en ciae TEACHER’S-ROBM 
—- iT} felts stack? RS ROGM 


T ie : ee 
‘TEACHER 


DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY 











How Our Dellar Is Spent 











NECESSITIES 
24 CENTS 
LUXURIES  .- 
22 CENTS 
SAVINGS - - SaaS 
11 CENTS 
WASTE - eee 
11 CENTS 
CRIME - - - - - + + - —_ 
8 CENTS 
GOVERNMENT - - - - . Ce 
7% CENTS 
PUBLIC SCHOOLS - - co 
° 2% CENTS 
RELIGION - : - = 
1 CENT 
MISCELLANEOUS ee 
10 CENTS 
= = 








Organ of the American Federation of Teachers 


APRIL, 1931 VOL. XV. No. 7 
cease 20 


























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A powerful antidote for the 
CONTENTS WORLD DISEASE of WAR 
Page 
Facts for History Textbooks............. 1 
etl dates teal. THE FIGHT for PEACE 
By 
EE ee ee 3 DEVERE ALLEN 
Nell Owen. 
Tee Gee CHG... 20. ccesscesesss 4 RITICS and historians agree that this is 
the most comprehensive, uncompro- 
ee eiusiibene Hinbanasetneainen 6 mising, and diversely useful literary con- 
; tribution ever made to the peace movement 
John Erwin Kirkpatrick................... 9 in any language.” Here you may find an ex- 
haustive survey of the peace movement for 
The Teacher as Actor.............++00:: 10 more than a hundred years. For the first 
Sir John Adams. time Peace bat cn ae ready at hand 
. . a vast compendium of reference to pioneer 
Have We Overemphasized Heredity?...... 13 experience which will give them perspective 
O. Myking Mehus. and enable them to work on something other 
: than a trial anderror basis. Preachets, teach- 
Teacher Credit and Loans................ 17 ers, and peace-minded people everywhere will 
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Educational Tendencies in Current Maga- value beyond estimate.” 
Mee ro erie tuba eg ou quae alee Gale & 27 $5.00 
Nell Peterson. ° 
I Sos OO a a i oh rs ke 29 Send ag order foe 7 volume te 
ee ee Ge Ro once ccccecsseces 32 The American Federation of Teachers 
506 South Wabash Avenue Chicago, Ill. 



































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The American Teacher 


patered as S 


tance 
Aen P3, 1926. 


Published monthly except July, 
506 South 


—— 


—— 


Volume XV, No. 7 


econd class matter Oct. 27, 1926, at the post office at Chicago, Ill., under the Act of March 3, 
for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in Sec. 1103, Act of Feb. 28, 1925, authorized 
August and September by American Federation of Teachers, 
abash Avenue, Chicago, IIl. 


APRIL, 1931 


1879. 


Two Dollars a Year 


Facts for History Textbooks 
By Lucia Ames Mead 


That nothing is really known until it is seen in 
is relation to other things, is a lesson which 
Emerson taught the American teacher, but the 
application of this vital principle is often far 
to seek in history textbooks. A new syllabus on 
history for New York teachers that is soon to 
appear will lay great stress on preventable ac- 
cidents; but will it compare these with our losses 
in war? The need for understanding something 
of world history if one is to understand one’s 
own is generally recognized, but the need of 
considering one’s own country’s political history 
in its relation to economic and vital statistics is 
less understood. The future voter is usually left 
grossly unprepared for making judgments on 
public issues. [specially is he unable to judge 
matters which appeal to the emotions like ques- 
tions of danger and defense. The student with a 
high school or even a college diploma is often 
all at sea regarding the most vital matters. He 
has learned a mass of facts unrelated to real 
life and the basis of judgment. 


The writer has asked thousands of students 
in secondary schools and in colleges from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific how many Americans were 
killed in battle in our five foreign wars—The 
Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican, Span- 
ish, and World wars. The first question was to 
a High School boy of 17 who guessed 2,000,000. 
The lowest guess she ever had was 100,000 and 
the highest was 6,000,000, the latter being from 
avery rich Boston woman who had once been a 
teacher. In asking audiences these facts were 
stated and the question asked as to how many 
thought the total was fewer than 2,000,000. In 
no instance were there more than a very few who 
thought it was fewer. Sometimes even in a 
Normal school composed of those who were 
about to teach American history not a single one 
raised a hand to indicate that the number was 


fewer, while nearly all responded when the ques- 
tion was changed to how many think it is more 
than 2,000,000? As a matter of fact the number 
is less than one hundred thousand, which figure 
means vastly more when it is shown that the 
total is much fewer than we have had murdered 
in the last ten years, and that far more were 
killed by automobiles last year than were slain ir: 
battle in our first four wars. Not infrequently 
the teachers have voted as the pupils did. The 
judgment of students about this matter is prob- 
ably as good as that of most adults. They re- 
member that when they went to school the chief 
part of history had to do with wars and they 
have imagined that foreigners have shed rivers 
of our blood. The bearing of this misinformation 
and false psychology on the American demand 
in recent years for parity of tonnage is obvious. 
Were the facts known that we are the safest 
nation in the world, yet as President Hoover 
says, spending more for armaments than any 
other nation in the world, the reaction to our 
preposterous demand for parity of tonnage 
would have been different. 


When the admirals and generals assure us that 
the army is below the danger point, that our 
security depends on having as great a navy as 
any upon earth, the average uninformed person 
believes it and is willing to submit to monstrous 
taxation under the propaganda of the Shrearers 
and the ship builders, and the clamor of the 
Chicago Tribune and the Hearst newspapers. 
Not until students are taught always to think of 
using facts comparatively, and are given the 
facts they need to be compared can their judg- 
ment on vital matters that affect their future 
and their taxes be anything more than the result 
of impulse, tradition and prejudice. Does not 
the law of self-preservation require that mankind 
should learn where to look for its chief dangers 








2 THE AMERICAN 


and not be left in the dark? Are there any text- 
books which make the dangers which threatens 
us clear? How many teachers know that six 
times aS many as were killed in our five wars 
perish annually from preventable accident and 
preventable disease? Graphic charts hung on 
school walls should give these and other cogent 
comparisons, when they are not published in the 
textbooks. How many students get high school 
diplomas who have not the wildest idea of our 
statistics of crime compared with those of other 
leading nations? How many know that we are 
the only C4ristian country in which lynchings 
occur? How many have any idea of the 
instability’ of the dollar and the variation in its 
purchasing power? One graphic chart, not going 
too much into detail, might revolutionize a future 
voter’s thinking on this subject. 

Lack of imagination is being recognized by 
psychologists as a serious defect in students in 
business colleges. Pupils who can solve problems, 
make schedules, and draw up statistics often 
have little power to see human beings or human 
relationships as affected by them or the relation 
of one set of figures to another in terms of ob- 
ligation or opportunity. In respect to imagination 
it is a question whether the banker is better off 
than the average man who deals very little with 
figures. Every child should be required to work 
out problems whose terms should teach inciden- 
tally a vast deal that he needs to know. Let him 
work out how long it would take men of different 
salaries, from those of a letter carrier to that of 
a corporation lawyer or bank president to earn a 
million dollars; let him figure out how long it 
would take at the rate of a dollar a minute to 
spend what our government has spent up to date 
because of the eighteen months of the World 
War and its aftermath in pensions, veterans’ aid, 
etc. We have spent over fifty-one thousand mil- 
lion dollars—fifty-one billion, as the government 
figures show. The highest estimate that I have 
ever had as to how long it would take to throw 
away one billion dollars at the rate of a dollar 
a minute was from a college professor of mathe- 
matics. This guess was that it would take forty 
years. A little figuring would show that it 
would take nearly nineteen centuries. The pupil 
might learn the cost of his city hall, his school, 
his church, and these taken as a norm for cal- 
culations. How many high schools like this 


TEACHER 















could be built for the cost of one $17,000) 
cruiser? How long would this building probajj 
serve? How soon would the cruiser become jf”. 
solete? It is not necessary to preach or to engy Geil 
in any propaganda but simply to state facts, oa 
ask questions and show the future taxpay 
where his money goes. 

Incidentally with this teaching of arithme; 
which concerned itself with something more th, 
mere accuracy and quickness, but which ma 
figures vital and significant the pupil would lex 
that great wealth is not produced by mere thri 
and it might set him to considering the bases, 
great fortunes and the relation of great fortuy 
to tariffs and to special privilege and other mg 
ters which have direct bearing on current his a 
tory. Bat mr 

The following facts are a few of the ma 
that textbooks and charts might profitably shov§ 

1. Our danger to life, prosperity and proiyith y 
erty has always been far greater from within og sco 
country than from attack of foreigners frog!tre 
without. No nation has ever yet declared w _ 
against us. pat 

2. Justice Hughes said: “So far as we 
see into the future, the United States is not in th é 
slightest danger of aggression. We recognize oufy,,, , 
immunity, not that we may boast, but rather th res 
we may appreciate our duty and responsibilityfAnd w 


0 rde 
10,427 


‘ou st 


We know that in no power or possible combim . 9 
tion of powers lies any menace to our security] y 


3. Our loss of life every year from prevet 
able accident and preventable disease is approxg'nd 0 
imately 600,000. Whe 

4. Our total loss from our Civil war af |. 
from our five foreign wars, including loss (yoy ¢ 
deaths in battle, wounds, disease and every oth no 
cause is less than that. These figures of loss‘ ™e 
both war and peace do not include the immenxg ™ 
number who are annually ill or injured froofThen 
preventable accident and preventable disease. — ™ 

5. The losses of the Civil War as given fro - ' 
the War Department are: deaths in battle Ill, vs 
C00; disease 224,586; other causes, 24,872; to y, 
359,528. In the Revolutionary War, fewer the tut t 
five thousand were killed in battle; in the Weg ™ 
of 1812, Mexican War and Spanish War, fewfay 4 
than two thousand were killed in battle in cf re 
war. In the World War, 51,000 were killed! t 
battle but others are still dying from wounds #: 
being gassed. In 1920, the sum total of all * 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 3 


,;ded deaths in all wars for every cause was 


12.427. 


’ 


Civil War is in another category than interna- 
‘nal war and may occur after international war 
ss been outlawed and ended and an organized 
old has established an international police to 
glace rival armies and navies. Whenever there 
; tyranny there may be rebellion. But after 


arsenals and armament have been greatly dimin- 
ished, after no nation in civil war can get muni- 
tions from other countries, civil war will not be 
easy and will finally end. 

The nation needs merely parity of security, 
not parity of tonnage. The slogan for all nations 
should be: “Above all nations is Humanity. Or- 
ganize the World.” 





JUST ANOTHER DAY 
By Nell Owen, Local 52 


ep up your faith, O teacher! 

% not bowed down in sorrow; 

You were not allowed to teach today 
bit maybe you'll be tomorrow! 


‘ou stand before your classes in the freshness of the 
morning 

ith your very best to give them and all lesser efforts 
scorning. 

here is perfect contact with them, they are working 
hard—no capers, 

When a lady lightly enters, in her arms a stack of 
papers. 


[have come to give your pupils a little mental 
test ; 

lu will grade the finished papers but I will do the 
rest. 

And we will thank you at the office if you will kindly 
hurry 


@\ith so many schools to hear from, you’ve no idea 


what a worry.” 


And out she trips and leaves you with your shattered 
senses reeling 

While visions of the mound of themes that always wait 
come stealing. 

You take a grip upon yourself, start in once more— 
no matter. 

A messenger comes banging in with dreadful noise 

and clatter. 


‘The nurse says send her all your boys!” The Three R’s, 
once so treasured, 

‘re forced to take a back seat while the boys are 
weighed and measured. 

No use proceeding with the lesson, no use becoming 

vexed, 

But the period is wasted for the girls will go out 

next, 





All that at length is over, and with a long sigh of 
relief 


of You begin the reading lesson, O. Henry’s “Ransom of 


Red Chief.” 
I's a thing they all delight in, with appreciative 
giggles ; 


You mark the progress of their reading by the current 
of their wiggles. 


Just as you think you’re making headway 
The dentist sends for Arthur Treadway. 
The spell is broken, the mood is gone; 
Unlike his thrush, you can’t recapture 
Browning’s “first, fine careless rapture ;” 
The rest is only plodding on. 

Wearily you take another book 

As the dentist calls for Mary Cook. 


You rally in the afternoon, resolved at last to do or die, 

You begin with composition and the pupils really try. 

There is peace at least ten minutes, when at the 
principal’s command, 

A wingless Mercury appears with a paper in his hand. 


Announcement of the meeting of the Civic Club next 
night 

Must be written on the board so each child will get it 
right. 


With that at last accomplished and the work begun 
again, 

Comes a tiny lisping tot, “Hath anybody theen my 
pen?” 


Next a grinning pupil enters with a note, you stop 
to see, 

And read the brief announcement: “Orchestra practice 
is at three.” 


A visitor gives a timid knock, 

And so it goes till three o'clock. 
Came the dawn: the morning papers, 
This flaming legend bore: 

“Teacher placed in straight-jacket, 
Beats head upon the floor.” 


Place me on Sunium’s marbled steep, 
Surround me with the ocean deep; 
Put a class within my reach, 
And then, good Lord, just let me teach! 
—The Teachers Forum. 








4 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


The Children’s Charter 


White House Conference on Child Health 
and Protection, November, 1930 


For every child a school which is safe from haz- 
ards, sanitary, properly equipped, lighted, and ven- 
tilated. For younger children nursery schools and 
kindergartens to supplement home care. 


For every child a community which recognizes 
and plans for his needs, protects him against physical 
dangers, moral hazards, and disease; provides him 
with safe and wholesome places for play and recrea- 
tion; and makes provision for his cultural and social 
needs. 


For every child health protection from _ birth 
through adolescence, including periodical health ex- 
aminations and, where needed, care of specialists 
and hospital treatment; regular dental examination 
and care of the teeth; protective and preventive 
measures against communicable diseases; the insur- 
ing of pure food, pure milk, and pure water. 


For every child from birth through adolescence, 
promotion of health, including health instruction 
and a health program, wholesome physical and men- 
tal recreation with teachers and leaders adequately 
trained. 


For every child who is blind, deaf, crippled, or 
otherwise physically handicapped, and for the child 
who is mentally handicapped, such measures as will 
early discover and diagnose his handicap, provide 
care and treatment, and so train him that he may 
become an asset to society rather than a liability. 
Expenses of these services should be borne publicly 
where they can not be privately met. 





Pronouncements of the American Federatio, 
of Teachers 


School buildings that are comfortable, safe, sajj. 
tary and well equipped, retaining an atmosphere ¢ 
friendliness and non-institutionalism. 

Program of Action, 19%: 


Therefore, be it resolved that the American Fed¢. 
eration of Teachers urge upon its locals and upor 
the school systems of any communities where thei: 
influence may reach, the adopting of a comprehen. 
sive program which shall include the following el. 
ments: 

1. Inspection of the physical health of the chil. 
dren once at entrance, and as often thereafter a 
may be possible, by physicians responsible to the 
Board of Education. 

2. Clinical facilities under the Board of Educa. 
tion for the study of behavior problems. 

3. A nurse in each school or to each 1,000 chil. 
dren for follow-up and frequent inspection. 

4. Training of teachers of physical education in 
corrective gymnastics, and suitable facilities as wel 
as time within the school day for giving them. 

5. An adequate staff of psychologists in the 
schools to give not only mental tests but also t 
undertake special studies of children and of results 
of prognosis and achievement tests for their im- 
provement, to assist in the adaptation of the curri- 
culum to the strength and ability of the individual 
child. 

6. A visiting teacher to each school or to each 
1,000 children to maintain the contact with the home 
and assist the adjustment of the individual child t 
his environment. 

7. A playground available to every school and 
time to use it as well as other means of organized 
recreation suitable to the community. 

Annual Convention, 192% 


The committee’s study has been convincing that 
education and vocational training for the crippled 
child is humanitarian and can in many cases “make 
tax producers out of potential tax consumers.” 

The committee is also convinced that the neces 
sary education for these handicapped children re 
quires that provision be made for medical, surgical 
and institutional care. Hence it desires to recom- 
mend that the American Federation of Teachers 
and its various locals strive to bring this matter 
before the legislatures of their respective states, and 
to interest labor and other local and national organi 
zations in securing the legislation necessary for ade 
quate educational opportunities for this class of 


children. Report of Education Committee 
Annual Convention, 1927 


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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 5 


For every rural child as satisfactory schooling 
and health services as for the city child, and an 
extension to rural families of social, recreational and 
cultural facilities. 


For every child protection against labor that stunts 
growth, either physical or mental, that limits edu- 
cation, that deprives children of the right of com- 
radeship, of play, and of joy. 


For every child an education which, through the 
discovery and development of his individual abilities, 
prepares him for life. and through training and voca- 
tional guidance prepares him for a living which will 
yield him the maximum of satisfaction. 


For every child who is in conflict with society 
the right to be dealt with intelligently as society's 
charge, not society’s outcast; with the home, the 
school, the church, the court, and the institution 
when needed, shaped to return him wherever pos- 
sible to the normal stream of life. 


For every child these rights, regardless of race, 
or color, or situation, wherever he may live under 
the protection of the American flag. 


The educational opportunities of the children in 
most rural districts is so inadequate as to constitute a 
severe indictment of our nation, and to be a leading 
cause of illiteracy and other social and economic 
dangers. 

Our investigation has found that the inability of 
many districts adequately to finance their schools 
has resulted in short compulsory school year, in 
some states, as low as four or five months, and 
low requirements for teachers. We find that boys 
and girls just out of the eighth grade are often 
employed as teachers and that professional training 
among rural teachers is rare. 

The American Federation of Teachers, is not in- 
different to this injustice to children and this menace 
to our nation, but urges upon its Iccals that they 
seek to interest all forces in their states in the 
matter of improving the rural schools. 

Report of Education Committee 
Annual Convention, 1927 


“It is hardly conceivable that in America, where 
we pride ourselves on a sense of fair play and de- 
cency, that a campaign worked by such insidious 
misstatements and vituperative, libelous attacks as 
those made by the opponents of the child labor 
amendment could be carried on. We are proud of our 
record as we were the first national educational 
organization to raise funds through our membership 
for the work of freeing the children of America. 

“To make our work to bring about the ratifica- 
tion of the child labor amendment more effective, 
we recommend that the legislative representative of 
the American Federation of Teachers and the Amer- 
ican Federation of Labor be commended for their 
efforts, and that our representative be empowered 
to enlist the fullest moral and financial support of 
the locals in her efforts to rouse the conscience of 
America against the evil of child slavery.” 

Report of Legislative Committee 
Annual Convention, 1925 


“RESOLVED, That we urge the establishment 
of more trade, vocational, commercial and central 
continuation schools in which the curriculum will 
be fitted to the student and not the student to the 
curriculum.” Annual Convention, 1929 


Establishment by the Board of Education of child 
guidance clinics for the study and treatment of prob- 
lem children; visiting teachers for schools of 1000 
pupils, from kindergarten through twelfth grade. 

Report of Committee on Positive Health 
Annual Convention, 1929 


Equal educational opportunity for all without 
discrimination on account of race, religion or social 
status. Program of Action, 1925 











6 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 





ss 


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: 


FLorENcCE Curtis HANSON 
Luce W. - ALLEN 











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


Remittances should be made in postal money- order, 
express order, draft, stamps or check. 





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EXECUTIVE COUNCIL 
President 


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


Legislative Representative and Vice-President 


Se_ma M. Borcnarpt, Washington No. 8; 1741 Park 
Road, N. W., Washington, D. C. 


Vice-Presidents 
AsrAHAM Lerxowitz, 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. Muster, Brookwood No. 189; Brookwood, Katonah, 


N. Y. 
CarRLoTta PitTTMAN, Memphis No. 52; 131 Clark Place, 
Memphis, Tenn. 
FLoreNce Roop, St. Paul No. 28, 372 St. Peter St., 
St. Paul, Minnesota. 
W. B. Satrertuwaite, Seattle No. 200, 1837 12th Ave., 
West, Seattle, Washington. 
Lucie H. Scuacut, Chicago No. 3; 6714S. Union Ave., 
Chicago, Illinois. 
E. E. ScHwarztrauser, Wisconsin University No. 223; 
1404 Vilas Ave., Madison, Wisconsin. 
W J. Scott, Atlanta No. 89; 212 Kings Highway, 
Decatur, Georgia. 
Cartes B. Stittman, Chicago No. 2; 827 Ridge Ave., 
Evanston, Ill. 


Secretary-Treasurer 
Fiorencs Curtis Hanson, Chicago No. 3; 506 South 
Wabash Ave., Chicago, Illinois. 
Associate Secretary 
Lucire W. Aten, Chicago No. 3; 506 South Wabash 
Ave., Chicago, Illinois. 


This Is Your Magazine 
What Will Yow Do About It? 

The AMERICAN TEACHER is not published for 
financial gain. Its aim is to clarify and promul- 
gate the principles of the American Federation 
of Teachers and to aid in establishing a profes. 
sional status for teachers. The editorial staff will 
do its best to see that it is reliable and practical. 
Pains are taken to make it attractive aud read- 
able, but it will not be the success it should be 
unless you are prepared to cooperate heartily 
with us. 

We want your frank criticism. Tell us 
whether you find it helpful and how it may be 
improved. Write to us about the problems that 
perplex you. Tell us about the trying situations 
that you have coped with successfully. Your 
experience may be of interest and help to others 
in the field. By such genuine criticism and 
cooperation we should be mutually helpful. 





Collective Bargaining in the Universities 


To the report of Dr. Yandell Henderson, chair- 
man of the Yale chapter of the American Asso- 
ciation of University Professors, to the national 
organization, we are indebted for an interesting 
glimpse of collective bargaining in a new scene. 
For four years the organization of professors at 
Yale has sought to reach certain desired ends 
through group cooperation with the officials of 
the university. In the end they report consider- 
able success in certain lines of activity, but the 
chairman expresses some dissatisfaction with 
what he feels to be the limitation of the scope of 
their possible or probable successes, and some 
fear that an undesirable breach between the pro- 
fessorate and the administration may be widened. 
Protesting against the existence of any cleavage 
between these two groups, Dr. Henderson ex: 
presses more dissatisfaction with the need for the 
organization method than satisfaction at its ac 
complishments. 

One cannot but sympathize with Dr. Hender- 
son’s regret that in the United States universities 
of learning have not developed along the line: 
of the Fellowship of Scholars which the Euro 
pean universities have inherited and preservel 
from the Middle Ages, but have taken on tht 
nature of American business corporations. Ont 
must also admire the clear-cut logic by whic 








he : 
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THE AMERICAN TEACHER Z 


he arrives at the conclusion that should the pres- 
ent tendency to reduce teachers to the level of 
employees continue there will be no alternative to 
the labor union of teachers. 


Americans, especially of the dominant business-man 
ype, and even American professors facing their own 
problems, seem year by year less able to conceive of 
ay large organization or institution in any terms ex- 
cept those of a business corporation consisting of a 
jaard of directors outside its active operation, a presi- 
dent and department managers, and a body of employees. 
In the best of our large business corporations some 
degree of recognition is now being accorded to the 
employees as partners in the functions and public service 
of the organization. In American universities, on the 
contrary, the present tendency is in the opposite direc- 
ton: the professorate is being relegated to the status 
of employees and is even accepting this status as natural 
ad proper. This may be sound in law; but it is not 
sound in the constitutional history of universities. Nor 
an it ever be a sound basis for an institution of 
learning. 

* * * 


One result of the changes brought by time is that 
sich problems as those of salaries tend now unfor- 
tunately more and more to call for action by some 
organization of the professorate outside the frame of 
the university. 


Nothing could be more disastrous for higher educa- 
tion and learning than for this condition to develop to 
such a point that the American Association of Uni- 
versity Professors or other organization should assume 
the functions of a labor union of teachers. Yet this 
must ultimately be the result, although undesired by all, 
if the professors are to decline to the status of mere 
employees. 

The industrialization of our universities is extremely 
adverse to the advancement of learning. Sweating in- 
jures no other enterprise or calling so much; yet 
teachers are notoriously weak in resisting it. If a 
factory lowered its wage scale and employed common 
labor in the place of skilled mechanics, its product 
would suffer and would not sell. But a university 
could reduce its salary scales by one half and still fill 
its faculties with ease. Probably many of those now 
holding positions in the common schools would gladly 
be university professors on half the salaries of the 
present incumbents. The product would be deteriorated, 
of course, but if well advertised the American public 
would probably buy it just as freely. 

I feel that we should urge on our own university, 
and indeed on all American universities, such a reform 
of university organization that a teachers’ guild would 
be unnecessary, except as an agency to help our brethren 
in weaker institutions. The teaching staff should be 
pattners in a noble enterprise, not employees in an in- 
dustry. A university should be a self-governing fel- 
lowship of scholars. 


Whether such changes as Dr. Henderson de- 
sires can be effected by spontaneous combustion, 
as it were, is a question, of course, on which the 
educational world will divide. But that a con- 
stantly growing number of college and university 
teachers are deciding to seek the advancement of 
their profession through affiliation with workers 
in their own and other callings, the records of the 
American Federation of Teachers give abundant 
proof. 

This abandonment of their splendid isolation is 
partially due, no doubt, to a conviction that this 
affiliation will be a source of strength which they 
need in the situation in which they find them- 
selves, partly to a sense that all fields should be 
one in a common struggle for the advancement of 
education, and partially to a broader ambition 
that all human life should be made better through 
a union of all who work with hand or brain in a 
common endeavor to protect human rights against 
the impersonal power of corporate organization. 

The American Federation of Teachers has 
found itself in hearty accord with the American 
Association of University Professors in more 
than one instance lately, and will watch with sym- 
pathetic interest its efforts to raise the status of 
the university teacher through the attainment of 
this vision of Democracy IN EpucaTIoN. 





It is of interest to know that since submitting 
this report to the American Association of Univer- 
sity Professors, Dr. Henderson has made a study of 
the principles of the American Federation of Teach- 
ers, and, stating he finds therein the organization 
he has sought, has joined Yale Local 225. 





Traditional A. F. T. Policy Gains Support 


Detroit, Mich., Feb. 4.—The policy of avoiding 
controversial issues in school rooms was termed 
“educational suicide” by Dr. Jesse H. Newlon, pro- 
fessor in Columbia University Teachers college, in 
an address today before a group gathering in con- 
nection with the National Education Association 
meeting. 

Dr. Newlon declared that “attempts of militant 
minorities and vested interests to control policy” 
constitute a difficult problem, and one from which 
schools generally retreat. “Where things are hot- 
test, controversial issues are excluded,” he said, 
“with the result that youth may prepare to grapple 
with the problems of tomorrow only by chewing 
over the lifeless problems of yesterday.” 











8 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


“In too many communities,’ he added, “teaching 
is saturated with points of view held by the con- 
servatives and even reactionaries in politics, eco- 
nomics, morals.” 

The schools, Dr. Newlon urged, “should become 
an instrument of enlightenment,” regarding contro- 
versial issues of the day. “Let us use the materials 
of whatever source, but properly labelled,” he said. 
“Let all sides be presented.” 

—Chicago Tribune. 


We do not know whether this is new to the 
National Education Association, or just to the 
press. The following excerpts from the report 
of the Legislative Committee to the Ninth An- 
nual Convention of the American Federation of 
Teachers held in Chicago, June 29, 1925, will be 
of interest in this connection. 


Academic Freedom 


Change is the law of progress. If the social 
value of change is to be secured, teachers and pu- 
pils must be free. Unless such freedom is assured 
intellectual stagnation is inevitable. * * * The 
American Federation of Teachers believes that under 
no circumstances should truth be perverted or dis- 
torted; that both sides of controversial questions 
should receive adequate and impartial consideration 
so as to develop the spirit of tolerance, and critical 
mindedness, and, in addition, to provide proper ma- 
terial for thought. Young America is entitled to 
know the best that has been evolved in literature, 
science, art and industry; that it has the right to 
evaluate any theory or doctrine. The denial of such 
right means not only a denial of this educational 
heritage but intellectual slavery. * * * While 
opposed to partisan politics or partisan teachings 
most impartial social and economic questions are 
controversial and to enact such a restriction is to 
kill the heart of our curriculum—the social sciences. 





Courage Always Wins 

“Dare to be yourself,” declared Senator Berah 
in a radio address last June to thousands of 
school graduates who were entering the arena of 
life. 

The Idaho lawmaker reminded young men 
that privilege seekers and their political agents 
cry for political regularity that the status quo 
be maintained. 

“If you have an issue of worth and moment,” 
said Mr. Berah, “the machine will follow like 
a whipped cur behind you.” 

Teachers should retain this thought. 

Political machines—and, in fact, the world— 
pay no attention to men who fear censure by the 
supposed “great.” 


The world may pity—but never respects—th 
whiner. That’s why men command attentio, 
when they dare to do. They sweep others int; 
their ranks by courage and disinterestedness, 

The world is filled with men who fear te tak 
chances. 


They waste their lives in the vain hope tha 
those who have seized power will some tim 
somehow, voluntarily surrender such power, 





How They Do It In England 


Mr. F. W. Goldstone, who has been for twen. 
ty-one years connected with the National Unio 
of Teachers of England and Wales, for the pas 
seven years as general secretary, will retire ir 
August. 

The following notice appearing in displa 
style in The Schoolmaster and Woman Teach- 
er’s Chronicle is interesting as showing th 
English method of handling such a situation, 


IMPORTANT! 


Applications are invited from members of the Na 
tional Union of Teachers for the post of Genera 
Secretary. The Scale of Salary is £1,000 to £1,359) 
per annum by annual increments of £50. In fixing 
the initial salary the Executive will have regard t 
the present emoluments of the successful applicant 
within the limits of the scale. The person appointed 
will be eligible for the benefits of the Scheme ¢ 
Pensions approved by the Annual Conference of the 
Union from time to time, provided satisfactory ev: 
dence of good health is produced prior to appoint 
ment. 

A list of duties and copy of the existing Schemi 
of Pensions may be obtained on sending a stampet 
addressed foolscap envelope to the undersigned, t 
whom applications should be forwarded not late 
than February 9 next. 

The successful candidate will be required to tak 
office on September 1, 1931. 

Canvassing, either directly or indirectly, will 
a disqualification. 

F. W. Go.psTOone, 
General Secretary. 
Hamilton House, Mabledon Place, London, W.C.1. 


The sentence, “Canvassing either. directly © 
indirectly, will be a disqualification,” strike 
strangely on the ears of Americans where " 





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as the 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 9 


JOHN ERWIN KIRKPATRICK 


In the death of Dr. John E. Kirkpatrick on 
january 31, 1931, at Topeka, Kansas, the cause 
of progressive education and liberal thought suf- 
fered an irretrievable loss. Dr. Kirkpatrick not 
oly saw the faults and failures of the present 
ystem of education but was keenly alert to dis- 
over better and more effective methods. He was 
the author of many books, pamphlets and maga- 
vine articles calling attention to the weaknesses 
of the present system and pointing the way to a 
ietter. Among these are “The American Col- 
kge and Its Rulers,” “Academic Organization 
and Control,” and “Force and Freedom.” 


Perhaps the greatest achievement of Dr. Kirk- 
patrick’s life and certainly the nearest to his heart 
was the establishment of Ashland College at 
Grant, Michigan, as an American Folk School 
modeled after the well known Danish folk 
schools. Here ‘ve translated into action his fine 
idealism. 


Professor Kirkpatrick’s boyhood was spent on 
an Illinois farm, and after high school and a 
few years’ experience as a salesman, he spent 
three years at Chicago Theological Seminary, 
which were followed by ten years in the Con- 
gregational ministry in Kansas. After three 
years at Yale Divinity and graduate schools he 
was called to the faculty of Washburn College, 
Topeka, as instructor in history and political sci- 
ence. After eleven years of service at Wash- 
burn College, he was dismissed from the faculty 
because in his spirit of high idealism and inde- 
pendence he did not keep to himself his criti- 
tisms of the views commonly held and practiced 
in the administration of schools and colleges. 
Dr. Kirkpatrick has the honorable distinction of 
having suffered an injustice for being in ad- 
vance of his times in educational policies and 
practices, 

This tribute to Dr. Kirkpatrick would be in- 
complete without notice of the beautiful and in- 
piring relationship he built up with the students 
with whom he came in contact. For all time he 
established a warm place deep in the hearts of 
those who were fortunate enough to study under 
his direction and those who were associated with 
him in social and educational movements. 

Dr. Kirkpatrick was for many years.a valued 
member of the American Federation of Teachers. 
He believed in its program and sought in every 


way to promote it. He gave with unstinting 
generosity to make this movement for educational 
progress an ever advancing movement. 

Dr. Kirkpatrick was indeed a man worth 
knowing, for whose passing by, not only those 
who knew him well but all the world are enriched. 





MARCH BLUES | 
It is the time of the year, isn’t it, when brains 


feel most cobwebby? When we realize that the 
grindstone has been our too constant companion? 
The wanderlust, which is the best type of spring 
fever, is a wholesome malady for teachers. No 
other type of workers so need the change of 
thought which new scenes and new peoples give, 
as those whose daily work demands that they 
shall think the thoughts of the immature and live 
in the minds of childhood. It is great work, 
of course, but dangerous, if we make it a year- 
around mental life. 

Elsie McCormick of the New York World has 
given us an inspiration for a summer which 
dreams good as a cure for the shut-in, grin-and- 
bear-it feeling which March brings. 

“Norway!” she says, “I am sure there are few 
lands on this limited planet more heautiful. * * * 
With every shifting of the clouds the near and 
distant walls showed new hints of emerald, ame- 
thyst and sapphire. * * * the fjord widened out, 
a diffused light of blue and silver made it seem 
as if we were Sailing into the crystal sea of 
Revelations. There were snow-covered moun- 
tains in the back ground and a glimpse of a 
glacier shining high up on the roof of the world. 
The tiny steamers that ply through the fjords 
move with so little crinkling of the satiny waters 
that a person feels as if he were gliding toward 
Avalon.” 

“The scene was so beautiful that it actually 
reduced American tourists to silence! Most of 
the way I merely wrung my thesaurus and wept 
impotently for new adjectives.” If it did that 
to Miss McCormick, what would it do to school- 
tired minds! New adjectives needed because it 
is new. And newness is what they need! 

The Norwegian America Line wanis to take 
some American Teachers to see Norway this 
summer. What they can show them, and how 
they will take care of them they tell on our in- 
side back cover. It is an advertisement, of 
course, but it seems to us like a good cure for 
the March blues. 








10 THE AMERICAN 





TEACHER 


The Teacher As Actor 


By Sir John Adams 


University professors whose subjects lend 
themselves to essay writing generally have by 
them a list of suitable subjects. But they must 
be careful in their use of them, for if they 
give them out indiscriminately the students are 
apt to take advantage and do a trade among 
themselves in old essays that may be furbished 
up as new. It is found that a certain decent in- 
terval must be allowed to elapse between the 
different occasions on which a particular sub- 
ject is prescribed. Three years is the minimum 
period for safety, but most cautious professors 
find it is better to make it four. By that time the 
tradition of the essay has died down, and old 
essays have lost their market value. 

In my experience there is one subject that I 
find always produces the same sort of essay no 
matter how long the interval that has elapsed 
since it was last prescribed. The reason seems 
to be that the student mind is so fixed in its 
attitude towards this particular matter that the 
reaction is always the same. This subject as you 
have no doubt guessed, seeing that you know the 
title of this article, is THe TEACHER As ACTOR. 
I have prescribed this subject a very great num- 
ber of times, but the outcome has always been 
the same. If you give an ordinary class of forty 
schoolboys an essay to write on Education you 
will get precisely two score little treatises on 
How to get on. So with two score essays by stu- 
dents of education on the Teacher as Actor the 
result is forty essays on Sincerity. The state- 
ment is perhaps truer of women students than 
of men: but even the men cannot quite get rid 
of the moral urge. Mark Twain speaks dis- 
paragingly of “the moral that wags its crippled 
tail” at the end of every school girl’s essay. But 
the boys are not much behind them in this 
respect: after all a certain number of pages 
must be filled and moralizing comes easy. 

In any case the essays submitted to me on the 
subject of the Teacher as Actor were always 
ferociously moral. Whatever the teacher is or 
does, if we are to believe my young essayists, he 
must be sincere. Few of them could resist the 
temptation to quote Polonius on their side and 
set out his portentous platitude: 


To thine own self be true, 
And it will follow, as the night the day, 
Thou can’st not then be false to any man. 

The vehement young moralists do not pause to 
consider which is the teacher’s true self. If, 
after a bad night and a worse breakfast, he 
comes to school in a highly disgruntled state, 
is it the teacher’s duty to make clear to his 
pupils the actual state of his temporarily dis- 
ordered personality? Was Goldsmith’s school- 
master in Sweet Auburn giving his pupils a fair 
deal when he offered them the chance to “read 
the day’s disasters in his morning face”? Ought 
he not rather to have put his best foot foremost, 
kept his personal chagrins to himself, and thus 
let the pupils bear their own burdens without 
the addition of his? Is he to be true to his 
passing ill-tempered self, or to the real perma- 
nent self that is something much finer? 

We have found that the enthusiastic young 
moralists brought into their essays a quotation 
from Polonius. Let us seek out in the same 
play a quotation on the other side. Speaking 
to the players, Hamlet himself gives the advice 
to assume a virtue if you have it not, and the 
level-headed cool elderly teacher is inclined to 
pass the advice on to the young teachers, and ask: 
Should not the teacher present to his pupils his 
best side, not his worst? 

It is at this stage that a word that has been 
hovering round the threshold of your conscious- 
ness for the past few minutes refuses to remain 
hidden any longer, and bobs up with some vig- 
or. The word hypocrisy. My young essayists 
would have produced the word at a much earlier 
stage of the discussion, and even you sedate and 
mature people have a feeling that it is time this 
word is brought to light, and its implications 
analyzed. 

It is indeed another of that group of words 
that have taken a wrong turning. Originally it 
meant something quite harmless. A hypocrite 
meant at first nothing more terrible than on 
who answers. The next step led to nothing mort 
disturbing than one who expounds or demor- 
strates—here we have an ominous correlation 
with our profession. From this standpoint we 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 11 


teachers are professional hypocrites. The third 
development connects the word with the stage, 
but meant nothing nastier than a professional 
actor. It was only at the last lap that it reached 
its present disagreeable connotation of one who 
plays a part meanly and for selfish ends. 

In this bad sense the teacher has no share, 
though to the second and third meanings he must 
plead guilty. Teachers are certainly expounders 
and administrators: but they are more. The real- 
ly successful teacher is from the very nature of 
the case a bit of an actor, even in the stage sense. 
Whether we will or know we teachers are always 
playing a part—and that without sin. One of our 
most brilliant English writers on education on 
its artistic side—Mr. Ian Hay—tells us in his 
Lighter Side of School Life that the teacher’s life 
is one long pose, his favorite role being one of 
blameless enthusiasm. 

We have only to look into our own experience 
in a Spirit of honest criticism to discover that we 
are playing a part through every school day. We 
need only picture to ourselves what would hap- 
pen if we exposed our real state of mind to the 
young people, to realize how inevitable this play- 
ing of a part really is in our profession. We have 
to give a lesson on, say, percentages. We are 
sick of the subject. We have taught hundreds 
of lessons on it, and we are frankly bored with 
the whole thing. We never want to hear the 
subject mentioned again in our lifetime. If now 
we let the class see that we are intensely bored 
we know quite well what the result would be. 
We are all aware how infectious boredom is. 
A well known English Public School master, 
Mr. A. C. Benson, used to claim that a certain one 
of the qualities he possessed was of most value 
to him in his profession. If I set you guessing 
what that prime success-producing quality was, | 
should be surprised if any of you hit upon the 
correct answer : it was a certain easiness in being 
bored. Mr. Benson claimed that the ease with 
which he himself got bored made him very sensi- 
tive to the same liability to boredom on the part 
of his pupils. 

Accordingly, the inwardly bored teacher ap- 
proaches the deadly dull percentage problem with 
a certain cheerfulness—not enthusiasm, mark 
you, for that is. very rapidly detected by the 
pupils—and the class responds in the same chas- 
tened, but not quite bored, spirit. We are indeed 


here brought face to face with one of the finest 
compensating principles to be found in the pro- 
cess of Education. Professor William James 
deserved well of our profession on the day on 
which in the psychological magazine Mind he 
gave an answer to his own question What is 
Emotion? We cannot enter here into detail about 
his answer, which implied that emotion and its 
expression are practically one. This we know 
is not generally accepted by the orthodox psy- 
chologists, but there is enough truth in it to make 
it a most valuable contribution to educational 
principles. If it be true that within certain limits 
the assumption of the expression of an emotion 
leads to the gradual establishment of that emo- 
tion in our experience, then we are prepared to 
find that the teacher who puts on an air of being 
interested in percentages gradually falls into 
the state of being actually interested. In this 
case virtue is emphatically its own reward, and 
the teacher finds a justification in playing a part. 

Plato objected to the theatre on moral grounds, 
but these grounds were not the same as weighed 
with our puritan ancestors in America here, He 
was not so much afraid of the audience being 
corrupted: he was afraid that the actors would 
be. A man, according to Plato, becomes himself 
bad by playing bad parts on the stage. To be 
sure the old philosopher was not quite fair in 
his argument, for if a bad part made a bad man, 
so a good part should make a good one. Accord- 
ingly the stage might claim to be a maker of 
good men, and the suggestion might be made that 
all the theatre has to do is to see that each actor 
has a fair alternation of good and bad parts and 
as a result the player would be a good average 
man. To this Plato would no doubt have replied 
that such resultant average man would have 
neither good nor bad character: he would have 
no character of his own: he would be a mere 
human mocking bird, that can imitate every bird 
of the grove but has no song of its own. 

In any case criticism of the Lange-James 
theory, as it is called, does not militate against 
the teacher playing a part: for in school life 
Plato could have been quite at ease for the parts 
thrust upon the teacher are all good parts. His 
function is always to appear better than he is: 
never worse. It is true that he is not infrequent- 
ly called upon to appear more disagreeable than 
he really is, but even that disagreeableness leans 








12 


to virtue’s side. You all know how severe and 
shocked we must appear on certain occasions 
when we are dealing with a matter of discipline 
that in our hearts we know to be in itself of 
trifling importance. We have all heard the loud 
laugh that echoes through the teacher’s room 
when a culprit has left the room in deep dejec- 
tion after having been lectured in the most severe 
fashion by a master who can hardly maintain his 
gravity till the young rascal has got out of 
hearing. Yet we know that we must maintain 
this severe attitude. The youngsters expect such 
things to be taken seriously. Even oldsters share 
this view as is shown in the authentic case of the 
Scotch elder who on one disastrous occasion 
looked too long on the wine when it was red. Re- 
morsefully but skillfully he kept out of his 
minister’s way for many weeks. At last on one 
occasion fate brought him into a narrow road 
in the little town. This “Loanings”, as it was 
called, had no side issue: the minister stood in 
the middle of the way. The elder braced him- 
self up to meet the wrath to come. But the 
minister, merely made a few kindly remarks 
about the weather and the crops, leaving the 
elder standing dazedly in the loanings. The 
point of the incident is to be found in the re- 
mark he made to himself as he looked after 
the vanishing clerical form: “Ca ye that a min- 
ister ?” 

We must treat matters in school according to 
schoolboy standards, even if it implies our pull- 
ing a long face when we want to laugh. 

All of which raises another quite different 
aspect of this whole matter of the teacher as 
actor. We are apt to take it for granted that 
the teacher can act. It is not merely a matter or 
should he, but also is he able to? Do not let us 
here get led away from our proper subject. Some 
of my young essayists, shocked by the moral 
problem, and convinced that under no circum- 
stances should a teacher play a part, made a 
harmless application of the problem, and turned 
their essays into dissertations on the dramatic 
method in education. But the application to 
the dramatic plan in teaching is here irrelevant. 
The school stage is the place where the pupils 
are actors. We are concerned with the histrionics 
of the teachers. Our main business is to settle 
the qualms of the supersensitive consciences of 


THE AMERICAN 





TEACHER 


teachers who suffer from a disease that may ng 
unfairly be called Polonitis. 


Now the first balsam that can be applied take 
the form of an assurance that we must all pla 
a part whether we will or no. We are all socia 
chameleons, taking on the color of our surround. 
ings. We not only seem to be, but we are, differ. 
ent persons under different circumstances, 4 
man is not the same in his club smoke-room a; 
he is in his family pew in church, behind his 
counter as at the race-course, at a literary society 
as at the theatre. (To be sure there is the funda. 
mental personality, the psychologist’s bugbear, 
the ego, underlying all these changing aspects) 
But we are not called upon to charge ourselves 
with hypocrisy in the bad sense of that term 
Whether we will or no we must meet the differ- 
ent circumstances of life as they arise. Educa. 
tion in fact consists largely in enabling the 
educands so to fit themselves into changing cir- 
cumstances as to do their best in their own 
interests and in the interests of those they meet, 


Sometimes teachers who are not good natural 
actors decline to be put on a pedestal, and pro- 
claim bluntly that they will appear before their 
pupils as they really are, let the consequences be 
what they may. These are not the best type of 
teachers. To begin with, even these never really 
carry out their principles to the full. If they did 
they would rightly be relieved from their posts. 
In a hackneyed line from an old Latin autho 
we are told that we grown-ups owe a great 
debt to Youth. Included in that debt, is the 
demand that we put things in the way that will 
best meet the needs of the young. We must 
tell them what to do, and we must show them 
how to do it. Old Chaucer’s parson taught the 
doctrine of Christ and his twelve apostles “but 
first he followed it himself”. I have a certain 
sympathy with the puzzled schoolmastér who 
laid down the principle “Don’t do as I do: do 
as I tell you”. But we cannot throw off our 
responsibility in this cavalier way. Whether we 
will or no we must take up the heavy role of 
the exemplar.. So we must do the best we caf 
to play a part that may be followed with good 
results. It is surely some comfort to know that 
in the constraint we put upon ourselves to pro 
vide the best example, we are doing what cannot 
fail to benefit ourselves. 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 13 


Have We Overemphasized Heredity? 


O. Myking Mehus, Northwest Missouri State Teachers College, Maryville, Missouri 


We all realize that both nature and nurture are 
important factors in the development of human 
ings. The part played by each is a mooted 
westion and able writers are found on both sides. 
On the side of nature we have men like Terman, 





McDougall, Grant, and Goddard. On the side of 
urture we have Watson, Bagley, Bernard, and 
freeman. We propose to summarize some of 
ihe investigations that have been made in this 
ied and briefly and critically to analyze them. 
The first investigation along these lines was 
that of Sir Francis Galton who made a study of 
Hereditary Genius” in 1869. He showed that the 
noted men of England ran in certain families and 
ew the conclusion that genius was a matter of 
ieredity, that it creates its own opportunity, that 
it is irrepressible, and that anyone gifted with 
yenius will not fail to rise to eminence and re- 
nown, 

It is of course true that genius did run in fam- 
ilies as Galton said, but he did not prove that 
hat genius was due entirely to heredity rather 
fan to a favorable social environment. The 
dren in these families had every educational 
wd cultural advantage and this, rather than the 
tm plasm, possibly accounts for their later 
ame. At any rate, even Terman? recently ad- 
itted that Galton did not prove whether it was 
ive to nature or to nurture. 

On this point, H. G. Wells? says: “England 
ne in the last three centuries must have pro- 
ined scores of Newtons who never learned to 
ad, hundreds of Daltons, Darwins, Bacons, and 
fuxleys, who died stunted in hovels, or never got 
ichance of proving their quality. All the world 
ver, there must have been myriads of potential 
st-class investigators, splendid artists, creative 
ind, who never caught a gleam of inspiration 
opportunity, for every one of that kind who 
‘it his mark upon the world.” 

An able reply to Galton’s study was the in- 
tstigation made by De Candolle in his Histoire 
ts sciences et des savants depuis deux siecles 
ich was published in Geneva in 1873. This 
Mtatise is briefly summarized by Peter Sandi- 
id. De Candolle contends that the environ- 
‘mt was the chief factor in the production of 


scientific genius. He analyzes 212 scientists in 
Paris, 255 in London, and 105 in Berlin with 
respect to the environmental pressures that 
caused them to become outstanding in their re- 
spective fields. He points out that most of these 
men belonged to the rich and leisure class and 
therefore were able to secure a good education iu 
their youth and in later life they did not have to 
spend their time earning a living, but could de- 
vote their time to intellectual pursuits. 

Another well known study of genius carried 
on in Europe was the investigation of the great 
men in France carried on by Odin in 1895 and 
admirably presented in our language by Lester 
F, Ward* in 1906. Ward maintains that it is the 
social environment that brings out genius. He 
analyzes the different environments as outlined 
by Odin—physical, ethnological, religious, local, 
economic, social, and educational—and shows 
how these environments influenced the 6,382 
great men of France who lived in the five cen- 
turies preceding 1825. 

Ward’s study has been summarized by Ira W. 
Howerth® who points out that the following 
conclusions were reached: 

1. That while it would be an exaggeration to 
conclude that the action of the physical or geo- 
graphical environment has been nil or only in- 
significant, its role in the production of men of 
genius has never been preponderant. 

2. That race differences have no appreciable 
influence in producing men of talent and genius, 
the civilized races, at least, being equally fertile 
in that respect. 

3. That the religious environment exerts a 
perceptible influence, but that it is impossible to 
determine how much. 

4. That density of population, while doubt- 
less a potent influence in civilization, is not, in 
and of itself, the real factor, the great generator 
of men of genius. Cities, however, are more 
prolific of genius than rural communities. 

5. That the economic, social, and educational 
factors are the real determinants of the amount ot 
genius manifested. These are the main factors 
which provide opportunity, so that the general 
conclusion reached is: Genius is dependent 








14 THE AMERICAN 


upon economic, sccial, and educational opportu- 
nity. 

This last conclusion is especially significant 
since this is undoubtedly the most comprehensive 
study ever made concerning the influences that 
tend to bring out genius in a population. 

The economic environment was found to be 
important, for only nine per cent of the eminent 
men were poor, while ninety-one per cent were 
well-to-do. The social environment was about 
equally effective, for ninety and two-tenths per 
cent of the eminent men of letters were from the 
upper classes and only nine and eight-tenths per 
cent were of lowly birth. Ninety-eight per cent 
of them received a liberal education in their 
youth. In commenting on this latter point Odin 
said: “Everything forces us to admit that educa- 
tion plays a role not only important, but vital 
and decisive in the development of men of letters. 
It acts not only upon average nature, but also, and 
with quite as great intensity, on talent and 
genius.” Thus a thorough, liberal education for 
all seems imperative if we are to develop the 
maximum number of geniuses. 

Ward’s reaction towards this study is expressed 
in the following terms: “So far as the native 
capacity, the potential quality, the ‘promise and 
potency’ of a higher life are concerned, those 
swarming, spawning millions, the bottom layers 
of society, the proletariat, the working classes, 
the ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water,’ nay, 
even the denizens of the slums... . are by nature 
the peers of the boasted ‘aristocracy of brains’ 
that now dominate society and look down upon 
them, are the equals in all but privilege of the 
most enlightened teachers of eugenics.”* 

It may be that this statement by Ward is rather 
strong, but undoubtedly he overemphasized his 
point in order to protest against the practice 
prevalent in the past of neglecting the latent pos- 
sibilities of the masses and stressing rather the 
education of the few. 

A study similar to the one carried on by Odin 
in France is the study of J. McKeen Cattell on 
“American Men of Science” which was first pub- 
lished in 1906. This study supports the view 
that leadership is developed through social inter- 
stimulation. A summary of the findings are given 
by C. Terrance Pihlblad’ as follows: 

“Cattell finds that American scientists are 





TEACHER 


many times more likely to be born in the easter 
part of the United States than in the southe, 
part; many times more likely to come from stat, ee 
with large cities than from those predominant) re 
rural. He finds, for example, that the probabj. like 
ity of a youth born in Massachusetts becomix 
a scientist was fifty times as great as that of | 
youth born in Alabama or Georgia. It would 
hard to believe that selective influences workin 
in the migration to these areas had produced i 
New England a stock fifty times more fruitful ¢ scie 
scientists than the southern stock. A much mo actu 
plausible explanation would find the differeng ¢,, 
due to the superior social stimulation of tf y 
towns, factories, small farms, strong churcheg i 
schools, colleges, libraries, and newspapers if «<,, 
New England, influences which were largely a 


mal 
soc! 


here 

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, prev 
sent in the rural south of a generation ago. Soci 
In commenting on Cattell’s study, R. Hf it w 


Gault* says: “The isolated life of the farm anf that 
plantation, the mechanic’s bench and the desk of be sc 
the manufacturer and the merchant, are not coo} comy 
ducive to intellectual leadership in science by ciety 
cause their social environment does not supplf comp 
such stimulation, at least not in sufficient meg als. 

sure,” doub 


This study clearly brings out the tremendos drink 
importance of the right kind of a social envirog " ‘ 
ment in the development of latent abilities. : woulc 
mentioned above, the educational opportunitig “utca 
seem to be all-important factors in determiniq woul 
the number of geniuses a given community wig T#tes 
produce. y~ 

The three studies that have received the m ap 
attention in this country, at least from the pop reas 
lar mind, are the studies made on the Kallik 
Family, the Jukes Family, and the Edwar hg 
Family. Since these studies are quoted so oft j 
to prove the tremendous influence of heredity 
such matters as crime, pauperism, feeblemindé of Ch 
ness, sex delinquencies, and immorality in 4 super 
eral we want to examine these studies rail Pada 
critically. cent, 

According to.the account of the Kallikak ff 1, ,,, 
ily, Martin Kallikak was a soldier in the Rev] 7), 
tionary War, who, in his campaigns, came 104 the m, 
inn where he met a feebleminded barmaid § perfe, 
whom he had illicit sex relations. An illegitim#; p,.. 
son was born to this barmaid who founded oy w, 
line of degenerates that has cost the cowl! their g 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


many million dollars and has been a menace to 
society morally. Later Kallikak married a Quak- 
eress of good stock and their descendants were 
respectable citizens. On the fact of it, this looks 
like a clear case of the baneful influence of bad 
heredity. 

However, when we analyze this study more 
dosely we find that there are several points that 
must be cleared up before we can accept this 
generalization. In the first place there is no 
scientific evidence to show that this barmaid was 
actually feebleminded and sexually dilinquent. 
She may have been seduced by Kallikak. 

What was the attitude towards an illegitimate 
child and its mother in those days? Hawthorne’s 
“Scarlet Letter” gives a good presentation of the 
prevailing attitude towards such unfortunates. 
Society would be against the child all its life and 
it would never be allowed to forget the misstep 
that its mother had taken. The mother would 
be socially ostracized and would have to seek her 
companions from the lower moral strata of so- 
ciety where the child and its mother would be 
compelled to associate with people of loose mor- 
als. And such an intolerable situation would un- 
doubtedly lead them to sex indulgences and 
drink. Later in life this illegitimate child could 
not seek his mate from the better homes, but 
would have to marry someone who was socially 
outcast like himself. No wonder such a situation 
would cause his children to become moral degen- 
trates like himself. This bad social environment 
played its part generation after generation. 

Criminologists are agreed today on the fact 
that criminality and moral degeneracy are not 
passed through the germ plasm from one genera- 
tion to the next, but are due to the social environ- 
ment in which the child lives. A few years ago 
Jane Addams discovered that there was a great 
deal of juvenile delinquency in a certain. section 
of Chicago. She induced the city to establish 
supervised playgrounds there and as a result 
juvenile delinquency decreased thirty-three per 
cent. Heredity had not changed one iota—it was 
the social environment that changed. 

The Kallikak study further showed that one of 
the men married and moved away and he had a 
perfectly good line of offsprings. A daughter of 
‘prostitute moved away and her family turned 
out well. Here again we have no evidence that 
their germ plasms were different from the others, 


15 


but we do know that their social environment was 
decidedly improved. 

The story of the Jukes family is similar to that 
of the Kallikak family. Max Jukes was a happy- 
go-lucky hunter and fisher who was born about 
1730 or 1740. He was a hard drinker and was 
not overly enthusiastic about working. There 
were no schools in the region, no religious in- 
fiuences, and no high moral codes. His daughters 
were “comely in appearance and loose in morals.” 

Dugdale, the author of the study shows that 
these descendants of Max Jukes were noted for 
harlotry, pauperism, syphilis, intemperance, 
crime, idleness, blindness, insanity, and feeble- 
mindedness. How these things can all be blamed 
on the germ plasm of Max Jukes is indeed hard 
to understand. Certainly immoraiity is not trans- 
mitted through the germ plasm; neither is pau- 
perism nor idleness, Intemperance and crime are 
clearly due to the social environment. 

Clarence Darrow® has, with great insight, an- 
alyzed the tragedy of the Jukes and he points 
out how it can be traced to the bad social condi- 
tions rather than to any defect in the germ plasm. 
He says: “The Jukes story is the story of any 
number of other families environed as they were. 
Living in a sterile country, surrounded by pov- 
erty, condemned by conditions which have always 
been common to certain localities, they developed 
a manner of living and acquired a reputation 
which as social heritages were passed on from 
generation to generation.” 

Dugdale pointed out that the Jukes who moved 
away from the community tended to live better 
moral lives, and that the establishment of fac- 
tories in nearby villages raised the moral tone of 
the community as it led to the establishment of 
homes in which more privacy was possible. It 
was the social environment that was changed, not 
the germ plasm. 

The Edwards family has been traced from 
Jonathan Edwards who was born in Connecticut 
in 1703. He was one of eleven children. His 
parents were Timothy Edwards and Esther Stod- 
dard. Timothy Edwards was the son of Richard 
Edwards and Elizabeth Tuttle. He was the only 
son of this couple. Richard Edwards secured a 
divorce from Elizabeth Tuttle and then married 
Mary Talcott to whom five sons and one 
daughter were born. The descendents of this 
union showed no particular greatness so it is 











16 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


clear that the important person in this genealogy 
is Elizabeth Tuttle, Jonathon Edwards’ grand- 
mother. Fortunately we have some information 
in regard to her of extreme interest to those who 
maintain that immorality is transmitted through 
heredity from generation to generation. 

Davenport,?° who is a strong believer in hered- 
ity, has this to say in regard to Elizabeth T ttle, 
the grandmother of Jonathan Edwards: “From 
two English parents, sire at least remotely de- 
scended from royalty, was born in Massachusetts, 
Elizabeth Tuttle. She developed into a woman of 
great beauty, of tall and commanding appear- 
ance, striking carriage, ‘of strong will, extreme 
intellectual vigor, of mental grasp akin to rapac- 
ity, attracting not a few by magnetic traits, but 
repelling’ when she evinced an extraordinary de- 
ficiency of the moral sense. ‘On November 19, 
1667, she married Richard Edwards, of Hart- 
ford, Connecticut, a lawyer of high repute and 
great erudition.’ In 1691, Mr. Edwards was di- 
vorced from his wife on the grounds of adultery 
and other immoralities. The evil trait was in 
the blood, for one of her sisters murdered her 
own son, and a brother murdered his own sister.” 
This last statement, remember, is made by Dav- 
enport, a strong believer in heredity. 

Every school boy has heard of the fame of 
the Edwards family so it is not necessary to go 
over that tale here. However, does it not seem 
strange that if immorality is a matter of inher- 
itance in the case of the Kallikaks and the Jukes, 
that the moral deficiency of Jonathan Edwards’ 
grandmother was not passed on to some of her 
descendants? Certainly if immorality were trans- 
mitted through the germ plasms in the Jukes and 
Kallikak families, the same law should hold true 
in regard to the Edwards’ germ plasm. The true 
explanation is, of course, that in neither of the 
three families or in any other family are moral 
traits, good or bad, transmitted through the 
germ plasm. Character is formed in the social 
environment in which people live. Training is 
the important thing in character formation. Is 
it not clear that the Edwards family has achieved 
fame because of the moral character, love for 
learning, and educational opportunities that have 
been part of their environment generation after 
generation rather than because of any potential 
greatness found in the germ plasm of Jonathan 
Edwards? 


We do not want to leave the impression thy 
we consider inheritance of no importance, fo; 
we realize that one cannot make a silk purse oy 
of a sow’s ear. But on the other hand, we fe! 
that the part played by the social environmen 
has been neglected entirely too much in the past 
Genius and high mental ability are latent in aj 
classes and are brought out under a favorabk 
social environment. Genius is not irrepressible 
but needs the stimulation of a proper environ. 
ment in order to be developed. 


A; few hundred years ago the peasants in 
Europe were considered as being incapable oj 
acquiring an education; and yet today the de 
scendants of those same peasants are ruling 
Europe and convincing the world that all they 
needed to prove their worth was educational op- 
portunity. The same is true of the great mas 
of common people in our own country. There- 
fore we believe that social progress can best be 
attained by equalizing educational opportunity 
that every child will have a wholesome and stim 
ulating environment in which to develop his 
personality, build a clean character, and lay the 
foundation for intellectual acumen. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


(1) The Twenty-Seventh Yearbook of the National Society 
for the Study of Education, Nature and Nurture, Part I, Pu 
lic School Publishing Co., 1928, p. 2. 

(2) The Outline of History, Macmillan Co., 1920, p. 58 

‘*) ss Psychology, Longmans, Green & Co., 1929 
pp. 15-19. 

(4) Applied Sociology, Part II, Achievement, Ginn, 1906 
pp. 113-281. 

(5) “Universal Education and the Increase of Genius 
Educational Review, Vol. LXIII, Jan., 1922, pp. 50-56. 

(6) Ibid, Pp 55. 

(7) Possible Application of Mental Tests to Social Theor 
and Practice, Published Pb. D, thesis, University of Missour! 
1925, p. 32. 

(8) Social Psychology, Holt, 1923, p. 227. 

(9) Clarence Darrow, “The Edwardses and the Jukeses 
The American Mercury, Vol. VI, No. 22, October, 1925, pp 


147-157. 
(10) C. B. Davenport, Heredity in Relation to Eugenie 
Holt, 1911, p. 225. 





It is the school, as the creative expression of the 
aim of the community, which will some day give 
new nucleus to the aimless sprawl of our preset 
agglomerations of streets and houses, the school 
the small town, the university in the great one. 
the coming cities of America and the reconstructeé 
world, schools and universities may presently tow 
over the towns as the cathedrals do over the older 
cities of Europe, and as the pyramids and coloss 
statue of the god Pharoah tower over the tow! 
of ancient Egypt. The university and its associate 
schools should be the lovliest and greatest mass © 
architecture in every great town. The commo 
school should be the center and pride of every VW 
lage. And such a school should not be thought @ 
as merely preparing children for a way of livin 
already defined and settled; it should be thought ¢ 
as giving a direction to the whole life of the peopl 

—H. G. Wells. 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 17 


Teacher Credit and Loans 


By H. S. Bechtolt, Local 2, Chairman of A. F. T. Committee Teacher Credits and Loans 


GivinG BatTtLeE To Hicu INTEREST MONEY 
LENDERS is the title of a highly instructive lead 
article in a recent issue of The Naticn’s Schools. 
As this important magazine is devoted to the ap- 
lication of research to the building, equipment 
and administration of schools, and as it blankets 
the entire nation in its circulation, this study of 
the victimizing of teachers by so-called loan- 
sharks is highly significant. And of special inter- 
est to us teachers in Chicago is the fact that the 
remedy offered almost without exception is the 
credit-union. 

Recent issues of THrE AMERICAN TEACHER 
have carried notice of teacher interest in this 
vital problem, with the A. F. of T’s urgent ap- 
proval of the same method of meeting it. So it 
was felt that a timely contribution to the sub- 
ject would be to bring to our readers the sub- 
stance of what The Nation’s Schools, through 
its research department, has made public. We 
are pleased to announce that magazine’s enthusi- 
astic endorsement of what union teachers are at- 
tempting along this line and also its permission 
to use its facilities and publications for that pur- 
pose. What follows will represent a generous 
quotation from this article. 


“It is difficult to tell or even to surmise how 
many teachers in the public school systems of the 
United States are bilked out of hundreds and 
thousands of dollars each year by the loan-sharks. 
The volume of loan business is estimated by the 
Russell Sage Foundation, a social service re- 
search organization, to exceed three-quarters of 
a billion dollars annually. 

It is certainly unnecessary that teachers 
should patronize loan-sharks charging 20% a 
month and often higher. If they can be inter- 
ested in credit unions, it will not even be neces- 
sary that they pay the high rates permitted under 
the Uniform Small Loan Law which may not 
exceed 344% a month on the unpaid balance on 
loans amounting to $300 or less. 


“We do not presume to suggest what rate is 
necessary for commercial lending agencies to 
charge and we are not lending our influence to 
assist in tearing down the Uniform Small Loan 


Law which has been developed by the Russell 
Sage Foundation to attract capital to the small 
loan field. However, the cultural responsibilities 
and financial embarrassments of poorly paid 
teachers practically makes it necessary that they 
be provided with a means of borrowing at a rate 
lower than it is possible for commercial agencies 
to lend money profitably in small amounts. 

“The chief concern of superintendents of 
schools is to devise some means whereby the 
members of their official families can borrow 
small loans in times of stress at reasonable rates 
of interest, certainly not to exceed 1% a month 
on the unpaid balance. 

“As this survey will show, banks in small 
towns do not hesitate to make loans to teachers 
although banks in the larger centers generally 
feel that it is too expensive to carry these small 
accounts. Credit unions are so obviously the 
answer that progressive superintendents who are 
striving for better educational facilities and a 
more contented teaching personnel have gone to 
some lengths in organizing credit unions or in 
seeing that they are organized in their cities. 

“The Nation’s Schools sent the following letter 
to 500 superintendents of city school systems ask- 
ing for information on teachers’ loans: 


‘In a number of cities public school teachers 
who wish to borrow money to meet financial 
emergencies can secure funds only from loan 
agencies which usually charge 42% per year, or 
from pawnbrokers. 


‘At the request of several school superinten- 
dents, we are conducting a survey to find out how 
widespread this condition is and whether teachers 
can successfully organize their own loan associa- 
tions to operate at low interest rates. 


‘We will appreciate any information you can 
give us concerning the teachers in your system— 
approximately how many must meet financial 
emergencies by borrowing, how frequently they 
need to borrow, whether loans can be made 
through local banks and whether there is in op- 
eration any plan which provides for loan asso- 
ciations or credit unions managed by teachers. 

‘Findings of this study will be made available 











18 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


to the entire field through our magazine, and 
your cooperation will help all teachers and ad- 
ministrators.’ 

“Although replies show considerable variance 
caused chiefly by such differences as salary 
scales, type of community (residential, subur- 
ban, industrial or metropolitan) and similar fac- 
tors, the evidence that teachers often need finan- 
cial help is conclusive. 

“From the replies received, based mostly on 
superintendents’ impressions of the local situa- 
tions, it may be conservatively stated that in most 
school systems an average of about 10% of the 
teachers must borrow at least once each school 
year. In some cities bank credit based on col- 
lateral or on notes is available to all teachers 
who need to borrow. In others, teachers bor- 
row from commercial loan companies. In many 
cities, teachers are so secretive that exact in- 
formation cannot be secured. It is reasonable to 
assume that a certain proportion of teachers in 
such cities are paying exorbitant interest rates 
for money loaned them. 


“In 1929 a study was made of the small loan 
situation in New Jersey. Data gathered in this 
study substantiate the belief that teachers borrow 
more frequently than is usually realized. For 
example, educators who were employers or self- 
employed comprised only eleven-hundredths of 
1% of the borrowers, and borrowed only twelve- 
hundredths of 1% of the total amount borrowed. 
But teachers comprised 1.36% of the total num- 
ber of professional employees who borrowed. 
These teachers borrowed 1.77%; of the total 
amount and the average sum borrowed by 
teachers was $221.98. The percentage of teach- 
ers was greater than that of any other division 
among the 838 professional employees included 
in the sample. Among the divisions were the 
following: accountants and auditors, architects, 
clergymen, technical engineers, judges, lawyers, 
musicians and statisticians. 


“Major reasons given for seeking loans by 
professional employees are given in order of their 
importance: current expenses such as Christmas 
gifts, clothing, coal, furniture and house furnish- 
ings, moving expenses and rent, repairs on auto- 
mobile, repairs on home, travel and vacation, 
wedding expenses and household expenses; ex- 
penses arising from illness or death, such as 


funeral expenses, confinement expenses and other 
payments to physicians, dentists and hospitals; 
combination of purposes; business expenses; to 
assist friends or relatives; miscellaneous reasons. 

“In addition to these general reasons, teachers 
have two specialized reasons for seeking loans— 
payment of summer school fees and payment of 
travel expenses. In a definite sense both these 
purposes may be considered professional tools, 
which advance the professional ability of the 
teachers. Several school superintendents report 
that they solve these problems by paying salaries 
in twelve or twenty-four installments and by ar- 
ranging loans that cover the needs of such sum- 
mer activities. 

“But in spite of all such local solutions, the 
fact remains that in many cities teachers need 
to borrow from low interest organizations and 
cannot do so. Our study proves conclusively 
that teachers confronted with this problem can 
solve it best by the organization of credit unions 
or loan associations operated by teachers them- 
selves. A credit union is a cooperative society 
organized under a state law within a specific 
group of persons for the two-fold purpose of 
supplying the members of that group with a plan 
of systematic saving and of making it possible 
thereby for them to solve their own credit prob- 
lems at a legitimate rate. There are credit union 
laws in 32 states and the plan of organization is 
uniform. 

“Credit unions have enjoyed a phenomenal 
growth in recent years. There are now more 
than 1,100 credit unions with more than 250,000 
members. Fifteen years ago all credit unions 
had combined assets of only $500,000; now they 
have combined assets of $45,000,000. Total loans 
now approximate $60,000,000. There are more 
than 25 credit unions among railway employees, 
and more than 200 societies with more than 
40,000 members among postal employees. The 
chief groups represented among existing credit 
unions are as follows: industrial groups, 40%; 
government agencies .and public utilities, 30%: 
labor unions, 5% ; communities, 20% ; miscellane- 
ous (including teachers) 5%. The credit unions 
organized among postal employees have had de- 
posits of $2,000,000 to date, during the 3 years 
they have been organized. More than 100,000 
loans involving a sum of more than $11,000,000 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 19 


have been made to postal workers. 

“As a concrete example of successful credit 
union Organization, consider the credit unions 
of the New England Telephone Company. Its 
8 branches have almost 15,000 members, or more 
than 70% of the total employees of the company. 
Total assets exceed $1,500,000, of which almost 
$1,250,000 is now out on loans to members. 
Paid shares of a total value of more than $750,- 
000 are earning the employees a 6% return on 
their investment. The number of present bor- 
rowers represents 40% of the employees of the 
company. Operation of these credit unions has 
practically abolished the loan-shark problem. 

“Much credit must be given to the department 
of remedial loans of the Russell Sage Foundation 
for its share in combating the work of loan- 
sharks who prey upon the general public, includ- 
ing teachers, with usurious interest charges. The 
director of its department of remedial loans, 
writes: ‘We have no doubt that if you are able 
to obtain accurate information you will find that 
most teachers obtain their loans from the 42% 
companies. These companies operate under the 
Uniform Law which we have drafted and spon- 
sored and it is to be found in twenty-four states. 
The law was designed for emergency loans by 
wage earners but it seems that school teachers, 
between terms, often require additional cash and 
we know they have made great use of these li- 
censed companies. School teachers are con- 
sidered excellent risks and the loan companies 
have modified their usual requirements in order 
to accommodate them. The credit union is an 
ideal agency for such loans and I hope your 
survey will find means of encouraging the forma- 
tion of such organizations.’ 

“Credit union operation in Kansas City, Mo., 
has proved most satisfactory. Its secretary- 
treasurer reports: ‘We have found some very 
sad cases, and the credit union has done a great 
service in placing these individual cases back on 
their feet financially. We have found teachers in 
the hands of loan-sharks, paying in some instances 
as high as 85% per year. In many cases loans 
have been made for the sole purpose of paying 
off a high interest loan from a 30% or a 42% 
company. We can truthfully say that we have 
already saved the teachers of Kansas City hun- 
dreds of dollars in interest. 


‘We feel that as yet we have not even begun 
to handle all of the loan business in our group. 
Teachers are more or less individualistic, and in 
many cases are hesitant in laying their financial 
problems before a committee of their own group, 
and would probably prefer to pay a higher rate 
of interest than to do so. As our credit union 
grows, confidence is being established, and more 
and more teachers are availing themselves of our 
service. Much of the former opposition to the 
organization has disappeared, because of the 
healthy growth of the union. Teachers do have 
to borrow money. This is proved conclusively 
by the fact that we have done a gross loan busi- 
ness of nearly $50,000. Business propositions, 
property repairs, hospital bills, medical treatment, 
deaths, accidents create emergencies which de- 
mand immediate financial assistance that the al- 
ready limited salary cannot supply. 

‘To date in the experience of the Kansas City 
Teachers’ Credit Union not a single borrower has 
failed to make repayments on the loan. The 
first dividend amounted to 6.9%, and the second 
probably will be 7%. During the summer period 
the loans went far ahead of the incoming capital 
stock, so that the officers were forced to borrow 
$4,000 from the bank in order to carry on their 
business,’ ” 

The question of teacher credit and loans was 
on the agenda of the last A. F. of T. conven- 
tion, but it did not come up for consideration. 
So that this timely matter may have attention 
this summer this series of articles is being sub- 
mitted for the information of all teachers. In 
the issue of next month will be given the results 
of the questionnaire sent out to educational ad- 
ministrators by The Nation’s Schools and also 
other timely contributions in the field. 

Looking towards the June issue of THE AMER- 
ICAN TEACHER, may we issue this invitation to 
all teachers to whom these articles come, to as- 
semble and submit to the author of this article, 
care of A. F. T. office, any information which 
would be helpful concerning the high interest 
loan situation as it affects teachers in their com- 
munities. 





Sir: Is’nt now the time to bring “The Star-Spangled 
Banner” down to date? Isn’t “Oh, say” a bit out of 
style? Why not start it, “Say lissen!”—W. P. 

—Line o’ type, Chicago Tribune. 








20 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


Teachers, Stand Fast! 


The Manitoba Teacher 


During every period of economic depression, 
the salaries of teachers are in danger of being 
subjected to drastic reductions. When a school 
district finds itself facing grave financial diff- 
culties, the trustees are compelled to consider 
every possible means of bringing its expenditure 
into line with its dwindling receipts. The easiest 
methods of solving the difficult problem is to take 
the line of least resistance and compel the teach- 
ers to carry the whole load by reducing salary 
schedules. 


Manitoba school trustees have generally recog- 
nized that such a solution is inequitable and 
usually unsatisfactory. A school district which 
has gained the uneviable reputation of making 
its teachers the scapegoats for its own errors of 
judgment or mismanagement, is unlikely to at- 
tract those who will make a worthy contribution 
towards the education of the younger generation. 
The Manitoba Teachers’ Federation has always 
hesitated to adopt any policy of “black-listing”’ 
trustee boards, but teachers who have suffered 
in this way are human enough to air their griev- 
ances before their colleagues and the standing of 
the various districts, in matters of this kind, is 
well-known throughout the Province. Circum- 
stances may compel a teacher to remain for a 
time with a board which, after attracting him 
by a fair salary, has, at the first whisper of 
financial difficulties, obtained some slight relief 
and a reputation for economy by inflicting a 
severe reduction of salary upon him. Is it to be 
expected that such a teacher will put his heart 
and soul into work which is, apparently appreci- 
ated so little? Can he be blamed for getting out 
at the earliest opportunity and shaking its dust 
from his shoes with right good will? 


There are many school districts in Manitoba 
which have yet to learn that the value of a good 
teacher to a community increases with every 
year, that a rapid succession of teachers, be they 
ever so competent, can never supply the tradi- 
tion which means so much to the spirit of a 
school. A teacher who can be “hired and fired” 
like any casual laborer, can never be expected to 
take his rightful place as a leader in the com- 
munity . 


The Manitoba Teachers’ Federation has, from 
the days of its inception, striven for security of 
tenure and salary schedules. There is a growing 
feeling that a determined stand must be made to 
uphold the sanctity of agreements which have 
been entered into with confidence in the security 
which they seemed to provide. The legal aspect 
of the case is not questioned but school boards 
which expect to get the most loyal service from 
their teachers must treat them with more than 
the minimum of consideration which the law de- 
mands. 


Teachers who are threatened with reductions 
or who are urged to co-operate with distressed 
school districts by volunteering to “take a cut” 
in salary, are strongly advised to refuse to take 
any decisive action until they have had an op- 
portunity of discussing the situation with the 
General Secretary of the Federation. Thought- 
less acquiescence in one district may precipitate 
an avalanche all over the Province. It has taken 
years of strenuous endeavor to bring salaries to 
their present level (such as it is) and to hold 
them there. Take care lest any hasty action to 
avoid trouble should undo the labor of the last 
ten years. 


The Federation will always be prepared to give 
expert advice and assistance to school boards in 
a critical situation, It can show them other 
methods of overcoming their difficulties than by 
salary reduction, which, although apparently the 
most obvious, is generally the least satisfactory 
solution. Teachers and trustees alike are pledged 
to do their utmost for the children in their care. 
Whatever happens, their future must be assured, 
but it must not be at the expense of those who 
have given years of their lives to a profession 
which, however noble it may be, demands con- 
stant sacrifice and unremitting devotion. 


Teachers must refuse to allow themselves to 
be stampeded. They must remember that they 
belong to an organization which is greater than 
the individuals of which it is composed, an or- 
ganization which has been tried and _ proved 
through years of struggle and difficulty. 











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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 21 


DOAK NAMED CHAIRMAN OF FEDERAL 
BOARD FOR VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 
Secretary of Labor William N. Doak has been 
cdected chairman of the Federal Board for Vo- 
cational Education, according to an announce- 
ment by Dr. J. C. Wright, director of the board. 
As chairman Mr. Doak succeeds James J. Davis, 
who served in this capacity for nearly ten years. 

The Federal Board for Vocational Education 
consists of seven members: The Secretary of 
Agriculture, the Secretary of Commerce, the 
Secretary. of Labor, the United States Commis- 
sioner of Education as ex-officio members; and 
three lay members appointed by the President, 
one representing agriculture, one representing 
manufacture and commerce, and one represent- 
ing labor. 

Speaking as a representative of labor, both as 
2 cabinet member and as newly elected chair- 
man of the Federal Board for Vocational Educa- 
tion, Mr. Doak took the occasion of his election 
to make a brief statement covering the attitude 
of labor in this country with reference particu- 
larly to our national program of vocational edu- 
cation aS administered by the Federal Board in 
co-operation with the 48 state boards of voca- 
tional education. 

“Labor believes in education of all kinds,” he 
aid. “It believes that educational opportunities 
should be, as they are in this country, provided 
ireely out of public funds for all classes of our 
people. It is not particularly concerned that vo- 
(ational education, shall be provided because such 
education increases earning power and makes 
possible a higher standard of living for all of our 
people. It believes that our public educational 
facilities should be continuously modified and ex- 
panded under our co-operative state and national 
program to provide adequate vocational training 
lor the youth of the country as well as for all 
adult workers who may desire by such training 
0 improve their trade skill. Labor recognizes 
the need for vocational training not only to in- 
‘ure the future welfare of our boys and girls, but 
4 well to insure the economic welfare of the 
‘country by maintaining the productive efficiency 
it the man power of our industries.” 





‘Tranquility is nothing less than the good 
dering of the mind.” —Marcus Aurelius. 


AN EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM SECOND 
TO NONE 


The Oregon State Federation of Labor at its 
1930 Convention adopted the following plat- 
form, as a broad program of educational activ- 
ities, 

1, Full enforcement of educational laws, includ- 
ing the compulsory attendance of pupils in the pri- 
mary grades. 

2. The wide use of school plants for extra-edu- 
cational and community purposes. 

3. Reduction of the size of classes wherever they 
are too large for efficient work, in order that the 
pupils may have individual attention from their in- 
structors. 

4. Salaries for teachers commensurate with the 
services rendered to society. 

5. Co-operation between school boards and ad- 
ministrative departments with committees represent- 
ing organizations of teachers. 

6. Maintenance of adequate tenure laws, in order 
that there may be established a degree of security 
which will leave the teachers free to devote their 
best energies to their work. 

7. The adoption of a state-wide retirement sys- 
tem which will enabla teachers to accumulate pro- 
tection against poverty after the age of retirement. 

8. Protection of the schools against propaganda 
and exploitation. 

9. Ratification of the child labor amendment to 
the Federal Constitution. 

10. Adoption of a free text book law for the state 
of Oregon. 

Miss May Darling, president of the Portland 
Teachers Union Local 111, was chairman of the 
Committee on Education, which submitted this 
report. 





SOUTHERN INDUSTRIAL CONFERENCE 

The National Women’s Trade Union League 
of America will hold an important conference in 
Greensboro, North Carolina, March 7-8. 

The general subject of the conference is In- 
dustrial Peace—How Achieved? The object as 
announced is “to aid in the creation of an intelli- 
gent understanding public on the working condi- 
tions in the South; to present the facts on 
industrial arbitration and the trade union agree- 
ment in maintaining industrial peace.” 

The program includes the names of some of 
the most outstanding figures of the nation, lead- 
ers in industrial, governmental and labor fields, 
whose presence will assure deliberations of the 
highest and most constructive character. 








22 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


A NEW FEDERAL SERVICE 

Scuoot Lire, the official organ of the Office 
of Education, announces that to it has been given 
the task of publishing information concerning 
the great store of maps, pictures, publications, 
lantern slides and other services which the United 
States Government can make available for use 
in schools, It will search through the records of 
departments, commissions, bureaus and boards 
and announce what it finds which may be used 
to bring color accuracy and vividness to school 
work. 

Every wide awake teacher has rebelled at be- 
ing confined to mere text book information and 
descriptions. Many are often at a loss to know 
how to obtain material through which valuable 
habits of work and first hand knowledge may be 
made available to pupils. None, probably, know 
all that they might have to remove the curse of 
dullness and poor pedagogy. 

Scuoot Lire may be obtained for 50 cents a 
year from the Superintendent of Public Docu- 
ments, Government Printing Office, Washington, 
D. C. 

BETTER STUDY NEEDED 

According to Dr. J. G. Jenkins, professor of 
psychology at Iowa State College, a more effec- 
tive technique of studying rather than longer 
study hours is needed by most students who fail 
to come up to scholarship standard. The profes- 
sor has completed a survey of the study habit of 
120 students at Iowa State and he bases his as- 
sertions on the results of this experiment. 

The group which made the higher grades spent 
two hours and thirty-eight minutes a day in 
study while the deficient section studied three 
hours and twenty-nine minutes each day. The 
poorer group allowed less time for dates and 
sleep in order to be able to study an additional 
hour per day and also they exercised more, at- 
tended church more often and spent less time 
in dressing. 








OHIO EDUCATIONAL CONTERENCE 
INDIVIDUALITY THROUGH GUIDANCE is to be the 
conference keynote of the Eleventh Annual Ohio 
State Educational Conference which will be held 
at Columbus, April 9-11, 1931. Thirty-six sec- 
tional divisions will insure that the varied inter- 
ests of all attending will be provided for. 





ANALYZING PSYCHOANALYSIS 


We may be said to be living in a psychoanalytic ag 
For there has been insinuated into our outlook a Frey Bri 
dian temper. The procedure of psychoanalysis invite the a 
the analyzee to disclose the truth about himself. Lik fourt 
prohibition, the experiment noble in motive may 
equally likely to fail in practice. There is nothing thy 
needs analysis so much as the procedure that goes by oppos 
that name. . . . How far the Freudian temper haf In 
brought order into the human cosmos, how far it haf there. 
enhanced or clarified, how far distorted or degraded not W 
human values, are questions of large moment for futur If 
generations.—Joseph Jastrow, The Century, 





throu 


thoug 
he is 
THE POSITIVE PEACE PROGRAM tion, ¢ 


The constant emphasis on the prevention of wag AS 
instead of the supreme necessity of cooperativg Britis 
building for peace, is a futile and wasteful folly; : are gi 





one is merely negative, the other is positive. Thi the ck 
negative effort is apt to ignore, or at least mini | 
mize, the deep underlying causes of war, while th The 
positive method seeks the removal of the causes : §20,0C 
inevitably breed war. The one is inclined to thin is wot 
of peace as the mere absence of war, while the othe} The 
regards peace as a mighty achievement whose hel unemy 
ful, healing influences are to be operative constant! 
in the life and relations of nations. 
The 
school 


—John Herman Randall in World Unity. 
the mi 


where 

Nov 
increa: 
stitutic 
Britist 
will ha 


univer: 





AMOS ’N ANDY 


The scientist worked with his tubes and his tools 

He probed nature’s secrets and learned its dee 
rules; 

He weighed distant stars and he harnessed th 
light ; 

He studied the atom, too small for man’s sight 

He taught the electrons to fly through the ail 

Discerning, he wrought with great labor anf TE 








The | 

care. Pama 

Behold his great gift as the radio sings a name 

And the voice leaps the distance as though #" /¢ ca 

had wings. a, 

“What voice,” you may ask, “do we get eV wjiay 

night ?” commut 

“Whose voice rides the ether waves bringi but sea 

delight ?” intentio 

demic ; 

Not Plato or Keats or the wise men of earth; f the new 
But a pair of white “coons” with mechanic 

mirth. 

For of all the broadcasters in all the whole 1 TEACI 

It’s Amos ’n Andy who hold the first place Mrs. 

_E. H. H. Holman | “tion 

tate fo 








> age 
Frey, 





nvites 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 23 


BRITISH WISDOM 
British lawmakers are realists. A bill raising 
ihe age limit for children leaving school from 


Lik fourteen to fifteen years is making its way 
y ke through Parliament in the face of stubborn Tory 


a by opposition. 


r has 
it has 
raded 
future 


f wal 
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rs fog 
mini 
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thin} 
othe 


help} 
tantli 


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tools 
dee 


In this country our legislators would stop 
there. The British, being more experienced, if 
not wiser, realize that something else is needed. 

If the child is taken out of school some 
thought should be given to the problem of how 
he is to live without working. The right solu- 
tion, of course would be to increase “Dad’s” pay. 

As that is not feasible in this instance, the 
British are doing the next best thing. They 
are giving the parents something to maintain 


Thi¥ the child for the extra year he is in school. 


The total cost is estimated all the way from 


* uf $20,000,000 to $40,000,000. Whatever it is, it 


is worth it. 

The first effect of the new law will be to ease 
unemployment a little, because thousands of 
youngsters will be taken out of the labor market. 

There will be important changes in Britain’s 
school system, too. At present the education of 
the mass of the children ends at about the point 
where American youngsters enter high school. 

Now arrangements must be made to admit an 
increased number to secondary educational in- 
stitutions, and that means that, eventually, more 


d thi British boys and girls, the children of the toilers, 


sight 
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anic 


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1an. 





will have a chance to see the inside of college or 
university.— Labor. 





THE BASIS OF ORDER IN MEXICO 
The rural school in Mexico is the outward thrust 
of the revolution in Mexico. The Mexicans have 
aname for the little community school—they call 


4‘ la casa de la puebla—the house of the people. The 


school is the social center of the community. The 
teacher is the social worker, the physician, the agri- 
cultural expert, the consultant upon questions of 
community and personal life. The teacher may have 
but scant education, he may be picked for good 
intentions and resolute purpose rather than for aca- 
demic attainments, but he is the true apostle of 
the new national order. 
-—Herbert C. Herring in World Unity. 





TEACHER CANDIDATE FOR PARLIAMENT 

Mrs, Leah Manning, president of the National 
Union of Teachers (England) is Labor candi- 
date for Parliament from East Islington. 


RETIREMENT OF F. W. GOLDSTONE 

The American Federation of Teachers learns 
with great regret that Mr. F. W. Goldstone has 
decided to retire from the office of general sec- 
retary of the National Union of Teachers at the 
close of this year’s term of office. 

Mr. Goldstone has served his organization de- 
votedly and ably for twenty-one years, fourteen 
years aS managing secretary and seven years as 
general secretary. It was only by the utmost 
firmness on the part of Mr. Goldstone that the 
Union was induced to accept his resignation. 

Mr. Goldstone has not confined his interest and 
activity to educational problems at home, but 
has been prominently connected with interna- 
tional movements. He is a member of the execu- 
tive council of the World Federation of Educa- 
tion Associations. 

The associates of Mr. Goldstone both at home 
and throughout the world extend to him their 
best wishes. 


DR. KUO RETURNS TO CHINA 

Dr. P. W. Kuo, a member of the board of 
directors of the World Federation, who has for 
several years past been director of the China 
Institute in America, has returned to China. As 
the chief executive officer of the China Institute, 
Dr. Kuo has been of great service to the large 
number of Chinese students in American uni- 
versities. However, for some time he has had 
urgent calls to return to his country in the inter- 
ests of educational affairs in the Far East and 
has now decided to leave the United States. 








The All-Asia Conference on Education held 
in India during December was the largest educa- 
tional gathering ever witnessed in that country. 
Seven thousand educators, representing about 
forty nationalities, took part in the meeting. 





The steady development of the National Union 
of Teachers [England] is evidenced by the con- 
tinuous increase in its membership, which has 
risen from 112,030 in 1924 to 137,294 in 1930. 





The task of the nineteenth century was to 
work out the problem of democratic government 
for great populations; the task of the twentieth 
century is to work out the problem of peaceful 
co-operation between nations so governed. 

—Lord Eustace Percy 








24 THE AMERICAN 


A FEW DON’TS 

Don’t condemn the Labor movement because 
you know of “objectionable features.” Every man 
and every human institution has some imper- 
fections. 

Don’t let so-called “independence” prevent you 
from being unselfish. We are all dependent on 
someone or something. “No man stands alone.” 
Get closer together. 

Don’t forget that bricklayers, plasterers, tin- 
smiths, stonecutters and, in some places, hod- 
carriers receive more pay than teachers, and 
don’t forget the reason—strong organization. 

Don’t shirk the moral obligation to do all you 
can to elevate the standard of living—to abolish 
child labor. 

Don’t be blind to your own interests, unionism 
helps all workingmen, all society, the home and 
state. 

Don’t “wait for the others.” Others are wait- 
ing for you. Some must be among the first— 
why not you? 

Don’t be a non-unionist “because unions are 
not run right.” Get into one and help keep it 
“in the straight and narrow path.” 

Don’t put it off. “Procrastination is the thief 
of time”—and of good intentions. 


Don’t say: “Unions can’t accomplish their 
purpose.” They do! Over 7,000,000 unionists 
say so. 


EDUCATION AND POVERTY 

The poorer the family, the poorer in general 
is the quality of the school work of the children. 
This is the conclusion reached by a German in- 
vestigator as the result of a study of about 800 
children 11 to 14 years of age coming from 
families of moderate or low income and attend- 
ing public schools in two German cities. 

About half the children of unskilled workers 
in the lower school grades and a still larger 
proportion in the higher grades were found to 
be retarded. 

This condition was attributed by the investi- 
gator to the prevalence of faulty hygiene, disease 
and physical weakness among the poorer fam- 
ilies, as well as to inherited lack of ability, which 
in the parents had kept them in the ranks of 
the less skilled workers, 








TEACHER 


DANVILLE STRIKERS ARE SUFFERING 
BITTER WANT 

Danville, Feb. 12.—Suffering of mill workers 
has increased since their strike was called off. 

State Labor Commissioner John H. Hall in. 
vestigated and reported. The union’s resources 
are exhausted and Red Cross assistance amounts 
to a bottle of milk and can of tomatoes to each 
applicant, Hall said. 

Before leaving with state troops, recalled by 
Governor Pollard, General Waller in command, 
urged Danville citizens and local agencies to re. 
lieve the needy. 





HOOKED RUGS FOR RELIEF 


To the Editor of The Nation: 

Sir: There are many families in Marion, North 
Carolina, who since the strike have not been able 
to find work. These families are badly in need of 
food and clothes. With the coming of winter and 
the school season the need is increased. 

In order to help buy the things most needed some 
of the strikers are making hooked rugs. We wanta 
market for these rugs, and would be very glad to 
send them to any central labor union, any group oj 
people, or any one person who could dispose of one 
or more of them for us. 

Some of the rugs are decorated with scenes from 
the mountains and the surrounding country and are 
very beautiful. Prices range from $3 to $15 accord- 
ing to size. You can gladden the hearts of these 
workers by ordering one or more rugs at this time. 
Correspondence should be addressed to me, Box 
634, Marion. 

Grace ELiort. 

Marion, N. C., December 20. 





“The right of man to labor and his right to 
labor in joy, 

Not all your laws can strangle that right, nor 
the gates of hell destroy. 

For it came with the making of man and wa 
kneaded into his bones, 

And it will stand at the last of things on the 
dust of crumbled thrones.” 





“When it comes to a question between a man ani 
a dollar, I am on the side of the man every time 
—Abraham Lincoln 


—— 





Our entire civilization is suffering from # 
exaggerated notion of the value of property, andé 
failure to emphasize human rights and human j* 
tice. 

—Dr. John A. Ryo. 








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THE AMERICAN 





BOOKS 


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











MACHINERY AND SociaL Procress. By E. H. 
H. Holman, 95 pp. North Central Pub- 
lishing Company, St. Paul, Minn. 50c. 

“Do you suppose” said the the social science 
teacher “that we have found it?” “It” meant 
that thing for which hundreds of social science 
teachers have been seeking, something which 
will bring the fundamentals of economics within 
the comprehension of the high school student. 
The book in hand was Machinery and Social 
Progress. 

For some eight or ten years the most intelli- 
gent of the social science teachers have known 
that we are giving our high school students a 
very inadequate preparation for life if we are 
sending them out with no basis for understand- 
ing the great economic system in which they 
must live their lives. 

Aside from history, a half year of political 
science has been the only social science offered 
in thousands of high schools. This study of 
the machinery of our state and national govern- 
ments is assuredly most necessary. But of the 
infinitely more complex economic system which 
will touch the student a thousand times 
where his government will touch him once, our 
school curricula have long been utterly silent. 
With the understanding of this economic struc- 
ture our schools have given their students no 
help. 

In a few systems a few teachers have been 
allowed to develop courses in elementary eco- 
nomics. Such teachers have been greatly 
hampered by the lack of texts and material writ- 
tn with the immature mind in view. We be- 
lieve Mr. Holman has rendered an important 
service in producing this interpretation of some 
of the fundamentals of economic principles, and 
‘tting it forth in such simple and imaginative 
style that high school students will be attracted 
and enlightened. 

The most dominant fact of modern life is the 
machine. The best and the worst of our pres- 
tat economic structure grows out of the machine. 


TEACHER 25 


It has freed man but it has enslaved him. It 
has brought progress, but it has destroyed men. 
To control this great power for good and for ill 
so that man may use its good and circumvent 
its ill is assuredly one of the great problems 
in the world today. We believe Mr. Holman 
has been signally successful in interpreting this 
problem and clarifying the underlying princi- 
ples on which the solution must be based. 

The course originated in classes held as part of 
the educational work of the Franklin Co-opera- 
tive Creamery of Minneapolis. The book has 
the endorsement of college professors, public 
school officials and labor organizations. It has 
been used in four colleges, been adopted by the 
St. Paul public schools, and been endorsed for 
use in trade union educational classes. We be- 
lieve it will be exceedingly useful in high school 
economic classes and recommend that social sci- 
ence teachers acquaint themselves with it. 


Home-Room ACTIVITIES. 
and Jane M. Crow. 350 pp. Professional 
and Technical Press, New York. $3.25. 

If it is possible in some measure to mitigate 
the evils of the large schools which some school 
systems insist on adopting for reasons of reputed 
economies, it must be found in the division of 
the great impersonal groups into smaller groups 
whose activities can be centered in and around 
what is known as the ““Home-Room.” The home- 
room organization is also the most favored de- 
vice for making possible many phases of charac- 
ter building and citizenship training which must 
take place outside the formal class room. The 
authors of this book, assuming that the case for 
the home-room type of organization has been 
proved, present a mass of material for the as- 
sistance of teachers and supervisors of home- 
rooms which is surprisingly extensive and valu- 
able. 

The book presupposes an_ elaborate 
munity-wide activity organization with a cen- 
tral committee and a home-room director (other 
than the principal) in each building, and claims 
that “until administrators will supply such aid 
to home-room sponsors and students, they can- 
not expect a successful home-room program.” 
Whether such machinery exists in many com- 
munities is a matter of doubt in the mind of 
the reviewer, but that more and more activities 


com- 


By Iris Cleva Good “ 











26 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


of this type are being introduced into many 
Junior and Senior High Schools is well known. 
Whether administrators are furnishing these aids 
to the teachers or not, much that is easier to re- 
quire than to do is being expected of teachers. 
This book will undoubtedly be a great help to 
many teachers who have been required to add 
duties requiring ingenuity, resourcefulness, re- 
search and hard work to a teaching program 
that has been, in most cases, in no way lightened. 

The book contains tried out programs for spe- 
cial occasions, programs on biography, on ad- 
venture, on citizenship, on free activities. etc. 
Games, puzzles, stunts, contests are described. 
Extensive lists of one act and longer plays will 
help with that difficult problem of finding suit- 
able plays to satisfy the never ending desire “to 
give a play.” 

The intelligent teacher will recognize that no 
ready-made program can be lifted bodily from 
any source. She will also be wary of too many 
suggestions, her own or any one’s else, lest the 
pupils lose the joy and profit of self expression, 
initiative and responsibility. But suggestions of 
new types of things to do, new games and new 
sources of material will be of great value in 
lending variety and avoiding ruts. 

Most valuable service of all, possibly, is that 
the book tells where and how to get the plays, 
stories, songs, poems, material—all the things the 
lack of which so often frustrate the teacher’s 
cleverest plans and ideas. 


CREATIVE SELF EXPRESSION 


From the east coast and the west coast have 
come to our desk little books that have given 
us no little pleasure. 

Teachers of New Education schools have 
seemed, very naturally, to find themselves in con- 
genial atmosphere in the American Federation 
of Teachers. Several such schools are 100% 
locals. This is the first time, however, that any 
of them have given us a sample of their products. 

The Voorhis School for Boys sends us a beau- 
tiful portfolio of First Poems written by the boys 
and made into a book in their own Viking Print 
Shop. Literary merit and skilled craftsmanship, 
both in high degree, make it a piece of real art. 

Of great interest also, and, we believe, of 
high value to other teachers is the History Proj- 
ect Play, They Built America. A Junior High 


workers, the southern planters, the slaves ani 


School class having finished its study of the 
Civil War period decided they wanted to mak 
a play which would show the place in the develop. 
ment of our country of our great national figures 
The result is something you all should read. Jef. 
ferson, Hamilton, Jackson, Clay, Lincoln an 
Davis, the pioneers, the immigrants, the factor 


the capitalists, appear, speak and pass off the 
stage. At the end you feel that these Californiz 
boys know their history and what it means, 

The Modern School at Stelton, New Jersey, 
sends us The Voice of the Children, written, 
printed, and illustrated by the children. With 
no assistance or suggestion of any kind from 
the teachers (the foreword tells us) these young. 
sters from three to thirteen have written their 
stories and poems, made the linoleum cuts for 
their illustrations, set their type, printed ané 
proof read the pages, and made them into 
book. We think it is art, composition, hané 
work and creative self expression to the nth 
degree. We think you all should see it. 





There is nothing in the world that teaches u 
so much as looking at life from another person’ 
point of view. 


BY A YOUNG GIRL 


I must laugh and dance and sing; 

Youth is such a lovely thing. 

Soon I shall be old and stately; 

I shall promenade sedately 

Down a narrow pavement street, 

And the people that I meet 

Will be stiff and narrow too, 

Careful what they say and do; 

It will be quite plain to see 

They were never young like me. 

When I walk where flowers grow 

I shall have to stoop down low 

If I want one for a prize; 

Now I am just the proper size. 

Let me laugh and dance and sing; 

Youth is such a lovely thing. 
—The Parents’ Magazine. 





The golf links lie so near the mill 
That almost every day 
The little children at their work 
Can see the men at play. 
—Sarah Cleghorn. 


EDUC 


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if). K. Pettingill, and William Allen White. 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


gDUCATIONAL TENDENCIES IN CURRENT 
MAGAZINES 


By Nell Peterson 


“There are no truly progressive secondary 
ghools in spite of many attempts to create them,” 


lis the verdict of that true friend of forward- 


oking movements, Mr. Welford M. Aijikin. 
Nevertheless teachers have reason to be hopeful 
hen the Department of Secondary School Prin- 
cipals, the United States Office of Education, and 


ifthe Progressive Education Association are mak- 


ing, each one in characteristic ways, nationwide 
studies of fundamental problems in secondary 
education. 

The National Survey, which began work in 
july, 1929, has recently announced the appoint- 
ment of an advisory committee of fifty business 
and professional leaders, no one of whom is di- 
rectly engaged in educational work. The mem- 
bership is drawn from all the states of the Union. 
Representative names on the selected committee 
ae Matthew Woll, Jane Addams, A. Lincoln 
Filene, Charles H. Mayo, John H. Finley, Mrs. 
The 
duty of this group of eminent citizens will be, 
frst, to make recommendations to the Survey 
workers and, second, to review the findings of 
the regular Committee before they are published. 
Thus in 1932, when the three-year program of 
investigation is completed, the United States Of- 
fice of Education hopes to have in every state 
at least one influential citizen who will be in a 
position to interpret the results of the study to 
the mothers and fathers in his state. 

R. L. Wilbur, Facts About Business and Professional 


leaders and the Secondary Survey, in School Life, 
Feb, 1931. 


The Progressive Education Association, not 
taving an appropriation of $225,000, such as was 
voted to the National Secondary Survey, must 
all upon friends of childhood throughout the 
tation to help it in the work it has courageously 
inaugurated. The Association is setting out, de- 
lierately and carefully, to create a condition that 
will make possible a superior type of secondary 
‘ducation by bringing about needed changes in 
the relation of school and college. Experimental 
chool leaders were led to study this phase of 
‘he problem by their growing conviction that even 
the best of the new schools cannot become the 


27 


experimental stations they were meant to be un- 
less college entrance problems can be surmounted. 
Mr. Aikin voices the progressive view: “Of all 
the divisions in our customary school organiza- 
tion the secondary school is the one which must 
secure the consent of another before making 
changes. The college still almost completely 
dominates the secondary school careers of those 
students who hope to go on with higher educa- 
tion.” 


The time has come when both schools and col- 
leges must face, without prejudice, the facts 
about progressive education. If it is wrong, it 
should be replaced by something better; if it is 
right in the main, no students should be penalized 
because “the first twelve years of their educa- 
tional life were wisely spent.” 

Such a facing of facts will involve the selection 
of those who should have a college education; 
requirements for admission and examinations; 
the organization and curricula in the secondary 
school and in the first two years of college. 


Already sub-committees are drawing up plans 
for ideal secondary school and junior college 
programs, based on the best concerted thinking 
and practice of experimental school teachers and 
liberal college professors. These programs will 
include provision for laboratory high schools 
with definite suggestions for experimentation. In 
addition they will suggest to the colleges the 
types of curriculum change which progressive 
secondary school leaders would like to have them 
make. 

Welford M. Aikin, Special Correspondence, in School 
and Society, Feb., 1931. 

The need of reconsidering the work of the first 
two years of college has long been recognized by 
colleges and universities. Seven noteworthy at- 
tempts to think differently about the college in its 
relation to a liberal education are summed up by 
a University of Colorado professor: “At Wis- 
consin the experiment is focused on content and 
reorganization of teaching materials; at Antioch, 
on the problem of integrating the college cur- 
riculum with the problems of practical life; at 
Chicago and Stephens, on the administrative re- 
organization of college education; at Rollins, on 
method of instruction; at Swarthmore, on honor 
courses; and at Bennington, on the establishment 
of a college which will attempt to ‘carry on’ the 











28 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


fundamental principles of the progressive ele- 
mentary and secondary schools.” 

The Teachers Journal and Abstract, a University of 
Colorado publication, summarizing Investigations in 
College Education, in The Journal of Higher Education, 
Dec., 1930. 

Already one of these wisely conducted college 
experiments has reached a stage where Dr. 
Meiklejohn, its director, can consent to have it 
discontinued at the end of the school year 1931- 
1932 while a survey is made of the results attained 
and their application to the University of Wis- 
consin as a whole. President Frank has an 
nounced that, as a result of such appraisal, the 
Experimental School of Wisconsin University 
may well be continued as an agency for testing 
other aspects and possible approaches to the work 
of the liberal arts college; or it may be dropped 
in favor of other agencies of educational experi- 
mentation. “It has, in my judgment,” Dr. Frank 
asserted, “made a distinctive contribution to the 
university. It has blazed the trail for that con- 
tinued self-assessment of the content and method 
and determining conditions of education without 
which a university cannot keep step with the 
changing social order it is designed to serve.” 


Experimental College of the University of Wisconsin, 
in School and Society, Feb., 1931. 


Put to the test of general use, no organization 
of education can be successful without teachers 
who can carry on their work with skill and power. 
In a desire to select and develop a group of truly 
professional masters of teaching, the School of 
Education at Harvard has recently made its re- 
quirements for an M. Ed. at Harvard prolonged 
and severe. A candidate must complete success- 
fully sixteen graduate courses, eight of them in 
the subject he plans to teach. In addition he 
must serve a successful apprenticeship as a 
teacher and, finally, must pass a very searching 
examination. The Harvard faculty believes that 
the dreams of experimenters will be appreciably 
nearer to realization if they can be carried out by 
a body of teachers and school executives who 
have received, in advance of entrance upon teach- 
ing, a rigorous, genuinely professional training. 
“An occupation that accepts persons who have 
little knowledge of the problems to be met and 
less skill in meeting them, that pays such persons 
well at the start, that lets them awake to the 


need of training in mid-career, and never raise; 
their salaries to a really attractive level as the 
advance in years, has yet to achieve the status o/ 
a profession.” 

The School of Education of Harvard, University jy 
the Guest Number of The Journal of Education, Feb 
23, 1931. 

If the best in modern thinking about education 
could be embodied in teacher training courses 
such as Harvard is asking educators to subjec: 
themselves to, weak and purposeless people would 
not choose to be teachers. Those who did elec: 
the discipline might really master the difficult 
problems that now face secondary education. 





The Elementary English Review (4070 Vicks. 
burg Ave., Detroit), official organ of the Na 
tional Council of Teachers of English in ele- 
mentary English, has announced for publication 
this spring special numbers on reading, composi- 
tion, and school libraries and recreational read- 
ing. 

Of especial interest are articles on the in- 
dividualization of instruction in reading and 
composition. A series of articles under the gen- 
eral title of “Building a Language-Composition 
Curriculum in the Elementary School” is also 
noteworthy. 





The Weekly News Review of February 23 
contains an article on Social Insurance which 
would not be very much amiss, we surmise, for 
many adults, although it is written for high 
school students. The experience of Germany for 
half a century with social insurance and the re- 
cently enacted French program are described 
The economic and humanitarian bases for ex- 
tending America’s one experiment of this type 
workmen’s compensation, to health, old age and 
unemployment insurance are clearly and simply 
explained. The arguments for and against the 
theory are impartially given, and the sources o/ 
opposition and support are cited. 





Washington—-(FP)—More than two-thirds of the 
high and primary school textbooks sold in the United 
States are provided free by the public to the pupils 
according to a survey made by the federal Bureat 
of Education. The total of sales of textbooks lat 
year to high and primary public schools and their 
pupils was $39,000,000. 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 








¥ Local News 


—_—_ 





WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS FEDERATION 
LOCAL 230 

A new local centering at Smith College has 
been chartered as the Western Massachusetts 
Federation of Teachers Local 230. Membership 
will include teachers in the colleges of western 
Massachusetts and the public and private school 
teachers of these college communities. 

Professor Newton Arvin of Smith College is 
secretary. 





DETROIT LOCAL 231 


In connection with the meeting of the Pro- 
gressive Teachers’ Association in Detroit Feb- 
ruary 26-28 it was demonstrated that there are 
progressive teachers in that city. On February 
24a group of teachers met and discussed the 
aims and policies of the American Federation of 
Teachers and voted to apply for a charter as the 
Detroit Teachers Federation Local 231. A com- 
mittee is now working on a program of action 
ior the new organization. 

Detroit is passing through a severe financial 
crisis and there is much discussion of the possi- 
bility of a suspension of the teachers’ salary 
schedule. The teachers naturally are taking an 
active part in the solution of this economic prob- 
lm. It was not, however, through an economic 
interest that the Detroit teachers organized, but 
because of their appreciation of the significance 
of the American Federation of Teachers as a 
social and educational movement. 





SACRAMENTO LOCAL 31 


Members of Local 31 enjoyed to a very high 
legree the recent visit of A. J. Muste, vice- 
president of the American Federation of Téachers 
and president of Brookwood College, who was 
in Sacramento the twenty-seventh and twenty- 
tighth of January. On Tuesday evening, the 
‘wenty-seventh of January, he addressed a large 
ddlegation at the Federated Trades’ Council on 
the subject of “Unemployment.” This address 
Was received with an unusual amount of enthusi- 
sm, Some considering it the best and most timely 
peech which had been heard at a meeting of the 
federated Trades’ Council. 





29 


The next evening members of the executive 
council and past-presidents of the local Federa- 
tion spent a social hour with Mr. Muste at din- 
ner. Later in the same evening he addressed 
the membership of the Federation at the Oak 
Park Club House. In this address after describ- 
ing briefly the progress of the Federation locals 
in the cities he has visited, he proceeded to tell 
of Brookwood College and of the peculiar con- 
tribution it is making to present-day education. 
His speech was enjoyed by all, and by this con- 
tact with Mr. Muste Sacramento’s Federation- 
ists were led to feel that, with such leaders as 
Mr. Muste in the national organization, the con- 
tinuous progress of the A. F. of T. can reason- 
ably be expected. 

J. N. Garpner, 

Delegate to the Federated Trades’ Council. 





WASHINGTON LOCAL 8 
The Teachers Union of Washington sends the 
following communication. Its record of accom- 
plishment will be of interest to other teachers 
as well as to those of our national capitol. 
Fellow Teacher: 


Do you know that 


I. In 1916 the basic salary for elementary 
teachers in Washington was $500? 


NOW, through dogged persistence on 
the part of the Teachers’ Union it is 
$1,400. 
II. In 1916 the basic salary for senior high 
school teachers was $860? 
NOW, because of the efforts of the 
Teachers’ Union it is $1,800. 
In 1918 through the efforts of the Teachers’ 
Union a Teachers’ Council was established ? 
NOW the Teachers’ Union is endeavor- 
ing to modernize this Teachers’ Council 
and make it more expressive of the 
teachers’ point of view. 


Ill. 


IV. In 1929, the Teachers’ Council, apparently 
not understanding the dangers of an im- 
plied attack on teacher tenure in its rec- 
ommendations for the maintenance of 
Group B efficiency, adopted these recom- 
mendations without submitting them in 
their final form to the teachers for approval 


or disapproval ? 











30 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


NOW, because of persistent requests 
made by the Teachers’ Union, the Teach- 
ers’ Council has agreed to reopen the 
question of the maintenance of Group B 
efficiency. 

V. In May, 1930, a bill providing for educa- 
tional leave for school employees with part 
pay was introduced in the House of Rep- 
resentatives ? 

NOW, The Teachers’ Union is working 
to have the word “temporary” inserted 
before the word “teacher” in that por- 
tion of the bill providing for someone 
to take the place of the teacher on leave. 
This word “temporary” will assure the 
teacher of getting his same position when 
his leave expires. 





WASHINGTON EDUCATIONAL UNION, 
LOCAL 198 


The Washington Educational Union is com- 
monly known in Washington as the “Principals’ 
Union.” It has been functioning during the past 
three years, and has devoted its attention mainly 
to sociological matters rather than to questions 
involving educational organization, discipline and 
routine. 

In recent meetings great stress was laid upon 
the subject of “Adult Education” by two guest- 
speakers, Dr. Alderman, Chief of the Service 
Section of the Federal Bureau of Education, and 
Mr. John Frey, a prominent Executive of the 
American Federation of Labor and former lec- 
turer at the University of Chicago. 

Each of these speakers dwelt earnestly and 
ably upon the need of facilities for self-help in 
education on the part of persons of mature years 
who felt the call to supplement the work they 
have accomplished in school-years or who have 
come to realize the loss in opportunity for ad- 
vancement which they suffer due to enforced 
severance from their studies before graduation. 

At each of those meetings the subject of adult 
education was taken up and discussed at the 
ensuing round-table, and at the business-meeting 
of the organization held December 15th it was 
determined that action should be taken placing 
Educational Union No. 198 on record before the 
Board of Education as favoring the institution 
of a feature of the Public School System of the 
District calculated to fill this need. 


When approaching the subject upon its prac- 
tical side, the members of Educational Union No, 
198 realize it is a matter which has its distinc- 
tive field, and must not be confused with the 
“Americanization” movement now being pro- 
moted under the able administration of Miss 
Maude Aiton, Principal of the Americanization 
School. It must be remembered, however, that 
“Americanization” is but one form of adult edu- 
cation. 

In its general aspect and scope Adult Educa- 
tion is that form of growth by which each indi- 
vidual is enabled to acquire that training and 
development which most enriches him—and to 
obtain it without formal school credits. The 
cause we are advocating is devoted to persons 
who are already citizens and who seek to ad- 
vance their interests either by going farther in 
education or to make up for losses in education 
due to inability to complete the regular course. 

In those cities where Adult Education has been 
adopted and applied with pronounced success, 
the convenient use of library facilities has been a 
prominent feature; and this will naturally follow 
in Washington as elsewhere, since the adult in 
most instances is qualified to bring experience 
to his aid, and guidance rather than class instruc- 
tion will be the key-note in helping him or her 
to help himself in the educational field. 

Such a movement as has been briefly outlined 
above is in keeping with the.times. It must be 
recognized by all thinking men and women that 
the installation of automatic machinery and other 
labor-saving devices in most trades is vastly in- 
creasing production, and that the introduction of 
shorter hours of labor is sure to follow the 
saturation of the market for those wares. How 
will these leisure hours be employed? How will 
habits of idleness and their corollary—gang-life 
—be stopped at the source? Education is the 
solution—adult education that will turn this 
leisure into an asset not only of advantage t0 
the student by increase of efficiency but will cre 
ate intelligent and ambitious citizens and thereby 
advance the public good. 

Inasmuch as the Americanization School is # 
present doing such excellent work in one field 
of adult education, and as it is organized to # 
even more, we determined to call upon tht 
Board of Education to provide such means 
will make possible the enlargement and extensiot 


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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 31 


of the Americanization School so as to make it 
an educational center for native-born adults, this 
expansion to include provisions for field workers 
to reach the people who need this instruction 
and trained teachers in adult education. 


The Board of Education replied to the com- 
munication addressed to them by the Union that 
the Board, as well as the Committee on Illiteracy 
appointed by Secretary Wilbur, was giving con- 
sideration to the expansion of the Americaniza- 
tion School as well as the evening schools, but 
had deferred action until the budget estimates 
were prepared. 

Richard S. Harvey, 
President. 





LUZERNE COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA 
LOCALS 211, 213, 214, 217, 222, 225 

A banquet was held on March 14 by the 
Luzerne County locals of the American Federa- 
tion of Teachers for the purpose of giving stimu- 
lus to the movement for the passage of the Penn- 
sylvania Teachers’ Tenure law. 

Governor and Mrs. Gifford Pinchot were 
among the guests of honor. Other guests in- 
cluded William Green, president of the American 
Federation of Labor; John A. Phillips, president 
of the State Federation of Labor; Selma Bo- 
chardt of Washington, legislative representative 
of the American Federation of Teachers and a 
member of President Hoover’s Child Welfare 
Committee; Mrs. Florence Curtis Hanson of 
Chicago, secretary-treasurer of the American 
Federation of Teachers; Charles Kutz, organizer 
of the State Federation of Labor, who organized 
teachers’ unions in Luzerne county, and a num- 
ber of other leading figures in the education and 
labor fields. 

Prior to his election Governor Pinchot met 
with the county conference committee to dis- 
cuss legislation relative to aiding the cause of the 
teaching profession in Pennsylvania, at which 
time he expressed himself in favor of sound 
tenure laws for teachers. His attitude was 
further emphasized in his inaugural speech in 
which he said that he advocated “security of of- 
fice for competent teachers and equal educatjonal 
°pportunities for every child in the State.” 

Such a bill has been framed and is part of the 


legislative program of the Pinchot administra- 
tion. 

The committee which had in charge this very 
successful first annual dinner of Luzerne County 
Branch, American Federation of Teachers, were 
Arch Davis, Hanover township, chairman; Miss 
Barbara McGlynn, Wilkes-Barre Township, sec- 
retary; Miss Agnes McElwie, Hanover Town- 
ship; Catharine Jones Hannis, Plains; John 
Boney, Larksville; Thomas Brannan, Plains; 
James A. Dillon, Jenkins Township; Stanley Ro- 
vinski, Hanover Township, and James V. O’Don- 
nell, Hanover Township. 





CAMBRIDGE LOCAL 195 


Local 195 held a special meeting January 12 
for the installation of officers during the visit 
to the local of Secretary-Treasurer Hanson, The 
installation was by Mrs. Hanson and addresses 
were made by Mrs. Hanson, Professor A. D. 
Sheffield of Wellesley and James D. Moriarty, 
President of the State Federation of Labor. 
Mayor and Mrs. Russell were guests. 

At the regular monthly meeting of the local an 
address on “Political Education” was made by 
Mrs. Louise Rantoul, State Chairman of the 
Committee on Women in Industry of the Massa- 
chusetts League of Women Voters. 

The local is continuing its work in raising 
funds for assistance for the unemployed. 


Anna L. P. Co..ins, 
Publicity Officer. 





The delegates of the two Decatur locals were 
“obligated” in the City Central labor body at 
its meeting of January 28th. 





THE COMMON RIGHT OF HUMANITY 


“It is the eternal struggle between these two prin- 
ciples—right and wrong—throughout the world. They 
are the two principles that have stood face to face 
from the beginning of time and will ever continue to 
struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, 
the other the divine right of kings. It is the same 
spirit in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the 
spirit that says, ‘You toil and work and carn bread, and 
I'll eat it. No matter in what shape it comes, whether 
from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the 
people of his nation and live by the fruit of their labor 
or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving 
another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.” 

—ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 











32 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 





News of Our Members 











Miss Bernice Rogers, president of Cambridge 
Local 195, has been elected secretary of the Cam- 
bridge Central Labor Union for the third suc- 
cessive term. 


Professor Harold Groves, University of Wis- 
consin, Local 223, has recently been elected to 
the Wisconsin legislature. He has introduced a 
bill for unemployment insurance which was 
worked out by members of the University faculty 
headed by Dr. John R. Commons. 


Professor Groves is also the author of an in- 
come tax bill which is part of the administra- 
tion program, and has introduced a bill for ten- 
ure for vocational teachers which originated 
with the Milwaukee Vocational Teachers’ Asso- 
ciation, Local 212. 


Mr. E. E. Schwarztrauber appeared before 
the Committee on Education of the Wisconsin 
State Legislature in behalf of the tenure bill. 
Strong expressions of appreciation of his work 
are voiced by the labor representatives who are 
working for the bill. 

Miss Lillian Herstein, Chicago Women, Local 
3, spoke before the Milwaukee Women’s Club, 
February 23rd, on the subject “Contemporary 
Problems on Marriage and Divorce.” 

Miss Herstein also took part in a symposium 
n “The New Generation” held March 2nd by 
the Forum Council of Reading Road Temple, 
Cincinnati, Ohio. Her subject was “The Effect 
of the Social and Economic System on the New 
Generation.” 


Former students of Brookwood Labor College 
tendered Dean A. J. Muste a testimonial dinner 
at *Hotel Woodstock, New York City, on the 
occasion of the tenth anniversary of the found- 
ing of Brookwood. Prof. Harold Laski of the 
London School of Economics was the principal 
guest speaker. 


Dr. Robert Morss Lovett has an article en- 
titled Memories of William Vaughn Moody in 
the Atlantic Monthly for March. 


Dr. Jerome Davis of Yale University heads 
a Citizens Committee which is seeking to arbi- 
trate the dispute which has resulted in a strike 


of the employes of the Siegman Co. of Ney 
Haven, Conn. 

G. W. Gasque, Fulton County Local 183, hada 
clever article in a recent number of the Georgia 
Education Journal on “What Is a Teacher’ 
Salary?” 





FOR RENT: To reliable party wishing coun- 
try life, an old homestead furnished or unfur- 
nished, in Wacousta, a small community near 
Lansing, Michigan, on hard road. Seven rooms, 
barn, garden, good fruit, electricity, telephone, 
spring in basement. Should be attractive to 
man retiring on small income. Rent $20 per 
month. Address Arthur Davis, 470 Drexel 
Ave., Glencoe, Illinois. 











This property belonged to Mr. William E 
Davis, for many years a highly esteemed mem- 
ber of Local 2. Mrs. Davis is offering it through 
the columns of THe AMERICAN TEACHER be 
cause s!ie feels it may be particularly well adaptea 
to the needs of some teacher who wishes a quit 
inexpensive home for a few years. 














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Third Annual Institute of Progressive Education 


Syracuse University, Syracus:, New York 
July 6 to August 14 


The Progressive Education Association will conduct its Third Annual Institute of Pro- 
gressive Education under the auspices of Syracuse University, offering a wide range of courses 
and outstanding instructors. 


DEMONSTRATION SCHOOL 


Plans have been made for a Demonstration School utilizing progressive education methods, with 
the cooperation of the Syracuse public schools. Classes at all levels will be arranged. The 
School will be directed by Dr. Ruth Andrus, Expert in Childhood Education of the New York State 
Department of Education. The Secondary School will be directed by Burton P. Fowler, Head Master 
of the Tower Hill School, Wilmington, Delaware, and President of the Progressive Education Asso- 


ciation. 
THD COURSES 


The Case Method of Studying Child Development—Dr. Andrus. 

The Methods and Materials of Primary Education—Dr. Andrus. 

The Methods and Materials of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Grades—Dr. Adelaide M. Ayer, Direetor of 
Training, State Teachers College, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 

The Principles and Practices of Modern Education—Dr, Ayer. 

The Methods and Materials of Secondary Education—Mr. Fowler. 

The Personality Adjustment of School Children—Mrs, Georgia Clarke Matthaei, Psychologist of the 
Bronxville, N. Y., Public Schools. 

Diagnostic Work in Reading, Spelling, and Arithmetic—Mrs. Matthaei. 

Industrial Arts as a Curricular Tool, a Laboratory Course—to be selected. 


GENERAL INFORMATION 


All of the above courses carry college credits. 

All students of the Institute will reside in one dormitory. 

There will be a Weekly Forum of distinguished lecturers. 

Numerous other lectures, concerts, and plays will be given. 

Syracuse University offers an exceptional climate, out-of-door sports and trips to places of interest. 
The fees for the courses are low, and room and board are inexpensive. 


For registration blank, application for room and board, copies of the Institute bulletin, 
and all information, write direct to Dr. Harry 8. Ganders, Dean of the Teachers College, Syra- 
cuse University, Syracuse, New York. 





























American Federation 
of 
Teachers 


506 South Wabash Avenue 
CHICAGO, ILL. 


SS 


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 subscription price is $2.00 per year, 25 
cents per copy.