‘] ocTOBER, 1927 VOL. XII—No. 2 


Democracy in Education Education for Democracy 


The 
American leacher 


THE ORGAN OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 


























“Believing, as I do, that the freedom of learning is the vital 
breath of democracy and progress, I trust that a recognition of 
its supreme importance will direct the hand of power and that 
our public schools and state universities may enjoy the priceless 
advantages of courses of instruction designed to promote the 
acquisition of all knowledge and may be placed under no restric- 


tions to prevent it; and that our teachers may be encouraged to 
) know and to teach the truth, the whole truth and nothing but 
the truth. ‘This is the path of salvation of men and democracy.” 


CHARLES EVANS HUGHES, 
Before the American Bar Association. 























Office of Publication Editorial Office 
Leader Building, RESET 9.9 ” 827 Sonth La Salle St., 
oma City, Oklahoma Chicago, Illinois 


Single Copy 25c—Yearly Subscription $2.00 


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2 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


THE GUERDON AND THE QUEST 







MARGUERITE WILKINSON 





For many generations men have lauded Victory; 

Let us now, rather, rejoice in the struggle that goes before a victory, 

For success is only a tardy recognition of long battles fought bravely 
and without recognition, 

And fame is but a toy to those who win it. 


oF 












3 * bd 


What if we have not won? What if the end is far away? 

Our days of triumph are not the greatest days. 

These days of toil and need and travail, when the old wrongs oppress 
us, may be greater still. 

For, if the spirit of a righteous struggle abide in our hearts now, it is 
enough. 

The guerdon is not so much as the quest, and the quest is ours today. 








ob 






















WHY ORGANIZE? CONTENTS 
Here's What Uncle Sam Says: 

“The average government salary of 1919 
showed an increase over 1915 of nearly 16 ‘Page 
per cent; .... RATES FOR RAILROAD The Needs and Tendencies of Democratic 
EMPLOYEES, 97 PER CENT ... . the Education—Jobn E. Kirk patrick____- 3 
greater part of the increase shown was re- 
ceived while the roads were under federal Address to Eleventh Convention— 
control. The rise in the cost of living could Dr. John A. Lapp__---------------- 7 
not affect the railroad worker more than it 
did the other government employees—But Relation of Organized Labor to the Pub- 
the railroad men were strongly organized. lic School—Mary Hicks____.__----- 10 

“The advances (in government salaries) 
have never been proportioned to the increas- Legislative Report ——.—_.....____--- 13 
ed cost of living except in the one case of 
the railroad employees’ advances. HERE Report of Legislative Representative__--25 
THE GOVERNMENT WAS DEALING 
WITH A STRONGLY ORGANIZED Editorials -—————————_______________- = 
BODY.”—From Monthly Labor Review of 
U. S. Department of Labor, June, 1920. cian ccaemmens ot 




















4 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 














The American Teacher 


Entered as second class matter Oct. 1, 1927, at the post office at Oklahoma City, Okla., under the Act of March 3, 1879. 
Acceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in Sec.'1103, Act of Feb. 28, 1925, authorized Nov. 3, 1926 











Volume XII, No. 2 


OCTOBER, 1927 


Two Dollars a Year 








The Needs and Tendencies of Democratic Education 
JOHN E. KIRKPATRICK 
Address Before the Eleventh Convention of the American Federation of Teachers 


Our topic assumes that we already have demo- 
cratic education. The speaker assumes that we do 
not now have democratic education. He assumes 
that what we now have in our public and private 
schools, for far the most part, is not education at 
all—only discipline and instruction; that what we 
now have is mass schooling in the interest of the 
status quo. The speaker is not assigning blame or 
seeking for the causes of present conditions. He is 
seeking only to define democratic education, to indi- 
cate the changes necessary to bring about democratic 
education, and to notice a few of the tendencies 
which seem to look in the direction of such 
education. 

With us, the proud and prosperous people of these 
United States, the school has become an end in itself. 
Schools, we think, like nurseries, are the natural places 
for children, adolescents, youths and even for some, 
many, young adults. With us schools are not merely 
accessory. They are primary. They are not merely 
aids to life, they are life to a vast proportion of our 
population. Free and universal education has become 
our national religion: We have now a mystical faith 
in our schools as once we had in a free church, then 
in a free state and again in a free and universal 
ballot. We believe in free education so strongly that 
we make it legally compulsory for everybody up to 
14, 16, even 18 years of age and socially compulsory 
up to 22 and even longer for those who can afford it. 

The speaker fears that we are indulging ourselves 
in a huge make-believe about our educational enter- 
prises. We spend so much on them, we boast so 
much about them that we compel ourselves to 
believe we are somehow making a better, a wiser and 
a happier people and society. When we are worried 
about our ramshackle social order, our unjust eco- 
nomic system, our mediocre political leaders, or our 
anarchistic world society, we take refuge in talk 
about our educational system and what it will do 
for the future. We must believe in it. It is our 
latest, our current popular superstition. But some 


there are among us, an increasing number and of a 
quality not to be lightly ignored, who remind us that 
this high faith of ours is like building skyscrapers 
on sand, that by trusting so much to schools, by 
thrusting so much on them, such as they are, we are 
inviting disaster. 

Indeed, there has developed more than a mere 
tendency to criticise our school system. There is a 
veritable avalanche of criticism descending from some 
quarters upon our devoted parental and pedagogic 
heads. It is being pointed out that we remain indif- 
ferent to great social evils, blindly expecting “‘edu- 
cation” to cure them, while at the same time we 
insist that our schools turn out a standardized 
product, good republicans, good democrats, good 
churchmen, good rotarians like ourselves. It is 
charged that we sentence our children to day 
nurseries called schools and our youth to places of 
public spectacles called colleges because our com- 
munities are not safe for them; that we try to 
establish in the midst of our urban welter of trade 
and traffic, education safety zones. 

Just at present our colleges are being vigorously 
attacked. It is being asked, “How much more are 
they than public arenas for our Olympian rites, play 
things for our new and idle rich, degree shops, a 
sort of glorified canning factory, rendezvous for 
academic lame ducks too timid to face real life. A 
dean of men ventures to hint, anonymously, of 
course, that they are parlors for perpetual petting 
parties, matrimonial bureaus.” He asserts that they 
are day nurseries for the young hopes of well-to-do 
parents, who thus far have employed schools and 
camps and still have need of the nursery. for their 
progeny. Now,. obviously, our colleges are some- 
thing more than the sum total of all these useful and 
varied social activities, but how much more, no 
informed person would venture to say. In such per- 
plexity, it may be time to redefine education. 

Venturing then to say what democratic education 
is we would suggest that first it will give the essen- 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 














4 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


tial tools of life to the entire population at the least 
possible cost of time and effort. Democratic educa- 
tion will concern itself but little with the mainte- 
nance of the status quo, but much with the status 
futurus. It will aim to develop in the entire citizen- 
ship a curious and critical attitude toward the com- 
pleted past, an alert and open minded attitude toward 
the unrealized future. To attain these ends demo- 
cratic education will devote its energies to a study 
of the life situations and problems of its students 
rather than to text books dealing with departmental 
subjects such as history and mathematics. 

First, then, the business of the common schools 
is just what our pioneer ancestors thought it was 
and nothing more, to put all citizens in possession 
of “the three R’s.” Perhaps there are now more than 
three R’s and some of thém may be more intricate, 
but the essential tools of life do not change much. 
Our fathers thought three months out of the twelve 
quite long enough for this purpose, and they did 
not think of compelling every one to attend for 
even that brief time. Now, although we have dis- 
covered by means of a few “progressive” and adult 
schools, that the three R’s can be picked up very 
quickly, when children or adults discover the need 
for the said R’s, we still hold to the theory, and 
practice, which assumes that all of the R’s must 
not only be gotten, but also practiced in schools if 
ever they are to be possessed by our citizenry. We 
have developed a school complex, we are afflicted with 
schoolitis. We act as if all information, learning, 
education, even culture must be gotten in schools. 

Our fathers were not so naive. They thought the 
place to learn life, to acquire knowledge, culture 
and refinement, was by living life in the home, in 
the church, in the community and in the world of 
their day. Now we assume that these powers and 
virtues are not only to be gained in school, but that 
for a very considerable portion of an individual’s life, 
they are to be practiced only in school. We forget, 
or we do not believe, what our mutual friend, 
Joseph K. Hart, has been saying of late, that educa- 
tion cannot begin, with us, until schooling is over, 
and that we are the best schooled and the most poorly 
educated people in the world today. May it not be 
true that our truancy laws, our driving class room 
methods, our vast expenditures and efforts, indicate 
that there is a dry rot at the heart of our system 
which makes education by means of it impossible? 

Democratic education, then, demands that school- 
ing be less prolonged, less detailed, less obligatory. 


Education can prove itself only in the shop, the 
home, the state. The Russians are wise in giving 
no credits or degrees to their students until they 
have proved themselves at work. As for tendencies 
in this direction in this country, they are too numer. 
ous even to mention here. Witness the Antioch and 
University of Cincinnati examples, now being widely 
copied, the continuation schools in many cities 
Witness also the many trade schools, like that of 
Henry Ford, which has been discovered by a Yale 
professor who dares to say that the boys in this 
school do as much class room work in the one 
week out of three as high school students do in 
three weeks. When a Yale professor sees this, espe- 
cially when he ventures to say it publicly, the time 
may be near at hand when we will all begin to 
believe it. 

In the second place, democratic education needs 
to be much less concerned than it now is about the 
status quo. We roundly denounced the Germans for 
using their schools to uphold their pre-war system, 
now we piously proclaim the duty of the schools to 
teach patriotism and loyalty to the government, how- 
ever stupid. “Safety First” with us means much 
more than instructing a novice how to run his cat 
and the public how to cross a city street. We are 
much concerned about the stability of society and 
not at all about its malleability. We forget that 
society tends to become static, stagnant, to conform 
closely to the past. We do not seem to know that 
it is more needful and far more difficult to provide 
for certain and sane changes than it is for conven- 
tion and conformity. Yet we use our schools more 
for what we call normalcy than we do for necessary 
and unavoidable divergencies from the present. 

Third, democratic education must have democratic 
organization and management. Now our privat 
schools are owned, and governed, on the same prin- 
ciple as a factory or railroad. At bottom our public 
schools have a show of democratic control, but like 
most of our ancient democratic machinery, it func- 
tions autocratically, or, to quote Upton Sinclair, 
plutocratically. We must substitute for the school 
trustee system, the city commission-manager type of 
government, or, still better, the soviet principle 
organization. The governing boards of our schools 
must give equal power to all, the financial sup 
porters, the patrons, the teachers, the administrator, 
the general workers, and, most important, the pupib 
or students. Presidents, superintendents, principal 
must become agents of the school community, not, # 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 








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the at present, factors of absentee landlords and stock- 
8B holders. 

hey A tendency toward thorough going democratic 
cies B organization and management is to be seen in a few 
ner- @ private schools and in some colleges of very recent 
and origin, but its general adoption will doubtless be 
dely secured largely, as in industry, by means of strong 
tes. craft organizations, possibly by the “One Big Union” 
i principle, Teachers, general school workers, pupils 


and students, will no doubt organize and adopt the 
principles and practices of the unions, not excepting 
the strike. Without here commending or condemn- 
ing the strike in schools we may note that the 
teachers have made effective and wholesome use of 
it in England, and that the university examiners in 
France, within the last few days, have alarmed a 
cabinet minister by threatening not to give the 
usual examinations. It is more than possible that the 
late high school strike in Superior, Wisconsin, has 
done more to educate teachers, public, pupils, even 
trustees and administrators, in the matter of demo- 
cratic management of schools, and of a democratic 
society in general, than years of the goose-stepping 
we call education. 

Fourth, the democratic education of tomorrow 
will be intimately related to the life of the day. It 
will not withdraw “from the world of realities,” to 
quote Robert W. Bruere who wrote in the June 
Survey Graphic, on Antioch College. It will not 
attempt to “recreate oldtime occupational disciplines 
within the walls of the school house or the fences 
of the play ground.” It will boldly incorporate the 
industries and activities of the day into its educa- 
tional scheme. How far this principle may be car- 
tied is disclosed in an article in the above mentioned 
Magazine, by the dean of Whittier College, Cali- 
fornia, Joseph Herschel Coffin. Here the “conven- 
tional subject-fields” have been abandoned and as 
the “core of the educative process,” the “basic life 
situations” have been taken into the class rooms: 
“the sex-marriage situation,” “the leisure-situation,” 
“the occupation-situation,” “the community-life-sit- 
uation,” “the what-is-there-in-religion-situation.” 


sk%s 8 & 


& & 


This is not a new principle or practice for the 
“progressive” schools of lower grade. But it does 
hot appear that any one of the several older and 
established colleges have gone as far as Whittier and 
made the dominant interest of the student the “core” 
of the curriculum for that student. Herbert W. 
Smith, in the same magazine, discussing the fifteen 
Years experience of the Ethical Culture School and 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


its plans for expansion, says they place the voca- 
tional interest of the student, once it is discovered, 
“at the center of the students educational program.” 
They propose now to extend this principle which 
has thus far been applied only to art students to the 
several ‘arts and professions and to prepare for imme- 
diate entrance into the technical and professional 
schools, This is not in the interest of a “short cut,” 
but, apparently, it is based on the belief that general 
knowledge and culture can be better secured in this 
way than by following the program of the conven- 
tional arts college. 

Democratic education will require teachers quite 
different from those of us who now occupy the 
desks. We were the all A, the most docile, the Phi 
Beta Kappa students. We have been most perfectly 
schooled and most poorly educated. The first half 
of our lives we spent in being schooled and the last 
half is being spent in schooling others. When we 
might get an education by selling books or life 
insurance, during vacations, we are being further 
schooled in the interest of degrees and income. The 
tendency in certain sections of the public schools, and 
in a few colleges and universities, to recruit teachers 
from the ranks of workers and professional people, 
looks strongly toward democratic education. It tends 
to do away with the monkish character of the peda- 
gogue, and make of him a colleague and friend of 
the student. Democratic education will, doubtless, 
require as a condition of certification for its teachers, 
an extended apprenticeship in factory, shop or 
kitchen. 

As an indication of how far we have gone in the 
direction of finding education in an interesting 
occupation, rather than in an uninteresting and com- 
pulsory school experience, I may cite President 
Lowell who recently said in the Harvard Crimson, 
that he thought a boy would be better off with a 
job that interested him than he would be in a 
secondary school that did not interest him. This 
sentiment, Dr. Lowell confessed to be a heresy. But 
Harvard heresy of today is likely to be the orthodoxy 
of tomorrow. For, if we have any lingering doubts 
about the infallibility of the word of a Yale pro- 
fessor, in the instance recently quoted, we can have 
none, certainly, about the utterance of the President 
of Harvard. 

Finally, the democratic educational program will 
be filled and dominated by the spirit of youth, of 
art, and of invention. It will not, as the present 
system does, produce individuals who are mere 








THE AMERICAN TEACHER 7 

















ee rer 4 


ing » shee less prolonged, less detailed, less obligatory. must become agents of the school community, not, # 


6 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


“bundles of habits without spontaneity or creativity.” 
Indeed, our schools can not be expected to produce 
individuals, personalities. Swamped as they are with 
their hordes of drafted victims, they must be formal, 
regimented, as impersonal as a factory or a barracks. 
Dominated by our present theories of schooling, 
organized and directed like an industry, there is 
nothing for it but the “goose step.” But education 
will have done with regimenting, with dry text books 
dealing with a dead past. Education will prepare for 
the laboratory of life, for life’s race course. 

Let us assure ourselves that education rather than 
instruction, drawing out of the personality rather 
than building in as per pattern, is possible by looking 
at the Danish Folk High Schools. Here are schools 
which for more than two generations have been free- 
ing the minds and quickening the spirits of the young 
adult farmers. Without the use of compulsory 
schooling or lectures, or texts or lessons and without 
bribes in the way of credits and degrees, almost 
without books, these schools have made out of back- 
ward, discouraged peasant farmers, the most scien- 
tific and successful of agriculturists, masters of 
their own business and political leaders in their 
nation. The chief factor in the work of these schools 
is the “living word” of enthusiastic and inspiring 
teachers who begin with the problems of their people 
and illumine them with the great issues of science, 
of history, of literature, of art, and of religion. 

If we say to ourselves, “That’s quite different, 
Denmark is a little, homogeneous country, it can’t 
be done here,” then we should at least be fair enough 
with ourselves to look about carefully and see what 
is being done here in our own land to develop per- 
sonality, spontaneity, creativity. One should read 
Hughes Mearns’s Creative Youth and see what can 
be done by not much more than ordinary secondary 
pupils in the Lincoln High School when they are 
emotionally released and artistically inspired by 
teachers who believe that all children have poetry in 
them. Or, turn to the pages of the art number of 
the Progressive Education quarterly published in the 
fall of 1925, if we would discover the artistic nature 
of children. 

What are now the energizing forces in our schools? 
Law or liberty? Spontaneity or the school police- 
man? Did not my little friend Bobby Jackson tell 
the whole story last fall just before school opened? 
I asked: ‘Bobby, are you glad school begins tomor- 
row?” Bobby replied with all the energy and dignity 
his seven years could supply: “No! Don’t you 


ODS OAD DOO 


SEE PSS rr ee el ee  Se-h)Uh—htrtC~C 


know school’s the worstest place in the world?” 
Bobby gets his “education” in a simple, happy home 
atmosphere. He resents the interference of the 
teacher who gives him his schooling. His teacher 
and his school have not learned the art of democratic 
education. They rely on compulsion. And how 
many Bobbies, think you, would be in school next 
fall if parents and police failed to function? 

But would Bobby’s teacher be in the class room 
next fall if it were not for the economic rod that 
hangs over her? How many of our teachers would 
rather teach than do any thing else? How many 
girls, and women, in our class rooms are here just 
waiting for a man? How many men are there wait- 
ing for some job more to their taste? The com- 
pulsions that hang over Bobby and his teacher may 
serve for a time to produce Fords and the other bric- 
a-brac of our mechanized age but they cannot carry 
on, or even begin democratic education. They dry 
up the springs of youth and are at once fatal to 
education, and, ere long, to the shop as well. Like 
creative art and vital religion, democratic education 
can flourish only in an atmosphere created by 2 
scientific yet idealistic educational philosophy and 
procedure. 


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Years experience of the Ethical Culture School and system does, produce individuals who are mere 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 7 


Opening Address 
DR. JOHN A. LAPP 


President Liberal Club, Chicago, Ill., and National Conference of Social Workers, to the Eleventh Annual 
Convention of the American Federation of Teachers, Chicago, Ill., June 27, 1927. 


Ladies and gentlemen: I claim only a partial kin- 
ship to education, although my chief interests are 
there. I regret that I am not now engaged in the 
active business of teaching in the class room but 
I am condemned to a life upon the road in the pro- 
motion of what I think are the general ideals of 
education as I see them. Therefore, I can not bring 
to you anything that is definitely education. My 
career in that respect, however, has been somewhat 
extensive. I claim a large part of the authorship 
of the Smith-Hughes Act, the creation of the voca- 
tional system of education in the United States. 


We are not concerned so much and I am sure you 
are concerned not at all with the technique of edu- 
cation, with methods, with class room wisdom. You 
are concerned with something that is deeper than 
the actual methods of education, albeit in the pro- 
fession you have that at heart naturally. You are 
interested in the spirit of education and I am sure 
that is where my interest primarily lies. To be inter- 
ested in the spirit of education ought to be a very 
high ideal and it ought to be enthusiastically received 
not only by the teachers but by the people as a 
whole. At this time under our social regime as it 
now exists, that which ought to be the spirit of 
education has bean more or less suppressed and some- 
times seems to be in disfavor by many people who 
certainly should believe otherwise. 


There is grave danger in this country of the 

spirit of education being obscured by lesser interests. 
The fact is that throughout the country men on 
horseback, as it were, are trying to suppress this 
movement and I know of nothing that is a graver 
danger today than this spirit of suppression which 
exists in many parts of the country. 
: I would like to find out in the great metropolitan 
centers what suppressions are existing—not merely 
on education but upon others—such as social workers 
of which class I am a part; upon labor unions, upon 
the employees of concerns, upon all people in fact. 
Then one outstanding danger to my mind today 
is the fact that these suppressions do exist and that 
they are killing the very best spirit of inquiry that 
ought to be the basis of our educational activity. 


It isn’t safe today to say a lot of things that we 
once thought were commonplace. It is rather inter- 
esting to note that we are in one class; it is rather 
interesting to think back to the time when we 
were young, twenty-five years ago, or thirty years 
ago, I can not imagine when I was in college of 
having any college president come around to our 
lyceums and debating societies and telling us what 
we were going to debate or suggesting that we must 
not debate on the subject of communism or bolshe- 
vism or any other question, for that matter. I 
imagine any person coming around and trying to 
dictate in those days to any group of college peo- 
ple or even in the villages, towns, or schools would 
have been thrown out on his head, for I am quite 
sure the people would not have tolerated that sort 
of thing in those days. 

Perhaps I did not see the thing then that I see 
today. People do not mind doing things today that 
once would have been considered out of the pale of 
good society. They do not hesitate to throw men 
out of colleges and out of the Y. M. C. A. (although 
the men in the Y. M. C. A. do not get active 
enough to be thrown out) for even speaking their 
minds on subjects not thought proper for the public 
minds; they are even being thrown out for opinions 
that once were passed as commonplace. Men think 
they are courageous when they discuss things that 
to me seem ordinary, everyday things. 

I have made addresses based largely upon the Dec- 
laration of Independence and men have said after- 
wards to me, “Well, that was a brave speech.” Well, 
why I should like to know is it brave to ‘express 
those things which deal with the fundamentals of 
free living and thinking? A professional woman 
whom I have known for some time who is very 
active in the Y. W. C. A. at Fort Wayne, together 
with her industrial secretary have recently been 
expelled from the society over there, not exactly 
expelled but their resignations have been asked for, 
because they belonged to the Fellowship of Recon- 
ciliation, an organization which merely stands for 
peaceful methods between nations, an organization 
that is backed by a great many of the leading labor 


». 


8 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


organizations and the leading liberals of the United 
States. It is not a radical organization in any sense 
and yet here is a community that doesn’t get excited 
over the fact that two women of distinguished 
manner and character have been driven out of the 
city by the houndings of some people who appar- 
ently do not believe in any kind of freedom at all. 

It is a very serious matter as applied to education 
for if education is to be anything at all it is to be 
absolutely free in spirit. It is to make men and 
women free to think and willing to think and back 
them up so they will dare to think and say what 
they please to say. I do not mean that people should 
run around saying absurd things but I mean they 
should say the things and play the part in a com- 
munity or communities that citizens are expected 
to do and say. 

I am not so sure what is going to happen to this 
country if we go on with this suppression of the 
spirit as we are going today. Today we hear of 
education going into politics. We are told that edu- 
cation must not go into politics. We hear much 
about the clergy and the white collared clerk. We 
hear the warning that we should not go into politics 
because they are courting the good will of their 
superiors or they are afraid of their superiors. Labor 
union men, even ordinary men, are apparently afraid 
to express their views on politics if those views hap- 
pen to run counter to the prevailing vote. 

In the campaign of 1924 men were afraid to 
speak their views; when they ought to have been 
out telling their views on public questions they were 
afraid to speak, they were afraid to let it be known 
if they happened to be supporters of La Follette for 
Apparently it is all right if you are a 
Republican. Apparently it is all right in some sec- 
tions if you are a Democrat. You can enter politics 
but if you happen to take a view counter to those 
two parties it is a° different situation. 

What has been the result of all this? Incidentally 
to politics, it has been shocking and it is a difference 
that will destroy the very foundations of the struc- 
ture if that influence is allowed to continue. We 
have on very good authority that at least seventy- 
five per cent of the people of the United States in- 
herit their politics. Seventy-five per cent of the 
people vote as their fathers and their grandfathers 
voted. How you can run a country, a democratic 
organization, when men vote on today’s problems 
with the information and the principles that guided 
their fathers and their grandfathers years ago, is 


president. 


quite beyond the comprehension of any of us who 
know what a progressive society we live in. Yer 
the fact is staring us in the face that we receive 
our inheritance of politics and pass on that inheri- 
tance to others without any kind of an attempt to 
learn the true situation as it exists today. 

Someone asked me the other day if that was true 
of religion also. We inherit our religion. If we give 
that answer the argument is all destroyed and we 
have imagined that we could inherit our politics 
When we inherit our religion it is not always a 
serious matter. But politics is not a personal matter, 
Politics concerns all the people and the acts of al! 
the people as citizens. It concerns your actions asa 
voter. It affects my rights as well as your rights. 
It affects the rights of everybody. 

A supreme court justice was nominated in, Indi- 
ana four years ago in one of the districts by a ma- 
jority of one vote. Every citizen of Indiana voted 
and everyone who didn’t vote had a direct hand in 
naming the supreme court justice of Indiana by a 
majority of one vote. You can see how easily our 
rights are affected when by the casting of a ballot 
determinations are made that decide other folks’ 
rights as well as our own. 

This matter of inheriting our politics is a very 
serious one as we do nothing at all to change the 
situation. We do really nothing to get a thinking 
population, and more than that, we are allowing 
these separations to come upon us, preventing actual, 
clear cut understanding of what the problems are 
that confront us today. 

Education is the only force that is going to be 
able to meet that condition. If the schools are go- 
ing to become the hand tools (to pass an old worn 
out political phrase) of the politician, if the schools 
are not going to be free, then of course, we can not 
have any growing policy that will be progressive and 
will meet the new conditions as they arise. 

If the schools can not be free to teach freely 
and frankly, then I do not know what we are com- 
ing to. A college president with whom I am very 
well acquainted was threatening a few months agg 
to remove a man from the chair of economics because 
he allowed the discussion, apparently with a favor- 
ing view himself, of the limitation of inheritances 
in the country, as though that were a new and 
strange doctrine that must be abhorred. The mao 
almost lost the chair because he had allowed the class 
to discuss the possibilities of limiting inheritances 
Apparently the president didn’t know the inheti- 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 9 


tance tax laws had limited inheritances to a con- 
siderable degree and that most men of sound judg- 
ment believe that a great limitation is inevitable 
and desirable. 

That kind of condition does prevail pretty widely 
—far more than we understand and we can get 
expressions everywhere, but I do not need to talk 
about that sort of thing to you. You are perfectly 
aware in the cities from which you come of interests 
of that kind, but it is the way out to which we 
must turn. What can we do about it? I don’t know 
what we can do about it except to stand up and 
fight on the question. I do not know what we can 
do except to try and convert some of these smug 
folks, educators and others, some of these folks 
who go on with the conditions as they have existed 
without engaging a hand to in some way or other 
get hold of these people, these well fed people who 
never think beyond their present meal, apparently, 
or possibly think of how they can get into power 
a group of people to control this thinking group of 
educators which they believe to be a menace to 
society. 

Most people are under the fears that have been 
fomenting carefully to keep them out of the activ- 
ities that might lead them toward a consideration 
of a reorganization of society. 

I am not so very much concerned about the laws 
that compel the teachers to teach certain subjects, 
but I am concerned about the laws which prohibit 
the teacher from teaching certain things on certain 
subjects, those things which are essentially true. 
They strike at the very basis of education. If you 
can not teach in schools that thing, those things, 
which are scientifically true on account of a prej- 
udice that has been enacted into law, then what 
becomes of education? The very spirit of education 
is destroyed. 

It is the spirit of education that the American 
Federation of Teachers must uphold. A great many 
of the other agencies of education are not uphold- 
ing the spirit of education and it falls to the lot 
of this organization as to no other, for I know of no 
other organization within the educational ranks that 
will stand boldly for the things for which you 
stand, the freedom of the teacher to teach, not to 
be erratic. A person of that type must lose out 
Professionally, but you stand for the spirit of the 
teacher to teach freely the things that are known 
to be true and to use text books that the teacher 
knows to be reliable. 


We are confused upon this issue all the time by 
politics. We have our issue in Chicago today in 
the teathing of history, a most absurd situation con- 
fronting us and a reflection upon education in an 
enlightened community. It is a reflection upon the 
people of this city that we should have a campaign 
that was based upon the question as to whether or 
not we should teach certain things about the Ameri- 
can Revolution. 

I believe we find that thing in many other cities 
also, that little testimony of facts. That we do 
not dare teach certain things even though they be 
true is the most damning thing that we could find 
from what we have obtained from education in the 
past. I do not mean to say that we should go out 
and denounce our American heroes by any means, 
but I certainly do not want to see myths taught 
about them. I want to see in respect to history, the 
straight-forward truth and when historians of repute 
have found that which they believe and understand 
to be the truth, then let us teach it. You can’t 
teach all there is about history but you must not 
suppress those things which are vital to an under- 
standing of American life and which are vital to an 
understanding and promotion of international bet- 
terment. 

So it is the spirit of education that I think you 
have in your keeping. If there is any way to make 
teachers free it will be through the organization 
of the American Federation of Teachers and if you 
can not give a certain degree of security to teach- 
ers then of course, they can not be free, they will 
not be free. 

The need which you have in your keeping is the 
greatest need of the times and in that purpose that 
you have charge of in the carrying out of views, 
representing the ends in view, is the greatest thing 
that could be given you. In that you ought to have 
the support of the liberal groups throughoyt the 
country. Educators can’t do it alone. If we can 
not buttress the educators who are standing for these 
ideals by support from the community, by sup- 
port from labor organizations, intelligent labor 
organizations, intelligent support from liberal clubs, 
intelligent support from women’s clubs, intelligent 
support from all the civic organizations of a com- 
munity, then there isn’t any hope and it is to that 
end that I have confidence in the combined support 
which can de given by the liberal clubs and groups 


of the communities of our country to the American 
(Continued on Page 22) 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


Relation of Organized Labor to the Public School 


By MARY HICKS 
Address to the Senior Class, State Normal School, Troy, Alabama 


The needs of the public school are familiar to us 
all. We are all familiar with the difficulties encount- 
ered in the effort to meet these needs. Buildings, 
equipment, size of classes, training of teachers, sal- 
aries of teachers, tenure and retirement of teachers 
—these problems are always with us, always involv- 
ing heavy financial expense, always requiring united, 
aggressive action on the part of those who realize 
the importance of these questions. 

One of the significant tendencies of our time is 
the promotion of all interests through organized 
groups. We have Chambers of Commerce, manufac- 
turers’ associations, professional associations, associa- 
tions for objects of charity, culture or pleasure; we 
are organized in every field of human endeavor. Our 
teachers’ associations, though organized and _ politi- 
cally weak, have done some worth-while things; and 
the Parent-Teacher Association, growing steadily in 
numbers and achievement, is a powerful ally of the 


public school. 

But though the Parent-Teacher Association may 
be united in devotion to the welfare of the children, 
it nevertheless includes varied and more or less con- 


flicting elements. Business interests, professional 
interests, investors’ interests, working class interests, 
are all represented, more or less, in its membership. 
On an economic basis, the Parent-Teacher Associa- 
tion is not a united group. 

And economic interest is, after all, the most 
unshakable basis of unity. A group whose members 
are welded together by the enormous pressure of 
modern economic conditions will maintain its unity 
and persist in its purposes to a greater degree than 
is possible with groups otherwise formed. 

Realizing then, that the public school needs the 
best organized, the most powerful support, we are 
led directly to this problem: What economic group 
is the strongest ally of the public school? 

There are three great economic groups into which 
society is divided—the wealthy, or capitalist class; 
the middle, or business and professional class; and 
the working class. 

The wealthy class has been generous to education. 
The Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie Founda- 
tion, the General Education Board, the Phelps- 
Stokes Fund, the Commonwealth Fund, with other 


boards and foundations, and with numberless ind). 
vidual gifts, are evidences of the awakening senx 
of social responsibility among wealthy people. 

The economic group known as the middle clay 
is less able to make large gifts of money. Moreover, 
the middle class is becoming weaker as the captains 
of industry extend their control over the natural 
resources of the country, concentrate and centraliz 
industry and limit ever more closely the field of com- 
petition. The uncertain economic condition of the 
lesser business and professional men is not conducive 
to independent thinking and fearless action. 

Finally—the working class! The workers in mines, 
who toil in the darkness, in danger of su‘focating 
death, that the world may have light and warmth 
and power; the workers in fields who under blazing 
suns provide the world with food, and with raw m:- 
terials of industry; the workers in mills and shops and 
factories; who in the deafening roar and dizzying 
whirl of machinery, shape with maimed hands pro- 
ducts to meet every need of civilized man—thes 
workers who have done all in material things—can 
they also take part in solving the problems of educi- 
tion? . 

Let us turn to history. 

A number of you may recall in this connection 
some statements made in one of your text books, 
“Social Forces in American History,” by A. M 
Simons. In discussing the early labor movement it 
this country, Simons says: 

“The one dominant feature of every section of 
this labor movement was the almost fanatical insist- 
ence upon the paramount importance of education. 
In political platforms, in resolutions of public meet- 
ings, and in the labor press, the statement is repeated 
over and over that the fundamental demand of labor 
is for an adequate system of education.” 

The working people demanded appropriation o 
the public funds for education on a system assuring 
to every child adequate educational opportunities. 

Simons tells us further that the workers were 10 
content with merely protesting and demanding—- 
they were far in advance of their age in their appt 
ciation of educational methods. In the year 183, 
a committee of Philadelphia workingmen, appointed 
to study the educational situation, gave in 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 11 


report a keen -criticism of the system then existing 
and outlined a scheme of education including kinder- 
gartens and manual training, supporting their argu- 
ments by illustrations drawn from similar institu- 
tions in Europe. 

This is what organized labor was doing nearly a 
hundred years ago, when in the state of Pennsylvania 
the rich sent their children to expensive private 
schools and only paupers were provided with teach- 
ers by the state. For the children of people of ordi- 
nary means “there was no provision whatever.” 

For demanding free, tax-supported schools the 
leaders of this movement were ridiculed, they were 
called revolutionists, they were even set upon by 
the police, beaten and thrown into prison. 

We find the same story told by Richard T. Ely, 
professor of political economy in the University of 
Wisconsin; by Frank Tracy Carlton, professor of 
economics in DePauw University, and by other 
writers. For the establishment of our public school 
system we are accustomed to give all credit to 
Horace Mann, Henry Barnard and the New England 
ministers, but these writers reveal “an underlying 
and more potent force.” To the early labor move- 
ment more than to any other cause we owe the com- 
mon school system of today. 

In his book, ““The Labor Movement in America,” 
Professor Ely says: “At every period of our history 
public school questions have been labor questions or 
labor measures.* And when I say this, I do not exclude 
our universities.” 

Professor Ely says further: “Where shall we find 
guardians against assaults on our public schools? 
Where shall we find those who will not only protect 
what we have but help us forward in new achieve- 
ments in education? To both questions I reply: in 
our labor organizations. All over the world, labor 
organizations are supporting and bearing forward 
every popular educational movement.” 

Let us compare these facts and views concerning 
the working class with all that can be said of the 
beneficence of the wealthy class, or of the intelli- 
gence and culture of the middle class. 

The workers are superior in numbers. They are 
superior in political power where they realize their 
power. They are more directly concerned with the 
free public school than any other economic group. 

I believe you will agree with these scholarly 
thinkers that the strongest ally of the public school 
is organized labor. 

Turning to more recent history, we find that for 


twenty-five years or more the teachers of Chicago 
have relied on labor for support. About twenty-five 
years ago the elementary teachers of Chicago deter- 
mined to relieve the shortage of funds from which 
they and their schools were severely suffering. ‘They 
believed that the taxes for the support of the schools 
and the rentals from school lands were not being 
justly collected. They believed that the school board 
itself was controlled by the great tax-dodging interests. 

The Chicago Teachers’ Federation, led by two 
women teachers, affiliated with the Chicago Federa- 
tion of Labor, and after a long and magnificent fight 
forced some of the greatest of these tax-dodgers to 
meet their obligations. 

Later the high school men teachers, and still later 
the high school women teachers of Chicago organ- 
ized and affiliated with the American Federation of 
Labor. The Chicago teachers now discovered that in 
different parts of the country were several other 
teachers’ organizations affiliated, or planning to affil- 
iate with labor. Communication with these locals 
was established and a national organization was pro- 
posed. In 1916 the American Federation of Teach- 
ers was organized and affiliated with the American 
Federation of Labor. 

The American Federation of Teachers now has 
locals throughout the country. Some are in large 
cities, as Boston, New York, Jersey City, Trenton, 
Baltimore, Washington, Atlanta, Memphis, Chicago, 
St. Paul, Minneapolis and San Francisco. Locals have 
been organized in several universities and normal 
schools. : Si 

Among the members of the American Federation 
of Teachers’ are some of the most distinguished men 
in the educational world: John Dewey, of Columbia 
University; Harry A. Overstreet, of the College of 
the City of New York; Jerome Davis, Yale Uni- 
versity; John A. Brewer, Harvard University; Paul 
Douglas and Robert Morss Lovett, University of 
Chicago; George Coe, of Columbia University; Joseph 
K. Hart, Harold Groves, Jacob Perlman and others 
of the University of Wisconsin. 


The affiliation of teachers with organized labor 
has resulted in many notable achievements. A few 
of these are increases in teachers’ salaries, reduction 
in the size of classes, democratic participation of 
class room teachers in the conduct of the schools, 
the election of progressive boards of education with 
labor representation and occasionally with teacher 
representation, legislative provision for free text 
books and for greater school revenues. 





12 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


In verification of these claims I have a statement 
from the president of the Federation, Miss Mary C. 
Barker, who is principal of a school in Atlanta. I 
asked Miss Barker to outline for us the work done 
in Atlanta through the co-operation of the Atlanta 
Teachers’ Association with the Atlanta Federation 
of Trades. She wrote the outline especially for us, 
and I give it to you in her own inspiring words: 


“The Atlanta Federation of Trades and the editor 
of the Journal of Labor are always alert to encourage 
the education of all the children of all the people, 
and to promote the interests of the public schools. 
They are ever alert to guard the schools from the 
attacks of those who would curtail the service of 
the schools either as relates to the school program 
itself or as to the number and condition of those 
who are to receive the benefits of education. 

“It is no unusual thing—indeed, it is the common 
thing—for the executive board or a committee from 
the Federation of Trades to appear before the finance 
committee of the City Council to support—yes, de- 
mand, if necessary, appropriations for school purposes. 

““When it was proposed by some of the ‘anti-tax- 
payers’ to do away with the Opportunity School, the 
Federation of Trades and the Journal of Labor made 
a valiant fight for it. The school was retained. 
When there was talk of cutting out kindergartens 
and ‘lopping off the frills,’ there was outspoken oppo- 
sition from these same quarters. When for any rea- 
son the schools need financial support or political 
backing, the labor interests go to the front in the 
battle for public education. 

“The teachers have civil service, higher salaries, 
and some ‘voice in the management’ that they never 
would have had but for the backing of the Federa- 
tion of Trades and their paper, the Journal of Labor. 

“As to the attitude of principals in our affiliation 
with labor they are one with the teachers. They 
know that it is from labor that we get our best 
support. One principal remarked some time ago that 
in the beginning ‘we hated to do it, but we were 
forced to in order to get support for the schools.’ 
She admitted that now we take it as a matter of 
course. 

“The superintendent also realizes that our best sup- 
port comes from labor. He would never have been 
able to put over the progressive program that was 
adopted several years ago but for the backing of 
that same group together with Parent-Teacher help. 

“Altogether, the public schools in Atlanta look to 
labor as our best friend.” 


This concludes Miss Barker’s statement. She deals, 
of course, with a great city school system co-operat- 
ing with the City Federation of Trades. But county 
locals may be organized by rural teachers and the 
State Federation of Labor also stands ready to help, 
Mr. Mosley, of Birmingham, publisher of the Labor 
Advocate, official organ of the Alabama Federation 
of Labor, writes me that if the teachers of this state 
were organized and affiliated with labor, they: would 
have the backing of probably 40,000 organized labor 
people in Alabama and would thus be greatly 
strengthened in their struggle to get results from the 
state legislature. 

Seniors—As president of the American Federation 
of Teachers, Miss Barker sends you this invitation: 
“To the Students of the State Normal School: 
“Troy, Alabama. 

“Through correspondence with one of your fel- 
low students, I learn that you have some knowl 
edge of the American Federation of Teachers. It 
occurs to me that some of you might desire to affili- 
ate with us if you are entering upon the career of a 
teacher. In case some are already teachers there is 
all the more possibility that you have become con- 
scious of the fact that only through organization and 
a definite program can teachers influence as they 
should the welfare of the schools of the land. 

““We should be pleased to welcome you into the 
American Federation of Teachers. We have a pro- 
vision for ‘membership at large’ whieh would enable 
you to be a member even though you should not be 
one of a group in a given locality that desired to 
form a local of the Federation. 

“My best wishes for your success in your chosen 
profession. 

“Very truly yours, 
“MARY C. BARKER, 
“President American Federation of Teachers.” 


Fellow students: If we accept this invitation we 
shall be doing that which John Dewey said teach- 
ers should always strive to do—help in the wiping 
out of the false distinction between the brain worker 
and the hand worker. 

In accepting this invitation we shall be only taking 
our rightful place in the labor movement, which 
Professor Ely has called “the strongest force outside 
the Christian church making for the practical rec- 
ognition of human brotherhood,” and eventually we 
shall realize that, as Carlyle has said, “This move- 
ment called organized labor is the universal, vital 
problem of the world.” 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


The Legislative Report 


Eleventh Annual Convention American Federation of Teachers, June 25—July 1, 1927. 


The great problem that confronts the teachers 
of America is the transformation of our educational 
system so that it will turn out educated men and 
women inspired by a desire to serve rather than to ex- 
ploit their fellow men. This goal can be achieved 
only when the teachers and the American people, 
rather than dominant economic interests, determine 
educational policies and curricula. While such 
social control can be best realized through the dem- 
ocratization of boards of education or boards of trus- 
tees and through the unionization of teachers, it can, 
however, be considerably advanced or retarded by 
legislation. 

Heretofore, teachers, because of their academic at- 
titude, have left the control of legislation largely to 
those who often have selfish ends to serve. Their 
aloofness has resulted in preventing the play of their 
trained minds, exact knowledge, devotion to truth 
and their general attitude of impartiality, from ex- 
erting proper and necessary influence upon legisla- 
tion. The American Federation of Teachers believes 
that the time has come for teachers to emerge from 
their school and college walls and to place themselves 
at the service of the public. 


We believe that teachers should organize and co- 
operate with other social groups, not only to advance 
legislation favorable to public education, but also to 
block anti-social legislation inimical to the public 
schools and to the people. Teachers should also take 
advantage of every opportunity offered by charter 
revision and constitutional amendments, to incorpor- 
ate the sound educational principles herein recom- 
mended into the basic law of every state or to bring 
about the incorporation of sound educational prin- 
ciples into the platforms of the various political 
Parties, 


ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND TENURE 


Change is the law of progress. If the social value 
of change is to be secured, teachers and pupils must 
be free. Unless such freedom is assured, intellectual 
stagnation is inevitable. In certain states of the 
Union the principle of academic freedom has been 
seriously menaced, if not nullified, by legislation 
based upon’ distrust, not only of the intelligence of 
teachers, but also of their unselfish devotion to the 
state and to the ideals of the teaching profession. 


As teachers loyal to our profession and to American 
tradition, we cannot but deplore the growth of the 
un-American spirit of political, religious and eco- 
nomic intolerance abroad in the land. 

This intolerance is evidenced by the summary dis- 
missal of Dr. John E. Kirkpatrick from the faculty 
of Olivet College for writing ““The American College 
and Its Rulers;” of Professors Robert T. Kerlin and 
John A. Kinneman of West Chester Normal in Penn- 
sylyania for their support of the Liberal Club and for 
daring to criticize the Nicaraguan policy of Presi- 
dent Coolidge; of Mrs. Della Clifford of Lynn, Mass- 
achusetts and Mrs Rachel Davis DuBois for their 
liberal activities; of Miss Dickinson of Superior, Wis., 
for criticizing the policies of the superintendent of 
schools; and of a host of others. We can but rejoice 
that members of the American Federation of Teach- 
ers have tHe courage to pay for their devotion to 
truth. It was their sacrifice, as well as the suffering 
and martyrdom of the champions of intellectual free- 
dom in the past, which makes it possible for mankind 
to enjoy fuller freedom than at almost any other 
period in history. 

The American Federation of Teachers believes that 
these dismissals were inspired by the fear as well as 
by the self-interest of those who are determined to 
maintain the “status quo.” Hence the educational 
heresy hunting so widely inaugurated to inspire the 
fear which has poisoned human relations by the cow- 
ardice it has engendered. The havoc wrought by the 
cowardice of those charged with the responsibility 
of the teaching of our youth, is almost greater than 
the havoc wrought by céwardice in public life or in 
international relations. This cowardice is largely due 
to the fact that teachers who perform their duties 
efficiently and conscientiously, lack permanent ten- 
ure or security of position. Amy attempts to weaken 
the tenure laws that now exist or the failure to 
guarantee efficient teachers a life position, strikes at 
the heart of our great democracy which depends upon 
courageous thinking citizens. All attacks upon ten- 
ure, whether made openly or insidiously, must be re- 
sisted. 

The most notorious example of insidious legislation 
undermining tenure was the enactment of the Lusk 
Laws by the Legislature of New York. These laws 
undermined tenure of teachers, since they made it pos- 





14 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


sible for the Commissioner of Education to dismiss 
teachers without a trial. Though these laws were 
the product of war hysteria and were later repealed 
by the mandate of the people as expressed at the polls, 
nevertheless, at numerous public hearings, reactionary 
groups, seeking to prevent the enactment of socially 
necessary legislation, such as the Child Labor Amend- 
ment or the Women’s Eight Hour Bill, still offer in 
support of their opposition, the biased and false testi- 
mony upon which the Lusk Laws were based. 

Moreover, teachers who have tenure based upon 
local by-laws or upon regulations adopted by boards 
of education, or upon annual contracts, must not de- 
lude themselves into believing that they have per- 
manency of tenure. Such a situation existed in the 
city of Minneapolis where, despite local trial regula- 
tions, teachers were dismissed without a trial and 
without having definite charges preferred against 
them, thus demonstrating that tenure laws based 
upon local regulations are inadequate. State tenure 
laws based upon the principles adopted by the Ameri- 
can Federation of Teachers are the only adequate 
safeguard against unwarranted dismissal. We con- 
gratulate our locals of Minnesota for their success 
in securing a tenure law. 

A somewhat novel method of undermining tenure 
was the effort to modify the New York pension law 
so as to empower the superintendent of school to 
compel teachers to undergo an examination at the 
hands of the physicians employed by the board of 
education in order to test their physical or mental 
fitness. Teachers who refused to undergo such a 
one-sided medical examination were automatically 
deprived of their salaries for four months. If, at the 
end of that time, the suspended teacher still refused 
to undergo a physical examination at the hands of 
the physicians controlled by the board of education, 
they could then be dismissed for neglect of duty 
without a hearing or a trial. 

The American Federation of Teachers believes that 
persons unfit for duty should be dismissed or retired 
according to the provisions of the tenure or pension 
laws. We regard efforts like the above as dangerous, 
because present laws provide a wise judicial method 
for eliminating unfit persons from the system and 
also because they tend to place undue power in the 
hands of the administrative authorities who, under 
the guise of ridding the system of unfit teachers, 
could dismiss excellent teachers who happen to be 
critics without giving them the protection embodied 
in the tenure laws. 


Another method of undermining tenure was tried 
successfully in Buffalo. Teachers with permanent 
teaching licenses, who had been advanced to higher 
positions on probation, were deprived of their position 
without the preferment of charges or without a hear. 
ing or trial. The Legislative Committee regards such 
action as arbitrary and un-American. It strikes at 
teacher morale and teaching efficiency. The com- 
mittee recommends the enactment of legislation pro. 
viding that teachers holding permanent licenses can- 
not be dismissed from the system during probation 
for higher license, without a trial and the right of 
appeal. “ 

All these attempts to undermine tenure are gen- 
erally fathered by selfish interests which seek to ux 
the public schools for propaganda purposes. Such 
attempts, if successful, tend to destroy academic 
freedom, and bring the teaching profession into such 
disrepute that courageous teachers will resign, while 
prospective teachers will be deterred from making 
teaching their life work. Hence such legis!-tion 
must not only be resisted, but every effort must be 
made to bring about the reinstatement of teachers 
dismissed without the right of trial or appeal. Teach- 
ers will not be safe against unjust dismissal unies 
they secure the enactment of tenure legislation in 
harmony with the following principles adopted at 
our third annual convention: 

1. Tenure, after the lapse of a probationary per- 
iod not to exceed two years, should be made perman- 
ent during efficiency. 

2. Ail dismissals, both during and after the pro- 
bationary period, should be for cause definitely em- 
bodied in the law, such as immorality and ineffi- 
ciency. 

3. After the probationary period, dismissal for 
any cause should be only by a trial board chosen 
follows: Three by the school board, three by the 
teachers, these six to select a seventh, who is not to 
be either a member of the schoo! board or of the 
teaching staff and who shall act as impartial chair- 
man. At all hearings, teachers shall have the right 
to be represented by counsel. Appeals from the de- 
cision of the trial board may be taken to the courts 
or to the commisisoner of education, where the teach- 
ers shall have the right of review on questions of lav 
as well as of fact. 


LEGISLATIVE CONTROL OF CouRSES OF STUDY 


One of the most pernicious of legislative tender 
cies is the attempt to determine the content of th 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 15 


social and biological sciences by legislative enact- 
ment. Such efforts were made in Wisconsin, Ken- 
tucky, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, 
North Carolina and other states. Aside from the 
fact that the efforts of laymen to determine the vari- 
ous courses of study must inevitably lead to disaster 
and block the march of educational progress, they 
strike at the professional status of teachers. The 
determination of the content of the various courses 
of study belongs to the teaching profession and every 
effort to infringe upon that right is resented and 
should be resisted if our professional status is to be 
maintained and strengthened. 

In the state of New York the senate which voted 
to repeal the Lusk laws overwhelmingly passed the 
Higgins Bill, which prescribed, with great minute- 
ness how text-books in American History should be 
written so that the lustre of American patriots and 
of American military achievements, especially those 
connected with our wars against England, be neither 
dimmed nor tarnished nor the motives of the partici- 
pants criticized. In the Federal Congress Representa- 
tive Connery introduced a bill which provides that 
Congress shall investigate all history text-books and 
shall have the World War explained and interpreted 
by commanding officers who fought in the war. The 
American Federation of Teachers was the only organ- 
ization which took cognizance of this measure. It 
induced Mr. Reed of New York, Chairman of the 
Committee on Education, to agree that if a hearing 
is held on this measure, educators and historians, as 
well as military men, should be heard. A similar but 
more ridiculous measure was introduced into the 
legislature of the State of Washington providing that 
the Dean of the Law School shall determine the con- 
tent of history text-books. 

The American Federation of Teachers believes that 
4 true picture of the past, with due regard for the 
age of pupils, should be given; that under no cir- 
cumstances should truth be perverted or distorted; 
that both sides of controversial questions should re- 
ceive adequate and impartial consideration so as to 
develop the spirit of tolerance and, in addition, to 
brovide proper material for thought. The attempts 
to have history engender, promote or intensify hatred 
between nations; to create a jingo patriotism or to 
develop a “superiority complex” through the perver- 
sion of facts in the interest of a wrong type of patri- 
otism, must be everywhere resisted. If that be not 
done, legislative text-book fixing will not only have 
deplorable results on teacher morale, but will tend 


to develop an American “kultur” and its dangerous 
concomitants. We cannot emphasize too strongly 
that truth is central in all social and the biological 
sciences and that truth can be neither loyal nor dis- 
loyal. Teachers must not only be loyal to truth but 
what is becoming daily more significant, they must 
be loyal to its social meaning. 

A most striking attempt to interfere with both 
academic freedom and the professional right of teach- 
ers to determine the content of the biological sciences 
was the enactment of the Tennessee anti-evolution 
law, the enforcement of which resulted in the 
removal of J. T. Scopes. Among the fundamental 
issues involved in this case are the following: 

1. The proponents of the anti-evolution law 
assume that science and religion are in conflict; 2. 
That persons holding certain religious beliefs shall 
have the right, when a fortuitious majority so 
decrees, to harness the machinery of state for its par- 
tisan religious purposes; 3. That truth is absolute and 
religious belief as static or as unchangeable as the 
laws of the Medes and Persians. 

We hold that no one has the right to interfere with 
the religious beliefs of any other person. We hold 
no brief for partisan teaching or for propaganda for 
or against the theory of evolution or for any other 
theory. We do insist on the imperative need and 
the right of teachers to be free to present such scien- 
tific theories, facts or opinions as are necessary to 
sound teaching, without interference by legislative 
enactment. Young America is entitled to know the 
best that has been evolved in literature, in science, 
in art, and in industry; it also has the right to 
evaluate any theory or doctrine. The denial of such 
right means not only a denial of their educational 
heritage but also intellectual slavery. 

We further believe. the constitutional separa- 
tion of Church and State as established by the Con- 
stitution to have been historically justifiable as well 
as wise and sound. We maintain that the principle 
of separation of Church and State is seriously en- 
dangered if not nullified when religious groups, how- 
ever well motivated, because they happen to have 
a temporary majority in the legislature, assume the 
right to use that power to limit the application of 
scientific or economic theories or the right to impose 
upon others certain interpretations of the Bible or 
of a religious creed. Such a denial of a cardinal 
American political principle seriously endangers 
liberty itself. 

As Americans imbued with the ideal of political 








16 THE AMERICAN 


and religious liberty that gave America its birth and 
its worth, we cannot permit our citadel of freedom 
to yield either to the zealots of science or to the 
extremists of religion; or to surrender to the intoler- 
ance of conservative or radical. Our schools must 
be kept free from political or religious bigotry to the 
end that truth may prevail and progress be not im- 
peded. 

Another menace to both tenure and academic 
freedom which has generally escaped notice, is the 
Summers Amendment to the Appropriation Bill in 
the District of Columbia. It provides that educa- 
tional administrators be denied salaries if they permit 
the teaching “‘of disrespect for the Holy Bible, con- 
troversial partisan politics or that ours is an inferior 
form of government.” The sinister amendment is 
hard to explain. As far as we have been able to 
ascertain, no teacher in the District of Columbia has 
ever taught disrespect for the Holy Bible nor has 
the slightest desire to do so. Who will interpret what 
is meant by the words “disrespect for the Holy 
Bible?” Will the teachings of astronomy, such as 


the Copernican Theory, or the teaching of the Theory 
of Evolution be so regarded? If so, then this evasion 
of academic freedom deserves the opposition that the 


anti-evolution law has evoked. While we are opposed 
to partisan politics or to partisan teaching, most 
social and economic questions are controversial, This 
restriction would, in effect, kill the teaching of the 
social sciences—the heart of any sound curriculum. 

As for the phase that no one may teach that ours 
is an inferior form of government, one can hardly 
find words with which to describe how easily that 
may be used, not only to prevent any teaching of 
comparative government, but also the presentation 
of any progressive point of view. We are reluctantly 
forced to the conclusion that the Summer’s Amend- 
ment is an insult to the teaching profession, a bar to 
scientific teaching and a serious invasion of the prin- 
ciple of academic freedom and teacher control of the 
content of the courses of study. While this amend- 
ment was nullified through the efforts of our legis- 
lative representative at Washington, Representative 
Blanton of Texas threatens to re-introduce this 
amendment in the coming session of Congress. Eter- 
nal vigilance is the price of our educational liberty. 


SALARIES 


National wealth, according to the National Bureau 
of Economic Research, has increased from $63,000,- 
000,000 to $90,000,000,000 within the past six years. 


TEACHER 


Since 1910 the total net annual income of America 
has increased over 80 per cent, while our capital ac- 
cumulations and power to create wealth have multi- 
plied enormously. This was shown by the output 
per man-hour in basic industries, such as steel and 
auto production; by the increase of 43 per cent in 
the production of electrical energy obtained by the 
use of fuel and by the increased productivity of labor 
itself. In view of America’s prosperity and her 
unprecedented growth in wealth since the World 
War, the failure of states and localities to pay ade- 
quate salaries to teachers seems incomprehensible. 

Teachers have never been paid salaries commensu- 
rate with the social service they render. Wage reduc- 
tions which have been suggested by some boards of 
education, are not only without justification but 
suicidal. They tend to drive out of the teaching 
profession those courageous idealists whose inspiration 
is the divine spark that fires impressionistic youth to 
those achievements which make for progress. At- 
tempts at salary reduction should be resisted not only 
because they entail hardships upon teachers and their 
dependents, but particularly because they are anti- 
social as well as destructive of the best interests of 
the country, since they transform teaching either 
into a part-time job or drive out of the profession 
those who can least be spared. 

A study of the salaries paid to teachers of normal 
school and teachers’ colleges, recently made by one 
of our locals, revealed the deplorable fact that the 
general salary level in these institutions is not such 
as to guarantee that the students in them will con- 
tinue to come under the influence of the most capa- 
ble and socially-minded teachers obtainable. Many 
of these schools still have salary schedules ranging 
from $1,000 to $3,300 and some from $1,700 to 
$4,000—-salaries less than those received by class 
teachers in first grade cities. Moreover, even these 
schedules are not automatic in operation and hence 
the underpayment of our normal teachers is even 
greater than indicated. As the future of America 
rests to a considerable degree upon the fitness of the 
teachers for their task and, as the fitness of the 
teacher is largely determined by the type of normal 
and training school teacher, we earnestly call upon 
the public to give these teachers a salary commen- 
surate with the service they render. 

America’s unprecedented growth in wealth since 
the World War, the improved status of the organized 
workers, the failure of boards of education to follow 
the recommendations of Citizens Committees for 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 17 


salary increases, explains, in large part, the great, 
annual teacher turn-over of 100,000 and the inevit- 
able lowering of standards. The niggardly policy, 
pursued by purblind boards of education toward the 
question of teachers’ salaries cannot be continued 
without paying heavily in the shape of an untrained 
citizenry and poor economic adjustments. To prevent 
the catastrophe which must inevitably follow if 
teaching becomes a part-time job or if it fails to hold 
the best teachers or to attract others equally able, 
teachers and public spirited citizens should be per- 
suaded to inaugurate salary campaigns in their re- 
spective localities, which should provide for the 
following: 

1. The embodiment of the principle of equal pay 
for equal professional qualifications and experience 
regardless of sex or of grade or class taught (as in the 
Minneapolis schedules). 

2. A $2,000 minimum, as every child is worth 
at least a $2,000 teacher. 

3. A maximum which will provide a cultural 
wage enabling teachers to live according to the re- 
quirements of their position, to provide for the 
hazards of: life, for leisure, for recreation and for 
professional improvement. 

4. A maximum to be reached in not more than 
ten definite annual automatic increments, regardless 
of ratings. 

5. An index system to maintain the purchasing 
power of the culture wage, to be periodically modi- 
fied to meet ever-increasing living costs and to be 
used in determining higher standards of living. 

When one realizes the many tremendous respon- 
sibilities now being placed upon the teachers by the 
complexities of modern life and the conditions which 
place teachers in “loco parentis”; when one realizes 
the intensive and extensive preparations now required 
of teachers and the growing number of administrative 
and executive duties performed by them, is it too 
much to ask that the financial returns be somewhat 
commensurate with the increased requirements of the 
Position, the services rendered by them and the gen- 
erally rising standards of living for all groups? 


FINANCE 


Attacks upon the mounting cost of education have 
recently received considerable attention. To those 
familiar with growing educational enpenditures, this 
unjustifiable criticism seems to show a misconception 
of educational values as well as an anti-social view- 
Point which augurs ill for educational advance. As 


champions of the cause of education and progress, 
we must insist that it is not what is spent for educa- 
tion that should excite alarm, but rather the kind 
of education for which it is spent and the compara- 
tively small sums which have been spent by a nation 
whose income in 1925 was about $90,000,000,000. 
Education should be more costly because we are 
now giving children a more comprehensive education 
to fit them for a more complex and varied life. 
Moreover, we are fitting our education more and 
more to the type of children and not, as heretofore, 
the children to a uniform educational scheme. Hence 
the special classes or schools for the crippled, the 
blind, the cardiac, the anemic; hence, the grading of 
pupils according to intelligence; hence the various 
types of individual instruction which characterize 
our educational experiments, such as the Dalton or 
the Winnetka Plans; the various types of high schools 
—manual training, textile, commercial or cultural. 
Comparing the growth of our wealth and population 
with conditions prior to the World War, we find, 
much to our amazement that the total educational 
expenditures of America in 1920 by our national 
government (exclusive of state expenditures) were 
a little over one billion dollars or less than two per 
cent of our annual income; that these educational 
expenditures are little short of one-third the amount 
spent by us on such luxuries as candy and tobacco. 


War AND EDUCATION 


Education is the only hope of a better and saner 
social order. True education should make of our 
children not only guardians of our revolutionary and 
constitutional heritage but also pioneers of this new 
society—a society built upon the principle of co- 
operative effort for the benefit of all and not upon 
special privilege or personal gain for the few. Not 
the development of robots but the development of 
character and nobility of soul should be our educa- 
tional goal. War not only militates against the devel- 
opment of the highest type of socially-minded citi- 
zens, but is also destructive of all that is best in man- 
kind. War makes for the survival of the biologically 
unfit, for economic disorganization, for misery and 
engenders hatreds which make future wars inevitable. 

We teachers must meet propaganda for war with 
propaganda for peace. Our chief task is to organize 
for peace by appealing to the hearts and minds of 
the growing manhood and womanhood of the nation 
entrusted to our care. Let the schools become the 
training ground for the warriors of peace, righteous- 





18 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


ness and justice—political, social and economic. When 
that is done, the goal longed for by the lovers of 
progress and mankind will surely be attained. 

To achieve the ends so ardently desired by the 
lovers of peace, the schools must first root out those 
narrow ambitions and those ancient animosities which 
haunt and dominate Europe. It must replace them 
with a desire for organized co-operation which alone 
can make possible the development of international 
mindedness without which no world machinery, 
however admirable, can function. .The American 
Federation of Teachers, in co-operation with world 
organizations such as the World Federation, should 
seek to secure the enactment of legislation, or better 
still, to complete our plans for a world conference 
of educators with a view of reconstructing our text- 
books in literature, in the social and natural sciences 
so as to eliminate national egoism, race hatred, the 
glorification of war and the substitution therefor of 
the teaching of the truth about war—its cold-blooded 
butchery, its elimination of the biologically fit, its 
economic chaos, its debts, starvation, misery and dis- 
ease. We should glorify the heroes of peace as sym- 
bolized by the physician who risks all to discover a 
cure for leprosy or the idealist who holds fast to mi- 
nority views which make man’s progress possible. 

Second, we should secure the passage of an amend- 
ment to the Constitution of the United States pro- 
viding for a referendum on war, except in case of 
direct invasion of our territory. 

Third, we should seek to have Congress enact 
legislation empowering the President to work for the 
outlawry of war and for the creation of an inter- 
national tribunal for the settlement of such disputes 
as may arise, on the principles of an international code 
to be developed and codified. 

Fourth, we should support such measures and 
movements as seek to have the United States partici- 
pate in international conferences called to consider 
the reduction of armament and such economic and 
social matters as are of vital concern to mankind to 
the end that imperialistic conflicts and the wars they 
engender may be forever banished. 

Fifth, we should secure the enactment of leg- 
islation which will insure the prompt publication of 
state department reports or treaties. 

Sixth, we endorse the Briand proposal for the 
outlawry of war between France and the United 
States as a step in the program for the general out- 
lawing of war between all nations. 

Seventh, we should support measures which 


seek to prevent the use of government funds for the 
support of compulsory military training in public 
schools and colleges. We are opposed to the con. 
scription of American manhood by educational insti- 
tutions, as tending to develop the military spirit. 
Compulsory military training, which is a poor sub- 
stitute for physical training, is educationally unsound 
since it substitutes automatic for rational reaction. 
What may be far worse, compulsory military training 
engenders an attitude of mind, menacing to world 
peace, because it recognizes war as a normal social 
phenomenon placing upon citizens the duty to par- 
ticipate in it. 

The outcome of the struggle between war and 
peace upon which so much depends, rests largely 
with the schools and colleges. It is therefore en- 
couraging to the lovers of peace and brotherhood 
to find the young men of our colleges objecting 
strongly to compulsory military training. The 
American Federation of Teachers hopes that this 
opposition to military training and, especially to the 
domination of such training by the Department of 
War with the resources and the prestige of the gov- 
ernment behind it, will grow until compulsory mili- 
tary training is completely wiped out of every edu- 
cational institution. Only through such a victory 
will a peace mind-set gradually develop and help 
undermine and finally nullify the organized efforts 
now being made to fix more firmly the war mind-set 
which unfortunately dominates mankind. 


ADMINISTRATIVE REGULATIONS 


Members of the A. F. of T. have always given 
consecrated service to the pulic schools of the coun- 
try. In times of crises our members have cheerfully 
rendered conspicuous additional service without a 
thought of remuneration or praise. It is therefore 
unfortunate that unscrupulous supervisors have 
sometimes taken advantage of the generous efforts of 
teachers to enact administrative regulations which 
would make such additional voluntary efforts a regu- 
lar feature of school work. This tendency is evidenced 
in the efforts of school administrators to impose 
unnecessary and unwarranted burdens upon the 
teachers. Among such burdens may be cited truant 
hunting; aid in special non-school activities sponsored 
by the supervisors for their own personal aggrandize- 
ment; useless clerical work which interferes with 
teaching; curtailment of the intellectual rights and 
physical comforts of teachers; dictating the type of 
school activity to be conducted by teachers, etc. All 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 19 


such unjustifiable attempts to curtail the rights and 
privileges of teachers or to waste taxpayers’ money 
must be continually resisted. 


PENSIONS 

One of the chief hazards to which teachers are 
subjected is the hazard of old age. The fear of being 
without a position makes the oldest and best equipped 
teachers educational conformists rather than pro- 
gressive educators. The low wages paid to teachers 
often compel them to continue teaching when they 
are no longer able to do so, either in justice to them- 
selves or to their pupils, thus clogging the educational 
system. To save the teachers and the schools from 
this misfortune, to make room for the younger and 
more vigorous men and women, to give the older 
teachers the rest and the comfort they have so richly 
earned, we recommend renewed endeavors to secure 
pension legislation based upon the following prin- 
ciples: 

1. The state or the locality shall appropriate the 
entire pension allowance. Where that is impossible, 
the state shall appropriate at least as much as the 
teachers to enable them to secure a half-pay pension. 

2. The state or the city shall make an additional 
contribution for the past services of teachers in the 
system rendered prior to the time the pension system 
becomes operative. 

3. Voluntary retirement after thirty years of 
service or at age of 60 and compulsory retirement 
at age 70. Exception to the compulsory retirement 
provision may be made by the Board of Retirement. 

4. Disability retirement after ten years of service. 

5. Return of contributions with compound inter- 
est at 4 per cent upon dismissal or withdrawal from 
the system. 

6. Credit shall be given for service rendered in 
other states, ’ 

7. Pension funds shall be managed by a Board 
of Retirement on which teachers shall be represented 
equally with the city. 

8. Insurance options, if embodied in the law, 
should be automatic in operation. 


CONTINUATION SCHOOLS 

Continuation schools were established to meet the 
educational and industrial needs of boys and girls who 
were forced by adverse economic conditions or ill- 
adjusted curricula to terminate their school careers 
too soon. These schools are now functioning with 
a large measure of success in almost twenty-six 
States. Anti-social, uneducated or misguided em- 


ployers are seeking to undermine these beneficient 
laws which are not only doing much to enable chil- 
dren to lift themselves out of blind-alley jobs, but 
also to develop their educational possibilities to the 
utmost. This has been made possible by the stimu- 
lation that comes from the correlation of education 
to one’s work and by their contact with reality. 

Recently efforts have been inaugurated to under- 
mine the operation of these laws by suggesting 
amendments reducing the compulsory school age or 
by substituting evening school for day school attend- 
ance or by other substitutes for the continuation 
school. We regard all these attacks upon the con- 
tinuation schools as undesirable and unwise attempts 
to undermine these beneficient laws and institutions, 
and we urge our affiliated locals to defeat all such 
attempts.. While we recognize that the continuation 
schools have weaknesses and that some of the op- 
ponents, alienated by these weaknesses, are sincere 
in their opposition, we believe the more intelligent 
solution lies in the elimination of these evils and not 
in attempts tc undermine the laws and thus destroy 
the efficiency of these schools. 

We, therefore, suggest that attendance should be 
required from four to eight hours weekly; that the 
curricula be broadened to meet the varying needs 
of the pupils—culrural as well as industrial; that 
better specialized equipment and buildings be pro- 
vided by boards of education; that trained trade 
teachers be attracted to teaching by improving their 
status; that more liberal state and national aid be fur- 
nished to make these reforms possible. We further 
suggest that vocational guidance be especially empha- 
sized along with health education and medical inspec- 
tion, using the resources of the physician, the dentist, 
the visiting teacher and the psychiatrist. 

The continuation schools, in their experimental 
state, with their small classes, their factual approach, 
and their contact with life, offer boards of education 
a challenge as well as a rare opportunity of testing 
the validity of our traditional educational policies. 
We hope that our educators will meet, not only the 
challenge of our changing economic order, but of 
those who offer creative education as the way out. 

CREATIVE EDUCATION 

Organized labor regards education as a means to 
a nobler and better life. It takes pride not only in 
the part it has played in making possible publicly 
supported schools but in its progressive educational 
outlook.- After a survey of our educational system, 
the A. F. of T. believes the time has arrived for a 








20 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


thoroughgoing reconstruction of our educational 
aims, methods, equipment and curricula so as to bring 
them in harmony with present day life. Such a 
change will make it possible for our schools to 
function more effectively in the preparation of boys 
and girls for social living. 

Our educational system seems to be characterized 
by traditional and outworn methods and curricula. 
It is artificially motivated and secures discipline 
largely through coercion. This “police concept” of 
education and the tendency to impose upon chang- 
ing childhood adult concepts not only makes for 
suppressions and neuroses, now only too common, 
but also has a most deadening influence upon the 
whole educational process. As a result, we have a 
regimentalized school proceedure, for the presenta- 
tion of subject matter remote from the life interest 
of the child and taught by a “speeding-up” process 
which makes it difficult for pupils to live richly 
and creatively during their school life. 

The A. F. of T. believes the schools of the future 
must be built in a wholesome, natural and artistic 
environment, upon principles of freedom and co- 
operation. Such schools will liberate and organize 
the capacities of children under a curriculum based 
essentially upon the needs and interests of the indi- 
vidual child as expressed by him. In such a school 
now being conducted by Local No. 5 of New York 
at Pawling, children grow by living their experiences 
instead of getting other people’s description of them. 
In these schools the teacher becomes a comrade and 
co-operator, rather than a disciplinarian and marker. 
Here education becomes a “guided growth,” has 
democracy for its cornerstone, a flexible curriculum 
for its foundation and the nursery for its starting 
place. 

Are TEACHERS HuMAN BEINGs? 

Since teachers are generally recognized as an over- 
conscientious and overworked group, since they are 
generally looked upon as being the most important 
of public employees, one would be led to believe that 
they were being treated with special consideration. 
Unfortunately, the treatment accorded teachers is 
utterly out of harmony with the laudations usually 
accorded them at commencement time, when they 
are referred to as the bulwark of the nation. The 
utter disregard of the rights of teachers, due to 
their failure to organize, manifests itself in such 
an inhuman way that nothing short of organized 
power will shock the social conscience into a realiza- 
tion of the inhuman treatment often accorded them. 


The low state of the teaching profession is evi- 
denced by the ridiculous restrictions imposed upon 
them. ‘Teachers have been denied renewals or pro- 
motions or have been dismissed for getting married, 
for “keeping company,” for bobbing their hair, for 
smoking, for attending dances, for going to moving 
picture shows on Sunday and for many other reasons 
which would never be considered in connection with 
other vocations. In fact, every act of the teacher 
has, at times, been minutely prescribed. We believe 
that teachers must insist upon the fullest exercise of 
their rights as citizens as well as teachers. We fur- 
ther believe that questions of professional conduct 
should be determined by the teaching profession and 
not by lay persons. 

In various parts of the country, teachers who be- 
come ill from overwork or natural causes, are 
penalized by the loss of their wages, while in Wash- 
ington, D. C., the superintendent of schools, who 
was chairman of the Department of Superintendents 
of the N. E. A., recommended that teachers who are 
absent, regardless of the cause, be forced to pay the 
replacing substitute more than a day’s wages. Only 
the strongest protest of Local No. 8 resulted in the 
modification of the rule to a deduction of three- 
quarters of a day’s pay. The A. F. of T. insists 
that the teachers are entitled to human consideration. 
It recommends that its locals begin a campaign to 
secure the following: 

1. Full pay for absence for ninety teaching days 
due to illness, if certified to by a physician. 

2. Payment for illness beyond the ninety days 
to be determined by the superintendent of schools 
or by the board of education. 

3. Full pay for absence due to death in the family 
or to quarantine. 

One of the chief causes of loss in teaching effi- 
ciency is loss of interest due to “‘staleness” or the 
failure of teachers to come under the stimulating 
influences of a new environment, new movements, 
or new ideas. To offset this, we suggest the adoption 
of a Sabbatical leave based upon the following 
principles: 

a. A leave after every seven years for study, rest 
or travel, 

b. Salary deductions to be no greater than the 
cost of replacement but in no case to exceed half 
of the teacher’s daily wage. 

A DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 
A bill creating a department of education was 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 21 


introduced into the 1925 session of Congress em- 
bodying the following principles: 

1. The creation of a secretary of education, who 
is to be a member of the Cabinet possessing the usual 
power Ss. 

2. The transfer to the Department of Education 
of the work now being done by the Bureau of 
Education as well as the control of the administrative 
functions usually assigned to this bureau. 

3. A provision for appropriations to carry out 
the research work entrusted to the department and 
so essential to educational advance. 

4. The creation of an inter-departmental con- 
ference which would make it possible for the war 
department to spread its propaganda through edu- 
cational channels. 

The American Federation of Teachers reaffirms 
its support of the first three principles and congratu- 
lates the American Federation of Labor for its firm 
adherence to them. We desire to voice our most em- 
phatic opposition to any military influence in our 
educational affairs or to any attempt to interfere, by 
national legislation, with the principles of local edu- 
ational autonomy. The Legislative Committee re- 
commends the continued support of Senate Bill No. 


291 which embodies our principles of limiting the 
work of the Department of Education to research 
work which is so indispensable to the educational 
departments of the states and to the country as a 
whole. 


PATRIOTEERS 


In the admirable survey of the national legislative 
situation our legislative representative emphasized the 
reason for the failure of Congress to enact sound 
progressive legislation. This was due largely to the 
spirit of intolerance engendered since the outbreak 
of the World War by such organizations as the Ku 
Klux Klan, the Key Men of America, the American 
Defense Society, the Daughters of 1812, the Nat- 
ional Defense Society, the American Legion and oth- 
ers. These organizations have capitalized the spirit 
of intolerance for selfish anti-social purposes. With 
an arrogance that is unsurpassed in the annals of our 
political history these organizations followed the ster- 
cotyped method of stigmatizing all humanitarian 
legislation as un-American, subversive of the Consti- 
tution, pacifistic, paternalistic, socialistic or com- 
munistic, as if these terms were synonymous, 

For instance, the Spider Web Chart, prepared in 
the office of General Amos Fries, head of the chem- 


ry yy 


ical warfare section of the War Department, at- 
tempted to prove that organizations supporting the 
Child Labor Amendment are communistic. And 
this chart was distributed under a government frank 
by General Fries until the pressure of an outraged 
public opinion forced the Secretary of War to re- 
pudiate it largely because of its inaccuracies. This 
and other instances that might be cited, show how 
unprincipled, unscrupulous and brazen are these 
pseudo-patriotic but un-American societies. 

These organizations, arrogating to themselves the 
right to dictate what constitutes patriotism, by sub- 
stituting distortions, perversions and even lies for 
facts, have attempted to blacken the names of Amer- 
ica’s foremost humanitarian leaders such as Jane 
Addams, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, Rose Schneider- 
man and a host of others. Great indeed must be the 
regret of genuine patriots and lovers of American 
idealism to find that these misrepresentations have 
influenced the unwary or unthinking to oppose as 
subversive, legislation for the protection of childhood 
and motherhood—legislation which has the endorse- 
ment of leaders of vision of all political faiths and 
of men who hold the highest office within the gift of 


the American electorate. 


The A. F. of T. notes with sorrow the loss of 
equilibrium of the American people as evidenced by 
the growing spirit of intolerance abroad in the land. 
We regret the cowardly attempts that are being 
made to discredit socially necessary legislation by 
sowing hatred, suspicion and distrust. In our humble 
judgment, America is not and cannot be menaced 
by “red radicalism” because Americans are too loyal 
and too devoted to their democratic traditions and 
because these subversive doctrines are contrary to the 
fundamental ideals of the American people and of 
organized labor in particular. 

America has a glorious future which is, however, 
seriously menaced by those “super-patriots” and 
psuedo-patriotic organizations which see “red” or 
which see the “hand of Moscow” in every piece of 
worthy legislation or in every attempt to bring 
nations together through the elimination of war—a 
relic of barbarism. Such conduct can only result in 
making meritorious legislation synonymous with “red 
radicalism and communism,” thus defeating the so- 
cial ends they profess to serve. We hope the teachers 
of America will do their part in helping to restore 
social sanity so that tolerance and brotherhood may 
play their part in winning for America a place of 





ALSTOODIYMART SKA MLIOD 92 





22 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


leadership in the struggle to bring about an interna- 
tional brotherhood of nations. 


In closing our legislative report we desire to di- 
rect the attention of our members to a brief survey 
of the achievements of our locals in helping to actual- 
ize our program. We note with pleasure not only 
some striking victories but, what is almost as im- 
portant, the preparation of bills embodying features 
of our program and their introduction into the var- 
ious state legislatures. Probably the most significant 
victories were the establishment of tenure laws in 
(a) Minnesota, where teachers in cities of the first 
class now receive protection; and (b) in California 
where all teachers were given security of tenure in 
place of localities with seven or more teachers. 


The efforts to secure protection against old age 
were signalized by the victory of the Illinois teachers 
who secured the passage of the voluntary retirement 
bill, by the amendment of the New York Pension 
Law providing a pension based upon the average 
salary earned during the last five instead of the last 
ten years; and by the launching of a campaign by 
the teachers of Minnesota for a state-wide pension 
law which will be on a sound actuarial basis. In the 
state of Wisconsin, our teachers successfully resisted 
all efforts to undermine their pension law. 

The movement for a Sabbatical leave is slowly 
gaining headway. The Minneapolis teachers won a 
signal victory, while a satisfactory form of a Sabbat- 
ical Leave is now in operation in New York City 
and in New Jersey. In California the teachers have 
begun their campaign for a law embodying the prin- 
ciples of our program. Their previous bill had passed 
both houses but was unfortunately vetoed by the 
governor. Both in the District of Columbia and in 
Georgia the question will be carefully considered 
during the coming year. 

In the struggle to achieve salaries adequate to the 
service being rendered by our profession, the teachers 
of New York City secured additional state aid 
amounting to $16,500,000 for 1928 and additional 
appropriations of $5,500,000 each year for three ad- 
ditional years. The Atlanta teachers not only secur- 
ed a new wage scale but were very successful in 
preventing a threatened reduction due to a financial 
shortage brought about by improper financing. In 
addition, the teachers of Chicago are to be congrat- 
ulated for having brought about the defeat of the 
tax bill which menaced sound school financing and 


proposed salary increases. 


This brief survey of the effects of our locals is 
indicative of the growing power and group con- 
sciousness of our members and their success in win- 
ning in an increased degree public support for the 
social legislative program of the American Federation 
of Teachers. We urge our locals to inaugurate educa- 
tional and legislative campaigns along the lines laid 
down in the report. We trust that the 1928 con- 
vention will have so many gains to record that the 
Legislative Committee will find it difficult to sum- 
marize them. Let us then take our part in the eco- 
nomic, social and political life of the communities in 
which we live to the end that our profession may win 
the place of leadership to which it is entitled. 

LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE. 
Abraham Lefkowitz, New York No. 5, 

Chairman. 
Hilma Anderson, Portland No. 111 
Mary C. Barker, Atlanta No. 89. 
W. M. Fishback, Sacramento H. S. No. 31 
Mollie Geary, St. Paul Women No. 28 
Mrs. Florence Hall Kirkpatrick, Chicago 
Women No. 3 

Mary E. McGough, St. Paul Women No. 28 
james A. Meade, Chicago Men No. 2 





OPENING ADDRESS 

(Continued from Page 9) 
Federation of Teachers and I think we have some 
prospects for the future in pulling us out of the 
morass in which we now find outselves. 

If we can lift ourselves out of the intellectual 
doldroms into which we have sunk we have accom- 
plished the best that can be accomplished for the 
present good of America. I wish you success in your 
deliberations. I do not need to pledge to you our 
faith in boldness of action. You are accustomed 
to action of a kind that is practical and at the same 
time far-seeing and I would almost say bold in its 
outlook. I wish I could remain with you and listen 
and get the inspiration that will come from the 
frank consideration of questions that are often not 
discussed in the outside world, not discussed in the 
N. E. A. and not discussed in other educational 
organizations, things that are not discussed in news- 
papers and not discussed very much in any other 
body. Possibly this is a delegate body and maybe 
a rank outsider wouldn’t be allowed, but the spirit 
of support of the Liberal Club of Chicago and the 
other groups with which I am associated, will be 
with you in these considerations and deliberations. 











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tir 
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win 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 23 


The Report of the Legislative Representative 


To the Eleventh Annual Convention of the American Federation of Teachers: 


Your legislative representative wants you to con- 
sider legislation not merely as that bill or this meas- 
ure, but legislation as a most important manifesta- 
tion of a functional democracy. 

During the last year our fight—and it has been 
a fight—has been not so much to get a bill through 
Congress as it has been to try in some way to help 
the citizens of the United States realize from whom 
and for what purpose attacks have been made on 
certain. measures, 

The war made cowards of many of us; the war 
removed what equilibrium many of us possessed. 
Restrictions of all sorts were enacted. Everything 
not meeting with the approval of those in power 
was condemned as pro-German—condemned, ostra- 
cised, cast out—as was done to Lindbergh’s father. 

And then after this came the Red terror. And that 
is with us still. Surely we trade unionists need not 
tell one another the menace of communism. We 
know it; hence we fight the real communists; fight 
them with a real thoroughness; oppose their destruc- 
tive tactics in every way. But we have a menace 
almost as great as the Reds. They are the see-Reds 
and the show-Reds. 

The Child Labor Amendment is today not ratified 
because of maliciously false propaganda. 

Attacks have been made and are being made on all 
the organizations supporting: 

First: A decent industrial program. 

Second: A program calling for humanitarian re- 
lations among the nations as well as among men; and 

Third: A measure making possible the advance- 
ment and power of true education. 

Let us analyze the opposition. It is not a simple 
direct something. We have few opponents in the 
open who frankly admit why they are fighting the 
measures in which we believe and who frankly ad- 
mit why they seek to have unsocial restrictions 
enacted. For a number of years there has been a 
peculiar alliance between certain groups which ap- 
parently have nothing in common except their desire 
to retard progress. It is not surprising therefore to 
find the most vituperative attack on social legisla- 
tion come from former anti-suffragists. In fact, 
as far back as 1915, the anti-suffrage publication, 
The Woman’s Protest, printed an article under the 
heading, “The Indissoluble Alliance—Suffragism, 


Socialism, Feminism.” 

When woman’s suffrage was won, most of the 
women who had opposed the enfranchisement of 
their sex, assumed their new responsibilities, even 
though they had not sought them. A small group 
however, continued to attack not only the leaders 
of the woman’s suffrage movement, but the measures 
which the organized women of America sought to 
ogtain. The Woman Patriot, the successor to The 
Woman’s Protest, continued and still continues its 
attack upon social legislation sponsored by the or- 
ganized women.of America. However, there is a 
very apparent, definite working co-operation between 
The Woman Patriot and certain manufacturing in- 
terests. The official publication of the Associated 
Industries of Massachusetts and the Wisconsin Manu- 
facturers’ Association have printed the speech by Mrs. 
Lilla May Monroe of Kansas, which sought to show 
that women’s clubs were used by Bolshevists. The 
material used by Mrs. Monroe appeared originally in 
The Woman Patriot of September 1 and 15, 1922, 
and was reprinted as a pamphlet entitled “Organizing 
Revolution Through Women and Children,” and was 
quoted in Ford’s Dearborn Independent of March 15 
and March 22, 1924 in articles which bore the titles, 
“Are Women’s Clubs Used by Bolshevists?” and 
“Why Don’t Women Investigate Propaganda?” The 
Associated Industries of Kentucky on April 10 and 
April 24, 1924, reprinted the Dearborn Independent 
articles. 

The magazine Industry, later called Industrial Pro- 
gress, formerly published in Washington and edited 
by two former editdrs of the official magazine of 
the National Manufacturers’ Association, Henry 
Harrison Lewis and Frederic W. Keough, expressed 
(September 15, 1920) its disappointment at the in- 
dustrial program adopted by the General Federation 
of Women’s Clubs at the Biennial Convention in Des 
Moines in June, 1920. On April 15, May 1 and 
May 15, 1921, it deplored the Industrial Program 
of the Young Women’s Christian Association. In 
July, 1922, Industrial Progress quoted from an article 
in The Woman Patriot under the heading “The 
Women’s Third International.” In August, 1922, 
it quoted again from The Woman Patriot and in- 
quired “Is America Facing a Slacker Movement?” 
In 1924 there appeared a laboriously manufactured 





THIR AMERICAN ‘TRACTERIED yo 








24 


“spider-web chart” which listed many of the or- 
ganizations working for the Child Labor Amend- 
ment and the Federal Department of Education un- 
der the caption “The Socialist Pacifist Movement in 
America is an Absolutely Fundamental and Integral 
Part of International Socialism.” It was a chart 
which had been prepared in the office of General 
Amos Fries, who is in charge of the Chemical War- 
fare section of the United States Army. Not only 
was this chart prepared by a subordinate in General 
Fries’ office but it was later distributed from that 
office under government frank. The representatives 
of the organizations attacked in this chart protested 
to the Honorable John W. Weeks, at that time Secre- 
tary of War, with the result that the following letter 
was received by the chairman of the committee: 


“War Department. 

Washington. 

“With reference to the letter from your Committee, dated April 
2, 1924, complaining of the injustice done your organization 
by the circulation of a chart by a subordinate in the War 
Department, you are informed that all the charts complained 
of in the possession of the Chemical Warfare Service, have been 
ordered destroyed. General Fries has been directed to inform 
all persons to whom these charts have been distributed from his 
office that there are errors in the chart and to request their 


destruction. 
I regret that charts containing the errors pointed out by 
your Committee were circulated by any branch of the War 


Department. 
Very sincerely, 
JOHN W. WEEKS, 
In reply refer to G-1-6410 Secretary of War.” 
Although this chart has been officially repudiated 


by the War Department and the subordinate of the 
Department under whose direction it was compiled 
has been ordered to inform those who received 
copies of the chart that it is incorrect, this 
chart and the material contained in it is still being 
quoted by those who oppose the Child Labor Amend- 
ment, Federal Department of Education and the 
Shepherd-Towner Infancy and Maternity Act. 

I am referring to some of the attacks which have 
been made in the past, because the same attacks from 
the same sources are still being made. On July 8, 
1926, Senator Thomas F. Bayard had put into the 
Congressional Record one of the most libelous at- 
tacks on women’s organizations supporting the ma- 
ternity and infancy act that could possibly have 
been made. This attack was presented to Con- 
gress by the Board of Directors of the Woman Patriot 
Publishing Company. Of this, the editor of The 
Woman Patriot says: “Not only the Maternity Act, 
but the origin, object, nature, methods and leader- 
ship of the Communist Conspiracy for Revolution in 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


T'LID ALADDICCART %TRlAMCLILCYD 























































America, through acts of pretended legislation for 
‘women and children,’ ‘labor,’ and the ‘farmer’ is 
the subject of the Petition to the Senate 
This brings to the fore another question with which 
we as citizens must concern ourselves. We recog- 
nize the need of congressional immunity, that is, we 
feel that a member of Congress should be free at any 
time to discuss any question on the floor of Congress 
as he deems best. However, there are some members 
of this body who have said things on the floor of 
Congress which were they said under other circum- 
stances and on other occasions would lay the speakers 
open to a libel suit. I refer particularly to the un- 
scrupulous, untruthful attacks of Senator Bayard of 
Delaware, Congressman Blanton of Texas and Con- 
gressman Sisnofsky of Michigan. ‘These men have 
used the Congressional Record as their medium for 
attacking you at your expense. ‘ 

I feel that, first of all, it is necessary for us to see 
that our own members are informed not only of 
the value of the measures which we support, but that 
they are ready at all times to answer these foul op- 
ponents who resort to unfair tactics at every stage 
of the fight. It behooves each one of you to inform 
his congressman and his senator that when your 
organization is attacked on the floor of Congress that 
you consider it his duty as well as yours to see that 
the untruthful attack is answered and the truth told. 
It is necessary that we continue in our fight with 
renewed vigor and that we try to clear the air so 
that all of our time need not be taken up in a nega- 
tive fight, but that much of it can be given to secur- 
ing positive betterment. 

Of the measures before the Federal Congress which 
I wish to call to your attention, I place first the 
creation of a Federal Department of Education. I 
repeat that we must be very careful that the bill is 
drafted and worded in such a way as to guarantee 
to the sovereign states absolute autonomy in educa- 
tional administration; that the Department be a fact 
finding research organization which could co- 
ordinate information from public and private sources 
for the good of all. We must be equally careful to 
make sure that in this bill there be no provision 
which would lend itself to a misrepresentation or 2 
misinterpretation of the functions of this Depart- 
ment. I have in mind particularly a section which 
appears in the Curtis-Reed bill, as at present drafted, 
which proposes to create a Federal Council on Educa- 
tion. Such a council, it seems to me, would not 
have to be created by statutory action, but could 
















































more flexibly function were it (when it be deemed 
necessary to create such a body) created by Execu- 
tive order. A council created by statute becomes 
permanent and its findings and announcements are 
apt to be regarded as official and final. Such a 
council, I fear, could easily develop into a source 
of propaganda, which propaganda would be particu- 
larly serious, for while it would, in fact, be but the 
opinion of a particular departmental representative 
at the Council, it would be regarded as the official 
opinion of the government on educational matters. 
I therefore again recommend opposition to section 
7 of the Curtis-Reed bill as at present drafted, but 
ask that we reaffirm our position in favor of the 
creation of a Federal Department of Education for 
research. 

I recommend that in keeping with our policy op- 
posing any legislative restrictions on academic free- 
dom, that we oppose any bill such as the Connery 
Bill, introduced in the last session of Congress, which 
sought to have Congress determine the accuracy of 
content matter in history textbooks, and which we 
are told will be reintroduced. I think that we may 
take a just pride in noting that the American Federa- 
tion of Teachers was the only educational organiza- 
tion opposing this measure at the last Congress. It 
is also interesting to know in this connection, that 
during the hearings on this question, the army chap- 
lain, who so earnestly sought the enactment of this 
measure, pointed out how wicked some of our schools 
are becoming, in that (he knows this, he says, as a 
matter of fact) in some cases the functions of the 
League of Nations are being taught. 

I recommend that we continue to support meas- 
ures asking adequate appropriations for the Women’s 
Bureau and the Children’s Bureau of the United 
States Department of Labor. We have at all times 
found these two bureaus to be tremendously helpful 
to us when we need accurate information, and we 
feel that their social value is tremendous. 

I have been informed that a measure similar to 
the Welsh bill which proposes to deny the use of 
government funds to any educational institution 
where military training is compulsory will be re- 
introduced. I recommend that we continue to sup- 
port any measure embodying this principle. 

While we recognize that the ratification of an all- 
inclusive arbitration treaty with France such as 
Briand has proposed will very likely be a matter of the 
somewhat distant future, I feel that the principle 
embodied in such a proposal is of such tremendous 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 25 


value that it behooves us to start even now when 
the goal is still remote to do the necessary educational 
work which the eventual ratification of such a treaty 
may demand. 

I recommend that we reaffirm our position in 
support of the ratification of the Poison Gas Protocol. 
This measure was favorably reported by the Foreign 
Relations Committee of the United States Senate and 
had the active support of General John J. Pershing, 
who commanded our expeditionary forces during the 
war. However, no sooner had this measure been 
reported out of committee when a terrific opposition 
to it arose. In spite of the fact that General Pershing 
ardently supported it and that many mén from the 
service endorsed it, Mr. John Taylor, legislative rep- 
resentative of the American Legion, organized a tre- 
mendous attack on it with the result that Senator 
Borah was forced to have the measure referred back 
to the committee in order to prevent its defeat on the 
floor. I do not attack Major Taylor, but I do com- 
mend to your attention the opinion of Congressman 
Hamilton Fish of New York, a founder of the 
American Legion and at present one of its most 
active members, who on the floor of the United 
States Congress deplored the fact that the attack on 
this measure in the name of the Legion should come 
from Major Taylor who is himself the treasurer of 
the chemical manufacturing concern which sells 
chemicals to the government and which feels perhaps 
that its sales would be affected by the ratification 
of this treaty. 

During the last Congress, the bill presented by us 
for the creation and appointment of educational at- 
taches was introduced. The sponsor of the bill, Mr. 
Henry Allen Cooper of Wisconsin, one of the loftiest 
idealists and one of the finest, most brilliant charac- 
ters ever to be a member of the United States Con- 
gress, has advised us and is advising us on how to 
proceed. With a man like Mr. Cooper sponsoring 
the measure for us and with the assurance that we 
may, at any time, and at all times, have his advice 
and support, I feel nothing more can be said on this 
measure at this time. 

Inasmuch as the Federal Congress legislates for the 
District of Columbia, I recommend endorsement of 
the following projects of interest to Washington: 
First: The enactment of a measure providing for 
free textbooks for Washington school children in all 
parts of the system. Second: ‘The enactment of 
legislation providing for Sabbatical year for Wash- 

(Continued on Page 30) 








THE AMERICAN TEACHER 27 








but the origin, object, nature, methods and leader- 


tion. Such a council, it seems to me, would not 


ship of the Communist Conspiracy for Revolution in have to be created by statutory action, but could 


26 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


The American Teacher 


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








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aS 


INVOCATION 

















By MAX EASTMAN 
Truth, be more precious to me than the eyes 
Of happy love; burn hotter in my throat 
Than passion; and possess me like my pride; 
More sweet than freedom; more desired than joy; 
More sacred than the pleasing of a friend. 








TEACHERS’ UNIONS—WHY? 


Teachers being as they are, are more influenced by 
what they can give than by what they can get. The 
social significance of the union movement reaches 
out and claims them. It is indeed true that to no other 
organized body of citizenry than Organized Labor 
can the teachers turn for help in their economic 
and social problems, for so sympathetic an analysis of 
the situation. But beyond that is the gratitude for 
what Labor has done for education and the recog- 
nition of the labor movement as a great social move- 
ment—a constructive movement for social better- 
ment—a movement in the interest of the humaniza- 
tion of life—the most vital in the world today. 


Organized Labor has a splendid record in the de- 
velopment of our public schools. Organized Labor 
was the major instrumentality in establishing the 
public school system. One hundred years ago the 
courageous and far-seeing advocacy of free educa- 
tion by Labor was responsible in a large part for 
the establishment of our system of public education. 
Not to the humanitarian leaders with Horace Mann 
at their head, but to the growing class of wage 


earners, are we indebted for our tax supported 
schools. 

The spirit of social idealism, social consciousness, 
vision, bring the. teacher into the labor movement, 
Labor offers its co-operation in working out prob- 
lems and in carrying through plans for the achieve- 
ment of higher levels of excellence for all groups. 
It is an integrating, not a disruptive force in society, 
It is the self-conscious organized expression of the 
workers’ struggle for their own welfare and for the 
public welfare. It represents the social idealism of 
a large number of our fellow citizens with whom we 
teachers as workers have much in common, who are 
walking forward, facing the future, instead of walk- 
ing backward, looking into the past. Labor believes 
in brotherhood, in democracy, in humanity. It sets 
itself against all forms of oppression and human deg- 
radation and arrays its strength against the enemies 
of mankind that it may achieve social justice for all. 

But how can the teachers contribute to the great 
labor movement? What return does organized labor 
expect from the teachers? Teachers and labor alike 
are determined to free the schools of special propa- 
ganda. What does labor expect in return for its 
admittedly powerful support? What can the teacher 
give? 

For one thing, labor believes, rightly or wrongly, 
that the trained intelligence of the teachers should 
be able to make a contribution to the solving of 
vexed social and economic, as well as educational 
problems. They can bring to the labor struggle 
intellectual balance and penetration. They can help 
to give to those struggles a direction that is unfalter- 
ingly social. The teachers have the heavy respon- 
sibility of showing that the vaunted value of their 
education is not overrated, when faced with the 
living problems of this difficult period. For the first 
time the teachers have the opportunity, not merely 
to teach history, more or less ancient, and indirectly 
to influence future history, but actively to assist in 
the making of current history. They are enabled to 
come into first hand contact with the economic, 
civic, and social conditions for which they are sup- 
posed to be preparing their pupils. 

Teachers’ unions not in expectation of great econ- 
omic rewards, but in the hope of being a part of 2 
great movement for making this world a better 
place in which to live! 





There is a necessary limit to our achievement, but 
none to our attempt. 





ould 


ted 


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ob- 


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Ps. 
ty. 
the 
the 

of 


we 
are 


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embodied in such a proposal is of such tremendous 


—_" on eee 


(Continued on Page 30) 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


STARTING THE SCHOOL YEAR RIGHT 


By Ambrose L. Subrie, Professor of Teachers’ College 
and Normal School Education, New York University. 


I, BEGINNING PUPILS 


With the opening of the new school year several 
millions of children will enter for the first time the 
nearly 800,000 classrooms of the public schools of 
America. It is a matter of far-reaching importance 
that they should be well received by their teachers, 
that they should be properly classified and adjusted to 
the school organization in which they are to work 
and that they should be made happy in their new 
environment. 

Every well-trained teacher accepts responsibility 
for doing everything in her power to create in her 
classroom at all times and especially at the opening of 
the school year such a spirit of good will as to make 
every student feel happy and contented with his asso- 
ciates and satisfied with the social environment in 
which he must do his daily work. 

George Dooley once said (and I quote him in the 
vernacular) :““When you’re gittin’ edicated it don’t 
matter what you study gist so you don’t like it.” 
Until twenty-five years ago there was a prevailing 
belief that school work must of necessity be full of 
unpleasant tasks and unhappy experiences. 

But times have changed. We now think of a school 
as a place where young people come together happily 
to educate themselves and each other with the help 
of good teachers. We no longer consider a school 
successful in the fulfillment of its mission unless 
children and teachers are happy in their work. 
Teachers are no longer taskmasters or timekeepers. 
We think of a good teacher as a comrade, as one in 
whose presence individual effort and group co-opera- 
tion are easy and natural. We think of her as a 
foreman who can create worthy ideals, right attitudes 
and permanent life interests, who knows how to pro- 
mote co-operation and to develop the team spirit, who 
as an expert workman herself is able to direct the 
efforts of others to successful achievements. 

Almost every child who early in the first year of 
his school career gets properly adjusted to such an 
organization and in each succeeding year comes under 
the influence of such teacher is reasonably sure to 
succeed. It is a matter of supreme importance that 
all of the millions who enter our schools for the 
first time this fall should get a good start under 
teachers who know how to promote joy in co-opera- 
tive endeavor. 


Il. BEGINNING TEACHERS 

With the opening of the new school year about 
120,000 teachers will enter for the first time upon 
the work of instruction in American public schools, 
It is likewise a matter of far-reaching importance 
that they should be well received by their fellow 
teachers of experience, by their principals, by their 
supervisors, by their superintendents, and by the com- 
munities in which their work is to be done. 

Every well-trained and efficient principal accepts 
responsibility for doing everything in his power to 
create in his building at all times and especially at 
the opening of the year such a dynamic manifesta- 
tion of the spirit of helpfulness as to make the new 
teacher on his staff—and especially the beginner— 
feel thoroughly at home in the happy comradeship 
of a group of congenial professional associates. The 
really successful principal is one who can quickly and 
completely win for his organization the professional 
loyalty of all who join his instructional staff. There 
is an element of tragedy in the way in which, and 
the speed with which, some otherwise efficient prin- — 
cipals lose the confidence of beginning teachers. 

The writer has, in the course of many years, enjoy- 
ed the professional confidence of thousands of normal 
school graduates. Scores and scores of them have told 
him of their heartaches at the beginning of their 
teaching experience, occasioned by the failure of the 
principals, supervisors and superintendents to man- 
ifest any appreciation of their difficulties, or even to 
give them credit for worthy motives and painstaking 
endeavor. 

The principal should take great care to give his 
new teachers, and especially his beginning teachers, 
such assignments as will tend to insure their success 
from the first day. And he should lose no chance to 
speak a word of encouragement whenever possible. 
The supervisor should go out of her way to bring 
some real assistance and commendation to the begin- 
ner as early in the term as possible. The superintend- 
ent should be especially soliticious about the welfare, 
the happiness and the success of the beginner. About 
one-sixth of all our teachers in any given year are 
beginners. It is a matter of the utmost importance 
that they should all get a good start under the most 
favorable circumstances and that they should, from 
the beginning, be made to feel at home with their 
experienced comrades and their superior officers in 





Hold by the right; double your might. 


- we WwW eves 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 





American life. 


From E,. E. Sehwartztrauber, Lincoln High 
School, Portland, Oregon; Vice President, Ameri- 
can Federation of Teachers: 


“For the first time in all my experience with 
current events magazines for history students, I 
have found what I want. The Weekly News Re- 
view is a challenge to open-minded study of na- 
tional and international problems. Well-written ar- 
ticles on vital issues—as many as students can di- 
gest in a week, thought-provoking editorials, timely 
magazine reviews and excellent monthly tests make 
the Weekly News Review ideal.” 


provements. 


Federation Leaders Endorse the Weekly News Review 


Many members of the American Federation of Teachers are using the Weekly 
News Review in their classes as a text for the study of current history, and they 
have expressed appreciation of its fair-minded and liberal attitude on the issues of 
Here are some of the comments that have come to us: 


From Mr. Charles B. Stillman, Late Technical 
High School, Chicago, former President, American 
Federation of Teachers: 


“I am still finding your paper by far the best 
current events periodical for class room use I have 
ever run across.” 


From Miss Lucie W. Allen, Lakeview High School, 
Chicago, Vice President, American Federation of 
Teachers: 


“I am liking the paper more and more. Other 
teachers are speaking highly of it to me. The clear 
presentation of differing views, the occasional dar- 
ing, the explanation of involved situations have 
pleased the children and have stimulated thought.” 


These comments came to us during last year’s use of the paper. This year we are making marked im- 
We have established a Research Bureau for the use of our subscribers; we have added two 


supplementary pages in which we explain in simple terms the business, industrial and labor developments, 
describe problems of various cities and localities and furnish suggestions and bibliographies to students en- 
gaged in the Constitution oratorical contests. We also make a very attractive magazine offer. The sub- 
scription price is the same as before; a dollar a year or fifty cents a semester for clubs and $1.20 a year for 
single copies. Write for samples. 


WEEKLY NEWS REVIEW, Lock Box 1915, Washington, D. C. 











THE AMERICAN LEGION AND FREE 
SPEECH 


A new tendency in the ranks of the American 
Legion toward “old-fashioned” constitutional Amer- 
ican free speech is revealed in an article by Rupert 
Hughes in the July issue of the American Legion 
Monthly and in an editorial by William Allen White 
of the Emporia Gazette, quoted in the same issue. 


Commenting on the action of the Legion of Em- 
poria in refraining from interfering with an address 
in that town by a young militant pacifist, an ex- 
soldier, Mr. White says in part: 


. . + « “The fine thing about the Legionnaires in 
Emporia is that without threat, without hindrance, 
without the slightest disturbance from the men who 
disagreed with him, this young militant pacifist 
spoke his piece, said his say, declared his creed, pre- 
sented his argument, and went his way from Empo- 
ria to the next town. 

“Free speech is one of the American guarantees 
of the American constitution. Sometimes it is hard 
to keep the guarantee but it is always imperative to 
keep it and the Gazette desires to tip a respectful 
hat to the Legion boys of Emporia.” 





Woman’s Century Club 
of Chicago 


aE 


An 
OUTSTANDING CLUB 
for 
OUTSTANDING WOMEN 


3 3 


New Executive Office 
Tower Building 

6 North Michigan 
Chicago, Illinois 


Suite 1607 











THE AMERICAN TEACHER > 


REPORT OF LEGISLATIVE REPRESENTATIVE 
(Continued from Page 25) 

ington teachers. Third: The naming of a school ff | — 

in the District of Columbia for Samuel Gompers. } P u rchas e 
Federal legislation, to be sure, constitutes but a | 

small part of our legislative program. Our most 

active locals and our national office must continue | e q u O t 

to give support to our fellow workers in states which |] - ; 

are not so well organized, whenever and wherever | 


the need arises. In view of the fact that the ten- | She e ts a nd 
dency to curb by legislative action the personal free- jf ° 

dom of the teacher and the academic freedom of the Pillow Cases 
school is so widespread, we must concern ourselves 


with this question. We must do more than merely | wis 
regret the fact that since the war there have been 


over 300 legislative restrictions on academic freedom 
enacted. We must educate the public on the serious- | UNION MADE 
ness of such a condition and make them realize how 


such actions curb not only their personal freedom, but Local No. 33—Salem, Mass. 


the freedom of all future generations. UNITED TEXTILE WORKERS | 
of America 








Particularly significant are these negative restric- 
tive legislative acts when we realize the crying need | 
for positive constructive action. Do you realize the |] AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR 
large number of states in the Union which actually | 
do not have compulsory attendance laws? There are 














Buy Union Stamped Shoes 








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


Boot & Shoe Workers’ Union 


Affiliated with the American Federation of Labor 


246 SUMMER STREET, BOSTON, MASS. 


COLLIS LOVELY CHARLES L. BAINE 
General President General Secretary-Treasurer 











30 


21 states which exempt children from school attend- 
ance if they live too far away from a school. There 
are 13 states which exempt a child from attendance 
at school if, for one reason or another, he is deemed 
too poor to attend. Less than one third of the states 
at present provide for a school census. Out of 150 
cities, covering every state in the union survey, only 
28 per cent grant free textbooks to the pupils. ‘Posi- 
tive constructive legislation is needed. Direct the 
attention of your legislators thereto. That, it seems 
to me, is the best answer in our fight against restric- 
tive legislation. 

The Washington office is only too, glad to assist 
any of the locais in any of their legislative work and 
hopes that the locals will use it. 

Respectfully submitted, 
SELMA M. BORCHARDT, 
Legislative Representative American Federation of 
Teachers. 





FEDERAL AID FOR THE SCHOOLS 


Our legislative representative is at present 
gathering and compiling data showing the effect 
of the Mississippi floods on the schools of the area 
affected. 

The children of the nation are the nation’s great- 
est concern. Let not the politicians, who may wish 
to make general aid to the distressed people of this 
area a matter of politics, deny the children their 
rights to school. 

The American Federation of Teachers feel that 
the federal government must and surely will help. 





The probability that we may fail in the struggle 
ought not to deter us from the support of a cause 
that we deem to be just.—Abraham Lincoln. 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


Dear Editor: 

Your readers will, I think, be interested to know of 
a One Day Conference on “Parent Education” in 
New York City at the Hotel Pennsylvania, Wed- 
nesday, November 2, 1927, under the auspices of the 
Child Study Association of America, Inc. 

The morning session will be devoted to the dis- 
cussion of the Family and the Foundation of Char- 
acter, with an introduction by Mrs. Howard S. Gans, 
the president of the Association. Dr Will Russell, 
Dean, Teachers’ College, Columbia University, will 
be chairman of this session. Mrs. Sidonie M. Gruen- 
berg, director of the Child Study Association, will 
speak on How Parents Establish Standards and Ideals; 
Dr. Lawson G. Lowery, director of the Institute of 
Child Guidance, on The Parent’s Part in Sex-Social 
Guidance; Dr. Porter Lee, director, New York School 
of Social Work, will discuss Parents and the Use of 
Leisure. 

There will be a luncheon session at which The 
Home’s Unconscious Influence on Individual Failure 
and Success will be taken up. Dr. Harry D. Kitson, 
professor of education, Teachers’ College, Columbia 
University, will speak on Home Situations as Sources 
of Conflict, and the Need for Vocational Guidance 
and Adjustment. 

The program for the evening session is Opportun- 
ities for Parents in Creative Citizenship; How Parents 
Can Determine the Character cf Public Education 
by Frederick V. Robinson, president of the College of 
the City of New York; How Social and Economic 
Limitations of the Existing Home Affect Its Func- 
tion in the Community by Dr. Ernest R. Groves, 
Professor of Social Science at Boston University; and 
the Parent’s Contribution to the Child’s Social Ad- 
justment by Dr. Arthur H. Ruggles, Superintendent 
of the Butler Hospital, Providence, R. I. 

Yours very truly, 
CORA FLUSSER, 








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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 31 


LOCAL NEWS 


The Chicago Federation of Men Teachers and the 
Chicago Federation of Women High School Teach- 
ers published in September, a very interesting eight- 
page bulletin dealing with the hectic Chicago situa- 
tion. 

These locals will have a joint dinner at the Men’s 
City Club the evening of October 28. The principal 
speaker will be Peter Manniche, founder of the 
International Folk School, Helsinger, Denmark, and 
the subject is International Education. 

Abraham Lefkowitz, New York Local No. 5, 
attended the convention of the New York State 
Federation of Labor in Syracuse, August 23-25, and 
served on the Committee on Education. 

Mary C. Barker, president of the American Fed- 
eration of Teachers, is in Los Angeles at the conven- 
tion of the American Federation of Labor as a 
delegate of the Atlanta, Ga., Trades Council. . 

Our secretary-treasurer, Florence Curtis Hanson, 
is the delegate of the American Federation of Teach- 
ers at the American Federation of Labor convention 
which opened in Los Angeles October 3. 

Mrs. Hanson will visit locals in Fresno, San Fran- 
cisco, Sacramento, Vallejo, and Portland. She will 
stop in Seattle and will visit Denver, Colorado, and 
several places in Wyoming. 

James A. Meade, Beulah Berolzheimer and Flor- 
ence Curtis Hanson represented their locals at the 
convention of the Illinois State Federation of Labor 
in East St. Louis, September 12-17. They served 
on the committee on schools. Mrs. Hanson visited 
the locals in Murphysboro, Collinsville and Granite 
City during the week. 

Dr. Ambrose L. Suhrie of New York University, 
who was tendered the presidency of the Georgia 
State College for Women at Milledgeville, will con- 
tinue his work at New York University at the head 
of the division which is devoted to the training of 


administrative officers and teachers for the normal 
schools and teachers colleges of the United States 
and as chairman of the committee in charge of the 
regional conference of normal school and teachers 
college officers and teachers which is held annually at 
the Hotel Pennsylvania, New York City, in the 
month of April. 





RESOLUTIONS ADOPTED AT ELEVENTH 
CONVENTION 

WHEREAS, It would strengthen and improve the 
organization work of the American Federation of 
Teachers by increasing the contact between the 
national office and the locals; and 

WHEREAS, Information of local situations is im- 
perative for effective work by the national office; 

BE IT RESOLVED, That all local organizations 
be required to select a member of its governing board, 
committee, or council, whose duty it shall be to 
keep the national office regularly informed on such 
activities and situations as the national secretary shall 
request, and the governing board shall direct or 
approve. 





DR. HART GOES TO WISCONSIN 

Dr. Joseph K. Hart, author of “Adult Education,” 
“Light from the North,” “Democracy in Education,” 
and other well-known educational works, has accept- 
ed a professorship of education in the University of 
Wisconsin, with special reference to the study of 
the problems of adult education in that state. 

Dr. Hart took over the duties as head of his 
department at the closing of the fall term. The 
invitation was extended him by President Glenn 
Frank. Dr. Hart has acted as educational editor of 
The Survey, and has travelled both as an observer 
and lecturer to summer sessions of the larger uni- 
versities, both North and South, at home and abroad. 

Dr. Hart has long been an active member of the 
American Federation of Teachers. 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 














American Federation 


of 


Teachers 


327 S. La Salle Street 
CHICAGO, ILL. 


Affiliated with the American Federation of Labor 
Organized April 15, 1916 
EE 09 


The American Federation of Teachers desires to 
establish an intimate contact and an effective co-opera- 
tion between the teachers and the other workers of the 
community. | 

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

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


Our Slogan Is: 
Democracy in Education: Education for Democracy 


“The American Teacher” is published monthly by the 
American Federation of Teachers. Membership dues 
carry subseription to the magazine. To all others the 
subscription price is $2.00 per year, 25 cents per copy. 





































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