacher is up 
against besides the job of being a real teacher 
to six classes a day, and a period of study room 
supervision. To be sure, some of these things 
occur only “once a half year and others only a 
few times in the half year, but many others occur 
every day, or even several times a day. Also, 
some of them are much longer jobs than their 
names would imply. Many of them, in fact 
most, have to be done for from 30 to 50 or 
more pupils. It may also be said that many of 
them are little things, taking only a little time 
each. Much the same thing may be said of a 
mosquito, but who would expect to think clearly 
in the midst of a swarm of these insects? Taken 
altogether, the items I have named make a kind 
of guerilla warfare on the teaching function. 


What is the remedy? There is no single one, 
of course, but the direct ones wait on more money 
for school purposes. Don’t say we can’t afford 
it—that schools are costing too much now. It 
seems to me that a nation which spends for to- 
bacco, chewing gum, ice cream and soft drinks, 
candy, theater admissions, jewelry, perfumes and 
cosmetics, a total of about $5,522,000,000 a year, 
and considerably less than half of that for all 
schools, public and private, from the kinder- 
garten to the university, does not deserve much 
sympathy when it complains about the cost of 
public schools. In 1924 the state of Illinois 
spent for all schools, public and private, just 
slightly more than one-third of what it spent for 
these luxuries I named—and Heaven only knows 
how much it spent for bootleg booze. For public 
high and grade schools only, Illinois spent less 
than one-fourth as much in 1924 as it spent for 
these luxuries. The actual sum spent for the 
luxuries was $466,609,000, and for its public 
high and grade schools approximately one-fourth 


of that, or about $116,652,000. The figures I 


quote for the national expenditure for these 
luxuries in 1924 are an estimate of the U. S. 
Treasury Dept. I take all these figures from 
Bulletin No. 1, Vol..5 of the Research Bulletins 


published by the National Education Association. 
I do not believe their authority is questioned. 
In view of these facts, with what face can the 
people of a state like Illinois object to more 
liberal expenditure for public schools? 

There are other unfortunate features of our 
huge school systems which I would have liked to 
mention, but perhaps I can do that on some other 
occasion. I believe that I have shown you some 
of the reasons why your boys and girls cannot 
get in school more of the teacher’s personal at- 
tention. It shows us that we have still a long 
way to go to bring the schools fully into their 
function of developing the personalities of our 
boys and girls. 





Democracy in Education 
(Continued from page 9) 
tain. The continuation school is a bar to poverty, 
a prop to democracy. Every citizen of a democ- 
racy should be its advocate until something bet- 
ter is provided. 


The Chicago Federation of Women High School 
Teachers, Local No. 3, is putting over a plan of 
group insurance which will give the members sick- 
ness and accident indemnity. 











Extra Money 
for Teachers 








For part time and vacation period 
employment of pleasant and dig- 
nified character in connection with 
educational and subscription cam- 
paign conducted by 


CHICAGO CIVIC OPERA 
COMPANY 


Next season promises to be the biggest 
and best in the history of lyric drama 
in Chicago. Everyone is interested. 
Why not increase your income by help- 
ing to accelerate that interest? 








For details call or write 


STUART M. HAMILTON 
Auditoriam Theatre 


58 East Con¢gress Street CHICAGO 























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Proper Basis for Treatment of Failures 


Thomas J. Wilson, Chicago Federation of 
Men Teachers 


Many conditions in Chicago schools. produce 
failures. These conditions are augumented by 
present tendencies in administrative policies. 
Larger classes, crowded conditions, and inade- 
quate equipment can result only in increased fail- 
ures. Teachers have reason to fear that by the 
expedient of reducing the apparent number of 
failures, through pressure by the administration, 
it will be made to appear the schools have not 
suffered because of adverse conditions, but have 
really been improved. 

As an illustration: Last semester the principal 
of one school reported at the end of the fifteenth 
week, a pupil failure of thirty-six per cent. At 
the end of the semester, five weeks later, this 


was reduced to less than five per cent. The . 


principal explained this phenomenon on the 
ground that the school was adapting its work to 
the needs of the pupil. It is difficult to see how 
a school could adapt its work to the needs of 
the students in a short period of five weeks. 
The teachers are in a position to know that the 
real reason was the pressure put upon them to 
cut down failures. 

The problem raised by pupils who fail is of 
concern to everyone. It concerns the pupil him- 
self, his parents, his teachers, his principal, the 
superintendent and the Board of Education. It 
concerns the tax payers as well. 


What is meant by failure? In school a pupil 


_is said to fail when he has not acquired those 


ideals, appreciations, habits, attitudes, skill and 
knowledge which he is expected to acquire by 
pursuing a subject or set of subjects in the 
school curriculum. This lack of progress con- 
stitutes the real failure. This failure is indicated 
on the report card by an arbitrary symbol like 
the letter “D.” This symbol is intended to ex- 
press the condition of the pupil and it should 
always tell the truth. If there are four pupils 
who have not made desired progress in the class 
there should be four D’s recorded, no more and 
no less. If there is any variation between the 
number of actual failures and the number of 
\D’s someone is practicing deception, perhaps to 
hide the cause of failure. Possible causes of 
failures are many and they should be exposed 





not concealed, When they are known, a remedy 
for the failure may be provided; when they are 
concealed, no remedy is possible. 

Responsibility for failure may lie with the 
pupil, with the parents, with the teacher, with 
the principal, the superintendent of schools, the 
Board of Education, efficiency experts, the tax 
paying public or the tax dodging public. If 
cause of failure is with the pupil it may be due 
to his dullness, inattention, lack of persever- 
ance, to having been born short or to his habit 
of sleeping short. Parents contribute to a pupil’s 
failure if they permit his keeping late hours, if 
they do not provide a quiet nook for home study, 
if they are not interested, if they are too lenient 
or too harsh. A child who goes to school tired 
or unhappy is in no proper mood for successful 
study. 

A teacher lacking knowledge of his subject, 
skill in technique, or enthusiasm for his work 
may cause the pupil to fail. If a teacher neglects 
to make daily preparation for his class work, 
if he exhausts his energy on outside activities 
or if he grows stale because of no outside inter- 
ests, his work is impaired and the pupils suffer. 

The principal of the school contributes to 
pupil failure when he pesters the teachers with 
needless changes in school routine, when his 
methods of supervision are shallow and perfunc- 
tory rather than critical and constructive, when 
he seeks to maintain his position by force rather 
than by the justice or wisdom of his acts. 

The superintendent, of schools may contribute 
to the cause of failure by increasing the size of 
classes, by being an educational dictator rather 
than an educational leader, by forcing. teachers 
to spend their time and energy in defending 
themselves from unjust requirements and by 
considering himself the walking delegate of civic 
or commercial interests rather than the business 
agent of the child. p 

The Board of Education contributes to the 
child’s failure when it does not. provide.sufficient 
funds to run the schools properly, when it fails 
to select wise school officials, when it’ fails to 
provide suitable buildings, when it seeks to pro- 








14 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


tect commercial, industrial, or religious interests 
rather than the interests of the children. 

Efficiency experts can do much to increase or 
remove pupil failures. 
ness results in lopping off something to save 
money rather than in spending more money to 
save the children. They aid the schools if they 
understand school problems and act to secure the 
greatest educational opportunities at the least 
cost. é 

If we have succeeded in narrowing the causes 
of failure to these groups we ought to be able 
to narrow the responsibility still further and say 
to an individual, “Thou art the man,” ‘You have 
contributed thus to the child’s failure,” or “You 
have been responsible for that.” 

Since the schools are run for the benefit of 
the pupils, it follows that all connected with the 
schools should be equally interested and equally 
diligent in discovering the cause of his failure. 
Having found it each should be willing to execute 
a right-about-face if former actions have been 
at fault. This assumes that each should have a 
fair chance to present his case to administrative 
officials, to the Board of Education, or to the 
general public. It means specifically that teachers 
must not be penalized by being sent on the “long 
road to Guam” for criticising the acts of ad- 
ministrative officials just as frankly as administra- 
tive officials criticize or penalize the teachers. 

The question “who is running the schools” has 
been bandied about liberally in the past few 
years. There is no doubt concerning the answer. 
The schools are being run by the teachers in 
the class rooms. They are the only ones who 
ever have run the schools. They are the only 
ones who ever will run them. You can eliminate 
every other element connected with the school 
except the pupil and the teacher and still have a 
school. If you remove either the pupil or the 
teacher, the school is destroyed. Whenever an 
administrative official boasts about running the 
schools the general public ought to know that he 
is merely kidding himself. He can do one of 
two things, either he can further the educational 
process by aiding the teachers or he can “hall 
up the works.” His worth to the school system 
is measured on that basis. 

Since teachers constitute one of the two es- 
sential elements ‘of a school it follows that they 
are best able to appraise the work of the prin- 


Too often their expert-’ 


i i. aA. 





_——— = =. - -s = 


The following books of our publication, 
among others, have just been listed by the Chi- 
cago Board of Education for basal or supple- 
mentary use: 
Robbins: 





teohie Health and Prim 
5-6-7 have previously been listed for use. 
Write for information about our Hun 


tington- 
: MODERN BUSINESS GEOGRAPHY 
for 8th or 9th grades. 


We shall be glad to send on request a booklet 
giving our complete listings in - detail. 
WORLD BOOK COMPANY : 
E. M. BRIGGS 
Chicago Representative 








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cipal or other school officials. When classes are 
increased in size the teacher knows the result 
as soon as he faces the class. When the prin- 
cipal blunders the impact falls upon the teachers. 
When the amount of clerical work is increased 
the teacher feels the load. In his examination 
before the British Parliament Benjamin Franklin 
said to his questioners, “They can judge best 
who feel.” 





TEACHERS, DO YOU REALIZE 

1. That renewing of advertising contracts and the 
signing of new ones for the American Teacher de- 
pends on the teachers, their families and friends? 

2. That the advertisers in our magazine are unable 
to trace the results of their ads unless you aid them 
to do so? 

Will you help by: 

1, Patronizing our advertisers whenever possible? 

2. Giving our advertisers the first opportunity of 
your purchase? 

3. Saying in each case (whether you buy or not) 
that you saw their ad in the American Teacher? 

4. Writing across your check sent) in payment of 
a bill, the. words, “American Federation of Teachers,” 
before sending it to our advertisers? 

5. Sending to the American Teacher office names 
of prospective advertisers, firms whom you patronize 
which are not our advertisers? 





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JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOLS 





Wm. T. McCoy, Chairman Educational 
Committee, Federation of Men Teachers 





The question of the attitude to be taken on 
Junior High Schools by the Federation of Men 
Teachers has been the subject of careful study 
by the Educational Committee this year. In 
view of the controversy that developed over the 
establishment of these schools in Chicago, it was 
felt that the position of the Federation should 
be definitely taken only after mature reflection, 
and careful investigation. 

The committee has submitted a carefully pre- 
pared preliminary report, which is being dis- 
tributed among the teachers to serve as the basis 
of discussion at a future meeting, when the 
position of the organization will be defined. This 
report is too long to reproduce here, but the 
following is a brief statement of the points. 


Proposed Points for Statement of Attitude of 
Federation of Men Teachers on 
Junior High Schools 

1. The federation recognizes that the junior high 
school is still in the stage of experiment. 

2. It recognizes the danger that the junior high 
school can and may. be misused to the injury of de- 
mocracy. 

3. It further recognizes that in existing junior high 
schools in Chicago there are present the same undesir- 
able features which are common to the elementary and 
senior high schools and against which the federation 
has protested in the past and still protests, i. e., over- 
crowding of shops and classrooms, over-large classes, 
over-regimentation. 


4. The federation does not wish to be considered as 


approving the method of introducing ahd extending 
the junior high schools without a serious attempt to 
educate and conciliate the public. 

5. The federation, mevertheless, believes that the 
junior high school is an honest effort ‘to meet justifi- 
able criticism of the traditional school organization. - 

6. It believes that this type of school, as now exist- 
ing in Chicago, shows no dangerous or undemocratic 
tendency not comimon to our other schools. It believes 
that the junior high school can ‘be a factor of high 
effectiveness in’ the training of our youth. 

7. The federation holds that it has a double duty 
in regard to the junior high schools: 

(a) To encourage and assist in popularizing them 
by combating unfounded suspicions of ‘their tendency. 


(b) To watch with particular care the development ’ 


of their courses of study and the policy of their ad- 
ministration in order to give warning of the beginning 
of any dangerous tendency if such should appear. 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 

















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16 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 








The American Teacher 


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


At the time of expiration, a bill will be found in the 
copy. Subscribers are requested to give prompt notice 
of changes in address. 


Remittances should be made in postal money-order, 
express order, draft, stamps or check (Chicago ex- 
change). 

SUBSCRIPTION PRICE, ONE DOLLAR FOR THE 
~ YEAR—FOREIGN, $1.10—SINGLE COPIES, 15c 


Advertising rates made known on application. 


ES 20 


“This movement they call organized labor is the uni- 
versal, vital problem of the world.” 
—Thomas Carlyle. 






































WHAT’S THE USE 
“R& good thing to remember, 
And a better thing to do, 
Is to work with the construction gang, 
Not with the wrecking crew.’ 


For a long time I have been impressed with 


the prevalence, especially among teachers, 
of the disease of What’s-The-Use-itis. I have 
wanted to write a protest against this attitude 
and to suggest a remedy. Chronic optimism is 
the only antidote for which let me speak a 
word, so that instead of discouragement, there 
may be developed with every disappointment and 
disillusionment a greater-and greater determina- 
tion to fight through to the end. Man must help 
himself. If he depends on others he will pay 
for that trustfulness. What he does for himself 
is more significant both to himself and to society 
than what is done for him. 

Are there more discouraged teachers every 
day ?« Is there a- blight that is coming over all 
the constructive professional ideas of teachers? 
And why? It is doubtless only too true that 
the human personal side of teaching is less and 
less valued. No discussion of problems is al- 
lowed. Newspapers are quick to note objections 
but not to take up any progressive ideas pro- 
mulgated by the teaching body. Teachers are 
worn out with system. They are depressed not 
by the material changes but by the loss of spiritual 
values. 


These, however, are not reasons for turning 
away and saying, “What’s the use?” but rather 
for saying, “Here is a task worthy of me and 
I shall, never stop while there are unfulfilled 
ideals to be realized. The more obstacles I meet 
the stronger and more resolute I am to over- 
come.” Just think upon the great outstanding 
figures of history and read carefully and take 
to heart what Romain Rolland says: 

“T want to tell you that I never worry about 
the immediate or future success of ideals which 
I know to be true, healthy and sacred. The 
success does not concern us. We are servants of 
our ideals. We have only to serve them bravely, 
and faithfully. Whether we shall be victors or 
vanquished this matters little. It is a joy to 
serve the eternal and to sacrifice oneself for it. 
I do not love those at all who so ardently expect 
a sort of human paradise on earth, and I have 
no confidence in them. Those are weak people 
who in order to act morally feel that they, must 
be promised an early reward, either for them- 
selves or ior their own people. The reward 
lies in your own self—it does not come from 
outside. It lies in our faith, our struggles, our 
courage.” 





Employes who have a voice in work conditions carry 
this intelligence and independence into every other ac- 
tivity of their lives. 

Trade Unionism is one of the nation’s greatest fac- 
tors in molding a higher citizenship. 


BROOKLYN TEACHER CHARGES GAG ON 
DARWIN 

“Inefficiency in teaching” and the consolidation of 
classes are. given as official reasons for the dismissal 
of Charles A. Wagner, young poet, as substitute 
teacher in the Berriman Junior High School of 
Brooklyn, New York. Mr. Wagner charges that he 
was dismissed because he taught the theory of evo- 
lution in a geography lesson to his pupils of the sev- 
enth grade. He declares he will not let his dismissal 
go unchallenged and has employed counsel to fight 
his case. 

Dr. William F. Kurz, principal, states that the 
school syllabus of Brooklyn prescribes the teaching 
of evolution in biology courses of the second and 
third year of senior high schools. “Darwin has no 
place in my school,” he says. Mr. Wagner. denies 
that classes have been consolidated and maintains 
that it has “taken the principal a long time to find 
out that I am inefficient.” He charges his dismissal 
raises a clear issue of academic freedom. The case 
has been referred to George J. Ryan, president of 
the Board of Education. 





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No High School of More Than 2,000 


Mabel Blazier, Federation of Women High School Teachers, Chairman Publicity 


In March, 1923, when a great building pro- 
gram was beginning, the High School Teachers’ 
Council appointed me to see what could be done 
to create public sentiment against the “over large” 
high school. The following month, an “all day” 
meeting of high school teachers was held at the - 
Hyde Park high school. Arguments against the 
large high school were distributed among the 
teachers, and each departmental section was asked 
to pass resolutions on this subject. Twelve reso- 
lutions were sent to the superintendent. , 

The newspaper publicity on this was quite 
interesting. The Tribune gave a picture of a 
group of teachers with the heading, “Teachers 
Tired of Climbing Stairs.” Each paper gave an 
authentic account of what had been done. 

In 1924 a committee of five in the Central 
Council worked on this subject. They prepared 
twelve arguments against the large high school 
and sent them to each teacher. The teachers 
were asked to discuss each of the twelve state- 
ments. About three hundred fifty replies were 
received. We tabulated the material, and it has 
been useful many times. 

As soon as this material was available we 
issued a brief statement which we thought more 
suitable to distribute to parents. 


NO HIGH SCHOOL OF MORE THAN 2,000 

Chicago High School Teachers have been asked the 
question, 

What objections are there to the “over large” 
High School? 

They have answered in questionnaires: 

“Created lock-step methods of education.” 

“Given instruction for the mass, not the individual.” 

“Destroyed leadership.” 

“Injured children in hall rushes and transportation 
accidents.” 

“Given an opportunity for dishonesty.” 

“Widened the breach between  student—parent— 
teacher.” 

“Cost the parents more money.” 

“Made uniformity an ideal.” 

“Made of the school a factory.” 

Do you want your child a cog in a machine? 

Join the crusade for 
NO HIGH SCHOOL OF MORE THAN 2,000 

About 15,000 of these have been distributed. 
They were given out from our booth at the Wom- 


17 


Committee, High School Teachers’ Council 






an’s World Fair, and about 3,000 at the N. E. A. 
at Indianapolis (1925), in addition to Women’s 
Clubs and P. T. A. organizations. Both of these 
with a letter have been sent to every member of 
the Board of Education since they were printed. 
We will soon send these again to the three new 
members and to each one on the Building and 
Grounds Committee. Some time later the chair- 
men of the Education Committees of twenty- 
three Chicago Women’s clubs held a meeting 
to discuss the “over-large” high school, at which 
Mr. Fellows, chairman of the Building and 
Grounds Committee, spoke, expressing sympathy 
with the propositions we outlined. 

In addition, talks were given before Parent- 
Teacher Associations and articles were written 
for Women’s Club bulletins. Two debates were 
held in 1925, one before a group of delegates 
representing thirty-five P. T. A. organizations. 
Mr. Wiley Mills, an alderman, gave a radio talk 
last March. As a result he hopes to get two small 
senior high schools for Austin, instead of one 
very large one. 

The small school has also the endorsement of 
some members of the Board of Education. Mrs. 
Hefferan has said: “After the Roosevelt, there 
should be no high school of more than 1,600.” 
Mr. Moderwell, former president, wrote, “I am 
of the opinion that the plans of the Board of 
Education for establishing Junior High Schools 
in Chicago will make it unnecessary to build 
buildings with a maximum capacity in excess of 
2,000.” Mr. Ellicott, then president of the Board 
of Education, wrote us June 8, 1926. He said, 
“T am in entire accord with your ideas on the 
desirability of a size to accommodate about 2,000 
pupils This is the basis on which the present 
schools are being built and it is hoped that in the 
future adjustments may be made so that our 
present high schools may be reduced in size.” 

Mr. McAndrew included our arguments for the 
smaller school in his report for 1926. 

We expect to continue this campaign ‘as long 
as Chicago builds senior high schools unless the 
time comes that it is a definite policy that “no 
high school shall have more than 2,000 pupils.” 












































The Tax Suits of the Chicago High School 
Teachers’ Federations 
Chas. B. Stillman, Treasurer Joint Tax Committee 


Tax evasion is a vital matter everywhere, but 
nowhere more than in Chicago where billions of 
taxable valuation annually escape the assessors’ 
books. When I speak of billions escaping, I am 
not talking wildly. The full value of all Chicago 
real estate has been conservatively estimated at 
eight billions. The assessed valuation should be 
half of that, or four billions. The assessed valua- 
tion for 1925 actually was in round numbers 
$1,356,000,000, or slightly over one-third of what 
the law requires. The building permits for the 
five years, 1921 to 1925, totaled $1,339,000,000, 
and the increase in assessed valuation on that 
count alone should have been one-half, or 
$669,000,000. During those five years the actual 
increase in the assessed value of all Chicago prop- 
erty, both real and personal, was only $177,000, 
000 in round numbers. And those figures take no 
account of the tremendous increase in land values 
during that period. 

But it is not real estate I want to call at- 
tention to particularly at this time. It is capital 
stock. The State Tax Commission and Board of 
Review found only $44,000,000 worth of taxable 
capital stock in Cook County in 1925. This does 
not mean that it was hidden in safety deposit 
boxes, because in Illinois capital stock is tax- 
able at its source against the corporation itself. 
Individual shareholders are not directly con- 
cerned. There are of course single Illinois cor- 
porations in Chicago with a greater taxable 
capital stock value than the $44,000,000 assessed 
against all such corporations in the county. The 
total value of the capital stock of all Illinois cor- 
porations in Cook County is conservatively esti- 
mated at more than $2,000,000,000. 

An all too typical illustration is the case of 
the United States Gypsum Co. The market value 
of its preferred and common stock on April I, 
1926 was $70,000,000 in round numbers. It has 
no bonded debt to be added. The total value of 
its tangible property both in Illinois and else- 
where is less than $34,000,000. Substracting and 
dividing by two according to the rule laid down 
by the Supreme Court gives a net assessed capital 
stock valuation of $18,000,000. For the last three 


sessed valuation at $1,000. The rest of us pay 
the penalty for that favoritism. The extent of 
that favoritism may be illustrated by a com- 
parison. A man who bought a home in 1924 
for $14,000 paid $318 in taxes. If he had been 
assessed in proportion to the assessment of the 
capital stock of this company, his tax would be 
less than one quarter of one cent. Even after 
the Board of Review last year, as a result of a 
complaint instituted by the firemen, raised the 
assessed valuation of the capital stock of the U. 
S. Gypsum Co. to $7,000,000, the Board of As- 
sessors, again fixed it at $1,000 this year. That 
is only one of the items in our current complaint 
and mandamus proceedings against the Board of 
Review. Other instances are Crane & Co., the 
net assessed valuation of whose. capital .stock 
should be nearly $54,000,000, and is fixed by the 
Board of Assessors at $50,000, Swift & Co., for 


whom corresponding figures are $26,000,000 and 


$500,000, and the Pullman Car & Mfg. Co., with 
$6,000,000 and $200,000. Our complaint lists 51 
corporations, the net assessed valuation of whose 
capital stock should total $96,000,000, and which 
have not been assessed one cent on capital stock. 
All told, we cite 68 corporations to the Board 
of Review which should be assessed at over 
$249,000,000 on capital stock, and are actually 
assessed by the Board of Assessors at $1,761,000. 

There are numerous Illinois Corporations in 
Cook County which are assessed not by the Board 
of Review but by the State Tax Commission. 
We are therefore taking parallel action against 
the State Tax Commission. For the assessment 
of capital stock the commission has adopted Rule 
11. Under its provisions contrary to. repeated 
Supreme Court rulings, the sum of the value of 
the stock and of the bonded indebtedness’is di- 
vided by two before instead of after the deduc- 
tion of the assessed value of the tangible prop- 
erty. There then follows.a second division by 
two. In addition, the commission has failed to 
follow Sapreme Court rulings in computing the 
market value of certain stocks. The case of the 
Chicago Title & Trust Co. will illustrate both 
points. The par value of the capital stock of the 


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18 . 





Oe Be ee Me ete 


—_ = =————l—C CUS hl 
— oe tel OG 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 19 


commission ‘in 1925~found the full value of* the 
stock and franchise to be $12,307,868. This was 
divided by’ two before the deduction of the as- 
sessed value of the tangible property, $5,453,934, 
leaving a capital stock assessment of $700,000, 
while if the division by two had been made after 
the deduction in accordance with the Supreme 
Court ruling, the assessment would have been 
$3,426,967. But more important still, the stock 
of the Chicago Title and Trust Co. sold at 567 
on April 1, 1926, not at par. So that the market 
value was at least $56,700,000, instead of 
$12,307,868. After deducting the tangible and 
dividing by two, the net assessed valuation of 
capital stock should be $25,500,000 instead of 
$700,000. 

Our complaint and mandamus proceedings 
against the State Tax Commission are designed 
primarily to compel the commission to revise Rule 
11 to conform with previous mandates of the 
Supreme Court as indicated above. But there 
are also specific complaints concerning 44 corpo- 
rations whose aggregate net capital stock value 
should be assessed at $250,000,000 in round num- 
bers, and actually was assessed last year at less 
than $34,000,000. In other words, the 112 corpo- 
rations named in our two complaints evade taxes 
on a net capital stock value of over $464,000,000. 

Since the state constitution gives the Supreme 
Court power to assume original jurisdiction in 
revenue cases if it so desires, our attorneys on 
Dec. 7 asked the Supreme Court for permission 
to file mandamus suits against the State Tax 
Commission and the Cook County Board of Re- 
view. On Dec. 9 the Supreme Court refused to 
take original jurisdiction, directing that the suits 
should be started in the Circuit Court. This was 
entirely without prejudice to our case. The 
Supreme Court did not in any way touch on the 
merits of the suits. On Dec. 10 therefore the 
two mandamus suits were filed in the Circuit 
Court of Cook County, and on Dec. -27 the tax- 
ing bodies filed demurrers. There was a hearing 
on these demurrers in January, and on Jan. 27 
Judge Eagleton rendered his decision overruling 
both demurrers and ordering ‘the two taxing 
bodies to file answers. Both bodies: have elected 
to answer, rather than to stand by their de- 
murrers and appeal, and the cases will go to trial 
in the near future. 


It is ‘hoped that this discussion has thrown 
some light on ‘the statements of members of the 
taxing bodies that they are “more interested in 
taxpayers than in taxspenders.” Probably many a 
small taxpayer who, through petty political in- 
fluence, has had ten or twenty dollars knocked 
off his tax bill thought that meant him. It is 
true that tax spending bodies should be kept in 
the public eye. But-the constantly increasing 
legitimate costs of public services must be met, or 
tose services will be dangerously impaired. And 
unless the ta: ing bodies provide adequate as- 
sessed valuations in step with increasing wealth, 
the only alternatives are still higher tax rates 
or crippled public services. If public opinion can 
be effectively aroused to the true situation, ade- 
quate, equitable assessment will be the answer. 





ORGANIZATION 
It is not the guns or armament 
Or the money they can pay, 
It’s the close co-operation 
That makes them win the day. 
It is not the individual 
Or the army as a whole, 
But the everlastin’ teamwork 
Of every bloomin’ soul.—Kno-+x. 





SENSATIONAL 5 


Typewriter Otfer 


Smith Typewriter Sales Corp. 
33 4-860 East Grand Avenne, Chicage 

















Emeritus Service in the Chicago Schools 
J. E. Armstrong, President of the Emeritus 


Group, Formerly Principal of the 
Englewood High School 


(The Chicago Teachers’ Emeritus Service law was 
proposed for adoption in January of 1926 and became 
operative by February Ist of that year. By its pro- 
visions 70 teachers were retired from active service on 
half pay, with less than a month’s notice. Feeling that 
they had been hired for the year, many of them had 
entered upon leases and other contracts and obligations. 

It will be seen from the appended account of the 
vicissitudes of the group by Mr. James E. Armstrong, 
one of the retired principals, that although in the orig- 
inal State Bill only those 75 years of age were to be 
immediately retired, and that it was to be five years 
before the bill should become operative for all teach- 
ers 70 or over, that, to include Wm. Campbell, it be- 
came operative for all teachers of 70 immediately, how- 
ever actively and capably they were fulfilling their 
positions. )—Editor’s Note. 


During the session of the Legislature of 1925 
the Board of Education prepared a bill for the 
superannuation of teachers, principals, district 
superintendents, and assistant superintendents, at 
the age of 75 that year and coming down to the 
age of 70 in 1930. This bill provided an annuity 
of $1,500 a year alike for all thus retiréd who 
had served in the public schools of Chicago for 
20 years. Mr. Walter R. Miller introduced the 
bill and followed it through its vicissitudes in 
house and senate. By some means, not under- 
stood, the bill was never presented to the Gov- 
ernor for his signature. 

A controversy having arisen between the Board 
of Education and the superintendent of schools 
over the appointment of the examiner, Mr. Wm. 
Campbell, an attempt was made to retire the 
examiner on an annuity. This was found to be 
impossible, and so a rule was prepared follow- 
ing the language of the bill in the legislature, ex- 
cept that it was made operative within a few days 
and the age was fixed at 70 without the sliding 
scale of ages as in the legislative act. 

Feeling the injustice of being turned out of 
our positions in the middle of the year on so 
short a notice, and believing the board had no 
legal right to pass sucH a rule, the writer and 
Mr. C. C. Doge decided to take the matter up 
in court. The board then changed the language 
of the rule so as to read “transferred” instead 
of retired and reduced the number of years of 
required service from 20 to 10 to clear up cases 


where teachers had been retired at the age of 70 
who had not been in the service 20 years. The 
number of teachers retired was then found to be 
70, since some of the names first reported were 
already out of service. About half of those 
upon the list joined in the suit in court, while 
others felt indifferent or were satisfied to “let 
John do it.” 


Owing to various delays in court, chief of 
which was the Tribune suit against the engineer 
experts, our case did not come up till October, 
and was then decided against us, upon which we 
took an appeal to the Supreme Court, where 
it was ably presented by Ex-Governor Dunne, 
Allen Carter, I. T. Greenacre, and Willis Thorne. 
The decision is looked for at the April term of 
court. 


While waiting for action by the court we de- 
cided to look up the cause for the failure of the 
bill in the legislature and found it was not too 
late yet to have the bill engrossed and signed. 
Attorney General Carlstrom gave a clear opinion 
to the speaker of the house, Hon. Robert Scholes, 
that there was no legal bar to its becoming a 
law, and so after many trips to Springfield, 
Peoria, Rockford and Joliet, as well as many 
long distance messages, the bill was signed by 
Governor Len Small on May 19th, 1927. “Had it 
not been for someone’s manipulation of the bill, 
the Emeritus rule could not have been passed 
and 70 of us would have held our places till 
the age set by law. The five states that have a 
superannuation law had state legislation for it. 
If the Board of Education had followed up its 
bill we should not have had this difficulty thrust 
upon us. 


Now if the Supreme Court decides that the board 
had the right to enact this rule the tenure of 
office law is lost. This law was passed in 1917 
and says that “after a three years probation, the 
teacher’s position becomes permanent subject to 
the rules of the board for conduct and efficiency, 
and subject to removal for cause” and then pre 
scribes the method of discharge “after 30 days 
notice and a trial.”” Having broken no rule nof 
been marked inefficient we feel that we are it 


20 








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to twenty-five) 


legally deprived of our positions. The teachers 
of the Chicago schools have stood by us nobly 
and assisted in the expenses in carrying the case 
through the courts. 

If the court decides that the bind had no 
right to remove us we shall not only be entitled 
to our places but to back pay up to the time 
specified by the state law for retirement. Thirty- 
eight of the Emeritus group have been trans- 
ferred to the state annuity and are drawing their 
city pension as well as their state annuity. If 
the bill now before the legislature becomes a 
law, allowing all over 60 to retire voluntarily, 
many of the Emeritus group would prefer not 
to return even if the court decides in our favor. 
All Chicago teachers should work for this amend- 
ment to the Miller Law. 





CHALLENGE TO AMERICAN EDUCATION 
By John E. Kirkpatrick 
ADULT EDUCATION, by Joseph K. Hart: Thomas 
Y. Crowell Co. $2.75. 

Two or three years ago Mr. Hart was engaged upon 
“The Discovery of Intelligence” in the byways of the 
past. Now he is seeking the same elusive factor of 
the human individual and of society in the world about 
him. He discovers “intelligence” in a few adults who 
have been able to escape from the folkways and to 
resist all the persuasions and pressures of society to 
make them conform. Without this “intelligence” in a 
much larger proportion of American adults Mr. Hart 
sees little hope for our so-called democracy. This 
indispensable “intelligence” can be secured by “adult 
education” of the sort found in the Danish People’s 
Colleges, which “exist for the prime purpose of con- 
serving and developing the intellectual and moral in- 
tegrity of the young people (from the ages of eighteen 
while their minds are still 
youthful and flexible.” 

This work is a critical review of American educa- 
tional theory and practice. It offers also an almost 
novel theory of education. It distinguishes sharply 
between schooling and education, and defines the 
latter as an awakening of the mind of an individual 
so that he may go on with his own education to the 
end of time. 

Few of the leading authorities in the field of edu- 
cation and psychology, we take it, will be willing to 
accept the author’s conclusions. But he offers a 
challenge which the best of them cannot ignore. 
Prof. Hart is so familiar with the eduéational philos- 
ophy and psychology of our own and of former times, 
he is so widely experienced and. so. weighty in his 
arguments, that he quite overwhelms the mere lay- 
man in these fields. 

** * 


“Our feet travel the highways of an unlimited 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 21 


world; our minds still fret and cower within the 
limits of the old village folkways.” “There is prob- 
ably no more provincial person in the world than the 
native resident of New York City.” “Most of our 
cities are overgrown, befuddled villages. . . . We 
have escaped from the physical tribe and the physical 
village” but not from mentality of the tribe and vil- 
lage. “The steam engine had not been taken into 
account by the prophets of democracy.” It works 
at close range, tearing processes to pieces, making 
new processes, piling process upon process, village 
upon village, group upon group, dissolving all groups. 
And we face this appalling world with our village 
minds. 

Man has in this age been far more successful in 
controlling his physical environment than in learning 
to, control his social relationships. “Our age is un- 
easy with its problems and its unsuccessful efforts 
to solve those problems.” Even so, we are less afraid 
of the ignorance of the workers than of the possible 
outcome of giving a real education, not only to the 
individual but to the whole deficient and disordered 
community. 

“There has been no time within the last -century 
and a half that any school could rightly claim to 
know what it was doing, except as to the three Rs.” 
“Education lingers in the byways of the past; or it 
masquerades in bizarre forms through the present, 
helping but little with the insistent problems of our 
times. At least this is true of schooling.” ‘“School- 
ing is education by exposure—a form of primitive 
magic.” “Educating, in the eyes of the community, 
is preparation for life under-the forms and patterns 
of the existent community.” 

** * 

“The more we are schooled the less we are edu- 
cated. The great problem of education today 
is that of getting back some mind into our life and 
work. When we moved from the country community 
to the growing city we took the country school with 
us, but we left most of the old education behind. .. . 
We shall develop minds again when we re-establish 
the social conditions which produce minds—namely, 
free pioneering, adventurous human communities 
growing up in challenging conditions!” 

“When Thorndike talks about ‘giving’ the boy or 
girl ‘certain habits,’ he means setting up school con- 
ditions which will so work out that the children will 
‘get’ those habits without being too much aware of 
the achievement. That is our dominant educational 
psychology, and it is, also, our dominant social and 
political strategy! And it works—from the third 
grade to the later years of the graduate school, ‘it 
works! The results may be seen in the millions who 
are through with learning, forever!” From the stand- 
point of education there are just two kinds of psy- 
chology, the kind that pretends to tell how to form 
the mind and the kind that would learn how to help 
the mind grow. Our. schoolish education moulds 
children into fairly happy subjects of the folkway past 

(Continued on page 24) 


FmeTTTe 06UKlCUc Ere Tee Oe le Ure Lee ee eee: = @& 





History of Chicago High School Teachers’ Council 


By Ann Lord, Publicity Secretary 


The Chicago High School Teachers’ Council 
is in effect, the voice of 3,000 active classroom 
teachers. The teachers of Chicago have had 
some part in the formulation of school policy 
since June 1, 1898. 

Councils were first officially organized thirty 
years ago to act in an advisory capacity to the 
Board of Education. By authority of the Board, 
an official central group resting on local groups 
was organized in 1913. The first official notice 
occurs in the proceedings of the Board, June 1, 
1898, when the Board appropriated $100 to the 
Central Council for printing expenses. 

It was not until 1907 that the councils obtained 
real recognition from the board. In the be- 
ginning of that year, the School Management 
Committee drew up a report. Miss Jane Addams 
was chairman of the committee. Because this 
report sets forth so definitely and clearly the 
justification and service of teachers’ councils, I 
quote from the records: 


“IT, Your committee finds that under existing con- 
ditions the Board of Education and the teaching body 
are as widely separated for consultative and freely co- 
operative purposes as if-they had no educational inter- 
ests or duty in common. For the teachers are in- 
articulate as a body, and the Board, compelled to act 
without their direct advice and only upon reports of 
official intermediaries is forced into the position of 
governing by the mere might of its legal authority and 
often in ignorance of matters regarding which the 
teachers would be its best advisers. This is manifestly 
detrimental. It tends especially to lessen the effective- 
ness of the teachers in their school work, by destroying 
in them that spirit of co-operation, which is vital to a 
homogeneous school system. 

“II, Even if it were true that all goodness and wis- 
dom in affairs educational dwell with the school authori- 
ties, the fact remains that in the end their decrees 
must be executed by the teachers. It is the teachers, 
after all, and not the Boards, committees, or superin- 
tendents, that must be depended upon to give vitality 
to public school education. Their cordial co-operation 
is therefore essential. 

“III. And inasmuch as teachers are neither soulless 
machines to be despotically manipulated by master 
hands, nor soldiers with no other function than un- 
questioning obedience, nor mechanical producers of the 
inanimate commodities of the factory, but are the per- 
sonal guardians and guides of the children they teach, 
and come into more intimate relations with these wards 
of the public school than any one else in the system, 
their hearty and intelligent co-operation in promoting the 


22 


educational policies of the Board is not to be secured 
by methods of management which are or seem to them 
to be despotic. If they feel the weight of the despotic 
hands, the less assertive among them will cringe in 
their official intercourse with superiors in authority, 
and be despotic in turn in their official intercourse with 
subordinates. Thus perpetuating itself, the despotic or 
decree-promulgating policy must inevitably react upon 
the pupils, tending to turn some of them into little 
learning machines and others into little rebels, instead 
of making eager students of them all. 

“In the opinion of your Committee the eeching force 
must be sympathetically considered and trusted. If 
they are to do the best for the children, the teachers 
must be consulted about educational policies—not now 
and then and here and there as real or apparent favor- 
ites of superiors in authority, but as a body of edu- 
cators organically recognized by the Board and its em- 
ployes. Their cordial acquiescence in the wisdom, jus- 
tice and sincerity of the policies they are called upon 
to promote must be secured, or their work will fall 
short of the highest possibilities. In the nature of 
things this acquiescence cannot be secured either by 
preventing discussion or by ignoring recommendations. 
To prevent discussion irritates; to ignore the results of 
discussion is disheartening. The important thing is not 
that the recommendations of the teachers shall be adopted 
by the Board regardless of their merits, but that they 
shall be considered in good faith upon their merits. 


“IV. One of the most important steps, therefore, 
which in the opinion of your Committee the Board 
ought to take, is the organization of the teachers into 
an official consultative and advisory body. 

“There is no implication here, nor have we learned 
satisfactorily of any demand from any source, that 
the teaching body should govern the Superintendent or 
the Board or in any manner dictate to either. What 
is in principle proposed is: (1) that the responsibility 
of legislative authority and final control should be 
reposed in the Board. (2) that the responsibility of ad- 
ministrative authority and advisory direction should be 
reposed in the Superintendent, and (3) that advisory 
authority and responsibility on educational subjects and 
the relation of the teaching body to the school system, 
should be vested in the teaching body. And the teaching 
body in its advisory capacity should it be thus organ- 
ized, should have the fullest parliamentary freedom of 
expression. The common sense of the teachers, fat 
better than arbitrary rules or decrees from their su- 
periors, would soon indicate to them the proper limita- 
tions of subject-matter for their discussion.” 


The councils established as a result of this 
report met on school time and without any ad- 
ministrative officer being present. 

In March, 1913, Mrs. Young brought in a 
recommendation for the official organization of 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 23 


Teachers’ Councils “to: give full and free ex- 
pression or voice to the different attitudes and 
judgments of the teaching force,” and “to enable 
the superintendent to become conversant at first 
hand with those attitude and judgments.” Ac- 
cording to Mrs, Young, “the voice of authority 
of position not only must not dominate, but must 
not be heard in councils.” Mrs. Young’s plan 
was Officially adopted by the board, March 20, 
1913. 

In 1921 Mr. Mortenson added local school 
councils to the plan of Mrs. Young, and in 1921- 
22 the councils for high school and elementary 
teachers were given still more definite standing, 
granting them greater responsibility and making 
the calling of the council mandatory upon the 
superintendent. The good feeling, loyalty, and 


esprit de corps created under this system was 
immeasurable. 

The list of worthy accomplishments of the 
council is a long one. Among these are: 


Revising the curriculum. 

Helping to raise special taxes for school purposes. 

Co-operating and working for the school unit of 
not more than 2,000. 

Offering suggestions which modified the rules and 
regulations of the Board when they worked hardships 
in special cases. 

Issuing an Educational Bulletin. 

Advising the Superintendent on classroom matters. 

Acquainting the public with such conditions as: 

. Over-large classes. 

. Overcrowded curriculum. 

. Shift system. 

. Over-large schools. 

. The effect of extra-curricular activities, etc. 


As Mr. James Mullenbach says: 


“I do not maintain that the Councils were above 
criticism or that they brought to the system as many 
helpful suggestions as they might, or that they were 
always wisely and unselfishly conducted, but they 
furnished the condition for an intelligent and open con- 
tact between the teachers and the administrative authori- 
ties that IS NOT NOW AVAILABLE, In my judg- 
ment until Councils of- this type are again organized 
in the system, happy, interested and contented teachers 
will not be characteristic of the Chicago schools.” 


The councils functioned in the original form 
until April 22, 1924. On this date Superintendent 
McAndrew sent out a bulletin to principals noti- 
fying them that it did not seem to him to be 
a good time to call councils—and no call was 
issued. . 


The reasons given for abolishing the councils 
were the following: 

1, Objection to their meeting on school time. 

2. Objection to their meeting without the 
presence of the principal. 

3. Objection to the dismissal of classes for 
their meeting. 

4, Objection to the time wasted since “noth- 
ing constructive” was accomplished by them. 

A dispute extending over several months de- 
veloped out of this refusal to call the councils, 
but in the end a majority of the board supported 
the superintendent, and the councils as an official 


‘and professional part of the Chicago school sys- 


tem ceased to exist, notwithstanding the fact that 
all of the voluntary teachers organizations pro- 
tested against the action. 

Despite the support of the superintendent by 
the Board of Education in this matter, there 
was a good deal of public sentiment in favor of 
Teachers’ Councils and so, on February 11, 1925, 
as a substitute for the original councils, Super- 
intendent McAndrew brought to the attention 
of the board a proposal which set up a small 
composite group made up of representatives of 
classroom teachers, principals, and various kinds 
of supervisory officials. This conglomerate body is 
known as the Chicago Public School Teachers’ 
Council. The recommendation of the superin- 
tendent was approved by a majority of the board, 
April 8, 1925. 

In speaking of this, James Mullenbach, mem- 
ber of the board said, “So far as I have observed 
this so-called teachers’ council has had no part 
in the formulation of the policies, or criticism of 
present methods, or proposals for new departures, 
or of fresh development in the school system. 
If this council has been active it has not come 
to my attention. And in my opinion it is bound 
to be ineffective, because it does not represent 
the classroom teacher, its discussions are cramped 
by the presence of supervisory officers whose 
good will is of moment to every teacher. Hence 
there can be no free criticism of methods or 
school organization and the whole purpose of 
providing a council for a free voice by the teacher 
is frustrated. The Chicago schools will not again 
be known for their experimentation: tintil the 
system provides for the free expression of the 
experience of the classroom teachers.” 

The. type of council we had, the kind in which 





24 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


teachers generally believe, is democratic in its 
origin. Under the system, known as the Ella 
Flagg Young system,-the teachers met in their 
own schools for forty minutes once every five 
weeks. They elected delegates to the Central 
Council once a year. The delegates to the Central 
Council met outside school time, organized by 
the election of officers and committees and met 
with the superintendent once every five weeks. 
At this meeting the teachers presented to him 
their views, gave him information of school and 
classroom conditions. At the same time the 
superintendent gave his views, took problems 
under advisement, and acted on them according 
to his judgment. Whether the decision was 
favorable or unfavorable the teachers felt that 
they had had a fair hearing, and were satisfied. 
It is this form of co-operation that was ended by 
Superintendent McAndrew’s action. 

Some of the very organizations, about thirty 
in number, most of them women’s clubs and 
among them Parent-Teacher Associations and 
civic organizations, that in 1924 gave the Super- 
intendent of Schools a vote of confidence that 
was a reflection upon the teachers’ organizations, 
are now supporting us in our endeavor to obtain 
teachers’ councils on school time. 








OME and revel in the glories 
i of this new Spring showing 
of the better grade SILKS 
and WOOLENS at consist- 


ently lower prices. 


pars 


he ale 


R™ EMBER that you 
will always save money 
by coming to ADLER first 
for. your Silks or Woolens. 


10% discount » members of the Ameri- 
can Federation of Teachers. 


Helpful suggestions and advice on. dress 
making problems will be gladly given gratis 


Eleventh Floor—Stevens Building 











ee Sean 
a — 


~atemenone = 
one rear 











- 


RADIO AND EDUCATION 


The Chicago Federation of Labor owns and oper- 
ates the radio station WCFL, the only broadcasting 
station controlled by organized labor in the United 
States. This fortunate circumstance is due primar- 
ily to the foresight, persistence and enterprise of Mr. 
E. N. Nockels, Secretary of the Chicago Federation 
of Labor. 

‘Wishing ‘to further the cause of good public 
schools, and promote straight thinking about educa- 
tional matters, the Chicago Federation of Labor has 
invited the affiliated teachers of the city to arrange a 
series of ten-minute talks on educational topics to 
be given five times a week running from Tuesday to 
Saturday, inclusive, at seven o’clock, Central Stand- 
ard time. 

Our speakers have included people from the exec- 
utive offices down town, principals, classroom teach- 
ers, and non-teacher citizens interested in the wel- 
fare of the public schools. 

The Chicago Federation of Labor seeks to pro- 
mote a full discussion of both sides of controversial 
educational questions of public interest. 

Beginning last December this series of talks has 
been running continuously since the invitation was 
extended, and it is proposed to keep the project 
going until the end of the present school year. By 
means of these addresses the teachers intend to keep 
the public informed of the real situation in our 
schools and promote every good educational cause. 

Tell your friends to tune in on wave length 491.5 
meters, WCFL, the Voice of Labor, and hear our 
message. 

The program is in charge of James A. Meade, 
President, Chicago Federation of Men Teachers. 


Challenge to American Education 
(Continued from page 21) 


and the mechanical present—until they come to en- 
joy their chains and to fear freedom as they would 
the plague. 

* * * 

Schools cannot turn out leaders. Experience under 
real conditions alone can do that. But we shall finally 
fill the great chasm which has been made by the in- 
dustrial revolution and get generations of adults who 
have escaped the inhibitions and blockings of the 
present and be capable of intelligent adjustment to 
the fluid modern world, its tasks and opportunities. 
But there can be no hope for the salvation of the 
world by merely feeding our children upon our own 
adult ignorances and prejudices, since we are “prob- 
ably more complacent about our own ignorance and 
more certain that our own prejudices are right than 
any generation that has ever lived.” .Would we know 
a real education if we saw one? “Nothing is more 
indicative of our narrow, factual materialism today 
than the fact that we find it difficult to believe in 
youth or in mind or in free intelligence.”—N, Y. 
W orld. : 





tend 
tion 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 25 








i A UNIQUE REFERENCE BOOK f 
l ‘The Interested Child Always Succeeds in School”’ 


ng The Human Interest Library, issued by the Midland ; 





ir- 


jas 


n- 


Id 


Press, of Chicago, combines the advantages of a text- 
book and an encyclopedia, in that while each volume 
is a distinct unit, it is so subdivided into chapters and 
sections, all carefully indexed, that it lends itself to 
continuous reading or to supplementary work. 

For instance, in Volume One, called the “Wonder 


“World” is the “Story of the World,” followed by the 


“Wonders of the Human Body; of Animals and 
Plants; of Light and Sound; of Air, Fire, and Water; 
of Earth, Sun, and Stars.” In Volume Two are 
Popular Science and Industry. Volume Three can- 
tains the story of our own country, told simply 
enough for a child of ten to enjoy. But herein oc- 
curs what seems a great omission: few maps, to give 
visual emphasis to the changes that took. place, but 
this seeming omission is taken care of in an excellent 
map supplement. Volume Four, also, suppiies this 
lack in part, in connection with “Travelogues,” whose 
style is much more mature. Good outlines, too, en- 
hance the value. 

And now comes what should attract old and young 
alike: a volume of biography entitled Leaders of All 
Times—in religion, statesmanship, education, art, 
science, literature, war (we hope this is not to be 
taken as a climax). Again there follows a valuable 
outline, of leaders and epochs. 

There is plenty of illustration, and an index. The 
type is clear, the limp leather binding simulates tool- 
ing. The volumes are not heavy—an objection in 
most encyclopedias. 


Can we add more? The set recommends itself. 





Before very long college educators of this country 
will have to face a problem that they have been getting 
nervous about for several years. It is a problem that 
is being felt in England as well as here. 

Are the colleges of the country merging into country 
clubs for the enjoyment of the sons of the rich or are 
they to turn sharply to the right and take up their his- 
toric mission of being, first of all, educators of the 
youth of the land? 

The thing that is worrying the authorities of Ameri- 
can colleges, especially the large eastern ones, is the 
tendency of athletics to become the chief pre-occupa- 
tion of the attending youths, sometimes ironically 
called “students.” ’ 

The “sound mind in.a sound body” talk. has always 
been propaganda. 

There are many ways of having sound bodies other 
than attending the inter-collegiate football games, boat 
races, golf tournaments and trapshooting matches. 
The truth is, the colleges have allowed a condition to 
gtow up that they will find hard to remedy. 


Any teacher who has tried the plan of pupil cor- 
respondence with foreign lands will testify to its value 
in creating ‘a new viewpoint and, therefore, a new 
appreciation of other races and nationalities. 








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In Five Beautiful Volumes Profusely Illustrated 


Just what the name says—page by page the most 
interesting textbook supplement on the, market. Com- 
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Classified by subjects; double index made by Library ex- 


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If you haven't seen this modern set, owned today all over 


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Send for illustrated pages to 


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Note: On Chicago Board of Education List—No. R8& 


























The Roxbury School 
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c ARE you seeking a school to recom- 
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The attention of the teachers who read 
this magazine is invited to the advantages 
of the ROXBURY SCHOOL, a boarding 
school combining sound scholastic train- 
ing with careful attention to the needs of 
the individual student. 


A large faculty and small instruction 
units admit of great flexibility in fitting 
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Headmaster. 


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————— 








Your Thinking World 


H. D. Roberts, Chicago Normal College 


Signposts on the Trail 


The attempt to understand the modern world 
is essentially a human one. Men have created 
and men can enable us to comprehend. The 
universe may be likened to a cryptogram to which 
a few highly developed minds hold the code. We 
have but to locate these minds and they will un- 
seal many of the temple doors. Guide books in 
hand we may wander through the mazes, un- 
raveling many of the secrets of the past, present, 
and future, and speculating on the meaning of 
life itself. It is a pleasant, eternal pathway. 

In tracing a few vigorous currents of our ad- 
vancing daily thought in science, business, and 
education, admittedly dominant features of our 
lives, and pointing out valuable late literature, the 
“outlines” must be our first consideration. Al- 
though much criticized by specialists for petty 
errors and omissions, as a whole they are com- 
pact, accurate, and easily read. 


He has predecessors, but H. G. Wells with his 
famous HISTORY, now brought out in new 
enlarged pictorial edition is rightly lauded or 
maligned, according to the prejudices of the 
reader, as their legitimate father. The con- 
troversy begun by his traditional enemies—the 
conservatives—has been carried on by the jeal- 
ousy of many ancient historians of all ages who 
do not yet comprehend that history is neither fact 
nor dependent upon fact, and that Wells is not 
a historian but a rather conservative prophet. 
Perhaps he is a bad one but as we make our 
decisions let us remember that in ANTICIPA- 
TIONS published in 1902, the year before the 
invention of a successful aeroplane, he expressed 
his personal opinion that by 1950 there would be 
heavier than air flying machines capable of ef- 
fective use in war. 

Chesterton, his inveterate enemy, whose rotun- 
dity belies the sharp thrust of his wit, predicted 
a little later in THE NAPOLEON OF NOT- 
TING HILL that hansom-cabs would be in ex- 
istence a hundred years hence due to the failure 
of invention. In six years there was a hansom- 
cab in a museum. It is a classic illustration of 
‘Alduous Huxley’s fine line in that vibrant in- 
tellectual holiday, JESTING PILATE: “For 


convictions and certainties are too often the con- 
comitants of ignorance.” 

Wells was followed by Thompson with the 
OUTLINE OF SCIENCE, Drinkwater with 
THE OUTLINE OF LITERATURE and now 
J. Pijoan with the OUTLINE OF THE HIS- 
TORY OF ART. None of these has achieved 
the popularity or distinction of Wells’ work be- 
cause all lack his amazing vitality and insight 
into the springs of human interest. 

The critics were writing an obituary for all 
“outlines” in general and Wells’ in particular 
when Van Loon startled and delighted the world 
with THE STORY OF MANKIND, written 
for his own small boys, but so ably done that 
it has been appreciated by millions of young 
minds, aged ten to seventy. Following it we have 
Macy’s successful THE STORY OF THE 
WORLD’S LITERATURE, and Will Durant’s 
present popular THE STORY OF PHILOSO- 
PHY, loudly decried by the metaphysicians and 
avidly read by the FOUR MILLIONS. All 
are able presentations of much of the cream of 
their respective fields. They will continue to 
be attacked by jealous workers in the exploited 
fields and read with delight by a public hungry 
for mental nourishment but disdainful of the in- 
digestible stones of scholarship. 

Science has had an excellent early protagonist 
in Slosson, especially in CREATIVE CHEM- 
ISTRY, but it was not until Dorsey issued his 
highly packed and imaginatively written WHY 
WE BEHAVE LIKE HUMAN BEINGS, in 
October, 1925, that the sleeping public proved to 
be only dozing. The book ran through twenty- 
five editions in a single year and daily sweeps 
steadily on to higher summits. The man who is 
not a recent graduate student in human biology 
and who has not read its simple and entrancing 
story of the beauty and mystery of his own body 
must be silent in more fortunate company. 

Our great universities have not proved insensi- 
tive to public demands for understandable science, 
devised, as Huxley wrote, for the average mat. 
In the Middle West the University of Chicago 
has issued THE NATURE OF THE WORLD 
AND OF MAN by sixteen noted members of its 
faculty, and Northwestern University has had 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 27 


for some time a chair in Contemporary Thought. 
Baker Brownell, who is conducting this work, has 
just published a fine synthesis of the physical 
and spiritual world in its relation to man that 
is proving an entering wedge for the integration 
of the constantly growing inverted pyramid of 
human thought and investigation. Thinkers as 
diverse as John Dewey, Carl Sandburg, E. A. 
Ross, and Zona Gale have praised its beauty and 
co-ordination of knowledge. It is a frontal at- 
tack upon the monasticism of specialists, and the 
Balkanizing of our universities which has re- 
sulted from excessive specialization. “There may 
be no United States of knowledge,” signals Mr. 
Brownell, “There may be no world empire of the 
real, one and inseparable, but it is time to try 
to find one.” Many of us will follow such a 
ringing summons out of the maze of present day 
obscurity. 

Throughout the volume there is careful sum- 
marization and, more important, synthesis of the 
late advances in science and sociology, from 
the Java ape-man to Einstein, and the influence 
of behaviorism upon our understanding of love 
and religion. It is a guide book to the modern 
world, finely conceived, executed with scholar- 
ship and scientific method, beautifully written, 
and bravely launched against the certain counter- 
current of the myopic and illiberal. 

Turning from the field of general knowledge 
to the special department of society that deals 
with education, we find much transition, more 
confusion. Our schools, which from the begin- 
nings have formed the chief bulwarks of democ- 


racy, are strangely enough the very institutions 


within whose walls the experiment of democracy 
is denied a trial. It is an interesting fact that 
from the desk of the rural teacher in our one- 
toom schools to the office of the superintendent 
of schools in our great cities or the sanctum of 
the captain of erudition, the university president, 
there is nowhere any indication that pupils and 
teachers as such may make up responsible bodies 
capable of the degree of self-government accorded 
the laborer in industry or the most recently nat- 
uralized Turk, much less lawyers and doctors. 
“Votes for women” once led a subject group to 
victory against the dominant male. When shall we 
answer the slogan VOTES FOR TEACHERS? 
Pupils, too, suffer from almost total lack of 
representation. They are as much in need of an 


Emancipation Proclamation as their teachers. 
We may not agree wholly with Shaw’s recent 
indictment of our ineptitude and dependency: “If 
the students of the United States are to get any 
education, they must organize for it,” yet both 
students and faculty are unquestionably among 
the groups who have never exercised the rights 
of self-determination. 

It is true there are student and teachers’ coun- 
cils functioning in limited fashion in most of our 
rural and urban provinces, but as Kirkpatrick 
pointed out in THE AMERICAN COLLEGE 
AND ITS RULERS, they are largely concerned 
with the unimportant details. Where is there 
a representative body of either group that is 
moulding the curriculum, the methods of study, 
or determining types of school buildings in which 
both must live and work? 

It seems to be sufficiently demonstrated that 
if they are ever to do these things they must find 
faith in themselves and demonstrate their capa- 
bility. Once they have convinced themselves, 
their new found confidence will dictate the course 
they are to follow. Oppenheim’s fine lines in 
“The Slave” give this fitting expression: 


They set the slave free, striking off his chains .. . 
Then he was as much a slave as ever. 


His slavery was not in the chains, 
But in himself. . . . 


They can only set free men free . . . 
And there is no need of that: 
Free men free themselves. 

But the problem of education is larger than 
self-determination although the latter may well 
prove to be the Open Sesame which will admit 
us to the green fields of a larger, more able pro- 
fession. Adult education is today the shibboleth 
with which we hope to lure the wary, unthink- 
ing minds, our own and others, to school. New 
nets must be spread for our complacent birds or 
the old nets dipped in new dye. It is the per- 
petual problem of the MEANING OF A LIB- 
ERAL EDUCATION so well stated by Everett 
Martin in his famous lectures at the Peoples In- 
stitute at Cooper Union, New Yory City, just 
this year published in book form. It is the in- 
sistent demand that the human mind~continue 
growth and expansion, gain new viewpoints, 
adapt and modify itself to the current of the 
day, not in a slavish acceptance of a passing fad, 
but for interpretative insight, understanding, and 





28 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


the critical tests which must precede vital choices 
not based upon old prejudice, threadbare tradi- 
tion, the whim of the hour, and the ruthless 
instincts of the human herd. 

In a vein that runs parallel to Martin’s cap- 
able work Joseph K. Hart points out fearlessly 
in his ADULT EDUCATION the futility of 
education when it is limited by and confused with 
schooling. Genuine education is not connected 
with either place or time—expands limitlessly. 
At present human nature follows in the trodden 
paths of the fathers. Children are brought up 
in the image of their parents, the process repeats 
itself, and the endless chain revolves, perpetuating 
old errors with the good. The dead hand of the 
past is on the steering wheel of civilization. Is 
there no way out? His answer is the education 
of the adult. Although, as teachers, we have 
considered the adult lost to able creative intelli- 
gence, we are speedily revising that mistaken judg- 
ment. Old dogs can learn new tricks—and they 
must. William James said, “By the age of thirty, 
the character has set like plaster, and will never 
soften again.” 

But we are unlearning a part of the psychology 
of yesterday. There are limits to mental growth 
and the intimately connected changes of character 
but we do not yet know clearly what they are. 
The possibilities of organized, purposeful edu- 
cation of our total adult population are enormous. 

What part are the teachers of America and of 
the World to play in the direction of this rising 
conception of education as a continuous unfold- 
ing of the human mind and personality? Is there 
any doubt that the answer depends upon us? 
We shall be asked and if we fail, others will suc- 
ceed to our opportunity. 

Shaw’s barbed epigram, “Those who can, do; 
those who can’t, teach” carries the sting of half- 
truth, but he has not gone beyond it to the cause. 
The profession of teaching pupils—as distin- 
guished from the business of administering edu- 
cation, is the only one which is continually de- 
capitated. Promotion, industry, business and 
other professions drain our best as in no other 
single vocation. We cannot expect society to 
remedy this traditional stupidity. We are af- 
fected; we know the circumstances from our 
daily regime ; we bear the consequences ; we alone 
must initiate and press for change. In our 

activity, we can be assured we will receive the 


support of many able groups who see clearly 
the results of the traditional morass into which 
we have drifted and out of which no species of 
muddling through will lift us. 

In ending, what observations can we make on 
the chief current of modern American business 
in its relation to education and living? A pre- 
publication copy of Sinclair Lewis’ new “preacher 
novel,” ELMER GANTRY, lies before me on 
the table as I write. In two weeks, a month, 
six months—thousands, perhaps, hundreds of 
thousands will be reading it. Why? Because 
in it Lewis lays bare the deadly mediocrity of 
tradesman’s standards sapping the honesty and 
sincerity of the church. Like BABBITT, it is 
the biography of a “go-getter”’: a four-square, 
red-blooded, two-fisted, 100 percenter full of zip, 
noise, activity, bluster, efficiency. And what else? 
Little else. Is not that sufficient? 

Prophecy is traditionally dangerous but this 
last volume from our great satirist seems to me 
likely to be less popular than his comment on 
George F. Babbitt, business man, and more so 
than his exposition of the life of Dr. Arrow- 
smith. As humanity we are more interested in 
religion than in our health, but today business 
is the colossus astride the world. Against its 
rising tide the creative minds of the world—in 
science, education, literature, and art, struggle 
like flies in treacle. 

Dreiser in the FINANCIER, TITAN, and 
the great AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY, and 
Anderson in all his work are examples of souls 
in revolt against this crushing behemoth, this 
true descendant of the old barbarians, this glori- 
ous new Roman of Mr. Tarkington’s PLUTO- 
CRAT. M. C. Otto, of the University of Wis- 
consin, has vividly stated the issue in that 
thoughtful and beautiful little single essay vol- 
ume, NATURAL LAWS. AND HUMAN 
HOPES. He asks, “Shall business have a place 
in life, or be life? There is the issue and you 
make your choice.” He gives “an old reply 
made by those touched by the upward striving 
of humanity—‘Render unto Caesar the things that 
are Caesar’s’—but remember he is Caesar, not 


God.” 

A series of articles by Dr. Joseph K. Hart on the 
Chicago Schools is appearing in the Survey Graphic. 
The one which appeared in March was called “What 
Price System?” The other numbers of the series 
will appear in June and September. 








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The Size of Classes and the Teaching Load 


By Hiram B. Loomis 
Principal, Hyde Park. High School, Chicago 


This article is a result of my reading two 
books. Its object is to call attention to the de- 
sirability of careful experimental study of several 
factors intimately connected with the size of 
classes and of the possibility of such studies 
being made by individual teachers with their 
present classes. 

The two books are SMALLER CLASSES OR 
LarcER, by P. R. Stevenson, Public School 
Publishing Company, Bloomington, _ Illinois, 
and RESEARCH FOR TEACHERS by Burdette 
Ross Buckingham, Silver Burdette and Com- 
pany. The latter book gives a clear and ele- 
mentary presentation of the method of secur- 
ing and handling statistics, a discussion of stand- 
ard tests, and a description of new type ex- 
aminations. The former book gives strong, though 
not conclusive, evidence that the results obtained 
from small classes are not enough better than 
those obtained from large classes to justify the 
small class. 

If we grant that the small classes were taught 
as small classes ought to be taught and that the 
large classes were taught, as large classes ought 
to be taught, I see no way of not accepting the 
evidence presented by Mr. Stevenson and avoid- 
ing the conclusion that for instructional purposes 
a class of twenty has but little advantage over 
a class of forty. Behind the question of the 
size of classes are two questions of technique: 
Do we know how to teach small classes, and 
do we know how to teach large classes? A 
question of technique can be investigated by a 
single teacher with two classes in the same sub- 
ject, provided the classes are reasonably alike 
in mental capacity and scholastic attainment. The 
two classes may be treated differently and the 
results measured. 

Before going into detailed suggestions for such 
experiments, I feel*that I should call attention 
to a consideration Mr, Stevenson seems to me 
to have overlooked. A teacher in one of the 
Chicago schools in which Mr. Stevenson’s ex- 
periments were tried made this very pertinent 
remark, “I believe I could get as good results 
from a large as from a small class if I put in 
enough work. I would have to give written work 
more frequently, correct it, hand it back promptly, 


and insist upon pupils correcting their more 
serious mistakes.” In other words the number 
of classes as well as their size is an important 
factor. I like to call the total number of pupils 
taught the teaching load. There are really two 
questions involved in the problem. How large 
should the teaching load be? And how should 
the load be distributed? If the load should be 
150 pupils, should we have three classes of 50, 
four classes of 37 or 38, five classes of 30, or 
six classes of 25? 

Let us next consider the technique of teaching 
a small class. There is a prevalent feeling that 
the advantage of the small class lies in the fact 
that the pupil gets more personal attention in 
the small class. It is easy to say we will give 
pupils more personal attention in a small class, 
but just what will we do for them that we do 


- not do now for them or their classmates in our 


29 


large classes? Can it be that the teachers of 
small classes in Mr. Stevenson’s experiments did 
not know how to give this extra personal at- 
tention? Certainly the results in these classes 
show too little superiority for the small class. 
If there is a technique by which the extra per- 
sonal attention possible in a small class can - 
produce adequate results, it certainly devolves 
upon those who feel sure there is to develop it 
and show its results. A teacher with a large 
class can try an experiment which bears upon 
this problem. After determining the I. Q’s and 
attainments of his pupils let him select two 
groups of half a dozen of as nearly equal ratings 
as possible. Then [et him choose by lot the 
group that is to receive the greater personal at- 
tention, and give that group a double allowance 
of class time, treating the other group ‘the same 
as the rest of the class. In the end let him give 
carefully prepared tests and compare the prog- 
ress of the two groups. If there is a technique 
for small classes which was neither known nor 
used by the teachers in Mr. Stevenson’s experi- 
ments, it ought to be given to the profession. 

But the proper size of the teaching Joad is a 
different problem and, in my opinion, a much 
more promising field for investigation. Granted 
that a teacher can do equally well with one class 
of twenty as with one class of forty, it does not 





30 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


follow that he spends the same time and. energy 
on each, or that he can do as well with five 
classes of forty as with five classes of twenty. 
Again I want to insist that in the last analysis 
the question is one of technique. If a teacher 
has but four or five pupils at a time, it is pos- 
sible that the instruction may be entirely oral; 
but when the numbers are materially increased, 
written work becomes a necessity. Otherwise 
the individual is not reached. Moreover this 
written work has no effect except as a spur un- 
less it gets back to the individual in such a way 
that he is compelled to correct his mistakes. If 
the above statements are correct, there arise such 
questions as: How much written work should 
be given? How often should it be given? What 
kind of written work should be given? To what 
extent should the pupils correct others’ work? 
How much must the teacher correct? How 
promptly should he get the corrected papers back 
to the pupils? And then for its bearing on the 
main issue of this paper there is the question: 
For how many pupils should a teacher be ex- 
pected to do this work, and how should they be 
distributed in classes ? 

Thus a teacher with two classes in the same 
subject of approximately the same mental calibre 
and scholastic attainments has the possibility of a 
great variety of experiments. He has simply to 
adopt for each class a consistent policy involving 
a comparison of some one point, and measure 
his results at the end, keeping a careful record of 
the time involved in his work outside of the class 
in each case. 

Not only will such experiments have a bear- 
ing on the question of the proper teaching load ; 
but in my opinion, for high school subjects at 
least, there is no subject deserving more serious 
attention than the necessity for and the proper 
use of written work. For written exercises have 
a part to play in instruction and in holding pupils 
to the performance of their work as well as in 
testing and grading pupils. 





New students are photographed upon registration at 
Pennsylvana State College. Under a plan inaugurated 
this year five prints will be made. One of these will 
be attached for identification to the student’s records 
in the office of the registrar; others are for use of the 
college physician, the dean of men or of women, the 
dean, and the head of the department in which the 
student is enrolled. 


TECHNICAL COMMITTEE OF LOCAL 
NUMBER 2 


W. E. Hill 


A Technical Committee, composed of at least one 
teacher from each Junior and Senior High School 
and each Continuation and Apprentice School has 
been organized from the membership of the Chicago 
Federation of Men Teachers. 

It is the intent of this committee to study the 
technical and vocational course of study situation in 
the Chicago Educational system and to devise ways 
and means of bringing before Chicago school admin- 
istrators, principals, teachers, students, trade unions, 
employers, and the public, the true general educa- 
tional values to be derived from this field of educa- 
tion and the necessity for its general advancement 
in this scientific, mechanical, industrial and con- 
structive day and age, and especially in such an 
industrial city as Chicago. a 

An investigation has been made into the reasons 
that have caused this form of education to be depre- 
ciated to the extent that the practical situation has 
been reached whereby certain shop studies: have 
been entirely eliminated from the Chicago Senior | 
High School curriculum and other shop studies 


' placed in doubtful positions. 


The initial movement of the committee took form 
in the presentation, to Chicago School administra- 
tors, of a paper dealing with. technical teaching 
standards, examinations for future technical teachers 
and salary adjustment. Due to the favorable accept- 
ance of this paper by certain school authorities, it is 
anticipated that favorable action will be taken in 
the near future by the Board of Superintendents 
and the Chicago Board of Education. 

Following acceptance of the content of the paper 
by the necessary Chicago school authorities, sub- 
committees will be appointed to further its objec- 
tives, by promotion of the following elements neces- 
sary to its successful accomplishment. 

1—Propaganda and promotion of Technical Train- 
ing. 

2—Working conditions of Technical teachers. 

3—Teacher Examinations. 

4—Courses of Study. 

5—Cooperation with trade unions and employers. 

6—Educational (For promotion of professional 
spirit among technical teachers). 


Nothing brings more forciblp home the meaning 
of the term “this changing world” than the new 
Pronouncing Gazatteer of Webster’s New Interna- 
tional Dictionary. Take, for example, the mutila- 
tion of the one-time Austria-Hungary, the shifting 
of boundaries in the Balkan States, the rise of Free 
Cities, the autonomous areas and republics of Soviet 
Russia. And then there are the new names: Lenin- 
grad, Oslo, Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin and Moselle, and 
the many new tourist centers. Take an hour to look 


it through. . 








~Our Locals 


There are three teacher organizations in Chicago 
bearing the name of federation: The Federation of 
Men Teachers, The Federation of Women High 
School Teachers, Locals No. 2 and 3 of The Ameri- 
can Federation of Téachers, affiliated with Labor, 
and The Chicago Teachers’ Federation, Miss Marga- 
ret Haley, business manager, an organization of 
grammar school teachers, not now so affiliated, and 
hence not represented in this issue. 


ATLANTA SCHOOL BUDGET 

The appointment of a committee from the Atlanta 
school board to co-operate with the citizens advisory 
committee in determining upon a 1927 budget is the 
first definite step toward an amicable adjustment of 
differences between the two groups. It is an official 
recognition of the advisory rights of the citizens’ 
committee which was appointed at the request of the 
Atlanta ¢learing house and as a condition upon 
which the funds to meet the $800,000 deficit in 1926 
was made available. 


It is now earnestly hoped, and believed, that the 
different views as to school administration, econom- 
ics and budget revisions, may be comported. 


The members of the advisory committee are busi- 
ness men of wide experience and! large affairs. 
Some of the members of the school board’s commit- 
tee are widely experienced business men. School 
administration is just.as much a business as bank 
administration, or any other business, employing a 


large number of people and rendering definite serv-’ 


ices. 


The citizens’ committee has thoroughly surveyed 
the situation. The members unanimously claim that 
the schools can be operated on full time without any 
shut-downs or salary cuts, on the funds in sight. 

If the two groups ‘get together in a spirit of con- 
structive cooperation, it is not difficult to see the end 
of Atlanta’s school troubles. The citizens will 
expect that degree of co-operation and harmony.— 
The Constitution, Atlanta, Ga. 


student teachers and the expert staff: 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 31 


MANUMIT SUMMER SCHOOL 


A Summer School under the auspices of {the 


_ Teachers Union of the City of New York will be 


held on Manumit Farm, at Pawling, New York, 
sixty-four miles north of New York City. The 
school will ‘be distinct from the organization of the 
regular Fall, Winter and Spring sessions of Manu- 
mit School. The Executive Committee of the Manu- 
mit Associates has granted the use of the property 
of Manumit School and Farm: to the {Teachers 
Union for the Summer séssion. The School will be 
open eight weeks, from July 8 to August 31, 1927. 

Four lines of activity will be carried on by the 
First, the 
philosophy of the new education movement; second, 
its psychology with the practical technic of group 
teaching; third, the comprehensive. presentation and 
practice of craftwork. The first will be in charge of 
Dr. Joseph K. Hart, formerly Educational Editor of 
The Survey; the second in charge of Miss C. Eliza- 
beth Goldsmith, »Associate Director of Walden 
School, New York City; the third in charge of an 
expert teacher of the crafts; the fourth, the presen- 
tation and promotion of project work on the farm 
and in biological mature study, will be in charge of 
Dr. Henry R. Linville, Director of the. School. 

There will be no formal set of lectures offered by 
the expert staff. But under its leadership each day 
will be filled with observation and with the inten- 
sive analysis and discussion of everything that hap- 
pens’in the school. 


N. Y¥. VOCATIONAL TEACHERS’ PAY 
STANDARDIZED 
Through the efforts of union teachers and the N. 
Y. State Federation of Labor, a bill to standardize 
salaries of teaching and supervising staff in part- 
time or continuation schools in New York City has 
passed both houses of the state legislature. 





The American Home Economics Association is 
holding its twentieth annual meeting in Asheville, 
N. C., June 21-24. Misg Cleara Lee Cone of Atlanta 
Local 89 will represent the American Federation of 
Teachers. 





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