STACK s 


STACKS 


AMERICAN 
‘TEACHER 


| “TERENCE 
DO WOT LOAN 


WHY JOIN? 


In every organized calling there are to be found 
individuals who hold aloof from their fellows and 
refuse to lend their aid to joint efforts to improve 
the conditions and status of their work. It is to 
be noted, however, that these same individuals 
are in nowise reluctant to accept the benefits 
which have been gained through the sacrifices of 
others. Absent at ploughing and seed-time they 
are in full evidence at harvest. Such are those 
who never supported the National Union of 
Teachers in the difficult years but are now 
contentedly enjoying the improved salaries or 
pensions which the Union did so much to obtain. 
Selfishness masquerading as wise caution has 
impeded many wholesome enterprises, and there 
are some qualified teachers who refrain from 
becoming Registered because they do not see any 
immediate gain to themselves. This aloofness 
marks them as being deficient in the kind of 
magnanimous professional spirit which is essential 
to the welfare of their calling, but they have no 
excuse for being ignorant of the Registration 
movement. 


Secretary, Royal Society of Teachers 


—From The London Teacher 
for December 12, 1930. 








Organ of the American Federation of Teachers 


FEBRUARY, 1931 VOL. XV. No. 5 




















Liberal-Constructive-Impartial 


HE publications of the Civic Education Service should commend 

themselves to members of the American Federation of Teachers, 
because they interpret the developments of the day in such a way as 
to encourage independent thinking. They are thoroughly democratic in 
spirit, scholarly in tone and simple in style. They are recommended by 
Federation leaders. Many members use these publications in their 
classes. 


The Weekly News Review A Weekly Letter to Teachers U 
An interpretation of current affairs for Senior correlating history and civics material with the The 
High Schools. current events of the week is sent free to each 

teacher using the Weekly News Review or the The 

Junior Review in class. References and other the 

helpful suggestions to teachers are also included. cons 

afte 
ina 
izati 
they 
ADDRESS 0 


Civic Education Service erat 


LOCK BOX 1915 WASHINGTON, D. C. aot 
tion: 


now 
For 
direc 


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CONTENTS tans 
THAT YOU ARE ENTITLED TO in 


. A voice and a vote in the management of your % 


What Does It Protit a Union school ; ; 
Joseph Jablonower. ; Independence of thot, freedom of expression and ex- wish 

Legislative Program of New York.. ercise of initiative ; : 1. 
A. Lefkowits. . Working conditions that are sanitary, cheerful and 

inspiring. 

Henry R. Linville. . A promotion in rank based on merit only; leadi 

Weatin Pees of Won Vette ‘ . A salary commensurate with the dignity and in- nique 
Paul Augustine portance of your office? 

Editorials the 1 


Manumit School | 
Sarah Cleghorn. JOIN HE HOST leade 
Buffalo Industrial Teachers Association... OF READERS OF lorge 


Brookwood ° all, t 

Medical Board Case The American Teacher great 

An Adventure in Education ; Published by teachers for principle; net for profi being 
Anna S. L. Brown. THE AMERICAN TEACHER is the only teachers izatic 

magazine whose sole excuse for existence is the desitt 

to improve the working conditions of the teachers, and B matte 

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An interpretation of contemporary life and lit- goes free as supplementary material with club 
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; Age rank 
PE UD ao cia warnmd wwe sake 


Six Little Schools at Bryn Mawr 
Eleanor C. Coit. 




















The American Teacher 


Entered as second class matter Oct. 27, 1926, at the post office at Chicago, Ill. under the Act of March 3, 1879. 

Acceptance for mailing at speciai rate of postage provided for in Sec. 1103, Act of Feb. 28, 1925, authorized 

Nov. 3, 1926. Published monthly except July, August and September by American Federation of Teachers, 
506 South Wabash Avenue, Chicago, Ill. 


teens XIV, No. 5 FEBRUARY, 1931 Two Dollars a Year 


What Does It Profit a Union? 


By Joseph Jablonower, First Vice-President, Local 5, New York 


Unions are more than forms of organization. “doles” that are wrested in their behalf from 
They are organisms. Unions undergo change. school administrations and from boards of edu- 
They cannot be made to stay put. Sometimes cation, This state of things is accompanied by 
the changes in the organizations are willed by the two very unfortunate by-products: first, that 
constituents. Often the constituents discover the organization will not attract to itself a grow- 
after a period that organizations have changed ing membership because it is not calling people 
ina manner not anticipated by them. The organ- to action, and second, that those who do join 
izations just “get that way.” They drift unless the organization because only of the practical 
they are directed. benefits which it promises, do so in the same 

Our teachers’ unions and our American Fed-_ Sterile spirit in which they would take out a 
eration of Teachers have shown that they are policy with a sound insurance company. In such 
not immune from the tendency to drift in direc- cases the organization loses its creative possi- 
tions that were not originally and that are not _ bilities even though it may show growth in num- 
now definitely contemplated by the membership. bers. Its initial purpose to act as a leaven in 
For good or ill, the organizations have taken a the educational world and in society goes by the 
direction which should at least be understood, in board. 
order that we know whether we want to con- 2. The organizations are becoming “prac- 
tinue in the course, or change, if we can, the line tical.” The tendency to place the getting of im- 
of motion. mediate results before all else leads individuals 

I see three aspects of this drift, and of these I and groups to discard the idealism that is the 
wish to treat here briefly. promise of their youth for what may prove to 

1. The leadership is moving away from the be a sorry mess of pottage. Practical achieve- 
rank and file. Through practice in organizing and ments tempt because they are tangible. The 
leading, certain persons develop a skill anda tech- vocabulary of idealism is particularly suspect 
nique that make them almost indispensable in the now, in this day of human engineering and meas- 
organization and that have the effect of making uring. We will not be called visionaries, so we 
the rank and file acquiesce in the work of the divest ourselves of vision. We investigate phys- 
leaders, Persons in leadership and in the ranks ical conditions in school, methods of rating 
forget, if they ever analyze their experience at teachers, resources for financing schools, pension 
all, that the skill of the leaders is acquired at funds, and the like, and call it a day. 
great expense, in trial and error, the expense It is questionable whether such practical ques- 
being borne by all of the members in the organ- tions are avoidable or whether they should be 
zation, and that not infrequently it has been a avoided. It is certain, however, that once 
matter of chance as to which among the possible- launched on such work the organizations are in 
agents are to be entrusted with the destinies of danger of becoming completely absorbed in it, 
the organization. to the exclusion of the more fundamental tasks 

The leaders are in danger of becoming techni- to which the unions have initially dedicated them- 
cans in manipulating their organizations. The selves: working out values in education, and 
rink and file are in danger of learning to accept, achieving, as teachers, a place for the profession 
more or less gratefully, the “concessions” or in the larger social efforts at revaluing and re- 








2 THE AMERICAN 


making present social relations. It is Professor 
Dewey (we in the union movement quote him 
frequently and fondly) who sees as the distinct 
function of teachers’ unions the emphasis which 
they can place on professional standards, pro- 
fessional rights, professional obligations. He 
sees it aS the legitimate function of the other 
types of organization to consider specific prob- 
lems of pedagogic and administrative devices. 

3. Finally, we are giving hostages to the 
status quo, It is reasonable that in efforts to 
achieve practical reforms and to obtains tangible 
results, officers and administrators of organiza- 
tions collaborate with officials of school systems. 
It is well that they do so. Such collaboration re- 
veals to each side the point of view of the other 
and develops in each an understanding of the 
whole of the problem on which it is working. 
But collaboration does not always stop at this 
point. One of our locals is now on the rocks 
because, in part, at least, its officers fraternized 
with city officials, with whom, as the event 
proved, to fraternize was to stoop too low, no 
matter how great the gain. Methods cannot be 
divorced from their consequences on the very 
people who employ them. The end, to gain 
which, calls for means that degrade the individual 
or organization that seeks it is an end that is un- 
worthy. 

Progressive education emphasizes the educa- 
tive value of the activity, and assigns only sec- 
ondary place to the product of the activity. This 


TEACHER 


it does because it gives thought to the transform. 
ing effect of the activity on the agent himself. 
It is no less true in adult life and in the work 
of teachers’ unions. However desirable the end 
we seek to achieve in the way of school organ- 
ization and teacher status, we must work toward 
that end on high ground. And those whose aid 
we seek in this endeavor can be permitted to give 
it to us only on the same high ground. We can- 
not afford to accept any measure from adminis- 
trative forces as a concession or in trade. To do 
so is to give hostage to reaction. We can afford 
to give nothing in exchange. We can continue 
to give only as we have given in the past: our 
best thought toward working out ideals in educa- 
tion and in the common life, and our best energy 
toward quickening the social consciousness in 
order that these ideals may be approximated, 

We must reconcile ourselves to a slow process. 
To attempt to purchase quick results would be 
to betray ourselves into hands of the forces that 
we have reason to fear and to combat. The only 
sure way of organic growth is the way that leads 
us to give thought continuously to the needs of 
the classroom teacher in his capacity as a worker 
with children and as a worker among workers; 
the way that leads us to work out cooperatively 
the ends towards which the teacher shall do 
his work as teacher; the way that leads us to 
achieve for the teaching profession a place among 
the creative forces that are making for right re- 
lations among men. 





The Legislative Program of Local 5, New York 


By A. Lefkowitz, Representative 


General activity based upon a social program is 
indispensable to successful teacher unionism. One 
aspect of the manifold activity of Local 5, New 
York, is its legislative work. From the positive 
viewpoint, the union seeks to enact legislation 
not only to further the pension, salary and work- 
ing interests of teachers, but especially to make 
the schools function more efficiently as social 
agencies. Negatively, the union seeks to achieve 
these ends by seeking to prevent the enactment of 
legislation inimical to public education and to the 
best interests of the teachers. What is the pro- 
gram of Local 5 for the legislative session of 
1931? 


In order to advance the pension rights and 
interests of the teachers, Local 5 is preparing to 
take an active interest in furthering the passage 
of amendments to the pension law. These amen¢- 
ments will enable the Teachers Retirement Board 
to grant teachers seeking retirement, credit for 
trade, business or other non-teaching experiences. 
Another will make it possible fer teachers to te 
tire after 30 years of service with a pension 
based upon a fractional basis such as 30-35 or 
32-35 of their service retirement instead of am 
actuarial equivalent which is much smaller. Stil 
another amendment will make it possible for 
teachers to borrow from the Annuity Savings 











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THE AMERICAN 


Fund at the rate of 6% instead of having to 
secure two indorsers as well as paying a heavy 
tribute to the loan sharks, 

To minimize as far as possible the decline in 
teacher morale due to ever increasing interference 
in educational affairs by local politicians or to the 
failure of local educational administrators to ad- 
vance outstanding educational leaders, the union 
will advocate again the enactment of legisla- 
tion to provide for the establishment of a merit 
system for all exempt positions below that of 
associate superintendent ; that is, district superin- 
tendents, principals of high schools, training 
schools, and continuation schools, directors and 
assistant directors. In order that educational re- 
sponsibility may be centralized, it is proposed in 
another bill to make the Board of Superinten- 
dents an advisory body to the Superintendent of 
Schools, upon whom all educational responsibility 
is to be centered, just as executive responsibility 
is lodged in the President of the United States. 

At the present time every locality in the state 
receives an educational quota from the state de- 
partment of education based upon population, 
assessed valuation of land, and upon the average 
daily attendance as well as upon the number of 
teachers employed, exclusive of the kindergarten 
teachers. To encourage the establishment of 
kindergartens throughout the state, the Union 
will support a bill to put the kindergarten teachers 
under the state equalization law. Should this 
amendment to the educational law be approved, 
every locality will receive a state appropriation 
equivalent to about $1,200 per teacher. New 
York City will receive from the New York State 
Department of Education a total quota of over 
$45,000,000 for support of its schools for the 
year 1931, 

From the negative side, the legislative program 
of Local 5 is quite simple; opposition to all leg- 
islation which may undermine (a) the continua- 
tion schools, (b) the power of the Retirement 
Board on which teachers are represented or (c) 
the state tenure law, and to legislation which is 
based upon sex discrimination, such as the ex- 
dusion of married women from teaching posi- 
tions. For the past few years the legislature has 
been flooded with bills to undermine the con- 
tinuation school law by proposing to reduce the 
age limit from 17 to 16, by substituting evening 
school attendance for attendance at continuation 


TEACHER 3 


school, or by providing for enumerated exemp- 
tions. All such efforts have thus far been de- 
feated through Labor’s united opposition. 

For the first time in years a serious attempt 
is being made by several N. E. A. educational 
leaders in our New York State Teachers Associa- 
tion, to undermine the state tenure law. They 
plan to do this by modifying our tenure law to 
provide for star chamber trials, by limiting ten- 
ure to ten year periods after which each teacher 
becomes a probationer again, and by providing 
that after thiry-five years of service teachers 
may continue to teach only at the pleasure of the 
Board of Education. To make these menacing 
amendments palatable to the teachers, the Asso- 
ciated School Boards and Trustees and their al- 
lied groups propose to make them operative only 
for future entrants. 

What an unprofessional attempt to bribe pres- 
ent teachers to betray other members of their 
profession! Should this attempt succeed, one 
may expect a national attack on tenure which, if 


‘successfully consummated in New York, will 


crush that little spark of independence which still 
flickers in a dozen or more educational centers of 
the country. With teacher enslavement assured, 
progressive education posited on the theory of 
the new social order, will no longer be possible. 
Education as an adventure in critical, coopera- 
tive, social thinking will be but an unrealizable 
dream. Our Union will fight that menace with 
every weapon at its command. So strong was the 
opposition of the rank and file members of the 
New York State Association that the proposed 
action on the tenure changes was postponed for 
a year. 

This meagre outline of one phase of the work 
of Local 5 indicates the vital part activity plays 
in its success. Through these and other measures 
members of the Union and the teaching staff are 
enlightened. They are made to realize the social 
implications of the more important legislation 
and, in addition, have a chance to appreciate the 
worth and the power of the Union. And what is 
equally significant, our members have an oppor- 
tunity to assume a share in carrying the burden 
of union activity in seeking to make the schools 
function as fitting instruments of a successful 
progressive social order dedicated to the service 
ideal. 








4 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


Some Union Jobs 


By Henry R. Linville, President, Local 5, New York 


In these days of great social and political crises, 
there may be many in academic cloisters who 
are waiting in fear and trembling for menacing 
movements in their quarter. For certain good 
and sufficient reasons we hope that such persons 
may not have long to wait. Whatever happens 
to them, our chief concern, however, is for the 
great majority of teachers who wait without 
either fear or trembling—and also without think- 
ing. 

One of the reasons we may have for hoping 
inferentially that the class of cloistered pedagogs 
is shaken a bit with concern as a by-product of 
other people’s activity is that teachers must learn 
that they cannot be isolationists. In fact, one 
of the reasons some statesmen are called reaction- 
aries is because they think the old, one-track ways 
are good enough for them. Aside from the 
matter of calling names, which is liable to be 
offensive, it is well for us to realize that there are 
many instances just now in the international 
fields of economics and politics which illustrate 
our state of dependence on the situation in other 
lands. Unemployment is a critical condition 
everywhere. As a result of unemployment there 
is social unrest also everywhere, which points up 
in difficult political situations, bordering on the 
threatened downfall of governments, or in the 
defeat of some political parties, and in the suc- 
cess or sudden growth of others. 

It can hardly be outside the ken of teachers in 
most enlightened centers that the economic de- 
pression in Germany has brought into the range 
of probabilities another war menace through the 
sudden growth of Fascism in that unhappy coun- 
try. Should we worry? Yes, because iu 1916 
we elected a President for having kept us out 
of war and in 1917 we sent boys to prison who 
did not want to go into the trenches. How many 
teachers have wondered how America would line 
up in the event of a world conflict between Fas- 
cism and some other political force? It is worth 
thinking about, because American education did 
not have much to say in the World War, and did 
nothing to prevent it. Some would say that these 
matters are outside the range of concern of 


teachers. If that is so, then education itself is 
on the sidelines. 


If these world-pressures seem to affect other 
persons and social functions—not teachers and 
education—what then can we say of the wide- 
spread misery that prevails before our eyes, and 
stretches out interminably in the bread-lines of 
New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and elsewhere 
throughout the country? By saying and acting 
as if we can do nothing about it, except to give a 
few dollars, under pressure, or even willingly, as 
“relief,” we are aligning ourselves with others 
who have “vested interests” in the status quo. 
In fact, it may be accepted as evidence that we 
belong with the vested interests if we sit in our 
cloistered shadows, do no thinking, and propose 
no program by which a way might be shown 
through education and through intelligent co- 
operation with other forces something of what 
may be done to control unemployment at its 
source. If we do nothing but seek our ease and 
keep free from the taint of “bolshevism,” we shall 
be able to protect our vested interests—until they 
may not be worth protecting. 

Obviously, what we need is a well-organized 
plan of social education for teachers, for those 
in training as well as for those in service. Even 
if a local teachers’ union limits its purposes to 
advancing the economic and professional inter- 
ests of its members, a place could be found for 
a program of developing some form of social 
consciousness among its members. 


Outside the realm of economic and social fac- 
tors that are constantly influencing education 
and creating situations that call for thought on 
the part of teachers, there are the school systems 
themselves which need to be kept under observa- 
tion. Any teachers’ union that interprets its duty 
to its members as getting promotions for them 
is liable to be overlooking its own social job. Ii 
politics menaces* the school system, whether by 
withholding financial support, or by filling post- 
tions with its henchmen, a teachers’ union may 
be the only force in a community that is free to 
act, and can act through intelligent leadership. 
If the superintendents and the principals cling 








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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 5 


to an ineffective rating system or to an antiquated 
course of study, the teachers’ union should still 
be vital enough to advocate the abolition of the 


| rating system, or to propose a modern course of 


study. If a company union of teachers in a com- 


| munity is engaged in the unprofessional conduct 


of “buying” favorable legislation by trading 
yotes, or by paying cash to political leaders, or 
in other ways setting up unprofessional stand- 


ards, it is the plain duty of teachers’ unions to 
express their disapproval in positive terms. 


A teachers’ union that does nothing to interest 
teachers in social situations, or takes a feeble 
stand on issues such as those that have been men- 
tioned, or no stand at all, is not a teachers’ union. 
It should change its name, and be known for what 
it really is—a company union. 





Trade Teachers of New York 


By Paul Augustine, Secretary, New York Vocational Teachers’ Council, Local 24 


The New York Vocational Teachers’ Council, 
Local 24 of the American Federation of 
Teachers, is made up of the trade teachers as- 
signed to the shops in the Elementary Schools, 
Industrial High Schools and Part-Time Con- 
tinuation Schools of New York City. It was 
organized February, 1915, and joined the,Federa- 
tion May 20th, 1918. At the very outset the 
members of this local were confronted with a 
number of very serious problems due to lack of 
understanding on the part of the school authori- 
ties concerning the type of men and women who 
were entering the teaching profession from indus- 
tria life. Their problems were further intensified 
by their own unfamiliarity with the environment 
into which they were thrust and the many years 
of academic tradition which had grown up with 
the profession of teaching. 


In spite of the fact that many liberal minded 
teachers welcomed the newcomer with the open 
hand of greeting and helpfulness and saw the 
need for the new education, many considered the 
trade teacher an intruder who would never be 
able to accustom himself to school work or school 
atmosphere. Yet with all the handicaps that came 
from the absence of high school and college prep- 
aration these teachers have survived and have 
helped lay the foundation of a system of train- 
ing which will supply better equipped and more 
efficient trade teachers for our industrial schools 
of the future. 


At first trade teachers had to work on a per 
diem wage basis since no salary schedules were 
provided. It required two years of work on the 
part of The Council to convince the school au- 
thorities of the injustice of this system and to 
obtain salary schedules commensurate with the 
teaching service rendered. 


In addition the hours of trade teachers were in- 
creased so that they were on duty more hours per 
day than other teachers. That program worked 
for a time in both the elementary and vocational 
schools until the protests and appeals of The 
Council for uniformity of programs eliminated 
the discrimination against the trade teachers. In 
the vocational schools (Industrial High Schools) 
the trade teachers were required to teach during 
July while the remainder of the teaching corps 
was on vacation. The Council again, after sev- 
eral years of negotiation, secured the elimination 
of the July teaching program. 

The greatest injustice of all was that which 
provided a separate and lower salary for women 
teachers in trade schools for girls, notwithstand- 
ing the state law requiring that there be no dis- 
crimination in salary on account of sex. Two 
appeals were made before the State Commis- 
sioner seeking to eliminate this injustice, but in 
each case the right to equal pay was denied with 
technical explanations. Owing to the persistence 
of the Vocational Teachers’ Council and of Dr. 
Joseph M. Sheehan, a member of the Board of 


Superintendents who had the courage to strive 


for fair play, the Board of Education has now 
made provision to pay the women teachers the 
same salary which is provided for men teachers. 

Thus the long line of inequalities and handi- 


‘ caps with which trade teachers were confronted 


when they entered the system have been wiped 
out. The trade teachers of New York City are 
now on a basis of professional equality with all 
teachers regardless of the subject taught. Other 
forms of discrimination may from time to time 
crop up but The Council will meet these as they 
present themselves. The new year points to a 
period of teaching without apprehension or 
worry. 











6 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


The American Teacher 


Democracy in Education Education for Democracy 
Published Monthly, except July, August and September 
Official Organ 
THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 

OrGANIzED Aprit 15, 1916 
Affiliated With the American Federation of Labor 
Editorial Office: 
506 South Wabash Ave., Chicago, Illinois 
Telephone Harrison 2950 
Editors: 


FLoreNce Curtis HANSON 
Lucire W. ALLEN 





At the time of expiration, a bill will be found in the 
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of changes in address. 


Remittances should be made in postal money-order, 
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, oe 20 





EXECUTIVE COUNCIL 


President 
Mary C. Barker, Atlanta No. 89; 685 Myrtle Street, 
N. E., Atlanta, Georgia. 


Legislative Representative and Vice-President 


SetmMaA M. Borcuarpt, Washington No. 8; 1741 Park 
Road, N. W., Washington, D. C. 


Vice-Presidents 


ABRAHAM LeFrKkowiTz, New York No. 5; 10414 27th 
Avenue, East Elmhurst, Corona, New York, N. Y. 
Henry R. Linvitte, New York No. 5; 70 Fifth Ave., 
New York, N. Y. 

A. J. Muste, Brookwood ~" Brookwood, Katonah, 


N.Y. 
CaRLOoTTA PittMAN, Memphis No. 52; 131 Clark Place, 
Memphis, Tenn. 
Fiorence Roop, St. Paul No. 28, 372 St. Peter St., 
St. Paul, Minnesota. 
W. B. SatrertHwairte, Seattle No. 200, 1837 12th Ave., 
West, Seattle, Washington. 
Lucie H. Scuacut, Chicago No. 3; 6714S. Union Ave., 
Chicago, Illinois. 
E. E. SCHWARZTRAUBER, Wisconsin University No. 223; 
1404 Vilas Ave., Madison, Wisconsin. 
WJ. Scort, Atlanta No. 89; 212 Kings Highway, 
Decatur, Georgia. 
Cuaries B, StittmMan, Chicago No. 2; 827 Ridge Ave., 
Evanston, III. 
Secretary-Treasurer 


Fiorence Curtis Hanson, Chicago No. 3; 506 South 
Wabash Ave., Chicago, Illinois. 


Associate Secretary 


Lucre W. ALien, Chicago No. 3; 506 South Wabash 
Ave., Chicago, Illinois. 


The Stretch-out System in Education 

Reports are coming in from the industrial 
world, of employers in utilities, banks, depart. 
ment stores and the like, who are using the bugj- 
ness depression as an excuse to make reductions 
in their working force, and increasing the work 
of the employes retained. Whether the invest- 
gations promised will reveal these stories to be 
fiction or fact, something very like it is fact in 
many school systems. 

In some communities the “stretch out” system 
has been in use in the schools for years. The 
number of pupils per teacher has been increased, 
gradually but continuously. One or two mor 
in a room won't make any difference. Nex 
term one or two more! Until personal knowledge. 
sympathetic understanding and skillful handling 
of the forty to fifty differing natures and minds 
are an impossibility to the overburdened teacher. 

Teacher training schools turn out their grad. 
uates who have entered the training course be- 
lieving their services as teachers would be needed. 
They are. But the stretch out system is applied 
Voila! There is an oversupply of teachers! This 
surplus can be, and probably is used to depress 
salaries, and to stop demands for better condi- 
tions. We well remember when a protest against 
an intolerably heavy program brought the cool 
response “we have a thousand applications on file 
in the office.” 

In the industrial world we may hope thes: 
conditions of simultaneous unemployment and 
over employment may be temporary. At the 
worst only the worker and inanimate products 
suffer. How tragically different in the schools! 
Here the consequences of strain on the teachers 
may be almost ignored so much more serious are 
the effects on the children. Cheated in their 
rights to a chance for adequate development this 
year, no future year can make it up to them. 
Psychologists tell us that for a child it is indeed 
true “I shall not pass again this way.” He takes 
this year that for which his nature is ready. Let 
the time pass without opportunity for this de 
velopment for which he is ripe, and no future 
time can give him just that. When he is ten he 
cannot go back and get what he missed when he 
was eight. Many teachers know this and the 
realization of how far they are failing in adequate 
care of the children constitutes the greatest bur 
den in their overload. 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 7 


Let no one, teacher, school official or tax 
paying citizen, deem that the teachers’ fight 
against overcrowding is a selfish one. It is a 
fight that they must make, because they are 
the ones who best know the conditions and 
their disastrous effects. The future of the 
nation itself must suffer if they fail in this 
obligation. 
Married Women Teachers 

In connection with the unemployment problem 
and the oversupply of teachers we have the ques- 
tion arising again with greater force and extent, 
“Shall married women be employed as teachers?” 

Detroit, Michigan, settled this question last 
spring on the basis of teaching efficiency and the 
capable married woman teacher in Detroit does 
not make way for the inexperienced unmarried 
young woman at a very appreciable cost to the 
child. In Indiana, on tlie other hand, 85% of the 
towns bar married women from teaching posi- 
tions in the public schools. Its neighboring state 
Ohio is agitated aS to whether it shall follow 
Indiana’s example. These are but examples that 
show the general trend. 

Very recently in Portland, Oregon, an effort 
to remove the married women teachers from 
their positions was defeated, largely through the 
active opposition of the teachers. Since under 
the Oregon tenure law it was impossible to dis- 
miss them, that having been decided by the 
state supreme court several years ago, the Board 
of Education sought unsuccessfully to pass a 
resolution to request married women to resign. 

The position on this matter of the American 
Federation of Teachers, that is that teaching 
efficiency shall be the basis of teacher tenure and 
that there shall be no discrimination against any 
teacher on account of sex, race, religion or social 
status, was ably and effectively advanced. The 
Portland Teachers Union, Local 111, put up a 
vigorous fight against this attempt to undermine 
the Oregon Tenure Law and to inflict an in- 
justice on a certain group. 

The Portland press in part upheld the position 
of the teachers. The Portland Telegram on 
December 15, 1930 published the following edi- 
torial, which reads much like a resolution of the 
American Federation of Teachers: 





Protect the Schools 
With an admirable sense of professional pride, 


the teachers of Portland protest against any action 
by the school board that would lower educational 
standards raised by a century of effort. They 
voice their disapproval of the proposed plan for 
dropping married teachers from the payroll and giv- 
ing their places to women who are without other 
means of support. 

In other words, the teachers hold, as all thought- 
ful persons must, that the schools exist only for the 
benefit of the child. Their purpose is not to provide 
genteel employment for unattached females, as did 
the “dame schools” of old England. 

In the interests of the child, the teacher must be 
a person trained for the work she is to do. After 
years of preparation, she must spend more years in 
active class room experience before she may be re- 
garded as a thoroughly competent, high-class edu- 
cator, able to handle every class room situation and 
give each pupil the educational opportunity that is 
his right. 

When a woman has passed this professional ap- 
prenticeship and proved her value as a teacher, the 
question is not whether the teacher needs the job. 
It is whether the schools need that particular 
teacher, and this last is the only question deserving 
of consideration. 

It would be an absurd extravagance to disor- 
ganize the teaching staff by summary changes made 
solely on a marital basis. It would be worse than 
silly to permit the hysteria of a brief period of de- 
pression to admit mistakes that would have a last- 
ing effect on the entire structure of our public 
schools, ; 

Further, such a reactionary program must rightly 
be regarded as an offense to modern womanhood 
which everywhere demands the right to individuality. 
The woman who chooses to perfect herself for work 
in any field is entitled to the same pride in her per- 
formance, the same security of position and the 
same hope of advancement as a man would have 
under like circumstances. 





Friends or Foes? 

From time to time there may have been no- 
ticed in labor publications the sort of thing 
called “sniping” at liberals outside labor circles 
who in one way or another have tried to do 
something to help labor win its battles. Curiously 
enough this “sniping,” or worse, has been par- 
ticipated in by representatives of the conserva- 
tive forces in labor, as well as by “red” groups. 
It seems to us that both participants to this form 
of intolerance would do well to estimate the value 
of the service offered by liberals rather than to 
condemn motives out of hand. 

Some labor journals have been trying recently 
to discredit the effort of the American Civil 











8 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


Liberties Union to aid in the fight to limit the 
power of Federal courts in issuing labor injunc- 
tions. It would appear that labor needs no help. 
Sut were this true, the power of the employers 
to defeat labor through the injunction would have 
been broken long ago. 

It appears to us that the National Committee 
on Labor Injunctions, recently organized by the 
American Civil Liberties Union should function 
effectively in the fight that must be made to free 
labor from judicial oppression. One of the most 
distinguished and liberal of jurists, former Fed- 
eral Judge Charles F. Amidon, of North Dakota 
is Chairman of the Committee and four hundred 
other liberal citizens from legal, academic, civic 
and labor circles are members. 





A. F. T. and the Illiteracy Problem 


The fourteenth annual convention of the 
American Federation of Teachers in July, 1930, 
took the following position on the question of 
illiteracy. 

First, by arousing public opinion and in any 
other way, we seek to have the United States 
Census Bureau definition of literacy changed. 

Second, we seek to have this campaign for 
literacy conducted not by private funds but by 
public funds, and inasmuch as the states which 
have the greatest number of illiterates have the 
weakest financial system, we hold that it is nec- 
essary that the Federal Government help fight 
this disease as it helps to fight other diseases. 

The United States government, quite apart 
from the appropriation for the standing army, 
appropriates $31,000,000 a year for the National 
Guard. Can there be any better national guard 
than an intelligent citizenry? Are we not justi- 
fied in asking some appropriation for an intelli- 
gent citizenry? The United States government 
appropriates $8,800,000 a year to fight pig 
cholera. Are not American citizens worth at 
least as much trouble and expense as pigs? 

The American Federation of Labor Convention 
in October passed a resolution introduced by A. 
F. T. declaring for a standard equivalent to that 
reached by fourth grade children in the ele- 
mentary schools and asking that this standard be 
adopted by the Federal Government, and used in 
census enumerating and in other situations where 
literacy tests are required. 


The George-Hammer bill, providing for an ap- 
propriation of $1,000,000 annually for this work 
of combatting illiteracy and leaving the adminis. 
tration of the funds entirely to the states, has 
been introduced into Congress at our request, 
The American Federation of Teachers urges the 
active assistance of all its members and friends 
in educating the members of Congress to the 
need of the passage of this legislation. 


Teachers’ Own Insurance Company 


Does it seem a wild and visionary idea for 
the teachers to own and manage their own in- 
surance company, providing them with health and 
accident protection, death benefits for their fami- 
lies, a home for convalescence and rest? Don't 
say it can’t be done, for it has been done. 

The National Union of Teachers of England 
has its own Teachers’ Provident Society with ac- 
cumulatel funds of $17,500,000 and a member- 
ship of 78,000. The Society provides help dur- 
ing illness, a country home for rest and recupera- 
tion and death benefits. Last year over a half 
million dollars was expended in sickness and 
medical benefit. The annual report of the So 
ciety says that “the feature of the year’s work 
in the State Section had been the extension of 
Golding House at Matlock and the acquirement 
of ‘The Anchorage,’ the Society’s New Con- 
valescent Home.” 

Mrs. Manning, president of the N. U. T.,, in 
her address to the fifty-third annual meeting of 
the Society, said that “in her opinion the Society 
was of the greatest possible value to the Union as 
a whole and to its individual members, and by the 
great successes which had been achieved through 
the T. P. S., the general public recognized that 
N. U. T. members were not solely idealists and 
doctrinaires, but they included men and women 
of great business ability.” 

What has been done by one Teachers Union 
can be done by another, can it not? 





NEED THIS? 


“If your nose is close to the grindstone rough. 
And you hold it down there long enough, 

In time you’ll say there’s no such thing 

As brooks that babble and birds that sing; 
These three will all your world compose— 

Just you, the stone and your darned old nose.’ 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 9 


Manumit School 
By Sarah N. Cleghorn, Local 191 


“Primarily for workers’ children.” So Bill 
and Helen Fincke, the founders of Manumit, 
who had also been the founders, a few years he- 
fore, of Brookwood Labor College, began the 
description of the community school for girls 
and boys of nine to fifteen, which they were about 
to start on their dairy farm of 177 acres, half- 
way between the villages of Patterson and Pawl- 
ing, in Dutchess County, New York, in the fall 
of 1924. Manumit began with twenty-five chil- 
dren and ten grown-up persons, to manage the 
farm, the herd of fifty cows (shipping Grade A 
milk to New York), to cook and do the house- 
work for thirty-five persons, take care of the 
children by day and night, nurse them in sick- 
ness, and educate them in “the five fields” of 
natural science, social science, mathematics, arts 
and crafts, and the study of language and litera- 
ture. | 

Manumit had a noble beginning. But after that 
brilliant first year, the founder and co-director, 
Bill Fincke, became ill with the malady which 
caused his death. Nevertheless the school has 
gone on seeking, without fundamental alteration, 
its original purpose, to serve the needs “primarily 
of workers’ children,” to unite creative study 
with a comradely sharing of all forms of socially 
necessary labor, and to explore the world, past 
and present, with the eyes of labor conscious of 
its mission to make the world juster and more 
fraternal. 

Dr. Henry R. Linville, President of the 
Teachers Union of New York, was its second 
director, but only served a year, and that on a 
half time basis. Nellie M. Seeds, the present 
director, is serving her fourth year. Before she 
came, the herd of cows and much of the farm 
equipment were sold. Very gradually, cows are 
coming back to Manumit. We have at the pres- 
ent time a herd of seven cows and four calves, 
four horses, two hundred chickens, as well as a 
motley collection of ducks, geese, pigeons, sheep 
and lambs. 

About fifteen acres are under intensive cultiva- 
tion. The rest of the land is divided into fields 
of hay and alfalfa, pasture land, and one thickly 
wooded section. Through it all runs a lively 
lrout stream. 


I should call Manumit life an adventure in to- 
getherness. From the rising bell at a quarter 
before seven to the dormitory-lights-out bell at 
nine in the evening, the children and teachers are 
educationally occupied together in one or another 
project—if that’s an adequate name for our com- 
munity undertakings. Before the academic work 
begins the houses must be in order—dormitories, 
halls, porches—the dining room and pantry—the 
classrooms and social rooms, must all be swept 
and set to rights by the children and teachers; 
for all grown-ups at Manumit are teachers; ; there 
are no servants here. When we meet, then, with 
books and pencils at a quarter to nine, we have 
already had a taste of that far more vital edu- 
cation, the realistic knowledge, the sense of hu 
man solidarity, that comes from doing necessary 
work in comradeship with others. How good a 
groundwork for intellectual acquisition!—to feel 
in our own bodies, and in inroads on our own 
time, the labor cost of daily living! This is a re- 
search in economics—this is social education. 

All day long, too, the interchange of school 
and farm goes on. “I’ve got an hour more to do 
of my required ten hours of productive work 
for this week—can I work an extra hour on the 
fall ploughing with you, George, after my regu- 
lar period of agriculture this afternoon?” asks 
one of the big boys. A girl brings in the carrots, 
the late celery, for the salad for supper: a boy 
and girl drive up the road to harvest the neigh- 
bor’s apples that have been given to Manumit 
“on the trees.” In a close partnership with earth 
we give and take bounty for labor, and literally 
taste the fruits of patience. 

Farm life, and its beneficial effects upon chil- 
dren, have long been appreciated by educators. 
They know how resourceful a farm-reared child 
becomes from being compelled by circumstances 
to adjust himself to a set of complex and varied 
situations, to acquire a number of skills, and ab- 
sorb a store of knowledge, in “learning by do- 
ing.” We look back with pedagogical wistful- 
ness to the pioneer homes, dependent as they were 
upon their own crafts for the necessaries of 
life. How few children now have the advantage 
of such an earth-rooted life! Manumit does ac- 
tually combine many rich possibilities of a pio- 








10 


neer farm home; and it is gradually working 
out a program which will use the farm activities 
more and more for the children’s educational 
needs. 

In this connection let me say a word about 
animals. For the horses and cows at Manumit, 
the two or three sheep and yearling lambs, the 
chickens, cats and dogs, are perhaps of all things 
here the most influential. That world-redeeming 
instinct, the protective, here finds nurture and 
growth, toward what may prove a high social 
value. 

At community meeting on Sundays, questions 
of mutual bearing are discussed by all of us to- 
gether. Is it that someone has been sliding down 
the haystacks in late November, when rain and 
snow might ruin the exposed hay? The farmer 
brings it up before the meeting, and the com- 
munity begins to fix responsibility, and devise 
safeguards for the hay. “Who slid down the 
haystacks?” Half a dozen hands go up. “But 
perhaps you younger children didn’t know how 
expensive hay is?” Derisive laughter runs round 
the room. Who at Manumit wouldn’t know the 
price of hay? The community votes that future 
slides will cost a dollar apiece. 

Coming into the classrooms, after seeing some 
of the rich education that surrounds the class- 
rooms at Manumit, we find that some of the 
classroom work is already done. Nadya and 
Molly have made clear, wise and_ spirited 
speeches in community meeting; not thinking of 
“oral English,” they have been creating a high 
quality of it for themselves and others. Irving 
and Byron and Sam have been conducting sci- 
entific research ; they have compared the value of 
milking machines, and grazing fodder. The chil- 
dren as a body have met civic problems and con- 
structed civic plans; without suspecting it they 
have been studying civics. 

Now in the classroom we find, perhaps, that 
the members of eighth grade, who yesterday 
spent their period on grammar, are having a 
“poetry party.” They are hunting in anthologies, 
asking “Can I read three? Can I read four?” 
The ninth grade are in the science room, studying 
the effect of light on growth. The tenth grade 
history class is discussing the French Revolu- 
tion and comparing its importance from a world 
point of view with the Industrial Revolution, the 
American Revolution, and the Russian Revolu- 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


tion. All of the children, without question put 
the Industrial Revolution first in importance. 
The seventh graders may be doing straight arith- 
metic, or perhaps this is their prized period for 
art, and perhaps they are finishing their batik 
scarfs for the Manumit exhibition and sale at the 
Civic Club in New York. And the Youngers 
leaving the pictorial map and sand pile survey- 
ing on which they have just been at work, are 
perhaps running over the bridge from the Cot. 
tage, to take their rhythmics. Visitors at Many. 
mit should always see our children dance inter. 
pretatively, or hear them sing together. Music 
is always the _best-loved-by-the-largest-number 
study. 

Sut what does Manumit do, and what can it 
say, about that old difficulty of teachers, “How 
to encourage the creative activities of children, 
and yet meet the set requirements of educational 
authorities, and rigid examinations of the old 
informational kind?” Like yourselves, fellow 
teachers, we have to compromise. The children 
must make their grades, they must not be 
penalized, by “losing a year,” if their par- 
ents’ all-too-slender purses cannot keep them 
at Manumit next year, even at Manumit’s 
low trade-union rates. Fortunately what creative 
teaching we can give them does sometimes (as 
you yourselves doubtless find) help and not 
hinder in the set memorizing, the fixed items of 
information, etc. And our old teachers, with 
whom the former pupils correspond, are always 
reassured about these questions, by finding how 
well, after one, two or three years of free and 
varied education like ours, the boys and girls 
“fit into” the formal schools in the “world out- 
side.” Only—along with pride in the children’s 
adequacy, we must cherish still more the hope 
that they will not forget to change and humanize 
that world outside, however well able they find 
themselves to cope with it! 





YALE LOCAL 204 

Yale Local met this week with Mrs. Hanson 
of the National Office. Our membership is slowly 
but steadily increasing. We hope soon to hold 
a large open meeting with Professor John 
Dewey. We send greetings to all other locals. 
Our Federation must grow until it embraces 
every teacher in America. 

JeroMeE Davis, Secretary. 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 11 


Buffalo Industrial Teachers’ Association 
Local 39 


THE TEACHER AND THE UNION 
By Lyman B. Fisher, Local 39 

The first trade unions were formed in Eng- 
land and were contrary to law. In 1871 these 
trade unions received legal recognition in Eng- 
land. 

In the United States the first trade union was 
formed in New York City, in 1802. The Ameri- 
can Federation of Labor was formed in 1881, 
and now has a membership of over 3,000,000. 
To this, will very likely be added the member- 
ship of the Railroad Brotherhoods, as plans are 
now under way to bring them into the American 
Federation of Labor’s fold. 

The protest of a single worker against wrong 
conditions in his or her work is usually of no 
avail, therefore a united body must be formed. 

Teachers as a body do not realize the benefits 
that do or may come to them by affiliation with 
Organized Labor. There is no surer way to come 
in close contact with the public. Education is a 
public enterprise. In times when teachers want 
the backing of the general workers to put over a 
special bit of legislation there is no way except 
through the local labor council. This is a proven 
fact. Through the labor council! the backing of 
thousands of outside workers may be obtained. 

It is sometimes the complaint of persons out- 
side of organizations or of those who do not regu- 
larly attend meetings, that they do not like the 
way things are run. The proper procedure in 
that case is to attend meetings and take an active 
part. I have never attended a meeting where any 
special clique ran things to suit themselves. 
Those doing the work were members who had 
the far-sightedness to labor for the benefit of 
all. 

To these critically-minded people I should like 
to repeat this advice. 

Those who are too busy to protect their own 
interests may soon find they have no interests to 
protect. 





TEACHERS’ EMERGENCY RELIEF 
FUND 


A considerable amount of money has been 
voluntarily contributed by Buffalo teachers from 
all public schools to a school children’s relief 


fund. This money, amounting to about $16,000, 
has been paid into the treasury of the Buffalo 
Federation of Educational Associations. 

The funds are to be used as follows: 

1. Every cent is to be used for our own school 
children, not a penny for administration. All 
the work will be done by unpaid workers from 
our own ranks and whatever money is needed 
for postage, printing, etc., will be paid from the 
Federation Treasury. 

2. Each school is to be the judge of its own 
needs and disposition of money from the emer- 
gency fund. 

3. Units of $20.00 may be had as often as 
needed, bearing in mind that the money is to be 
used for food and clothing for needy school 
children only. 

4. None of this money should be used to re- 
lieve home conditions. Family relief should be 
taken care of in another way, namely, through 
the Council of Social Agencies. 

5. Such children as will probably be in posi- 
tive need of food during the holidays should be 
reported to the Social Agencies. 

6. Too much publicity within the school or 
district might encourage abuse or cause a great 
deal of embarrassment for the relief committee 
through petitions for aid over and above what 
the plan contemplates. Wisdom would seem to 
indicate that extension of relief should be done 
quietly. 

7. The principal of Opportunity School can 
supply boys’ shoes at low cost. 





VISUAL INSTRUCTION IN VOCA- 
TIONAL CLASSES 
By Allan Nicol, Local 39 

Visual Instruction is not a separate subject, 
but, rather, is the adaptation of any of the many 
visual devices to the improvement of the teach- 
ing unit. Visual Instruction is built up on the 
assumption that word calling makes for different 
mental pictures in the eyes of the various in- 
dividuals in the class. That these mental pic- 
tures are the result of previous experience. If 
the child has not experienced the thing there is 
no reaction that will result in this mental picture. 

When a pupil enters a shop or drawing room 











12 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


he is taught the language of the shop. This 
language is new to him. He must connect the 
written symbol, through association, with the ob- 
ject it stands for. This association must take 
place in his mind, several hundred times before 
he has actually mastered it and can call it his 
own. 

The labeling or placarding of all of the objects 
in the room, machines, tools, special equipment, 
etc., for several weeks, at the beginning of the 
term, would aid the pupils a great deal in their 
efforts to learn the names of the things the 
teacher wishes to have them know. The bulletin 
board is another very excellent means of getting 
over very definite teaching facts to the class. 
The pupils should be encouraged to bring in 
everything relative to their work. ‘The best 
should be selected by the teacher and preserved 
for use on the bulletin board as he covers the 
unit of work in his demonstration or lecture 
work. 

Every shop and drawing room should boast of 
an elaborate reference library of books, pictures, 
catalogs, magazines, and other things which 
would encourage research and the building of a 
classroom collection of valuable objects. 


In dealing with the materials and other sup- 
plies a very valuable background may be fur- 
nished the class by the use of picture material 
in slide and film form. Time spent in this man- 
ner is time very well spent by the shop instruc- 
tor, for, after all, one of his major objectives is 
to furnish his pupils just as much of a back- 
ground, through varied experiences, as he pos- 
sibly can in the short time that he has them. 

Professor Einstein in a recent press article 
stated very pointedly that what was needed in 
our schools today was more demonstration work, 
that the thing to be learned must be experienced, 
and where the school equipment does not permit 
of this the instructor should resort to the use 
of the motion picture film. 





ETHEL BEERS SCHOLARSHIP 


The Ethel M. Beers memorial Brookwood 
scholarship, established several years ago by the 
Chicago Federation of Women High School 
Teachers, is held this year by Florence Nelson, 
a colored dressmaker of Cleveland. 


BROOKWOOD 
By Helen G. Norton, Press Secretary, Local 189 


Brookwood Labor College, founded coincident. 
ally with the Workers Education Bureau, is com. 
pleting its tenth year as a workers’ educational 
institution. “Ten Years of Workers’ Education 
—A Survey” has been appropriately chosen this 
year as the topic for the Washington’s Birthday 
Conference of Teachers in Workers’ Education 
held annually at Brookwood under the auspices 
of Local 189. 

This conference will attempt to review and 
evaluate the activities of the various workers’ 
education projects throughout the country. Ques- 
tionnaires are being sent out to gather material 
on results and accomplishments, on policies of 
finance and control, on teaching methods, ma- 
terials, and personnel, and on recruiting methods, 
Digests of these questionnaires will form the 
basis for discussion at the conference, and the 
published proceedings should furnish a valuable 
handbook on the trends of the workers’ educa- 
tion movement in the country during the last 
decade. 

About thirty teachers and other persons active 
in workers’ education are being invited to attend 
the conference which will be held February 21-23. 





THE MEDICAL BOARD CASE AGAIN 
October 21, 1930. 
Mr. George J. Ryan, President, 
Board of Education, New York City. 
Dear Sir :— 

The Teachers’ Union has occasion again to call to the 
attention of the Board of Education the objectionable 
conduct of Dr. Emil Altman, the Chief Medical Ex- 
aminer of the Medical Board of the Department of 
Education. 

You will recall the fact that in 1928 the Teachers’ 
Union made complaint concerning the unprofessional 
conduct of Dr. Altman in his inhuman treatment of 
teachers who in the judgment of family physicians were 
physically unable to return to the classroom when or- 
dered to do so by Dr. Altman. You will recall also 
the fact that two public hearings were given on the 
matter by the Committee on Law of the Board of 
Education and that about thirty teachers testified to 
unfair treatment at the hands of members of the Med- 
ical Board. The Committee delayed its report many 
months. When the report finally appeared it failed to 
meet the points made in our charges, although the 
power of directing teachers to report for duty ‘was 
taken from Dr. Altman and given to the Superintendent 
of Schools. 








189 


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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 13 


It was also evident that the public indignation result- 
ing from the public hearings had served to hold Dr. 
Altman in check for over one year. In the spring of 
1930, however, the Union received the first complaints 
that Dr. Altman had resumed his former practice of 
brow-beating teachers. This fall the number of com- 
plaints has increased to such an extent that the Execu- 
tive Broad of the Teachers’ Union has ‘authorized the 
issuance of a public demand that the Board of Educa- 
tion take final and effective steps te put a stop to Dr. 
Altman’s offensive and improper conduct. 

According to the statements of complaining teachers 
he has been trying to force them to return to school 
before they are physically able to do so—a fact which 
indicates that he has failed to obey the order made by 
the Board of Education that the Superintendent of 
Schools only should perform the function of directing 
teachers on sick leave when to return to school. 

The Union would iike to inquire whether the Board 
of Education is powerless to discipline one of its own 
subordinates. If not, we submit that dismissal is the 
only course of action left. 

The Union also requests that the Board of Education 
inquire in this connection into the official conduct of 
Associate Superintendent Charles W. Lyon to whom for 
some years the supervision of the Medical Board has 
been assigned. In the thirtieth annual report of the 
Superintendent of Schools for the year ending July 31, 
1928, published in the fall of 1929, there appears a 
statement by Associate Superintendent Lyon which re- 
fers in discrediting terms to the work of the Teachers’ 
Union in the Medical Board Case. This report is filled 
with incorrect, misleading and prejudiced assertions. 
The report also makes light of the complaints of teach- 
ers who gave testimony concerning unfair treatment at 
the hands of the Medical Board. Dr. Lyon naively 
maintains that only one per cent of the cases investi- 
gated have “complained” when he must know that at 
all times the fear of official displeasure is a powerful 
deterrent against the making of complaints against 
school officials. 

Dr. Lyon makes an amazing contribution to imaginary 
psychology when he says in his report that “of all 
those who complain a substantial percentage belong to 
one of two classes of temperamental abnormality.” The 
members of one class, he says, show a “hypochondriac 
tendency ;” the other apparently manifests a “superior- 
ity complex.” The Teachers’ Union submits that if 
Associate Superintendent Lyon were less concerned with 
making out a case for his brother officials on the Med- 
ical Board, he might be less prone to blame sick teachers 
for “temperamental abnormality,” and more willing to 
admit the probability that the chief desire of most con- 
valescing teachers is to resume work at the earliest 
possible moment, not only for financial reasons but for 
professional reasons as well. 

It appears to the Union that the publication of Dr. 
Lyon’s nonsensical report has had the effect of en- 
couraging the Chief Medical Examiner to continue his 
objectionable conduct in dealing with teachers. We 
ask, therefore, that the Superintendent of Schools be 


notified that all propaganda which involves the making 
of an attack on a teachers’ organization, or the ridicule 
of teachers with grievances, is prohibited from being 
published in official reports of the department. 

The Teachers’ Union requests that steps be taken 
immediately to relieve a situation in the Medical Board, 
and in its official supervision, which has become in- 
tolerable. 

Very truly yours, 
(Signed) HENRY R. LINVILLE, 
President. 





NEW YORK WILL CELEBRATE 

Local 5, New York, will celebrate its Fifteenth 
Anniversary in March. On Saturday, March 21, 
the Union and the Auxiliary will unite in giving 
a comic opera, entitled Ching Chong and the 
School. Commissioners, with prima donnas and 
their male complements from the two organiza- 
tions. There will be stars of the first magnitude, 
with numerous satellites as the chorus. Much 
may be imagined from the title, but nothing will 
be told in advance of its presentation of the story 
with its clever setting-forth of educaton as it is 
understood and practiced in our great city. We 
think nothing could be funnier than the real 
thing, and the effort of the artists will be given 
sincerely to making their portrayal as nearly real 
as possible. 

We hope that special trains will be run from 
Washington, Boston and Chicago, and even from 
Philadelphia, to see the performance. 

The second part of the birthday celebration 
will consist of a luncheon to be given on Satur- 
day, March 28. Professor Harold Laski, of the 
London School of Economics, has been invited 
to be the guest speaker, and to deliver an address 
on the “Teachers Union in a New Social Order.” 


We in New York are much set up over the 
publicity we are getting concerning the number 
of charges against our judges that are worse 
than any gangster charges that have been made 
against Chicago. No one has yet charged our 
schools with being at fault in having missed fire 
in the teaching of the principle of citizenship to 
iis embryo judges. People may get around to 
that later. In the meantime we shall try to pro- 
tect ourselves against indictment. 





“Tf we fail, that failure shall not arise from a 
want of strict adherence to principle or attention 
and fidelity to the trust we assume.”—Enquirer. 








14 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


SEATTLE 
YELLOW DOG RULE DROPPED 


As we go to press the Seattle Post Intelligencer, 


brings welcome news. 

Organizing for the new year by electing John B. 
Shorett, president, and Dietrich Schmitz, vice-presi- 
dent, the Seattle school board yesterday ended a 
long controversy by eliminating Clause No. 6, the 
so-called “yellow dog” clause, from contracts to 
be offered teachers. 

The clause required teachers signing the contract 
to agree not to join the American Federation of 
Teachers, or any subsidiary, during the term for 
which they were employed. 

Inclusion of the clause in teachers’ contracts was 
ordered three years ago, when the so-called teachers’ 
union, affiliated with the American Federation of 
Labor, began an active campaign to organize in- 
structors. 

Labor Joins Fight 

Organized Labor joined in a legal battle on the 
right of the board to include the clause in the con- 
tract, but the school board was upheld in both the 
superior court and the state supreme court. 

The terms of the contract also became an issue 
in school board campaigns during the last two years. 
Opponents of the board policy gained a preliminary 
victory in the election of Shorett and Austin E. 
Griffiths. But last year’s elections saw a definite 
victory for the board policy in the election of 
Schmitz and Frank S. Bayley. 

™~ 





FUTURE OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION 
OF LABOR 


In an editorial on The Future of the American 
Federation of Labor, the Journal of Electrical 
Workers and Operators concludes success 
“means technical management of labor unions. 
It means the discard of much illusion, hearsay, 
romanticizing and self-deception. It means con- 
tinued hard work. It means the stressing of 
competency. It means elevation of technical 
knowledge, of education, of research to a new 
place of respect in labor union affairs. It means 
that labor unions must require a new and greater 
ability to read the present and future, and a 
greater alacrity in meeting problems. It means 
less bunk, talk, attitudinizing, political wire-pull- 
ing, and more hard work, self-training, mutual 
confidence, and intelligent co-operation.” 





“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not 
for themselves and under a just God cannot long retain 
it.” 

—Abraham Lincoln. 





APPRECIATION IS SWEET 


James P. Egan, editor of the A. F. L. Weekly 
News Service, has “written up” the Boston Con- 
vention in the November number of the Ma- 
chinists Monthly Journal. The American Fed- 
eration of Teachers seems to have impressed him 
as one of the “features” of the convention. He 
writes thus: 


These brainy and courageous men and women 
Trade Unionists are tackling privilege at its most 
vulnerable point—control of the human mind. 

They reject the theory that second-hand opinions 
is education. They demand a system that makes 
men and women think. This system is tersely ex- 
plained by President Robert M. Hutchins, University 
of Chicago: 

“Education is not to teach men facts, theories or 
laws. It is not to reform them or amuse them, or 
to make them technicians in any field. It is to teach 
them to think straight if possible, but to think al- 
ways for themselves.” 

This is the underlying educational principle of the 
A. F. of T. Every Trade Unionist and sympathizer 
should be an especial friend of these organized men 
and women. They are Trade Unionists to the core 
and fear no one in their intelligent and aggressive 
presentation of union principles. 

We should never overlook an opportunity to say 
a good word for the A. F. of T. to unorganized 
teachers if we would have our children taught by 
those who understand and who are sympathetic with 
the efforts of workers who would install a better 
day. 

A narrow-minded teacher, or one who is ignorant 
of life’s problems, can work havoc with the human 
mind at its most impressionable age. 

City central bodies and local unions should put 
their best man on this job of aiding themselves by 
aiding the A. F. of T. 


This is no mean praise and Mr. Egan’s per- 
sonality and position make his praise no insig- 
nificant thing. 





FROM A PERSONAL LETTER 

I am also greatly pleased to note that you are a 
charter member of Local No. 3 of the American Fed- 
eration of Teachers. It is certainly unfortunate that all 
of the teachers of the country can not see the wisdom 
of affiliating with the American Federation of Labor. 
I congratulate you on your membership. 

The American Federation of Teachers has been the 
pathfinders in every progressive move for the elevation 
of the profession of teaching. 

Very truly yours, 
Wo. Ortr, 
Asst. Secretary-Treasurer, 
National Federation of Post Office Clerks. 








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Fortunate is the person who lives to see his 
big idea become a vital force, a powerful incen- 
tive, a pronounced success, with the gratitude 
of hundreds who have come under the influence 
of the big idea, in action. 

The City of London Vacation Course in Edu- 
cation will celebrate its tenth anniversary in the 
summer of 1931. In the belief that teachers and 
others of kindred interests, from all of England 
and the British Empire, would respond to such 
an opportunity, open to all who cared to qualify 
and use its advantages, Sir Robert Evans put his 
idea at work, and founded the course. 

In London, England, within the shadow of Lon- 
don University and the British Museum, amidst 
the historic glories and beauties of the capital 
and its environs, with the center of activities of 
government and business; in the atmosphere of 
art and literature of the past and present, with 
all the concentrated interests of the great city, 
the course is given and the privilege to attend is 
extended. 

Perhaps a rather detailed list of personnel 
will disclose to best advantage the breadth of the 
idea. While it is “by educationists,” it is not 
stereotyped. The very scope of its work is in 
a way indicated by the types of advisors. This 
Advisory Board is, naturally, the strong founda- 
tion of the plan. The Right Hon. Viscount Burn- 
ham is president. The principal and director of 
studies is the Hon. H. A. L. Fisher, Warden of 
New College, Oxford. The vice-principal is Lord 
Gorrell, who is president of the Royal Society of 
Teachers. Mr. Frank Roscoe, M. A., secretary 
of the Royal Society of Teachers, is Senior Tu- 
tor. Both Lord Burnham and Dr. Fisher have 
been loyal and successful sponsors for much 
that has been helpful, encouraging, and stimulat- 
ing to the cause of education in England. Dr. 
Fisher is perhaps best known as sponsor of the 
Fisher Bill, and Lord Burnham is crowned with 
the blessings of English teachers for constructive 
work in his official capacity in government edu- 
cational affairs. Sir Robert Evans, the founder, 
is, of course, a zealous member of the Advisory 
Council. 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER a 15 


An Adventure in Education 
By Anna S. L. Brown 


To these officers is added the strength of such 
persons as Mrs. Leah Manning, J. P., who is 
president of the National Union of Teachers, 
and A. A. Somerville, Esq., who is chairman of 
the Independent Schools Association, Inc., and 
Canon A. W. R. Little, president of the Edu- 
cation Committee for England and Wales, and 
others of equal prominence. 

The range of the course meets the needs of 
the teachers, and more, for it provides mental 
and spiritual stimulus through comprehensive 
lecture courses. To the varied subjects of the 
teachers’ work-a-day world, such additions as 
courses in Modern English Literature bring rec- 
reation and pleasurable change. It is arranged 
somewhat to meet the specific needs of teachers 
in English schools, under organization classed as 
Infant, Junior, and Senior divisions, but it ad- 
justs itself splendidly to varying needs. 

The Three R’s, Handwork, Games and Dances, 
Music through Song, Arts and Crafts, the teach- 
ing of English, English Speech, and Geography, 
surely give variety. The prospectus says: “The 
school deals with today’s doubts and tomorrow’s 
difficulties, provides mental and spiritual refresh- 
ment, and stimulates to fresh and fruitful en- 
deavor.” For instance, when geography is world 
geography, international, broad, clear, unbiased ; 
when the figures, measurements, “atmospheres,” 
physical, historical and economic, are presented 
with the human note dominant, the human appeal 
crowning, it is an enticing adventure even though 
a vacation school, a glorified normal. Similar 
breadth of presentation pervades the entire 
course. 

The members of the course are brought into 
contact each day with some notable, outstanding 
personality, besides the staff of lecturers. States- 
men, divines, soldiers, artists, actors, writers, 
commercial princes, and explorers are brought in 
to speak to the body at after-luncheon periods, 
with addresses that are unmatchable in variety, 
force, interest, and charm. Literally, many of 
the world’s most famous men and women have 
thrilled and inspired the group. Not necessarily 
in lighter vein, nor as things apart, are these 








16 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


after-luncheon lectures, they are glimpses, in- 
timate ones, into life, diverse and animating, that 
offer the student-body opportunities rare and re- 
freshing. At the risk of tedium in names and 
lists one feels impelled to try to indicate just 
how delightful and wide is the range these 
speakers covered. 


Holborn Restaurant, with its beautiful ban- 
quet hall and many spacious rooms, is taken over 
for the course each season. In it King’s Hall 
is almost palatial and is said to be one of Eng- 
land’s best. It is used for the inaugural, and 
all luncheon and evening meetings. At the open- 
ing of 1930 Course the Hon. Margaret Bond- 
field, M. P., and Minister of Labor under the 
present government, was the chief speaker. Her 
spirited address will not be forgotten. Some of 
its wit and wisdom broke through again and 
again, throughout the course. Lord Burnham, 
presiding, and Lord Gorrell and Dr. Fisher, were 
alsa speakers on “inaugural night.” On one 
occasion H. R. H. the Prince of Wales, gave the 
opening address. Among the many who have 
spoken we wish to record, with special signifi- 
cance: Hon. Ramsey MacDonald, Hon. Stanley 
Baldwin, Lord Burnham, Lady Astor, Viscount 
Astor, Hillaire Belloc, Hugh Walpole, Henry 
Ainley, Lord Eustace Percy, former president 
of the Board of Education, Hon. Sir Charles 
Trevelyan, present president of the Board of 
Education, Lord Birkenhead, former Chancellor 
of England, Duchess of Atholl, M. P., Dr. 
Nicholas Murray Butler, Lady Baden-Powell, 
Mrs. Philip Snowden, J. H. Thomas, M. P., 
Minister of Employment, Lord Irwin, Viceroy of 
India, and others. 


The student body goes en masse, by special 
invitation, to services at St. Paul’s and at West- 
minster Abbey. They are also entertained at the 
famous Guild Hall and at Mansion House by 
the Lord Mayor of London. Political, religious, 
educational slants of various lines, added zest 
to the fast-moving course. Among the after- 
luncheon speakers were: J. B. Priestley of “Good 
Companions” fame, Lord Lothian, better known 
as Philip Kerr, Earl Russell, brother of Bertram 
Russell, though of quite a contrasting type, and 
C. Leonard Wooley, the well-known archeologist 
and writer, who spoke from first hand knowledge 
of “Dead Towns and Living Men,” and “Ur of 
the Chaldees.” 


Who could forget the thrill and delight of 
an hour with Shakespeare through the interpre- 
tations of Henry Ainley, England’s greatest 
Shakespearian actor? In sharp contrast, though 
none the less interesting than Henry Ainley, 
was the venerable radical, now of the Indepen- 
dent Labor Party and First Commissioner of 
Works under the present government, the Hon. 
George Lansbury, who has represented Bow and 
Poplar since 1922. His appearance as after- 
luncheon speaker, was a marked day. As was 
said at the risk of tedium, lists of names would 
be used. Those mentioned were chosen for con- 
trasts. They do indicate how very democratic 
the course was. Presenting world questions and 
a diversity of themes, the speakers were certainly 
specialists of a high order. Almost as thrilling 
as the celebrities, was the day when four mem- 
bers of the course from the four corners of the 
earth were the speakers: a veritable affair of 
world-fellowship. 

Members of Parliament escorted small groups 
through the Houses of Parliament, with anec- 
dotes, explanations, and cordiality that held. 
The garden-party, as Dr. Fisher’s guests, in the 
garden of the New College in Oxford, was a 
glorious experience. The day on the Thames, 
the visits to Windsor and Eton and other famous 
spots, were occasions of significance in friendly 
association. 

To attend the Course one signs up in the usual 
order. For what it offers it is of modest price. 
These are several classes of students, and it is 
not confined to teachers. Residence is in two 
large hotels, with hostesses and carefully worked- 
out arrangements that make for friendly contact 
and acquaintance. External members find satis- 
factory plans also. 

It is a strenuous course, running about three 
weeks ; a short intensive term, with lectures com- 
ing quickly in the forenoons. There is great 
leeway in choice and little conflict. The pressure 
is not too great, for the educational visits, planned 
with expert conductors for small groups, are 
delightful variations. Literary London at night, 
to avoid crowd and traffic, the haunts of Dickens 
and Johnson and others, the Tower of London, 
Hampton Court, Tate Gallery, British Museum, 
large industrial plants, big mercantile houses, the 
shops, factories, parks and docks, and other 
points of interest, make one know and appreciate 
London and its history. 








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The Course has been so popular that many 
have attended several sessions. The freshness 
of viewpoint of the lecturers, the friendliness, 
the internationalism of it, its side lines and, at 
the close, its certificate, are worthy objectives. 
“Get acquainted” parties bring sociability. Fare- 
well evenings are literally the partings of friends. 
Mr. Roscoe manages those affairs admirably. A 
dramatic evening at the Royal Academy, theatre 
parties, and a performance by members of the 
Children’s Theatre, are extras that are appre- 
ciated. Theatre parties are arranged for all 
worthwhile plays. 

The offices of the London Vacation Course of 
Education are at Montague House on Russell 
Square, London W. C. 1. Mr. Hugh Ewing, M. 
A., is secretary of the C. L. V. C. E. Dr. A. 
Compton-Rickett, who lectures on Modern Eng- 
lish Literature, is almost incomparable. Dr. A. 
Lloyd James, of London University, as lecturer 
on Speaking of English, has a special appeal to 
over-seas students, but his lectures were generally 
appreciated. Ernest Young, B. Sc., who gives the 
course in geography, is world-known, and he has 
lectured from coast to coast in university circles 
in the United States. The entire-faculty is made 
up of high class talent. 

The opportunity to attend is open to the world. 
Sir Robert Evans, the founder, has shown that 
the wider the “home-range” of the student group, 
the more successful he considers the development 
of his big idea. In 1930 there were nearly two 
score from the United States. Pittsburgh, Penn- 
sylvania, has a special scholarship privilege for 
a few teachers, and a nucleus of Americans are 
Pittsburgh folk. Some from scattering points 
in the far west and a few from the middle west 
comprise the two score. Eighteen countries were 
represented in 1930. To be so associated with 
those of kindred interests, from New Zealand, 
Australia, Germany, Rhodesia, India, Czecho- 
slovakia, Belgium, Denmark, from all parts of 
the British Empire and the islands of the seas, 
is a rare opportunity. 

The course has passed the experimental stage. 
It is an unqualified success. It offers an objec- 
tive, a stopping point, a rest from too strenuous 
travel, to all who can appreciate its unusual ad- 
vantages. Each year finds more availing them- 
selves of them. There are summer schools and 


summer schools, each with its special promise. 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 17 


This Course has lured many to repeat its con- 
secutive sessions, or to go more than once. This 
attempt at appraising it is only a small voice, but 
it is an attempt at setting forth its advantages, 
with a full realization that it is a splendid adven- 
ture in the educational field, and one very worthy 
of further consideration. 





RUSSIAN TOUR 


Because of the interest which has been ex- 
pressed in the visit of Professor Henry R. 
Seager, of Columbia University, and his party to 
Russia last summer, plans are being made to 
erganize a similar group to go to Russia during 
the summer of 1931. This party will meet in 
Berlin on July 6, 1931, and spend five weeks in 
Russia, visiting the industrial centers, financial 
institutions, schools, courts, workers’ clubs, co- 
operative farms, museums and places of historical 
interest. 

Anyone who is interested in joining this party 
should communicate with Roy H. Mackay, Col- 
umbia University, New York City. 





COLLEGES AND CULTURE 


Assuredly it is not the function of the college to 
train technicians or experts, or even to steer its 
students in that direction.’ Its proper business is to 
raise the general level of culture in the community 
by preparing a soil in which ideas may find a favor- 
ing growth. Not until this task has been performed 
will the great work of teaching be held in honor, 
or executive autocracy be curbed, or the professor 
be allowed freely to speak his mind. We should like 
to see 1930-31 a banner year for culture in every 
American college.—The Nation. 





ADULT EDUCATION 

In a recent editorial on Adult Education the 
Chicago Evening Post quotes President L. P. 
Jacks of Manchester (England) College as say- 
ing that: 

Success in adult education involves such a long 
journey, that this generation can only approach the 
starting point. In the course of attaining it, he 
says, there will be difficult reactions affecting our 
industrial and social structure. Higher levels of en- 
joyment, for example, automatically would elim- 
inate inferior goods and low forms of entertainment. 
Dr. Jacks recommended as the starting point of this 
cultural journey greater attention to physical cul- 
ture, in close conjunction with the art of music. 
This attention to physical perfection, he believes, 
would tend to create a passion for excellence in 
other fields. 











18 : - THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


Six Little Schools at Bryn Mawr 
By Eleanor G. Coit, Local 5 
Educational Secretary, Affiliated Summer Schools for Women Workers in Industry 


On the opening day of the Bryn Mawr Sum- 
mer School in June, 1930, one hundred and one 
women workers assembled from all parts of the 
United States. These workers were separated 
by varying industrial experiences, nationality 
backgrounds, racial prejudices, by differing poli- 
tical affiliations and school experience. By the 
third day of the two month session this group 
of students were meeting in six school units— 
each group working together as such a “little 
school” within the one big school. 

The set up of these six little schools for effec- 
tive summer work meant a knowledge of the ex- 
perience of these 101 women workers. They 
came from a large number of industries, espe- 
cially from the men’s and women’s clothing, the 
millinery, and the textile industries. There was 
a hosiery topper, a tree-er in the boot and shoe 
trade; there were cigar and cigarette packers 
and automobile assemblers. Seven students were 
engaged in domestic and personal service. One 
was an adding machine operator in a cotton mill; 
another an interpreter and special worker with 
a union; and one, a student from Germany, a 
factory inspector. 

Both union and non-union workers were en- 
rolled in about equal proportions. The age of 
the students ranged from 19 to 35 (with one or 
two older women). The largest age group fell 
in the 25-29 year classification. Fifty-seven stu- 
dents had been born abroad, while of the forty- 
four born in this country, twenty-seven came of 
foreign parentage. These workers brought to the 
school old world backgrounds of Russia, Poland, 
Austria, England, Scotland, Italy and other coun- 
tries. Some spoke English haltingly; a still 
larger number found the written expression of 
English difficult. 

Their school experience was varied. Seventeen 
students, including three visiting students from 
Germany and England had attended foreign 
schools only. Some of the others attended grade 
or southern rural schools in this country; others 
the high schools in our metropolitan communities. 
This meant formal education anywhere from the 
second grade to graduation from High School. 
All these factors as well as those of educational 


experience, union activity in strike and other 
forms of union work, and club leadership under 
the local industrial department of the Y. W. C. 
A., entered into the picture in grouping the stu- 
dents. 

Of great importance here was some measure 
of the abilities of the students for their effective 
grouping in class units and constructive work. 
For a period of four years an experiment has 
been conducted at the Bryn Mawr Summer 
School in the use of psychological tests. The 
results of this experiment are not yet ready for 
publication. Their importance to the school, 
however, has come through their use in suggest- 
ing the groupings into which the students are 
divided. Students working at more or less the 
same rate thus are able to develop together. The 
other factors mentioned also have been taken 
into consideration along with the results of the 
tests, with every attempt to follow the special 
interests of each student. An effort was thus 
made, to group the students not only according to 
their abilities, but also according to their indus- 
trial background. This year the units met tenta- 
tively for preliminary discussions to discover the 
ideas and interests of each student and to gain 
some conception of whether the groups as planned 
would work well together. Necessary shifts were 
made in the personnel of these groups, both on 
the recommendation of the faculty and of the 
students. The six little schools were then ready 
for intensive work. 

Various interests motivated the work of these 
groups—these plans developed on the basis of 
winter activities of students in various communi- 
ties, dominant interests expressed in the applica- 
tion blanks of the students, and the summer 
school work of the previous summer. 

The group with the most limited ability and 
language handicap carried on its study of Eco 
nomics through a consideration of specific prob- 
lems such as wages, hours, and insecurity. Care- 
ful work in English was important in this group 
and the students also carried work in Science. 
The next group studied Economic History. An 
effort was made throughout the work in this unit 
to emphasize the changing world both through 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 19 


the study of Economics and through the work in 
English and in Science. A third unit attempted 
to correlate closely their study of Economics and 
Science, tracing through their discussions the 
development of the process of evolution in the 
physical and economic worlds. One unit was 
especially concerned with the study of labor and 
government. The English teacher in this group 
conducted her study through the discussion of 
literature describing different parts of this coun- 
try in an effort to give a picture of the American 
scene as a background for the study of economic 
life. Another group carried on a study of the 
problems of Trade Union organization and de- 
veloped an interesting scrapbook about the Amer- 
ican labor movement. The work of the English 
section was in a survey of literature, thus giving 
an historical background for the discussion of 
the modern labor movement. The sixth unit dis- 
cussed international economic problems with the 
work in English also forming a background pic- 
ture of different sections of the world. 

Spontaneous dramatic work was conducted in 
close relation to the study in the classroom and 
the use of the movie was an important part of 
the curriculum. Speakers representing varying 
political and economic points of view spoke to the 
school. Forums and discussions emphasized the 
importance of informal means of teaching, and 
were valuable in unifying the school and in in- 
creasing general school activities. 


It is important that work of this type grow 
out of the mind and experience of the students, 
and form a basis for activities carried over into 
community living. The Summer School keeps 
a flexible attitude about ways of learning, that 
its method may not form a crust of habit. The 
School is interested not so much in factual in- 
formation as in attitudes of mind, in curiosity 
about life, and in searches for new understanding 
of the world in which the worker lives. Many 
means are used to keep the learning process in- 
formal. All groups are small, from fifteen to 
twenty. The method used is that of discussion, 
beginning with the experience of the worker stu- 
dent, interpreting this experience in the light of 
history, economic organization, trade unionism, 
geography, or politics, as the situation under con- 
sideration demands, and working coincidentally 
in the field of literature,*science, or psychology 
in an effort to understand a changing world. 


In 1930 the discussion of the problems at hand 
worked out in different ways. The unit giving 
its special consideration throughout the session 
to trade union problems may be used as an illus- 
tration of method. The most concentrated study 
was conducted in the class room. Study of the 
trade unions important in the trades represented 
by the girls and of their outstanding problems 
proved a valuable basis for discussion. The work 
carried on by the Economics teacher Dr. Gladys 
Palmer was well supported by a survey of litera- 
ture giving a background of struggle and a 
knowledge of history. But supplementary to this 
class room work, in which visiting representa- 
tives of various unions actively participated, this 
group visited trade unions’ headquarters and 
trade union shops They invited speakers ‘to 
school forums on questions of importance to 
students of this subject; they held a forum for 
the whole school on the question of a labor party. 
The Union representation in the school was suffi- 
ciently varied so that campus conversation on 
many phases of union problems served as a val- 
uable testing ground for ideas developed in the 
class room. 

Specific problems at hand formed a valuable 
basis for discussion. Industrial girls living in 
Philadelphia from time to time attended their 
own labor meetings and took friends with them. 
One girl had to work two nights at her trade 
during the Summer School session to hold her 
priority. in the union shop. The Women’s Trade 
Union League of Philadelphia cooperating with 
the Central Labor Council and the United Tex- 
tile Workers held a conference on the campus of 
the Summer School to discuss the southern or- 
ganizing campaign of the American Federation 
of Labor. Mr. Tom Tippett brought the trade 
union work in the South close to the girls when 
he read his play “Mill Shadows” in which he 
tells of the struggle of the Marion textile work- 
ers. 

A group of trade union students preparing for 
a dramatic presentation by the whole school of 
their trade experience, decided that the student 
body needed to clarify its thoughts on the his- 
torical and tactical differences of various types 
of unions. They found they needed further in- 
formation, and after that a clarification of their 
own thinking before they could properly present 
their ideas. This proved an important road to 
new learning. 





20 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


Impressions which the students had of visiting 
speakers, informal discussions, dramatic sketches, 
labor meetings and from library study were 
brought back to the class room for further anal- 
ysis in the light of the experience of the teacher 
and fellow students. 

Many methods of work cannot be discussed 
here, but they were all important in the work of 
the school. The other units although their work 
is not discussed here in detail carried on active 
study developing from their interests and grow- 
ing out of their special problems: wages, hours, 
the worker and government, international eco- 
nomic questions and a changing world. The 
library of Bryn Mawr College has been from the 
first available to the School, in addition to the 
library of the Summer School in which is being 
collected constantly material most usuable for 
worker students, especially that in connection 
with the consideration of current labor and in- 
dustrial questions. An effort was made this 
year to use participant observers in certain of 
the units. These observers were asked to keep 2 
record of the discussions in those units as a 
basis for increased effectiveness in teaching. The 
work of the student-faculty council in meeting 
the day to day problems of the campus has been 
invaluable in the process of learning how to meet 
the problems of a group trying to live and work 
together. 

Miss Edith Christensen, former secretary of 
the Philadelphia Women’s Trade Union League, 
and of long experience in the labor movement, 
assisted in the unit studying trade union prob- 
lems, and worked with the entire student body 
in answering questions about trade unions in 
their own communities. Many of the non-trade 
union members were thereby introduced to a 
knowledge of the unions in their own trades and 
of trade union resources in their own towns. 


Both faculty and assistants to the faculty as- 
sumed the responsibility of assisting the students 
to learn not only resources in printed material 
but also in organizations. One forum of the 
school dealt with the relative value of such or- 
ganizations as the Consumers’ League, the Wom- 
en in Industry Division of the League of 
Women Voters, the Industrial Department of 
the Y. W. C. A., the Pioneer Youth, the Young 
Pioneers, and the League for Industrial Democ- 


racy, as groups through which industrial worker, 
may effectively function in dealing with industrial 
problems. These groups were considered as sup. 
plementary, of course, to their own trade unig, 
groups when these are organized or possible oj 
organization. 

Resources within the student herself have bee, 
considered no less important, and the develop 
ment of her ability to live creatively. One of the 
projects of this year was that of creative dra. 
matic groups. Many interests are develope; 
through dramatic presentation, One evening th 
nationality and racial groups presented in son 
and dance pictorial representations of their vari 
ous cultural backgrounds. The unit studying 
international economic problems pictured with 
the assistance of the whole school the set-up oj 
the International Labor Organization of the 
League of Nations. On several occasions, 4l! 
interested persons were invited to come together 
for informal dramatic work. After some in-} 
formal singing, or other group activity, Miss 
Smith, the Director of the School, invited ind- 
viduals or groups desirous of sharing some com- 
mon experience to act out their idea. Two o: 
three would soon go off to another part of the 
room to plan, and before long all would be par- 
ticipating in the activity of the British Labor 
Party, in stumping for their candidate. This was 
worked out by Mr. Mark Starr, a member of the 
faculty from England and two British students 
all of them members of the British Labor Party. 
Another student wanted to act out in pantomime 
the futile search for a job by an unemployed 
worker, another group presented the hearing be- 
fore the impartial chairman of the workers an! 
employers in the men’s clothing industry. 


Through music as through dramatics there 
much opportunity not only for the free expres 
sion of the personality and experience of eat! 
student, but also for the expression of the bes 
culture of many nationalities represented at the 
school. The development of a group spirit in the 
student body and the growth of a sense of loyalty 
to the cause of labor are important in connet- 
tion with the music program. 


A health program has been carried on at Bry! 
Mawr in the last two years which has attempted 
to teach each student relaxation in body and th 
coordination of muscles, to make her bette’ 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 21 


equipped to meet life. The individual physical 
needs of each student are studied, and at least 
the beginning of remedial measures undertaken 
with every effort made to follow up in each city 
after the girl returns home. Campus activities 
include also many play times—picnics, baseball, 
swimming, tennis—much that means a renewing 
of body and mind. 

The Summer School has developed its program 
on the basis of the needs of women workers. 
The curriculum provides opportunity for the in- 
dividual growth and development of these work- 
ers, but places its emphasis on the group respon- 
sibility of workers and their effective group 
action in meeting their industrial problems. 

The Summer School staff are often asked 
such questions as: “What is the value of the 
Summer School?” “Do the students continue 
their study?” “What happens after they return 
home?” We continually ask these questions of 
ourselves. The Summer School work of eight 
weeks has inestimable value to each student in 
her new understanding of herself and of the 
world in which she lives. Its greatest value, how- 
ever, comes through this experience forming a 
Bryn 


part of a wider educational experience. 
Mawr Summer School is one of the four Summer 
Schools for Women Workers in Industry alli 
interested in the group activity of industrial wom- 


en and especially in the labor movement. Miss 
Herstein in her article in the January number of 
The AMERICAN TEACHER has spoken of the 
origin and purpose of these schools: The Bryn 
Mawr School, the Barnard Summer School, Wis- 
consin Summer School and the Southern Sum- 
mer School. The four schools work together, 
three of them through affiliation with the Affili- 
ated Summer Schools Committee, in preparing 
students and workng with them as they return to 
their communities. The students come in large 
part from preparatory classes conducted either 
by the local Summer School Committee or by 
various organizations with which the Summer 
School cooperates. Some of these organizations 
are: The Women’s Trade Union League, a 
local labor college wherever these exist, and the 
Industrial Department of the Y. W. C. A. 

The winter work of the Summer School is con- 


ducted through local committees all over the 
United States. These committees are responsible 


for recruiting new students, raising money, work- 
ing with the students on an educational program 
and interpreting to the community the signifi- 
cance of the Summer School work as a workers’ 
educational project. 

The Bryn Mawr students are actively at work 
in various ways in their communities to which 
they have returned. One 1930 student from an 
important clothing center in the middle west re- 
turned home to develop new class plans which 
would be participated in largely by fellow mem- 
bers of her union. A hosiery worker from a 
New England city “was all ready to help” with 
the organization of the girls in her plant. Her 
union is now 98% organized and she is secretary- 
treasurer of her union. She is anxious to interest 
the members in discussion of certain vexing wage 
problems. A former student is manager of a 
cooperative bakery. A neckwear maker has re- 
turned to her city to carry on a discussion of 
union problems with unorganized girls in the 
hope of interesting them in trade union activity. 
One girl acts as a union organizer ;-another has 
brought together other women workers in her 
city under the League of Women Voters—to 
work for bills of importance to workers; others 
are carrying on study in their industrial clubs 
and organizing classes ; several students are work- 
ing with Pioneer Youth. In many ways these 
students are trying to translate into everyday 
living the new understanding of their responsibil- 
ities as workers which the Summer School ex- 
perience has brought to them. 

The AMERICAN TEACHER has recently carried 
carried two articles on the Summer Schools; the 
first by Mr. Schwarztrauber of the Wisconsin 
Summer School, the second by Miss Herstein on 
the Southern Summer School. The interest of the 
Teachers’ Union in this work is accentuated 
through the presence on the faculties of these 
schools of many members of the American Fed- 
eration of Teachers. This interest is deepened 
through the experimental methods of teaching 
used at the schools. Those who are concerned 
in workers’ education are interested in develop- 
ing the program of their schools through an 
interpretation of the experience of the industrial 
workers who attend. Through an analysis of 
their interests in the industrial world we find a 
basis for learning which means a better under- 











22 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


standing ur life and of their place in society. 
Problems of unemployment, of insecurity, of 
wages, all the grim realities which face workers, 
mean constant questioning of our economic or- 
ganization and a need for knowledge in which 
to build new interpretations. This includes not 
only study on the part of students of ways to 
meet the perplexities of everyday living, and to 
test out means of overcoming certain problems 
through union activity, through legislative meas- 
ures, and so on, but also it involves consideration 
of new organization of our social forces. Ina 
world torn by economic difficulties, seriously ex- 
emplified in the present problems of unemploy- 
ment, education should form the basis for build- 
ing a new world. The Bryn Mawr Summer 
School as the other summer schools for women 
workers in industry holds this ideal. 

The experience of the Summer Schools is 
further interesting to teachers as such schools 
may serve as experimental centers for methods 
of teaching which may be valuable in the develop- 
ment of social controls. Through this experience 
also, certain valuable data on the experience of 
workers is being assembled of use to all teachers 
interested in the labor movement and in social 
problems. 

Several studies have been conducted and others 
are in process of preparation. These include a 
history of the work of Bryn Mawr Summer 
School, studies by various schools of the follow- 
up work of students in local communities, experi- 
mentation with the use of tests in grouping stu- 
dents and in studying their progress in work in 
the schools. The job histories of the students at- 
tending the four Summer Schools have been kept 
for three years and give valuable data on the 
work experiences of these students. The schools 
are particularly interested also in developng the 
use of case stories about the lives of the students 
as a means of throwing light on teaching methods 
and of interpreting the experience of women 
workers. Through all these means, and especially 
through the work of their former students, the 
Summer Schools strive to carry on effective work 
in the field of workers’ education. 





Sit down before fact as a little child; be prepared to 
give up every preconceived notion—or you shall learn 
nothing.—Husley. 


FIGHT FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM, 
PROF. ROSS WARNS TEACHERS 


Teachers must organize to preserve their inde- 
pendence, Los Angeles educators were told at a 
meeting of the Classroom Teachers’ Federation 
addressed by Prof. Edward A. Ross, head of the 
sociology department, University of Wisconsin, 
on “Academic Freedom.” 

“If you want to be something more than cring- 
ing worms, then you will have to fight to retain 
your tenure (civil service) rights; and to fight 
you will have to organize, and to organize you 
will have to agitate,” Prof. Ross said. 

He advised the teachers to bind themselves to- 
gether and make themselves a force that the pri- 
vate interests could not molest. 

“The enemies of the public are organized to 
the hilt, secretly, of course. The power trust 
has 30,000 paid persons working for it for the 
purpose of influencing nublic opinion and putting 
propaganda in the schouls, and they admit it. The 
big interests are trying to intimidate the teachers 
to abstain from all political activities, unless, of 
course, they work for the political parties that 
big business is for. 

“They want to terrorize the teachers away 
from anything unorthodox. They wish not only 
to take away the teachers’ reasonable rights as 
citizens, but they want to assure the teaching of 
an orthodox history, economics and political sci- 
ence, and nothing else, in the schools. 

“They aim to bring it about that any teacher 
who doesn’t fall in with their program may be 
quietly dropped—always under the pretense of 
incompetency or immorality—never, of course, 
giving him a show.” 

—The Open Forum, Los Angeles. 





FEDERAL SURVEYS IN EDUCATION 

The Commissioner of Education, in his annual 
report to the Secretary of the Interior, gives an 
account of two nation-wide surveys now under 
way in the Office of Education, namely, that of 
secondary education and the professional prep- 
aration of teachers. For the latter survey Con- 
gress appropriated 50,000 for the current year 
and authorized the Commissioner of Education 
to pursue the study through three years at 4 
cost not to exceed $200,000. Dr. E. S. Evenden, 
of Teachers College, Columbia University, is in 
charge of the foregoing survey. 








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THE AMERICAN 


TEACHER 23 


A World Speech Possible and Practical 


By Henry W. Hetzel, Local 192, Philadelphia 


Educators, no less than other enlightened 
people who feel themselves privileged to lead in 
progressive movements, find the need of meeting 
periodically with their fellow professionals in 
other countries in order to discuss and make 
definite their ideals and methods. Characteristic 
of the age which manifests an urge for world-co- 
operation, the international conference has come 
to stay. However, there has always been, even 
in the best arranged of such gatherings, consider- 
able difficulty due to the differences in language. 
The Tower of Babel is still with us. And with 
the increasing number and intensity of inter- 
national contacts, with the airship, radio, the 
talking picture and now television,—to say noth- 
ing of future marvels of communication of which 
these but give us a hint,—the language barriers 
are seen to be of increasing seriousness. 

It is proper to consider the international con- 
ference specifically as the acid test of language 
adequacy, for here we have the need of speech 
in its most particularized and exacting form. 
The fellow who boasts of his ability to travel 
abroad “on English alone” (or any other national 
tongue, for that matter) and thereby considers 
the language question as settled, has a very child- 
ish view of the necessities of this modern, co- 
operation-minded world. The crude needs of 
locomotion and nutrition may very well be sup- 
plied by the use of one’s own mother-tongue 
(although many travelers will hardly believe it) 
or the smattering of foreign language so toil- 
fully learned at school, but to take an active part 
in a world congress,—that is another matter! 
Often we have seen in such gatherings the very 
flower of European scholarship unable to talk to 
us (or to one another) except through inter- 
preters. Utterly refuting the oft-asserted “every 
educated foreigner knows English,” these in- 
tellectual lights stubbornly insist upon speaking 
each in his own mother-tongue. It is significant 
that not once in modern history has a conference 
truly international been held in which one na- 
tional language alone has been used. The excep- 
tions are, of course, in diplomacy, but here it has 
been French and not English that has been the 
speech used. 


As an example of how even the best of these 
congresses fails to meet the difficulty, let us take 
the case of the World Federation of Education 
Associations and its big Conference in Geneva 
last year. Those of us who were present distinct- 
ly remember that, in an atmosphere of high ideals 
and lofty purpose, the participants divided them- 
selves into mutually uncomprehending groups, 
that time was lost (and temper perhaps) in more 
or less imperfect translations, to say nothing of 
the injection of conflicting psychologies insepar- 
able from national languages. It seems almost 
incredible that modern civilization has nothing 
better to offer than this linguistic chaos. One 
may well ask, can progressive educators devise 
nothing better for a world bent on efficiency? 
Will it not be admitted that the absence of a 
common tongue for all international uses is a 
reproach to our profession ? 

It is not the purpose of this article to exploit 
any proposed solution of the difficulty; let us 
admit that the last word has not been said upon 
the subject. Still, it may hearten those who do 
think about the matter to know what has already 
been accomplished. The ordinary person, even 
the intelligent one, while conceding the desirabil- 
ity of an international speech, usually dismisses 
the thought as a fantastic, impractical notion,—a 
dream “too good to be true,” or else he falls 
back upon approval of “one of the existing na- 
tional tongues” (meaning his own, of course) to 
meet the difficulty. 

Merely to point out a field for inquiry where 
exploration may amply repay those seeking a 
solution of the international language problem, 
the writer wishes to instance the Twenty Second 
Congress of Esperantists held in Oxford, Eng- 
land, the past August, which is typical of all 
of the several which he has attended. Imagine 
a group of twelve hundred people from thirty- 
six different countries using a synthetic tongue 
in every possible way in which any national 
language can be used, from scientific lectures and 
discussion to sight-seeing excursions : from a 
complete church service to the comedy “Charley’s 
Aunt” and a talking moving picture; from busi- 
ness discussions to ordinary conversation. With 











24 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


the exception of speeches of greeting from about 
a half-dozen non-Esperantist organizations, dur- 
ing the whole of the eight days not a word was 
heard in any national tongue and, of course, no 
interpreters were needed. At least a dozen gov- 
ernments sent official delegates and _ several 
Chambers of Commerce and other trade bodies 
were represented. Many participants came in 
their several distinctive national costumes, thus 
imparting a colorful cosmopolitanism to the 
whole affair. 

It has long ago been shown that it is possible 
for any group of “language sharps” to invent 
a code for their own amusement, to jabber at 
one another for the glory of themselves and their 
hobby. The rest of the world, however, need 
not consider such a “stunt” as especially signifi- 
cant in world progress. But it is significant 
when men of affairs, scientists, business men, 
religious workers and educators from all parts 
of the world, each group in its own de- 
partmental meetings, get together to discuss their 
common interests and methods of cooperation, 
all in a common tongue which by its neutrality 
eliminates the injustice of favoring some nations 
at the expense of others. And all this is exactly 
what has come to pass! During the week meet- 
ings of this kind were held of policemen, pharma- 
cists, stenographers, post office employees, Cath- 
olics, Rotarians, Freemasons, Pan-Europe advo- 
cates, the Pacifist League, bankers, scientists, 
radio “fans,” feminists, workers for the blind and 
Friends of Dumb Animals. The writer attended 
some of these meetings. In the speeches and 
discussion, fairly bristling with technical terms, 
there was no lack of vigor or spontaneity; the 
all-sufficient Esperanto was handled with a na- 
turalness that is paralleled only where all use the 
same mother tongue. It is not necessary to point 
out to those who have attended world confer- 
ences of the usual kind that the one here des- 
cribed stands out in refreshing contrast. 

The pronunciation about which our readers 
may be inclined to question is quite uniform,—at 
least no outsider has ever disputed the claim of 
the Esperantist that it is impossible to tell the 
nationality of a speaker by his pronunciation 
alone. Laughable mistakes in guessing at one 
another’s fatherland are commonplace in such 
gatherings. This is all the more remarkable when 


it is remembered that some of these delegates in 
Oxford came from such far-apart places as 
Japan and Brazil, Australia and Iceland, and that 
some hundreds of those present have learned 
the common tongue solely from text-books, with- 
out as much as a phonograph record to give the 
pronunciation. 

One hardly needs an argument to realize that 
the language of world-democracy must neces- 
sarily be a neutral one, and therefore, that no 
national tongue, however vastly used, can serve 
this lofty purpose. Those who see in a congress 
such as the one just described merely a demon- 
stration of language efficiency have not caught its 
true significance. In an atmosphere where there 
are no “favored nations,” where the accidental 
differences of birthplace sink into nothingness 
and are all but forgotten, you have the necessary 
condition for the cultivation of harmonious rela- 
tions between the peoples of the world, a promise 
of tremendous importance to the future of civil- 
ization. Whatever may be the final outcome of 
the cumulating efforts toward realizing the dream 
of the ages, a linguistic bond for humanity, and 
whatever one may think of the merits of Dr. 
Zamenhof’s creation judged solely from a lin- 
guistic standpoint, it must be admitted that 
Esperanto has shown that such a priceless boon 
is indeed realizable. At the least estimate, it is 
an adventure in practical idealism that should 
command the sympathetic attention of progres- 
sive educators. 





The educational Department of the League of 
Nations Association, Inc., reports that during the 
past school year, approximately 5,300 students 
from thirty-five states have participated in forty- 
four model assemblies, representing two hundred 
and forty colleges and schools of all grades. In 
addition, some one thousand members of clubs 
and special groups have taken part in the model 
assemblies which have been arranged in connec- 
tion with their regular group programs. 





The first International Camp for Girls will 
open during the summer of 1931 on Lake George, 
Adirondack Mountains, New York. Foreign 
students coming to American colleges are invited 
to attend the camp, where a study of American 
life and institutions will be made. 











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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 25 


MILITARIZATION OF YOUTH GETS 
FURTHER SETBACK ABROAD 


The abolition of cadet training and use of mili- 
tary titles has been approved by the General 
Council of the United Church of Canada. The 
United Church is the largest Protestant Church in 
the Dominion. This we learn from Labor, Octo- 


ber 7, 1930. 

This action in Canada is in harmony with the 
complete withdrawal of support from the cadets 
of Great Britain which took place earlier in the 
year. The Parliamentary debate on this subject 
in the House of Lords on April 11, 1930, is in- 
structive. The Government’s decision was ex- 
plained by Earl de la Warr: 


The case of the War Office is perfectly clear. We 
have to make up our minds and your Lordships have 
to make up your minds, whether this is military 
training or not. If the answer is that it is military 
training, we say that it is undesirable at that age (a 
large majority of the boys are between 13 and 16). 
If you say that it is not military training, then we 
contend that this is not proper military expenditure. 
The Boy Scouts, with a very much larger member- 
ship than the cadet forces, do not receive any recog- 
tion or grant from the War Office. From that date 
(October 31, 1930) the grant will be withdrawn, 
recognition will be withdrawn, arms will have to be 
given up, and no new uniform will be served out or 
allowed. They will be permitted to wear out exist- 
ing uniforms, but without military badges or any 
other military marks. 

There was one point raised by the most reverend 
Primate which I did not quite clearly answer, and 
that was hig point as to what we meant by moral 
and educational reasons. Let me make it quite clear 
that when moral and educational reasons were re- 
ferred to, it was simply the feeling of objection to 
instilling military ideas into them. 

—Bulletin, National Council for 


Prevention of War. 





MORE REGARDING COMPULSORY 
MILITARY TRAINING 

The suspension of compulsory military train- 
ing by the Government of New Zealand an- 
nounced in our September Bulletin becomes more 
interesting as we learn the explanation officially 
given for that action. The first reason for the 
Proposed change in defense policy, said the Min- 
ister of Defense during the debate on the bill, 
was the urgent necessity of economy. The sec- 
ond was the strong feeling in favor of worldwide 


peace and the opposition to compulsory military 
service that had grown up in the last few years 
in most civilized countries. It had not been abol- 
ished altogether, he explained, because the ques- 
tion of defense was so important and the differ- 
ences of opinion respecting it so great that it had 
been thought wiser merely to suspend compulsory 
service for a year rather than to abolish it alto- 


gether. The matter was one in which haste 
should be made slowly. In conclusion the Min- 
ister said: 


I maintain that no sensible plan under existing 
conditions can justify an annual expenditure of up- 
wards of $1,000,000 plus on what we term defense, 
but what is really a system for the training of a 
force to be ready for active service overseas at short 
notice. Taking all these facts into consideration, the 
government felt that it would not be doing its duty 
if it continued, in face of decreased income, increased 
unemployment and the marked change in public 
sentiment, to maintain in its entirety our present 
system of compulsory military training. 

—Bulletin, National Council for 


Prevention of War. 





A manifesto has been issued by nine peace organiza- 
tions denouncing military training and conscription. 
Among the signers are Jane Addams, John Dewey, Al- 
bert Einstein, H. G. Wells, Romain Rolland and Stefan 
Zweig. “Military training is training of mind and 
body in the technique of killing. It is education for 
war. It is the perpetuation of the war mentality. It 
prevents the development of the will to peace.” 


¢ 





Abolition of the elective military science course at 
New York City College was favored by a 5 to 2 vote 
of the student council. 





DONALD GRANT 

Donald Grant hates war and likes folks. He 
hates war because he likes folks. He hates war 
so’much that with some 4,600 other Englishmen 
he went to jail rather than fight; and now, out 
of those 4,600 who went to jail with him for 
conscience sake, England has sent 25 to Parlia- 
ment.—The World Tomorrow. 





War was necessary to civilization, and it ended by 
destroying civilization. To this contradiction is due 
all the tragic grandeur of the ancient world.—Guglielmo 
Ferreo, Militarism, p. 134. 





The fatherland of the wise and the good is the 
whole world. 








26 THE AMERICAN 





BOOKS 


“There is no frigate like a book 
To bear us lands away.” 
—Emily, Dickinson. 











PELLE THE CoNQueRoR. By Martin Anderson 
Peter Smith. New York. $3.50. 


When Pelle the Conqueror first made its ap- 
pearance in Denmark a quarter of a century ago, 
critics hailed it as the labor novel of the century. 
Yet the English translation was a failure finan- 
cially because of the price—$2 for each of four 
volumes. The four were condensed to two, at 
$5, but this edition it also out of print. Now 
comes a one-volume edition at $3.50 and one of 
the greatest novels of the world is back on the 
shelves of the bookstores. 

Each of the four parts is almost a complete 
story in itself. First we have the open-air life 
of the boy on his native island of Bornholm; 
then his apprenticeship to a shoemaker in a small 
town; next his struggles in Copenhagen against 
cmployers and authorities; culminating in his 
being framed and sent to prison for six years; 
and the final victory in laying the foundation of 
a garden city for his fellow workers. He is a 
trade unionist and social pioneer. In his garden 
city the workers are at last at peace with the 
machines. His is a utopia come true. 


Nexo. 





Your Jos AND Your Pay. By Katherine H. Pol- 
lack and Tom Tippett. Vanguard Press, 
New York. Cloth, $2.00; Paper, 50 cents. 

This textbook for elementary economics classes 
has been previously issued in mimeograph form 
by Brookwood College under the title Moprern 
INDUSTRY—A CHALLENGE TO WoRKERS. 

It discusses how industry treats its workers, 
with special attention to wages, unemployment, 
hours of work, and industrial accidents; shows 
how the evils of the present industrial system 
arose ; and analyzes the improvements which may 
be wrought by government action, welfare capi- 
talism, trade unions, and the remodeling of our 
industrial system. 

The authors have made a special effort to 
simplify vocabulary and treatment in order to 
make the book easily understood by workers, 





TEACHER 


and its success in workers’ education classes at 
}rookwood, Marion, N. C., the Cuiimhia Con- 
serve Company at Indianapolis, and in industriaj 
groups of the Young Women’s Christian Asso- 
ciation seems to indicate that they have accom- 
plished their purpose. 





ANCIENT LIFE IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST. 
3y Edgar L. Hewett. Bobbs-Merrill, Indi- 
anapolis. $5.00. 

To Dr. Hewett it is astounding that most his- 
tories of the United States begin with European 
explorations, in the face of the achievements 
of the First Americans. As answer to the com- 
plaint that America has no ancient history, hence 
no traditions to build on, he spreads before us 
the “noble heritage” left us by the “ancients” of 
the Indian race. For Indians are neither savages 
nor primitives: theirs is a civilization developed 
through thousands of years. A civilization very 
different from ours, to be sure, but with much 
to teach us, if we will but listen. 

Who, then, is this author who, after forty 
years in the archaeological field, is issuing his 
first book—though by no means his first docu- 
ment? Few who have visited Santa Fe need 
ask. Dr. Hewett, Director of tht State Museum 
and of the Archaeological Institute’s School of 
American Research at Santa Fe, also occupies 
the chair of anthropology in the University of 
New Mexico, and ranks as dean of southwest 
archaeology. He was one of the first to excavate 
now-famous ruins in Yucatan and Guatemala. 
Excavations in Europe, Asia and Africa have 
added to his prestige. No one has done more 
to secure protection for ancient sites through 
making them National Parks or National Monu- 
ments. 

All this shows him to be one who speaks with 
authority. Yet he writes with an ease and an 
enthusiasm that wins the reader. A map, fine 
illustrations in abundance, and an excellent in- 
dex, make the book equally valuable for the gen- 
eral reader and the classroom. 

Part One deals with the general history of the 
American Race, its time and evolution factors, 
and its culture type. Part Two reveals the “Wis- 
dom of the Past,” as expressed in mythology and 
tradition and in religious ceremonial. In esthetics 
the Indian has won a foremost place through his 





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THE AMERICAN 


pottery, basketry, and painting, and his “drama- 
dances.” 

Half the book is devoted to “The Realm of the 
Pick and the Spade.” It is a detailed account of 
what the “archaeologist’s quest” has revealed on 


mesa and desert. 
Lyp1a G. TROWBRIDGE. 





On THE RHYTHM OF THE Rep Man. By Julia 
M. Buttree. Introduction, Art Section and 
Illustrations by Ernest Thompson Seton, A. 
S. Barnes and Company, New York. $5.09. 

This delightful book should stand beside “An- 
cient Life in the American Southwest.” Mr. 
Seton, too, sees a rich heritage in the Indian 
dancing and decorative arts. After speaking of 
the instinctive expression of joy in dancing, and 
reviewing the history of dancing and its many 
dismal failures to express emotion spontaneously, 
because so hedged about by our conventions, he 
asserts very positively that the American Indian 
is the leader we need. “His dancing is clean, 
beautiful, dramatic, interpretive, rhythmic exer- 
cise; it is possible for all exhibiting 
more than any other dancing the perfection of 
physique, it is helping us to regain the noblest 
ideals of outdoor life that did so much for an- 
cient Greece.” 

Then Miss Buttree teaches the fundamental 
steps. Forty-four dances and ten ceremonies fol- 
low, So plainly described that any child can fol- 
low the instructions; so beautifully interpreted 
that they induce reverence. Musical scores add 
their charm. 

And since this is manifestly a book for scouts, 
old and young, though the word is not used, it 
includes, not only the shaping but the decoration 
of the tent, the war bonnet, moccasins, garments, 
masks, canoes, paddles, peace-pipes Indians used. 
It is not hard to imagine the joy teachers and 
children will get out of these activities. 

Lypra G. TROWBRIDGE. 





THe ProGRaAM FoR ELEMENTARY Scuoot Lt- 
BRARY SERVICE. Lucile F. Fargo, 224 pp. 
$2.25. The American Library Association, 
Chicago. 


With the discarding of the traditional textbook 
method of teaching, and the attendant need for 
adequate school libraries, the appearance of The 
Program for Elementary School Library Service, 


TEACHER 27 


by Lucile F. Fargo, is particularly timely. Miss 
Fargo, who viewed the whole school library 
field in her earlier work, The Library in the 
School, here concentrates upon administrative 
problems. 

To link library service more closely to the 
grade school curriculum is Miss Fargo’s aim in 
this new volume. In classifying already existing 
libraries, she develops an outline which identifies 
the traditional, reading laboratory, and unlimited 
service types in elementary schools. 

By the case method she then analyzes four 
typical situations and formulates programs to 
meet the needs and resources of each: Case A, 
an isolated village of 2,500 inhabitants; Case B, 
a city of 150,000 inhabitants; Case C, a rural 
county with a few consolidated schools and a 
number of isolated districts; and Case D, a pros- 
perous city of 300,000 inhabitants. The cases 
vary as much in the attitude of the population 
as they do in size, locality, and available funds. 

To summarize the typical problems arising in 
these various localities, Miss Fargo draws up a 
chart which makes possible the analysis of any 
local situation, and suggests plans of procedure in 
setting up a library program. This chart, as well 
as Miss Fargo’s discussion throughout the vol- 
ume, is remarkable for its flexibility. 

The author, who was recently appointed by 
United States Commissioner of Education 
Cooper on a committee to make a national sur- 
vey of secondary education, is now directing the 
training of school librarians at the George Pea- 
body College for Teachers. 





CHANGING CIVILIZATION IN THE MopDeRN 
Wortp: By Harold Rugg. Ginn and Co., 
N. Y. 633 p. $1.96. 


Harold Rugg and his colleagues of Teachers’ 
College in the textbook Changing Civilization 
in the Modern World have made a notable con- 
tribution to building up that world outlook which 
will enable people to live safely in the interlocked 
world of the 20th century. There is a wealth 
of maps and pictorial material to make an effec- 
tive introduction to the life of other lands. As 
the title implies, this is no erroneously static 
view of things. There is no nonsense about 
the unchanging East or Nordic superiority. The 
facts given show that the place of the United 
States in the world is not on top but in the circle 











28 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


with the other groups from which she differs only 
because of geographic, economic and historical 
factors herein made clear. 

In startling contrast to the average textbook, 
this one explains why economic rivalries caused 
the World War although, in explaining the entry 
of the United States, it is the submarine attacks 
on American vessels and not the loans made to 
the Allies which receive emphasis. Czarist op- 
pression receives attention as the cause of the 
Russian Revolution and while the tremendous 
handicap of foreign intervention to support Kol- 
chak, Wrangel and their ilk is ignored, the book 
is a model of fairness to many we have been un- 
fortunate enough to study. The book is unwit- 
tingly propagandist for cooperation between the 
peoples because the facts point that way. We 
should feel much more satisfied about the prog- 
ress of the human race if this book becomes 
widely used inside and outside the schools of the 
United States and other lands. 

MarK STARR. 





Strike: By Mary Heaton Vorse. Horace Live- 
right, New York. $2.50. 

Reporters and speakers have tried to tell what 
happened last year in Gastonia and Marion, N. 
C., when men and women pickets were beaten, 
bayonetted, and shot, a police chief killed, and 
union leaders kidnapped and flogged. But how 
it happened remained mysterious: the series of 
events was too incredible. Mary Heaton Vorse, 
who spent several months in the midst of the 
turmoil, has caught the flavor of it all in Strike, 
the first labor novel of the new south. If you 
still wonder what and how and why, read her 
book. In it you will live among the people, and 
see for yourself. 

Of course Strike does not attempt to be faith- 
ful in all details to the personages and events 
of last year’s tragedies. It is remarkably faith- 
ful to essentials, as the reviewer felt them in 
North Carolina. With a minimum of descrip- 
tion—rather through a thousand little glimpses of 
human nature—the momentous scene is_illu- 
mined. You feel the impatient surprise of the 
comfortable people that the mill workers who 
“had so much done for them” should want to 
organize. You feel the high lift of hope among 
the workers, suddenly stirred to try for a change. 


They know what was done for them. They 
know that whatever it was, their lives remained 
a weary drudgery of eleven or twelve hours work 
for a precarious existence. The least sickness— 
another child—loss of job—-upset the balance, 
and made them actually hungry. Mamie Lewis— 
the Ella May of the book—sings it with touch- 
ing simplicity. Union, to them, meant a better 
life. Union meant salvation. You see in Strike 
their dogged loyalty, their fears, and their amaz- 
ing courage. You see also the bitterness that 
cleft the community like a knife. The union 
idea, one journalist has said, made Gastonia “not 
a place, but a state of mind.” In Marion the 
attitude was similar, despite the difference be- 
tween the United Textile Workers and the Na- 
tional Textile Workers Union. Events and 
people from both places figure in Strike. 

The book teems with moments of high drama 
and heartbreaking intensity. The terrible weight 
of hope and hate that hangs on Fer Deane, the 
organizer, fills one with foreboding. Hope— 
from the workers, who believe him a hero who 
can do anything for them, while he feels only 
too human; hate—from the comfortable people, 
who think him a devil. Fer can never rest— 
until he is shot. 


But Strike is not all tragic. Love is there, and 
the little things also—petty personal jealousies 
and triumphs that make it live. The indescrib- 
able humor of the southern mountain people 
walks through the book in many varied charac- 
ters. 


This book imparts like nothing I have read 
the strength of the desire for union among south- 
ern workers. The force which, in talks with 
these workers, strikes one like a living truth, is 
here. In many years to come it will seethe 
through the south. The reviewer found it in 
every town she visited. It will bring many more 
struggles, one feels. Danville is boiling now. 
There, apparently, the community is with the 
union. But the bitter determination of the em- 
ployer to have no “interference” is there. And 
the lovable southerners, with their humor and 
heroism. Any one who wants to understand one 
of the most stirring chapters of labor history 
should read Strike. 


—Jrssie Lioyp, Federated Press. 





Cl 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 29 


NEW VENTURE IN THE FIELD OF MENTAL 
HYGIENE EDUCATION 

The Massachusetts Society for Mental Hy- 
giene announces that through the generosity of 
the Godfrey M. Hyams Trust it will begin the 
publication early in January of a quarterly to be 
called “Understanding the Child.” This new 
magazine will be distributed free to every teacher 
in the public schools of Massachusetts, Its pur- 
pose is to bring to them a knowledge of the 
principles and practices of mental hygiene. As 
Dr. Burnham has stated so well, “In the business 
of understanding the child, mental hygiene is 
vastly helpful to parents and teachers. One rea- 
son for this is the fact that education is con- 
cerned especially with the primary results of 
teaching—knowledge, certain forms of skill. the 
development of interests in certain subjects. 
Mental hygiene is concerned with certain second- 
ary results—habits of attention, of study, and 
work, certain health interests, healthful associa- 
tions, and wholesome mental attitudes. The very 
fact that hygiene is primarily concerned with the 
latter and not with the educational interests and 
attitudes, enables the hygienist to see many things 
significant for the health of children that both 
parents and teachers are apt to overlook.” 

The editorial direction of this new magazine 
has been placed in an Editorial Board consisting 
of J. Mace Andress, Editor, and Dr. E. Stanley 
Abbot and Dr. Henry B. Elkind, Associate Edi- 
tors. There will be a Consulting Editorial Board 
of fifteen members, composed of experts in the 
fields of mental hygiene and education, such as 
William H. Burnham, C. Macfie Campbell, 
Augusta F. Bronner, Payson Smith, Lawrence 
A. Averill and others. This Board, together with 
the Editors, will insure a high standard not only 
from the point of view of presentation but from 
that of scientific accuracy. 

A small annual subscription fee to the maga- 


zine will be charged for those who are not public 
school teachers in Massachusetts. 





UNION TEXTBOOKS PREFERRED 
San Antonio, Tex.—(FP)—Sec. William B. 
Arnold of the Texas Allied Printing Trades 
Council reports that the Texas school textbook 
commission has awarded contracts to 30 union 
printing firms and to only four non-union shops. 


PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION ASSOCIATION 
TO MEET 

The Progressive Education Association will 
hold its eleventh annual convention in Detroit, 
February 26-28, 1931, following the meeting of 
the Department of Superintendence, National 
Education Association, in that city. The Pro- 
gressive Education Association and the New 
Education Fellowship of Europe have affiliated 
for the purpose of making available the resources 
of both organizations in spreading knowledge of 
educational advancement. 





W. F. E. A. 

The Fifth Congress or Fourth Biennial Meet- 
ing of the World Federation of Education As- 
sociations will be held at Denver, Colorado, U. 
S. A., July 27 to August 1, 1931. Educational 
organizations in all countries are invited to send 
delegates and educators generally to attend. 

Miss Selma M. Borchardt is the representative 


of the American Federation of Teachers on the 
W. F. E. A. Board of Directors. 





PENSION PLAN AT THE UNIVERSITY 
OF MICHIGAN 


The faculty of the University of Michigan is 
considering a retirement annuity plan proposed 
by the regents of the institution. 

The plan would begin this year. Faculty mem- 
bers would pay 5 per cent of their salaries, the 
amount to be doubled by the university, to pur- 
chase annuities payable after 25 years of service 
as a professor or after 30 years as an instructor 
and professor. 

Pensions would equal one-half of the average 


salary for the last five years of service, plus 
$400, the total not to exceed $4,000. 





WE’D LIKE TO GO BACK! 

Fifty-nine college students recently sailed to 
spend their junior year in France under a plan 
inaugurated by the University of Delaware. A 
similar arrangement is under discussion in con- 
nection with Germany, according to Dr. Stephen 
P. Duggan, director of the Institute of Inter- 
national Education, who hopes ultimately to ar- 
range for similar groups to study in Spain, Italy, 
Austria, and other countries. 











30 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 





Local News 











VOORHIS SCHOOL FOR BOYS, LOCAL 210 

In schools such as the Voorhis School for 
Boys at San Dimas, California, where local No. 
210 is located, news of the local is mostly news 
of the school as all the members are associated 
in the life uf this little community. 

Consequently, teachers’ meetings or social 
gatherings are hard to distinguish from meetings 
of the local, and meetings of the local are like 
as not to be teachers’ meetings or social gather- 
ings. 

The Voorhis School is really a community cre- 
ated to make an ideal environment for some sixty 
orphans or boys from broken homes. It is their 
home, and they look upon it as their home, to 
which they may always return and be welcomed. 

The boys live in groups of twelve in separate 
cottages, under a housemother. Each family 
has boys of various ages, the youngest being 
about nine years old, and the oldest being seniors 
in high school. 

Only the Junior High School grades (seventh, 
eighth and ninth) are taught at the community, 
however. Grammar School and High School 
boys go by bus to the neighboring town of San 
Dimas. A few high school graduates are also 
attending college, and return to the community 
for week ends. 

The Voorhis School accepts only the boys who 
are in great need of care. Originally it was in- 
tended that a certain number of pay pupils would 
be accepted, but so many youngsters of a high 
type, who seemed to be completely “up against 
it” were found that need is now the first con- 
sideration for admittance. It should be added 
that there are no places open at the present time. 

The center of the community is the “Chapel of 
the Beloved Disciple.” And, very appropriately, 
a painting of St. John, by El Greco, is hung 
there. The spirit and purpose of the school 
might be compared with Christian socialism. 

Naturally, most of the boys come from work- 
ing class homes—since others are cared for in 
other ways—and will probably go out into the 
industrial world. For this reason the school is 
interested in the problems of working people, 
and lays a strong emphasis on these problems in 
social science courses. Manual work is also met 
at first hand on the school farm, in the shops, 


kitchen and print shop and in caring for the 
buildings and grounds, 

The school tries also to develop potential artists 
and writers and creative thinkers, or at leas; 
young men who will appreciate the beautiful and 
true. In classroom and in the community in 
general every encouragement is given to creatiye 
work. Considerable freedom is allowed to those 
who show signs of creative ability. 

The community is always happy because it js 
always busy. Frequent excursions to factories, 
lectures, dramatic productions and what not, are 
made. There is always something to do. 

Lawson P. Cooper, 
National Correspondent. 





COMMONWEALTH, LOCAL 194 

Commonwealth College, the only independent, 
self-owning and self-governing resident labor 
school in the United States, will begin the Winter 
Quarter of its eighth year on December 29th with 
a wide offering of courses for workers who wish 
to enter the farmer, labor and cooperative move- 
ments. 


Commonwealth, which was established in 1923, 
is one of the very few workers’ education projects 
that has been and is surviving this extended peri- 
od of depression and bad times. It began opera- 
tions in 1923 with 34 cents. Today it owns its 
own educational community made up of simply 
built student dormitories, teachers’ cottages, li- 
brary, commons, commissary and other com- 
munity buildings, situated on a 320 acre farm 
in a beautiful valley in the heart of the Ouachita 
Mountains, the southernmost range of the 
Ozarks. ; 

Commonwealth, endorsed by labor, is an edu- 
cational community of, for, and by workers. Stv- 
dents and teachers work 20 hours a week a 
community tasks for board, lodging and laundry 
service. No teacher receives a salary. Each 
student aside from his work for maintenance, 
pays $40 a quarter for tuition. The school com- 
munity aims to be entirely self-supporting and 
thus achieve complete freedom for expression of 
thought and teaching. 

The courses offered the Winter Quarter in- 
clude Effective Writing; English for Foreign 
3orn Workers; Labor Journalism; American 
History; World History (from the Dark Ages 
to the Industrial Revolution) ; Valid Reasoning 








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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 31 


and Argumentation; Elementary Economics; 
Advanced Economics; Labor Problems ; Sociolo- 
gy; Law; Mathematics; and Modern Languages. 
Preparatory courses are offered as an introduc- 
tion to the college work. 

Only adult workers are admitted to Common- 
wealth. Entrance is by written application to the 
Executive Secretary. The Winter Quarter 
promises to be one of the most interesting in the 
history of this unique cooperative educational 
community for workers. 





BUFFALO, LOCAL 39 

The Buffalo Industrial Teachers’ Association, 
Local No. 39, held a regular meeting Tuesday 
evening, Dec. 16, 1930, in the Girls Continuation 
School. 

Officers for the next term were re-elected, 
namely, Norman Kleason, president; Lee S. 
Cooke, vice-president; Arthur Solomon, record- 
ing secretary ; Herman Eschner, treasurer. 

Wm. Regan, president of the Federation of 
Educational Associations of Buffalo, explained 
to us how the Charity Fund, to which the school 
Teachers have contributed about 16 thousand 
dollars, was to be distributed to needy children. 

The association voted a contribution to the 
children of the unemployed textile workers of the 
south. 

Thomas Carveth, who was a delegate to Bing- 
hamton, N. Y., on the tenure question, explained 
how the new resolution on tenure for N. Y. state 
teachers was lost. If it had passed it would 
have ended by the teachers having no tenure. 

LyMaN B. FIsHeEr, 
National Correspondent. 





CHICAGO PLAYGROUND TEACHERS, 
LOCAL 209 

The Board of Education Playground Teachers’ 
Union has held a number of meetings, business 
and social, in the Club Rooms of the Teachers 
Unions. 

After the business session of the Novembe1 
meeting Mr, Skibbe showed pictures taken on a 
recent trip to Yellowstone Park. The social com- 
mittee added to the joy of the occasion by serv- 
ing delightful refreshments. 

A series of Bridge and Bunco parties has been 
started. The first one was held November 25th 


and the second on December 9th. Although held 
after work hours, nine thirty, the good attendance 
showed that the idea was popular. 

Cyrit JOHNSON 


Publicity Secretary. 





HANOVER, LOCAL 214 

At the annual meeting of the Hanover Town- 
ship Teachers Union on November 24. Archie 
Davis, principal of Askam school, was elected 
president. Mr. Davis has been active in the af- 
fairs of the Union since its formation more than 
a year ago, and previous to his election to the 
presidency served as secretary. He succeeds 
James V. O’Donnell. 

Other officers elected were: Michael Caffrey, 
vice-president ; Miss Agnes McElwee, secretary ; 
Stanley Rovinski, treasurer; grievance commit- 
tee, James V. O’Donnell, Ralph DeHaven, Frank 
Finnegan, Thomas R. Kane and Adolph Bogues- 
zewski. 





Superintendent Wells has announced that Ful- 
ton County teachers will probably be placed on 
a twelve months’ salary basis next year. 





OVER A MILLION IN VOCATIONAL 
SCHOOLS 

More, than a million persons, young and old, were 
enrolled in vocational schools in 1930, according to the 
annual report of the Federal Board for Vocational 
Education. 170,000 were learning to farm better, 250,- 
000 to make better homes, and 625,000 to do some spe- 
cific job better in trade and industry. This enrollment, 
the report states, was largely in schools which received 
aid under the terms of the national vocational educa- 
tion act and all of it in vocational courses organized 
and conducted under a joint Federal and State plan of 
vocational education. 

Under the national vocational education act, which 
is administered by the Federal Board for Vocational 
Education, three types of schools have been set up in 
each of the States: The day school for the boys and 
girls who have chosen an occupation and desire train- 
ing in it; part-time school for persons who are em- 
ployed and can devote part of the day to instruction 
and training; and evening schools for workers who 
desire to devote time outside their employment hours 
to improving themselves in the occupation in which 
they are engaged. Instruction in these schools reaches 
into every kind of employment requiring a measure of 
technical or mechanical skill. 











32 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


— 





News of Our Members 











Dr. Henry R. Linville, the President of the 
New York Teachers Union, has been invited to 
speak at the meeting of the College Teachers of 
Education at Detroit on February 24 on the sub- 
ject of “Social Control of Public Education in 
a Great City.” 





On January 7th Yale Local 205 held a lunch- 
eon, in honor of Secretary-Treasurer Hanson at 
which a number of Yale professors who are not 
members of the local were present. 

Mrs. Hanson spoke on the mutual value of the 
university professor to the A. F. T. and the 
A. F. T. to the university professor. She stressed 
the aim of the organization to build a profession 
for teachers of all grades from university to rural 
school, maintaining that until conditions were 
right for all they could be safe for none. 





Miss Bernice Rogers, president of Local 195, 
has been appointed by the Mayor as chairman 
of the Women’s Committee on Unemployment to 
represent Cambridge on the state emergency com- 
mittee. 





A. J. Muste, chairman of the Brookwood fac- 
ulty and vice president of the American Federa- 
tion of Teachers, is making a six weeks trip 
to the Pacific coast, starting January 2. He 
expects to visit Chicago, Butte, Mont., Seattle, 
Portland, Los Angeles, Denver, and other points, 
speaking on workers’ education and progressive 
labor issues, 





Mark Starr, former divisional secretary of the 
British National Council of Labor Colleges, ex- 
pects to return to the United States in February 
to teach economic geography at Brookwood and 
to lecture at the Rand School in New York City 
and to groups in Detroit and Cleveland on the 
British labor movement. Mr. Starr has been 
on the staff at Brookwood and the Bryn Mawr 
Summer School for Women Workers for the 
last two years. He is the author of “A Worker 


Looks at History,” “A Worker Looks at Eco- 


nomics,” and “Lies and Hate in Education.” 





$= 


A Book to Develop International-Mindedness 
Betty of the Consulate 


LYDIA J. TROWBRIDGE 


Scene: China in the Sixties. 
Chief characters: A consul’s two children. 
Plot: The struggle for possession of a mascot. 


Chicago Schools Journal. Pleasant style, often twin- 
kling with humor. 


The Midland. Richly imaged experiences . . . un- 
usually well written. 

New York World. A blithe record of two happy 
youngsters. 

Chicago Evening Post. Those who have a little 
geography and history will enjoy (it) for the back- 
ground; the littler ones for the adventure. 


Saturday Review of Literature. Sound psychology 

of race and country . . Such books would help 

to make the coming generation 
international-minded. 

Pittsburgh Press (Mary E. Foster, of Carnegie Li- 
brary). You will enjoy reading ‘Betty’ to your 6, 7 
and 8 year olds. It should interest them in China. 
And interest is the basis for later 

international understanding. 


Price $1.50 
DOUBLEDAY, DORAN AND COMPANY 
Garden City, N. Y. 

















Have You Changed 
Your Address? 


The Challenge of Waste Once More! 


It is one of the little things we forget, this 
matter of notifying the National Office of a 
changed address, but the aggregate cost of all 
the carelessness is not little. Help save this 
money that is being wasted on return postage. 
If you have changed your address recently 
please clip this form and mail to the American 
Teacher, 506 So. Wabash Ave., Chicago, II. 


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The Teacher in the Progressive School 


The March Issue of Progressive Education will be devoted entirely to 
The Training of Teachers for Progressive Schools 


PARTIAL CONTENTS 
“What a Teacher’s Preparation Should Be for Work in a Progressive School.” 
Dr. F. G. Bonser, Teachers’ College, New York City. 
“The Teacher's Personality and Attitude Toward Her Work.” 
Caroline B. Zachry, Director, Mental Hygiene Institute, Montclair, N. J. 
“The Meaning of Freedom in Education.” 
Stuart A. Courtis, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich. 


“Remaking the Teacher.” 


“Nerves and Tension.” 


I———— i--o1— 1S >- 


schools, teacher’s colleges, and teachers. 
Single copies, fifty cents. 


PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION ASSOCIATION 


10 JACKSON PLACE 


“Teacher Training for Progressive Schools. } 
Lucy Sprague Mitchell, Bureau of Educational Experiments, New York City. 
“Mental Hygiene for the Teacher.” 
Dr. Joseph K. Hart, Contributing Editor, “The Survey,”” New York City. 
“Teacher Training at Yale University.” 
Dr. F. E. Spalding, Yale University, New Haven, Conn. 
“The Teacher as an All-round Person.” 
Millicent J. Taylor, Educational Department, “‘The Christian Science Monitor.” 


Dr. George D. Stoddard, State University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa. 


Dr. Edmund Jacobson, University of Chicago, Chicago, III. 
“The Promise of Progressive Education to the Teacher.” 
Bess B. Lane, Tower Hill School, Wilmington, Del. 
“Implications for Teachers from Social Behavior Studies.” 
Dr. Lois Hayden Meek, Child Development Institute, New York City. 
“The Teacher Problem in Progre:sive Schools.” 
Margaret Pollitzer, The Walden School, New York City. 
“The Teacher and the Progressive School.” 
Dr. Eugene R. Smith, The Beaver Country Day School, Chestnut Hill, Mass. 


There is no greater problem in education today than the proper training of teachers. 
PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION here offers its approach and solution. It is an unusual 
assembly of significant experience. This issue is of vital interest to officials, normal training 


Year’s subscription, three dollars. 


WASHINGTON, D. C. 





























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ARE TEACHERS WORKERS? 


Progressive Teachers Are Reading 


Labor’s News 


., The News Magazine of the Labor Movement 
to find out. 


Once a week, in 8 small pages, LABOR’S 
NEWS brings you a comprehensive survey 
of the American labor scene, with high- 
lights on working class movements of 
Europe, Asia, and Australia. 


Written by 60 Federated Press correspond- 
ents all over the world, and edited by trained 
FP staff men, LABOR’S NEWS fairly 
seethes with human interest. Published by 
the largest labor newsgathering agency in 
the Western hemisphere, authorities agree 
that it stands alone as a reliable source of 
labor facts. 
Send for Your Free Sample Copy Today! 


The Federated Press, 

112 E. 19th St., 

New York, N. Y. 

CT Please send me a free copy of LABOR’S 
NEWS. 
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American Federation 
of 


Teachers 


506 South Wabash Avenue 
CHICAGO, ILL. 


—- 


The American Federation of Teachers desires to estab- 
- lish an intimate contact and an effective co-operation be- 
tween 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 subscription to the magazine. To all others the sub- 
scription price is $2.00 per year, 25 cents per copy.