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IN THIS ISSUE 
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A. F. of L. Structure 

A Workers’ Community 











= : Campus Issues 

ey | Education in Mexico 
| So This ls America! 

2 Teachers and Taxes 

“ A. F. of L. on Education 
t- Women in Industry 

ed They Say 

~ Who Said It? 

7 Workers’ Education 


News From Locals 
Book Reviews 


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2 DEMOCRACY, 
IN EDUCATION) 
bok wis eX ORR Seas 





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A) EDUC'ATAONS 


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NEW LOCALS 


The American Federation of Teachers wel- 
comes into membership the following locals 
whose applications have been approved since 


the previous issue of The American Teacher. 


Ohio County Federation of Teachers, No. 429, 
Ohio County, W. Va. 


Los Angeles Federation of Teachers, No. 430, 
Los Angeles, Calif. 


The Cambridge Union of University Teachers, 
No. 431, Cambridge, Mass. 


Wisconsin Circuit Teachers’ Union, No. 432, 
Madison, Wis. 


Norris Teachers’ Federation, No. 433, Norris, 
Tenn. 





Federation of Teachers of the Belleville Township 
High School, No. 434, Belleville, Ill. 


Flint Federation of Teachers, No. 435, Flint, Mich. 


Jasper School Teachers’ Union, No. 436, Jasper, 














CHRISTMAS 


SEALED! 

The girl of the 1860's never heard 
of Christmas Seals. But she knew 
about “‘consumption.”’ Tubercu- 
losis still takes fifty per cent more 
girls than boys between 15 and 24. 
To help protect our modern girls 
against this disease the Christmas 
Seal must continue its program of 
education and prevention. 


BUY 


CHRISTMAS 
SEALS 


The National, State andLocal 











Tuberculosis Associations 
of the United States 

A Great American Institution.................. William Green 3 

ES OE ae ee a anne F. M. Goodhue 5 

The Ashtabula City Schools Situation......... E. B. Pendleton 6 

EES EES I a 7 

Campus Issues and the New Leadership... .. Willard E. Uphaus 8 

Educational Policies in Mexico................. H. L. Latham 11 

Doing Things Together in a Democracy..........- VM. A. Wight 13 

Neen Nn ce ecavbbacsssveve 13 
I UO ccs acess ecccsscn ceed Anonymous 14 MERRIAM-WEBSTER 
Fraternal Greetings from Mexico ey eee ee eee 15 New from cover to cover. Backed by a 
So This Is A Bais f 1¢ century of leadership. William Allan Neil- 
~»O ee a ee se eke bbb eeée8eseese ) son, President of Smith College, Editor in 
They Say 17 Chief, heads the most authoritative staff 
EES EES DEPLETE TET TOL TEE ET TELE E ETT edatmaanaes extnaiend. Cuntaiaae 
Editorial—T eachers and Tares............cccceccces V.J. Eck 18 entries — the greatest amount of informa- 
Say - : 2 ‘ tion ever put into one volume— 122,000 
re rn ee... cto sescececceccccces 19 more entries than any other dictionary. 
7 . ; . ‘ ; 12,000 terms illustrated. Magnificent 
Effects of Technological Changes on Women Workers........ 20 plates in color and half tone. ‘Thousands 
i : > of encyclopedic articles — 3,350 pages. 
Who Said EE eS ued boecevedeeewees 21 Write for free, illustrated pamphlet con- 
ee ee a dudiw ceeeseecwain’é 23 | taining specimen pages, color plates, and 

5 full information. 
, M4 : 

Book Reviews td + -k Pen alee ebb eee cee ae ee oo oe seen eees 24 G. & C. MERRIAM Co., Springfield, Mass. 








SUBSCRIPTION $1.00 for the year—For- 
eign $1.10—Single copies, 25c. At the time 
of expiration, a bill will be found in the 
copy. Subscribers are requested to give 
prompt notice of changes of address. Re- 
mittances should be made in postal money- 
order, express order, draft, stamps or check. 


PUBLISHED bi-monthly, except August, by 
the American Federation of Teachers, 506 
South Wabash Avenue, Chicago, Ill. En- 
tered as second class matter October 18, 
1933, at the t office at Chicago, Iil., under 
the Act of March 3, 1879. Acceptance for 


mailing at special rate of postage provided 
for in Sec. 1103, Act of Feb. 28, 1925, au- 
thorized Nov. 3, 1926. 


eo 














WEBSTER’S 


NEW INTERNATIONAL 


DICTIONAR 











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TTT ant 


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aff 


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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 














NOVEMBER-DECEMBER, 1935 No. 2 











A Great American Institution 


By WILLIAM GREEN 
President, American Federation of Labor 


There is no institution that directly or indirectly 
affects the lives and prosperity of more people in the 
United States and Canada that does the American 
Federation of Labor. The level and rate of industrial 
and business progress depend on expanding consump- 
tion. It is the American Federation of Labor that puts 
additional millions and even billions in the pockets of 
those whose patronage is necessary to the corner store, 
the doctor, the theater, the art collector, the shoe shop, 
the office clerk, the farmer, the dairyman. 

The organized workers have been the flying wedge 
that has raised wages and incomes for the unorganized 
as well as union workers. It formulated and gained 
acceptance for the American high wage principle. It is 
the organized labor movement that has put the products 
of factories, mines and mills to work in constructing 
higher standards of living, 


Prosperity in two countries is directly attendant on 
the progress of the American Federation of Labor. It 
is obvious, therefore, that every person concerned for 
nis or her own best interests should know exactly what 
the American Federation of Labor is. 


The American Federation of Labor has had a long 
and distinguished history. 


Purposes 


It was organized November 15, 1881, by a group of 
trade unions. There had been a number of national 
labor organizations but none had lasted long. At this 
time trade unions began to feel the need of mutual help 
with industrial problems. This organization became 
exclusively a union of trade unions for trade union 
advancement. As the name implies, it is an organization 
of unions of workers which is the spokesman through 
which the unions act on matters that concern more 
than one trade or group of workers. Practically all 
important unions with the exception of the four rail- 
way brotherhoods are affiliated to the American Fed- 
eration of Labor. Just as workers on a job need to act 
together in a union, so unions in an industry need to act 
together to prevent lower standards in any section of 
the industry from undermining their gains. To meet 
wider interests, wage earners in all industries find it 
necessary to agree upon how they shall deal with com- 
mon problems. Members of the Federation increase 
their economic strength, political and social influence 
because they are identified with a national organization 
and have its potential backing. 


Structural Organization 


The American Federation of Labor consists of the 
following affiliated organizations: 105 national and in- 
ternational unions, 4 departments, 337 directly affiliated 


local unions, 49 state branches, and 799 city central 
bodies. 

National and international unions are organizations 
of workers in the same trade or calling with control 
over a definite jurisdiction to which the affiliated mem- 
bers of the Federation have agreed. International 
unions have members in Canada as well as the United 
States and sometimes in Mexico. Their membership is 
organized wholly into trade unions. The jurisdiction of 
an international or national union may extend over a 
trade such as machinists; or it may extend over sev- 
eral different kinds of work such as carpentering, furni- 
ture making, pile driving, or it may extend over an 
industry such as mining, covering all trades and kinds 
of work in the whole industry. The tendency of a 
jurisdiction is to broaden in order to adjust to changes 
in machinery and technical processes. 


There have been many changes in the affiliated mem- 
bership of the Federation since 1881. Out of these 
changes has come a trend toward consolidation, unify- 
ing responsibility. For practical reasons the American 
labor movement is opposed to dual organizations and 
division of authority. Dual organizations divide re- 
sponsibility and make for friction. 


Coordination 


In some industries where trades are well organized 
into unions, a method of coordinating the work of the 
several national and international trade unions in an 
industry has been worked out through departments of 
the American Federation of Labor. There are three 
such departments: building trades, metal trades, and 
railway shop crafts. A fourth department is that of 
the Union Label Trades where cooperation is for mu- 
tual assistance in promoting the sale of union labeled 
products. The metal trades and construction depart- 
ments promote the formation of corresponding local 
bodies through which the related local unions function. 
The railway shop unions organize system federations 
with jurisdiction paralleling railway systems. Similarly 
local union label leagues are formed in industrial cen- 
ters, sponsored by the Union Label Trades Department. 


The unions of a single city or industrial center have 
found it necessary to band together for mutual protec- 
tion and assistance in local undertakings. These local 
central labor bodies are chartered by the American Fed- 
eration of Labor. Their authority is restricted to fed- 
erated activities and in no way infringes upon the func- 
tions of trade organizations. They cannot declare 
strikes or negotiate agreements but they are invaluable 
in mobilizing labor support for a union engaged in such 
undertakings. They enable workers to have effective 
representation in the life of the municipality. 








Similarly, state federations of labor have been formed 
to further the state-wide interests of Labor and to pro- 
mote state labor legislation. These state bodies are also 
chartered by the American Federation of Labor. These 
local federated bodies have a responsibility for initiating 
organization and educational work. 

In order to take care of workers over whose organi- 
zation no national or international union has responsi- 
bility, the Federation charters them in a directly affili- 
ated union. Where there are not enough workers to 
meet the charter requirements of standard unions, the 
Federation also issues a charter to the whole group as 
a federal labor union. The directly affiliated local 
unions are the materials out of which new national 
and international unions are formed. 


Executive Machinery 


The American Federation of Labor has a president. 
secretary-treasurer, and fifteen vice-presidents. These 
seventeen officials constitute its Executive Council. It 
holds annual conventions to which affiliated members 
send delegates in proportion to their dues paying mem- 
bership. These annual conventions are the supreme law 
making bodies of the Federation. Between conventions, 
issues are referred to the Executive Council which 
meets about four times a year. The responsible admin- 
istrative agents are the president and the secretary who 
devote full time to the Federation’s work. The Fed- 
eration has its headquarters in Washington, D. C., in 
its own building. 

The Federation has twenty-one paid organizers who 
are sent out to perform specific duties and 1,337 volun- 
teer district organizers who are responsible for local 
interests. There are 369 persons who in addition to 
obligations to their own unions are commissioned to 
serve as general organizers to help with Federation 
work. 

Administrative and educational work is carried on 
through the Washington office. The legislative and 
political interests of Labor are taken care of equally 
with its economic and social welfare. The Federation’s 
representatives keep members of Congress informed as 
to Labor’s interests in pending legislation. The Fed- 
eration is active politically, following non-partisan 
political policies. That is, it submits political principles 
to candidates and parties and advises labor organizations 
as to their positions on these and other labor issues. 

The Federation publishes an official monthly maga- 
zine, the “American Federationist.” It issues a weekly 
news service to the labor press and supplies unions with 
statistical, educational and organizing literature. The 
President of the Federation is the spokesman for Labor 
who officially presents its needs and experience. 


Revenues 


The revenues of the Federation are derived from a 
per capita tax paid by national and international unions 
of one cent per ice: Se per month; monthly dues from 
directly affiliated local unions of thirty-five cents per 
member ; and flat annual dues from state federations of 
labor and central labor bodies of $10.00 per year. 


Fundamental Principles 


The Federation is based upon a philosophy of volun- 
tarism—that is, the organization has no power to 
compel any union or person to do anything. Trade 
unions realize that force does not lead to permanent 
progress, but only realization of the value of better 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


methods and better agencies. Membership and compli- 
ance with regulations are the result of voluntary de- 
cision, directed by enlightened self interest. Because the 
union renders valuable service, it retains its membership, 

The worker needs the union just as the individual 
union needs the support and cooperation of other 
unions in the same kind of work. Similarly unions in 
one trade or industry need the cooperation of other 
groups of workers. Related interests are the strong ties 
that bring workers into unions—mutual help and ser- 
vice are what keep them in. Intelligent understanding 
of the welfare of the whole group is the disciplinary 
power that imposes policies and rules. 

Following this principle of self-determination, the 
national and international trade unions have control 
over their own jurisdictions, make their own rules and 
decisions. There is, however, one regulation common 
to all—the trade union card is essential to activity in 
the union and this is given only to wage earners in the 
jurisdiction. i4., 

Collective Bargaining 


Industrial history shows that collective bargaining 
is the method by which progress is made in industrial 
relations. When representatives of management and 
workers meet for the purpose of finding and agreeing 
upon conditions of employment, the workers acquire 
status in the industry. They are putting their time, 
work ability, and personalities into the industry under 
conditions which they helped to decide. Conferences 
with the management give them a better understanding 
of industrial problems and definitely disclose that eco- 
nomical production and sales with increased output 
make is possible for the company to pay higher wages. 
These conferences help management to understand the 
experience of those who handle their tools and machin- 
ery. Collective bargaining naturally leads to cooperation 
between union and management in working out indus- 
trial problems so that each may benefit. 

The American Federation of Labor has a construc- 
tive program which guarantees fundamental rights to 
workers and provides for the settlement of industrial 
problems. This program enables workers to participate 
in the problems of work and to share in the results of 
work. There may result a real partnership in work. 
The union gives workers an organization with the nec- 
essary independence and scope to enable them to keep 
pace with progress in the industry and the community 
and thus give a substantial foundation for rebuilding 
prosperity. 

Eprtor’s Note: 


This is the first of three informative articles. The second 
will deal with the state federation; the third, the central body. 





They Are Not Organized 


The Washington Joint Committee on National Re- 
covery in their report on “The Present Economic Posi- 
tion of the Negro Woman Worker” stated that the 
Negro woman worker was triply exploited, because of 
her nationality, sex, and class. They have the lowest 
wages, the longest hours and greatest insecurity of any 
group in the U. S. More than any other group they 
are denied the benefits of the Security Bill, since 90 per 
cent are in domestic and agricultural work. These two 
types of work are specifically excluded in the bill. 
Negro domestics work 70 to 80 hours a week, usually 
for less than $2 a week. Some families of 12 to 14 
people live in one room houses and 10 to 12 people 
sleep in three beds. 





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NOVEMBER-DECEMBER, 1935 


SEACROFT 


Toward an Independent Workers’ Educational Community 
F. M. GOODHUE 


I 

The first week of last October a little group of earn- 
est people began the development of SEACROFT, a 
square mile island one and a half miles off Port Royal, 
South Carolina, where they plan to open a free and 
independent school for workers on October 1, 1936. 

To many romanticists a verdant isle in a sunny sea 
is just the beginning of a lovely pipe dream. But to 
Dr. Wm. E. Zeuch* and his associate founders it is 
just the beginning of much very hard work. From 
years of experience with somewhat the same sort of 
venture they know that it means plowing and planting 
and harvesting, erecting and remodelling buildings, 
formulating a realistic course of study, establishing 
working rules and productive efficiency, developing in- 
telligent community social standards, and all the thou- 
sand and one things that go into the building of a 
workers’ cultural center. 


II 


Educationally, SEACROFT will be a non-factional, 
non-sectarian, non-propaganda school of the social 
studies. Since throughout the world today the teach- 
ing of the social studies is largely a war of propa- 
gandas, this statement needs a bit of clarification. 

In the regular schools and colleges of the United 
States the teaching of the social subjects is notoriously 
safe for capitalism. The successive “Red” hunts have 
failed to discover the teaching of any “Red” ideas in 
any of our conventional colleges and universities. Our 
institutions of higher learning appear to have accepted 
this appalling disclosure of their intellectual dishonesty 
and moral bankruptcy with complacence; seemingly 
they have given up even the pretension of being free 
forums for the analysis and discussion of all economic, 
political and social ideas. Subservience to capitalism 
could hardly sink lower. 

In the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics the teach- 
ing of the social subjects is just as safe for communism. 
No teacher there would dare to allude to capitalism 
except to damn it. To extol capitalism would be count- 
er revolution and any teacher or other person caught 
praising it would sacrifice not only his job but also his 
liberty, and possibly his life. 

Free teaching of the social studies is thus banished 
in orthodox educational institutions in the U. S. A. and 
in the whole of the U. S.S. R. To the earnest scholar 
in search for the truth there is not much difference 
between “Red” hunts and “White” hunts. In the 
United States, however, we are still permitted to estab- 
lish independent schools devoted to the free teaching 
of the social studies if they are established privately. 
That is what the founders of SEACROFT are plan- 
ning to do. They are taking advantage of that still 
remaining freedom. 





*Dr. Zeuch, as earl readers of the American Teacher will remember, 
was the Founder and first Director of Commonwealth College. In 1931 he 
was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in recognition of his pioneering 
labors in the field of workers’ education and he spent a year in Europe 

dying resident workers’ education, cooperation, trade unions and labor 
Politics. More recently he devoted almost two f in the Administration 
at Washington trying, without success, to induce responsible officials to 
inaugurate cooperative resettlement projects. 


Further, since young industrial laborers and farmers 
are being excluded more and more from higher educa- 
tion because of mounting costs and unemployment, and 
since the interests of the workers are sacrificed in the 
present biased teaching of the social studies in our col- 
leges and universities, SEACROFT will devote itself 
to the education of workers and the building of a work- 
ers’ cultural center. 


III 


SEACROFT will be different from any educational 
community yet attempted in that it will make a greater 
effort to lay an adequate economic foundation for 
academic freedom. The key to that effort is found in 
its slogan, “Production — Education — Recreation,” 
which sums up the methods of economic support as 
well as the purposes of the community. 

Physically, as has been stated, SEACROFT is a 
square mile island. Aside from several hundreds of 
acres of timber and pasture there are approximately 
240 acres of trucking and general farming land—and a 
set of plantation buildings. There is a commodious 
farm house, a bungalow, a half dozen two to four room 
cabins and cottages, a large packing shed, barns, cribs, 
a dock and boat house, a deep well with tank and water 
system—in short, enough simple housing and other 
facilities, with some remodelling, to shelter for some 
time the growing nucleus of a workers’ community. 

The trucking and farm lands, as well as the sur- 
rounding waters, will be utilized to the limit to develop 
food sufficiency. Garden and truck crops can be and 
will be grown the year ’round. The sea will provide 
fish, shrimp, crabs and oysters in season. The com- 
munity will furnish meat, eggs and milk. Since the 
winter climate is fairly mild—about like that of Jack- 
sonville, Florida—and as the summers are made livable 
by sea breezes and sea bathing, SEACROFT will also 
develop its recreational possibilities as a workers’ re- 
sort, especially for fall and spring when the climate is 
at its very best. During these seasons the school will 
be in session and visitors may attend lectures and join 
discussion groups as well as fish and swim. By means 
of fishing, trucking, farming, teaching and entertaining 
guests, the resident members believe that they will be 
able to raise sufficient income in produce and money 
to meet the running expenses of the project. It is 
hoped to receive the cost of the initial capital equipment 
in the form of grants from the friends of free workers’ 
education. 

The teachers and other specialized workers at SEA- 
CROFT receive only a simple maintenance. All stu- 
dents will pay a nominal tuition and put in fifteen hours 
of efficient work each week. A number of scholarships 
covering tuition will be available for worthy unem- 
ployed workers. No student will be accepted unless 
he or she has had actual working experience. While 
students will be admitted from all sections of this coun- 
try and from abroad, preference will be given appli- 
cants from the southeastern section of the United 
States. 











TEACHER 


THE AMERICAN 


The Ashtabula City Schools Situation 


as related to the A. F. of T. Convention by 
E. B. PENDLETON 


In January, 1932, all teachers of the Ashtabula City 
Schools were forced to accept a 10% salary cut. They 
were forced to sign a statement for publication in the 
Ashtabula Star Beacon that they “willingly” accepted 
this cut. Some were told that if they did not sign it, 
“someone else will be in your place who will.” The 
evening after nearly every teacher had signed, a gen- 
eral teachers’ meeting was held for all teachers in the 
system and it was explained why we should sign and 
the floor was thrown open for discussion on both sides 
of the question. (Sort of a post-mortem.) And this 
happened at a time when nearly all of the teachers had 
contracts which read: “........ dollars per month for 
the school year.” The school year was completed and 
the summer annual report showed a balance of several 
thousands of dollars but the teachers had their 10% 
cut just the same. We talked of a teachers’ federation 
at that time but the teachers were afraid to stick to- 
gether. They preferred to hang separately as time 
proved. From this time on there has been continual 
unrest. 

Down, Down 

In April, 1933, teachers were handed their second 
cuts, less gracefully this time for the contracts had 
been changed to read “on a month to month basis” 
which means good for twenty school days. These cuts 
were 12% on the upper salaries (so called) and 10% 
on the smaller salaries. This left the maximum salaries 
at $1,496.67 per year, and the minimum that prescribed 
by the state ($810, I believe) with some senior high 
school teachers at less than $1,000. Even Supt. M. S. 
Mitchell had to acknowledge that the salaries were the 
lowest paid by any city the size of Ashtabula in the 
state. But nothing was done about it. Again teachers 
talked of organization but did nothing. 


But Not Supt. Mitchell 


Just this spring it came out in the Star Beacon that 
Supt. Mitchell had received $4,800.00 before the cuts. 
The paper said he took the same rate of cut the teachers 
took (i.e., 10% and 12%). Then it added that he had 
been reemployed for five years at the salary he has re- 
ceived since the cuts and stated that as $4,000. Figure 
it out and you will find that he has been receiving 
$198.40 more per year than he is entitled to and expects 
under his new contract to receive that amount for five 
more years. 

Mild Protest 

With this and many more things as a setting the men 
of the system got together and presented a petition to 
the superintendent, signed 100% except two new men 
who were not asked to sign. The petition was for the 
Board of Education and asked a restoration of salaries 
as they had been before the cuts, including the increases 
of $90 per year for increased service. The petition 
and the teachers themselves were treated with reserved 
ire and some contempt by the superintendent who told 
them that the board would not meet for over a month 
and a special meeting could not be called. This not- 
withstanding the fact that the hoard has a printed 
schedule of meetings every two weeks. This was two 
years after the second cuts. 


Other meetings were held by the men and on April 
10, 11 and 12, 1935, the men circulated the following 
paper among all teachers of the system and asked for 
signatures : 

“We, the undersigned, believing that the mutual in- 
terests of the Ashtabula schools can best be furthered 
through a permanent organization of the teachers, so 
express our desire to cooperate in forming such an 
affiliation.” 

Before all had been interviewed many had been in- 
timidated and others had been forbidden to sign. Even 
so a check-up revealed that a large majority had already 
signed. A committee of six (three men and three 
ladies ) was chosen to set up the machinery for forming 
a local teachers association. These six were all teachers 
with years of experience. On April 15th they visited 
the Conneaut schools where they found an excellent 
association which even the superintendent said was 
working in perfect harmony with the administration 
and the board. 

On April 24 this committee met with their own 
superintendent and after presenting the following nine 
objectives asked permission to use the building as a 
meeting place to organize an association. 


Objectives 
1. To cooperate with school administrative officials. 
2. To better the educational agencies for the children. 
3. To foster better teaching ethics, 
4. To influence legislative action. 
5. To secure legal tenure for teachers. 
6. To obtain group action for civic and educational 
projects. 
7. To help make our schools better. 
8. To raise the standards of the teaching profession. 
9. To encourage experimentation, research, and other 
projects for the improvement of public education. 


So Far, So Good 


The committe was assured by the superintendent that 
he was not opposed to a local teachers’ association and 
that he would cooperate with them in arranging a time 
and place, as soon as he had consulted “a couple of 
board members.” He also expressed regret that they 
had not come to him first in order that he “might have 
been of greater assistance to them.” But his answer 
regarding the use of the biilding as a meeting place 
has not been given yet, except very indirectly. Mem- 
bers of the committee have gone to him individually 
but he has “not been ready yet.’ Indirectly the answer 
has come. 

Then It Happened 

Five days later, on April 29th, Mr. J. L. Spratley, 
science teacher at West Jr. High, was advised to look 
elsewhere for a position for next year. This after 
seven years in the system. 

The next day Mr. Robert Stephens was given sim- 
ilar advice. His service record here dated back four 
years. He taught mathematics in the senior high. 

The next day, Wednesday, May Ist, Mr. E. B. 
Pendleton was given similar advice. He had taught 
physics and biology for eight years in the system. 











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NOVEMBER-DECEMBER, 1935 

Together these three men had given nineteen 
years of satisfactory service but had suddenly become 
undesirable. Some very poor excuses were given to 
each but no satisfactory reasons to anyone. Some could 
be quoted and were very absurd. But the process of 
intimidation has continued until the remaining teachers 
fear to call their souls their own, much less their jobs. 
And the students are the real losers. It is an auto- 
cratic school supposedly preparing children for life in 
a democratic country, a czar with subjects bowing at 
his knee. 


Answers Wanted 


And now some of the teachers are wondering about 
the following : 


1. Why Cleveland, Toledo and other places can have 
Teachers’ Associations but Ashtabula can not 


2. Why, when the teachers received their last cut of 
12% the superintendent was cut only a little over 
7%? 

jo! 

3. Why Ashtabula salaries stop at approximately the 
point where Cleveland teachers’ salaries begin. ( Ref- 
erence: Plain Dealer of May 9th, 1935, pg. 3.) 


4. Why the best paid teachers in our high school re- 
ceive less than our city mail carriers, policemen, fire- 
men, and many railroad employees? Is this a fair 
return for time and money spent in preparation? 


5. Why teachers here are hired on a “month to month” 
basis with no definite salary schedule, but the super- 
intendent was just given a new five-year, $20,000 
contract ? 


6. Why a superintendent’s contract cannot be as easily 
broken as the teachers’ contracts were in 1932? 


The teachers feel that from the way they have co- 
operated through the present crisis they could safely 
be entrusted with the conduct of an association and 
their inherent right to organize demands it. Ministers, 
doctors, lawyers, bankers, business men and _ other 
groups of this city have their organizations. In fair- 
ness, why not teachers? 


And so we offer out situation to you, fellow teachers, 
for a suggestion and a solution. We feel that the prob- 
lem is one that reaches far beyond the local scope. And 
in return we offer our gratitude and thanks. 


Child Labor Day 


January 25-26-27, 1936 


Following a custom of more than a quarter century, 
the National Child Labor Committee has designated 
the last week-end in January as Child Labor Day— 
dedicated to the thousands of American children whose 
lives are still shadowed by the threat of industrial ex- 
ploitation. 


The breathing spell granted to child laborers for 
nearly two years by the temporary industrial codes 
came to an abrupt end with the Supreme Court deci- 
sion last May. Once again child labor is permitted in 
American industry. 

Suggestions for the observance of Child Labor Day 
may be secured from the National Child Labor Com- 
mittee, 419 Fourth Avenue, New York City. 


We learn that: 


Local 5, New York, is active in the promotion of a 
twelve point program of local teacher needs. A sub- 
stantial gain in membership is reported. 


Local 71, State Teachers’ College, Milwaukee, has 
affiliated with the Federated Trades Council and added 
several members to its roll. 


Local 89, Atlanta, president concludes message to 
members : 

“There are then in this array [salary adjustment, 
tax limitation, city-county merger, elections, pension, 
insurance] no new problems, no new duties; only new 
opportunities: the same struggle, its solution dependent 
upon the same thing that it will always depend upon— 
the spirit of the union.” 


Local 192, Philadelphia, in cooperation with the 
P. T. A. is making a drive for complete restoration of 
salaries ; is opening a membership campaign. The local 
was active in defeating a number of bills in the State 
Legislature aimed at teachers’ salaries. 


Local 250, Toledo, will work for a labor Board of 
Education this year and that the case against the local’s 
president has been satisfactorily settled. 


Local 252, Milwaukee, with the help of organized 
labor, has secured full salary restorations for Milwaukee 
teachers. Two laws were enacted with the help of the 
Wisconsin State Federation of Labor and the Wiscon- 
sin A. F. of T. locals automatically placing on the per- 
manent list all substitute teachers who have taught full 
time for six or more semesters and correcting discrim- 
ination against vocational teachers without degrees. 
A proposed teachers’ loyalty oath bill was defeated. 


Local 279, Cleveland, reports the election of labor 
candidates to all vacancies on the Board of Education, 
and the passage of an additional four-mill operating 
levy at the November election. 


Local 332, Butte, is championing a single salary 
schedule. 


Local 414, West Allis, Wisconsin, reports only one 
non-member on the eligibles of the West Allis voca- 
tional teaching staff. A new salary schedule was put 
in force by the Vocational School Board this fall with 
general increases in basic salaries. The local hopes 
to secure full salary restorations for the second semes- 
ter of this school year. 


Local 417, Pontiac, reports “progress slight but 
shows signs of increasing.” 


Local 420, St. Louis, plans a membership drive. The 
Board of Education at that place up to the present has 
refused to rescind an anti-union rule. 


The Michigan State Federation of Teachers in con- 
ference with the secretary of the Michigan State Fed- 
eration has mapped out an organization campaign. 
Committees have been set up on Salaries, Tenure, Or- 
ganization, Pensions, Academic Freedom, Progressive 
Education and Publicity. One local or a group of 
locals in close proximity will be responsible for one 
committee, the work being cleared through a state ex- 
ecutive council. 


The reason the American Federation of Labor has 
lived so long and grown so large and stands so strong 
today is because it is run from the inside and not from 
the outside. 








8 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


Campus Issues and the New Leadership 


WILLARD E. UPHAUS 


I 
. Basic Issues Before Higher Education 


The severe critic of college and university education 
may be forgiven for asking repeatedly why the gradu- 
ate has not played a more constructive role in the life 
of the community. Why, with the vast amount of in- 
formation gathered, lectures attended, papers written, 
and the extra-curricular affairs indulged in, is the out- 
put of the college so unimaginative, so intensely indi- 
vidualistic, so poorly prepared for the actual problems 
of personal and social living, and so little inclined to 
corporate effort in rebuilding the social and economic 
structure ? 

May it be that his picture of the leader is still one 
of the single self rising to the top through domination 
and control, and having as a following a docile, intimi- 
dated crowd? May the picture still be wholly of the 
driving business executive, the wily politician, the as- 
sertive clergyman, or the overruling professor? Despite 
the shining exceptions in the way of profound teaching 
and occasional evidences of a community of spirit on the 
campus, the college is not accepting responsibility for 
the new leadership. Among the reasons why this is so 
we may point out four. 


/ Facts or Issues 


1. College education fails to make students realist- 
ically aware of the real issues that confront the world. 
It does not sensitize their imaginations and enrich their 
emotions. (Instruction is factual, subject-centered and 
transmissive, instead of creative in character} The 
whole system labors under the illusion that a knowledge 
of the facts leads to useful activity, when it is now well 
known that our attitudes and behavior depend more 
upon the way we feel about the facts. Courses consist 
of weary recitals of dry information abstracted from 
human situations and need. There is little taste for 
grappling with troublesome issues, or for dealing, in 
collective fashion, with social and economic problems 
full of nettles. 

When the teaching situation deals with war, the 
chance is that it begins with costs and political and eco- 
nomic frictions as causes, and never gets around to the 
stark brutalities and the unspeakable agonies of the war 
system. The effectiveness of the teaching situation is 
often almost wholly destroyed by the counter propa- 
ganda of a military unit on the campus with its sweet, 
immaculately-dressed girl cadets, the honors and trap- 
pings of an officers’ fraternity, or, if nothing better, 
by the meager income with which the needy student 
holds soul and body together. 

If the course be one in social science the chance is 
that the class begins with statistics and ends up with (if 
it ever gets to) empty stomachs, degrading homes, mis- 
erable streets and all the squalor of shantytown. There 
have been enough fact-gathering commissions connected 
with institutions of higher education to change the eco- 
nomic structure and the overt behavior patterns of 
people in five years, if we could some way connect facts 
with feelings and get students and faculties, working 
collectively, committed to change. 

It is a question whether the much-heralded new cur- 
ricula, including survey and orientation courses, do bet- 


ter than instil a subtler form of sophistication. Can 
we ever expect the college to be realistic, when, to do so, 
means asking some penetrating questions about the eco- 
nomjc system from which it draws its resources? 

2. Again, college experience fails to give students a 
single, unifying life purpose. It too rarely results in 
the intuiting of great and impelling ideas that gather up 
and correlate the fragmentary elements of a hurried ex- 
istence. The educational setting discourages sequence 
of thought, and the synthesis of the many conflicting 
opinions and forces. Few students are known to bet 
their lives upon a great, moving, self-accepted hypoth- 
esis. The student who wrote the following expressed 
the plight of many: “I seem to be at war with myself. 
Two forces fight for possession of me. I take sides 
sometimes with one, sometimes with the other. More 
often I merely look on. Of all things I want peace 
within, in which to go ahead with my work.” 

Of course much of this inner confusion may be at- 
tributed to our’ departmentalized system of education. 
The graduate schools have turned loose a horde of spe- 
cialists who were permitted to carry on their research 
and receive their degrees without being required to re- 
late their disciplines to one another and to the whole 
of Reality. They escape problems of religion, morality 
and social control. They venture out of their fields with 
fear and trepidation. They refuse to express convic- 
tion, or share in group action, because the evidence ona 
complex issue is not all in—when they know all the evi- 
dence never will be in. To blunder in a conscientious 
effort to put knowledge to use means losing status in 
their professional societies. There is the real danger 
of escaping social responsibility in the plea for objec- 
tivity and academic standards. 

I recently worked with a dynamic person who holds 
the belief that the real role of the leader is that of the 
participant-observer who escapes both the dangers of 
inaction and superficial behavior. He has experienced 
everything from authorship of scholarly works to first- 
hand contact with a fpoliceman’s stick. With so little 
planned search for the central ideas and issues of the 
time through the integration and humanization of knowl- 
edge, and with so few dependable criteria for determin- 
ing the worth of activities, it is littke wonder that the 
student is so disorganized and lacking in purpose. 

3. The typical college campus, does not provide situa- 
tions in which the student can test the information he 
is receiving. He gets an idea of social change, but it 
must be very little and very gradual—no undue haste 
or radicalism. I am prepared to admit that there are 
plenty of so-called projects on foot—part-time employ- 
ment that has some social value, assistantships on church 
and settlement staffs, practice teaching, days for gather- 
ing up old clothes and filling baskets—but at best these 
projects are slightly ameliorative. 


The participants still do all the nice things to or for 
those who are expected to stay in an inferior social and 
economic caste. It is outside their imagination and 
purpose to reshape completely the whole order of life 
so that the recipient of the dole will rise to a self-sus- 
taining and self respecting place, enjoy all the privileges 
and comforts that modern science and technology could 





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NOVEMBER-DECEMBER, 1935 
provide, and sense a “togetherness” that characterizes 
a true community. 

A college cannot be trusted to prepare the new leader 
for the solution of the great issues of classes and nations, 
if it is too unethical or incompetent to put its own house 
in order. I have seen many instances of this failure 
during recent visits. 

A group of young men in a certain institution wanted 
to introduce a bit of social and religious realism into 
their education, but found their hands tied by the fact 
that the major industrial concern in the community had 
contributed the college’s gymnasium and athletic field. 
Questions about labor conditions were not welcome. A 
university that prides itself on its social science survey 
courses excludes Negroes. In a church college, when 
a ministerial student insisted in a conference with the 
president that military training was not compatible with 
the religious ideals of the institution, he was answered 
in the words of scripture—that Jesus said His kingdom 
was not of this world. 

It is a matter of common knowledge that campuses 
reek with corrupt politics, while professors talk on about 
the science and technique of government. Light about 
the delicate problems of the sex life, the choice of a mate, 
the building of a home, and parenthood may filter in 
incidentally in an unenlightened “bull session.” At best 
these problems are covered in ‘a minor section of some 
course, 

Class distinctions appear in housing, in salary scales, 
treatment of employees and student-faculty relations. 
What an opportunity to relate sociology, psychology, 
economics, ethics, religion, and other subjects, in cre- 
ating at once the sort of community that college-bred 
youth are supposed to build at some dim, distant date! 

4. Because of the failures mentioned—failures at the 
points of sensitivity, purpose and practical demonstra- 
tion—education naturally fails, also, in lifting the whole 
of life to the level of meaning and spiritual functioning. 
The great want is that of coming into illuminating and 
consummatory experiences characteristic of religious in- 
sight. There is seldom that sense of being caught up, 
of having an engagement with the universe. 

The vast potentialities in individual persons, in so- 
ciety, and in the world are not comprehended. Real 
religion has lost its relevancy for many students, for they 
spend their college days in cynical reaction to the narrow 
indoctrination of earlier years or to the obvious betrayal 
of ethical standards in the institution itself. True wor- 
ship is rare, for there is little time or provision for 
assimilation and synthesis. Where formal worship is set 
up, it is often an escape from reality and intelligent 
action. 

II 
Some of the More Specific Problems 


The fundamental weaknesses of education are re- 
flected in numerous campus problems of a specific na- 
ture. We mention five. There are many more. 

1. An almost universal problem on the American 
campus is the lack of intellectual integrity. It is at this 
point that the college epitomizes the state of society at 
large. A hectic round of activities is substituted for 
sustained intellectual effort. Slovenliness in study is 
apparent. The single criterion of success is still the 
grade. It is sought at any price to win the coveted 
diploma, empty honors, or admission into a graduate 
professional school. 

A student friend of mine recently characterized his 
dormitory during examination time as a mad-house. 


9 


Sometime ago, when I visited a campus soon after final 
examinations, I heard everywhere, “What did you get ?” 
It is a real “break” when an instructor fails to show up 
for class. “There is not enough of the pure joy of 
learning in our college,” said a professor to me. 

In our criticism of the student we must not forget 
how difficult it is to have integrity in some of our sys- 
tems. During the past three years a student-faculty 
committee in a well-known state institution has been 
making a study of the factors in the situation that en- 
courage cribbing, and other unauthorized methods of 
getting by. 

It has found some of the chief factors to be: crowded 
room conditions, unfair quizzes, stress on memory work 
and reproduction of facts, resistance broken down by 
seeing so much dishonesty rewarded by high grades, atti- 
tude of the instructor, lack of personal contact, the over- 
ruling of instructors who report cribbing, by the higher 
authorities, and the pressure for production in research 
which results in reduced time for student contacts. 

2. Another problem is the constant conflict of in- 
terests and activities that befogs the real issues and 
enervates student life. The struggle is particularly ap- 
parent in the case of the regular classroom work and 
extra-curricular interests. Someone has well asked, 
“Why two curricula?” If curricular resources were in- 
tegrated around such focal points as health, social be- 
havior, marriage, home-building, parenthood, civic re- 
sponsibility, vocational and economic adjustment, human 
relationships right on the campus, leisure time, would 
not many conflicts be resolved? If education began, 
using a dynamic instead of a static logic, with the prob- 
lems of students and society, might not the two curricula 
become one? Political science might begin with the 
problem of campus government. 


Closer Home 


Students who criticize Washington and London, or 
perhaps deplore friction in class and international rela- 
tions, do not see the implications for their own fraterni- 
ties. Courses in business administration might begin on 
campus managing boards, if they are concerned about 
either efficiency or ethics. Why should studies in nutri- 
tion go on, while the college bursar dictates what stu- 
dents shall eat or ignorant stewards in fraternities pre- 
scribe the diet of their houses? 

The Department of Education, often the butt of ridi- 
cule, is absorbed in grinding out teachers’ certificates, 
and neglects the college community as the choicest labo- 
ratory for working out and testing educational prin- 
ciples. So-called secular affairs constantly come into 
conflict with poorly attended courses in religion and 
hurried, sandwiched-in religious exercises. As was 
pointed out before, we may expect little in the way of 
effective attitudes and skills in practice after graduation, 
if the college cannot solve the problems inside its own 
gates. 

3. The fraternity has always been a problem, but hard 
times have intensified some of the gravest weaknesses. 
House after house is practically bankrupt. Buildings 
erected and furnished with foolish extravagance in days 
of prosperity are now difficult to maintain. The drive 
for pledges with money is sharpened. Unreasonable 
standards of comfort are kept up with terrific strain on 
both purse and = 

On the other hand, there are houses where the sleek 
and well-fed lounge in ease, probably supported in their 
luxury by a few doting alumni. All the conflicting 








10 


passions and prejudices—national, ra- 
cial, economic—are fed by such putrid 
situations. They belie all that may be 
said in a social science course about the 
possibilities of a new cooperative com- 
monwealth. But all this scathing criti- 
cism does not mean that a real commu- 
nity, in which the welfare of all must 
come before the selfishness of a few, 
cannot use social nuclei in working out 
a basis for the common life. 

4. Closely bound up with the problem 
areas so far stressed is that of the so- 
cial life of the campus. Here the dual- 
ism between bookish education and 
driving interests becomes very real. 
There is an unfortunate separation be- 
tween work and play. When our grand- 
parents all turned out for a log-rolling 
or a husking-bee, they combined fellow- 
ship with utility. This the typical 
campus fails to do. 


Work—Play 


There is too little occasion for nor- 
mal, joyous comradeship in doing 
things worthwhile: retreats around 
great personalities, exeursions in con- 
nection with the investigation of social 
and natural phenomena, quest groups 
for studying and remedying some of 
the campus situations already described, 
community extension in the form of 
drama, adult education, recreation and 
political activity. 

No, the country-club type of student 
grinds out the minimum requirements 
in readiness for quizzes and examina- 
tions, and then is off for the week-end 
spree; while the conscientious student 
always feels a tension between the 
claims of absorbing activities and the 
“regular” lessons. 


What would happen on a campus if 
learning were centered in the issues of 
life, if advancements were made in 
terms of units of experience instead of 
regimented courses and grades, if stu- 
dents and faculty alike could take the 
participant-observer attitude and, if 
present-day questions were understood 
in the light of history, social and nat- 
ural science and the world’s best litera- 
ture? Probably many students, with- 
out an eight o'clock or a compulsory 
chapel to get them up, would feel 
cheated, pack up and leave; while pro- 
fessors would throw away lectures that 
students pass on from one generation 
to another and examination questions 
that are carefully preserved in fraternity 
files. 

Religion? 

5. The disorganization and aimless- 
ness of the college is exhibited best by 
the nature of its religious program. 
Among the reasons for this unfortunate 
state of affairs one must be the stub- 
born refusal of its leaders to face the 
requirements of a dynamic religion, and 
its relation to the problems of a rapidly 
changing order. In many church insti- 
tutions the administrators seek to per- 
petuate religious belief utterly unreal in 
the light of modern science and human 
necessity. Average students remain 
blind to the discrepancy; the brilliant 
continue to attend classes for credit, or 
avoid everything religious with cynical 
indifference. 

The liberal university that prides it- 
self in its new program of orientation 
to literature, science and civilization 


THE AMERICAN 


breaks down old attitudes and habits 
much better than it commits disillu- 
sioned youth to constructive new ways. 
A pathetic sigKt is to see a student body 
relieved of its faith in the old order of 
things, but restrained by a social sys- 
tem, of which the university is still an 
integral part, from trying something 
essentially radical. 


The chapel problem, unfortunately, is 
still with us in spite of surveys and in- 
vestigations. Except in rare cases, the 
findings get safely pigeon-holed just as 
the results of industrial surveys are 
promptly forgotten. Formal worship 
remains unreal because it is not the 
heart, center and inspiration of social 
and spiritual adventure. Prejudices, 
bickerings, unrelated instruction § in 
other fields, race and class discrimina- 
tions, questionable business practices 
quench the feeble flame. 


Candor, fearlessness, questing, things 
in process, the actualization of the po- 
tential in life—the essential attributes 
of the religious experience—find it diffi- 
cult to thrive. The system smothers, 
hounds, dragoons. Interdepartmental 
groups hesitate to test the social as- 
pects of their related disciplines. I can 
think of a college that advertises “clear- 
thinking” as a slogan, where instruc- 
tors in religion and the sciences would 
take their professional lives in their 
hands if they applied their subject-mat- 
ter to such questions as race, war or 
the industrial system. On another 
campus I felt the constant dread of 
“the firing squad.” Students there plan 
carefully to take their chapel cuts on 
the days when the president gives his 
sermonettes. 


Religion—Realism 


It seems to be an inevitable law of 
our natures that real religion takes its 
flight the moment the campus refuses 
to be realistic, honest and open for the 
demonstration of the ideal. Integrity 
comes when deep feeling and overt be- 
havior are coupled with insight. Until 
groups—nuclei, cells in the new order— 
learn through study, discipline, penal- 
ties and loyalties how to humanize and 
relate intellectual disciplines in terms 
of behavior and definite social and eco- 
nomic goals, religion will be an empty 
formality. Not until then will it achieve 
its real function—to determine the ends 
of the whole of life in all of its relation- 
ships. 

There is something extremely sig- 
nificant in the way the authors of a re- 
cent volume on the principles of educa- 
tion both criticized and set the goals of 
education by introducing the work with 
the following lines: 

Greeting his pupils, the master asked: 

What would you learn of me? 

And the reply came: 


How shall we care for our bodies? 
How shall we rear our children? 
How shall we work together? 


How shall we live with our fellow- 
men? 


How shall we play? 
For what ends shall we live?... 


And the teacher pondered these 
words, and sorrow was in his heart, for 





TEACHER 


his own learning touched not these 
things. 


III 
The New Leadership 


The student aspirant to leadership is 
one of our best examples of a selfish 
individualism. Leadership, in popular 
thinking, spells power, control and high 
pressure for selfish ends. The gain of 
the leader means the loss of the whole. 
His ingratiating ways lead to a servile, 
dependent following. He is constantly 
on the stimulating end of the expe- 
rience. 

His petty courtesies, when added to- 
gether, do not compensate for one-tenth 
of the damage of the system that nour- 
ishes his own selfishness and vanity, 
He expects a tractable following. Ac- 
quiescence is what he craves. While he 
seems to give with one hand, he takes 
more with the other. He is morally 
incapable of complete disinterestedness, 

Who has not seen campus leaders 
that answer this description? Take the 
clever, young politician who can deliver 
the vote of a block of fraternities. He 
promises to hold his forces off one field, 
if he can reach his coveted goal in an- 
other. Not infrequently the plaudits 
and trappings of a military career break 
down the resistance of a sensitive con- 
science, 


Big Shots 


The ruthlessness with which students 
struggle for the managerships of or- 
ganizations and publications is a matter 
of common knowledge. Recently the 
newspaper in a certain school was taken 
out of the hands of racketeers. A 
junior declined to accept the editorship, 
a prize upon which he had had his heart 
set for two years, because the expected 
rake-off had been eliminated. The idea 
that leadership should signify useful- 
ness, and eliciting the potential powers 
of each member of the group to which 
he belongs, for the mutual benefit of 
all, seems foreign to the campus scene. 

Ten or fifteen years later one will 
find this type of leader manipulating 
municipal elections, accepting bribes, 
receiving huge bonuses at the expense 
of the public, underwriting false propa- 
ganda, fighting for power and security 
through interlocking directorates, sup- 
pressing the working class—all with a 
smiling amiability that deludes the 
victim. 

The way even the worker has risen 
from the ranks and, when in a position 
of power, has betrayed those whom he 
has left behind is a vivid example of the 
poisonous effects of this merciless in- 
dividualism. Education has so magni- 
fied the tinsel of the “big shot” type 
that the mass of students move out into 
the struggle, each cherishing in his own 
breast the hope that he will land on 
top too. Unfortunately, faculties do’ 
not dare attack this philosophy too vig- 
orously, since the “big shot” alumni 
and financiers control the budget. 

Moral leadership should, in the fu- 
ture, reside less in the individual, and 
more in the group. This means a loy- 
alty, a cohesiveness, a candor, a nobility 
of purpose, and a stand-or-fall together- 
ness that does not characterize the or- 
dinary educational process. 


Turn to page 12 











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NOVEMBER-DECEMBER, 1935 


11 


Educational Policies in Mexico 
Moral Education 


H. L. LATHAM 


Character Research Service, Chicago, Illinois 


_An examination of the publications* of the federal 
Department of Education for the past few years dis- 
closes a sincere and well considered effort to organize 
the education resources of the Mexican Republic. 

The Revolution has placed in power men who be- 
lieve earnestly in the need for universal public educa- 
tion. The task is stupendous since for ages past no 
one until recently has struggled manfully with the 
problem of popular welfare including the schools. 

The plans outlined in these publications reveal a 
clear sense of the need for moral education although 
specialized departmental activity seems lacking. Our 
task will not be a minute criticsm of these plans; in- 
stead certain quotations from the monthly bulletins 
and annual reports will be offered and with them a few 
summaries of declarations relative to moral education 
problems. 

1. In several passages the ethical elements in a well 
balanced education are mentioned but are not developed 
in detail. Very often the list of objectives set up for 
certain schools contains particular reference to ethical 
matters. 


Some Aims 


Respecting rural schools it is said that “Everything 
in the rural school of today has been devised with an 
eye to material, social and moral improvement of coun- 
try life... 1. Improvement of the health of individ- 
uals and sanitary provision for the rural communities. 
2. Exaltation of the home, introducing better stand- 
ards in domestic life and establishing and organizing 
the family as an effective economic unit. 3. Improve- 
ment of the common occupation, substituting for rou- 
tine habits of agricultural labor truly scientific meth- 
ods ... 4. Creation of a satisfactory social life, in- 
troducing healthy forms of recreation and socializing 
activities of a different type.” (Memoria, 1:5, 1932.) 

Among the objectives set up for the primary school 
occur the following: “4. To acquire the social virtues 
such as co-operation, mutual help, the spirit of service 
without which the progress of the community would be 
impossible. 5. To develop the spirit of initiative, self- 
confidence and of the qualities of veracity and respon- 
sibility. 6. To qualify the child for formulating plans 
and projects and for carrying them forward to comple- 
tion with perseverance. To make suitable use of 
leisure time’ (Boletin 9:43, Sept.-Oct., 1930.) 

The “Cultural Mission” is a group of educators sent 
out to rekindle and redirect educational activities among 
teachers and school patrons. Here again the objectives 
put forward reflect interest in moral education: 

“The work of the Cultural Mission is multiple, since 
it touches all the aspects of the economic, spiritual, 
moral and intellectual life of the people.” (Boletin 
10: 10:31, May, 1931.) 


~ *Boletin de la Secretaria de Educacion Publica, May, 1929, and subse- 
quent monthly issues to June, 1931. Also ae que Indica el Estado 
_ Guarda el Ramo de Educacion Publica, Au 1931. Also the same 
or Aug. 31, 1932, vol. I, Exposicion and vol. fi, Documentes. La Secre- 
taria de Educacion Publica, Mexico, D. F. 


In the later publications of the Department of Edu- 
cation the word “moral” appears more frequently 
the titles of particular divisions of a report; it is often 
coupled with the term “social.” In fact there is an 
heroic attempt to produce many ethical results through 
social activities. Let us examine some of these 
statements. 

“The new Mexican Secondary School has adopted, 
from the beginning, the Social Ideal as its primary 
educational objective. The intimate and constant rela- 
tion of the secondary school with life in its social, 
economic, political, ethical and esthetic aspects should 
continue to be the fundamental basis of all of its activi- 
ties within and without its halls.” 

This includes presenting knowledge in such a way 
that it will improve society, cultivating the unfolding 
personality of the pupil so that he may engage in 
worthy and conscientious social activity, for instituting 
habits of work, co-operation and service, cultivating 
a sentiment of responsibility, a sense of nationality with 
programs of instruction fully adjusted to social needs. 


(Memoria, 1:317, 1932.) 


Values 


The purposes guiding the operation of the House of 
the Native Student are thus framed: 1. Realization of 
one of the imperatives that has animated the Mexican 
Revolution—social justice. 2. Elevating the Indian by 
his own powers. 3. To initiate the mutual approach and 
spiritual fusion of the different aboriginal families that 
people the national domain. 4. To eliminate the dis- 
tance that separates Indian graduates from each other 
by transforming their mentality, tendencies and cus- 
toms. 5. To realize the idea of culture as a good which 
should be provided by service of others in connection 
with the interests of the whole group. 6. As a corollary 
of the preceding, to prepare social leaders in the best 
sense of the word, who will specialize as rural teachers 
after graduation. (Memoria 1:27, 1932.) 

This fusion of moral and social matters has been 
effected in the Department of Primary and Normal 
Instruction: The school must “study customs, needs, 
inimical habits, and social ideals in order to correct 
them, to purify them, to ennoble them and direct them 
to higher levels.” 

The Kindergarten offers “improvement of the atmos- 
phere, by means of counsels given to mothers, classes 
for mothers . cooking, washing, ironing; reading, 
writing, arithmetic and singing.” (Memoria 1:261, 
1932.) 

In the primary schools annexed to the National 
Teachers’ College, discussions are held in “respect to 
the child, children’s lies; hygiene of the child of six 
years of age, thrift.” Questions raised are such as 
these: “How shall we satisfy the curiosity of the child? 
How do you correct your children? How shall the 
children be occupied during the hours out of school ?” 


(Memoria 1 :267, 1932.) 
Continued on page 21 








12 
Campus Issues 


Continued from page 10 


Now the classroom lecture, the forum 
and the discussion are the commonly 
accepted techniques. Considering the 
values of meaningful participation and 
social change, they are given about in 
the order of merit. The most gifted 
lecturers only can use facts to fire the 
imagination and release moral energy. 
But the usual result of the lecture sys- 
tem is slavish note-taking and laborious 
reproduction. 


The classroom situation is not an in- 
tegral part of an issue being met. The 
class is neither a unit, nor a fellowship. 
It is without a common purpose. As 
a group, it stands for nothing. It may 
commonly be described as a number of 
bodies in physical juxtaposition. Let 
the suggestion be made that a class in 
anthropology or sociology begin at 
once to understand and resolve a race 
conflict right on the campus; it would 
crumble. A few members would re- 
spond, but the majority have had other 
motives for entering the course. 


Some need it to complete a require- 
ment, others take it because it fits into 
their schedule, others because it may 
help to get a position with some cor- 
poration operating in Chins, or to 
Christianizing the Africans—in Africa. 
This criticism does not imply that the 
lecture room should be ruled out; it 
merely seeks to show that the method 
is not functional in nature. 


Forums 


The open forum is rarely a part of 
the academic set-up. It disrupts the 
regular schedule too much. Christian 
Associations and Liberal Clubs some- 
times succeed in rendering a splendid 
service by crowding them in on mar- 
ginal time. But the difficulties are 
great. Many colleges, far removed from 
the larger centers, find it hard to secure 
leaders. A few local faculty members 
will make almost any sacrifice to speak 
and answer questions, but the majority 
are hard to reach. They plead heavy 
teaching schedules. They commute to 
quiet suburban towns where they can 

et away from the noise and clamour. 
They are pressed by the publishers to 
complete a book, or they must attend 
the sessions of a learned society, per- 
haps read a paper. 


Often specialists show an inherent 
distaste for facing one another in the 
open. It endangers their prestige and 
authority. Besides, what committee 
would have the hardihood to pit a 
forum against a week-end migration, an 
athletic contest or an approaching final 
examination? 


Given a forum with enlightening 
addresses on all sides of an issue and 
with clearly answered questions, the 
method still has its limitations. The 
members, except the speakers, are on 
the receiving end only, when Ppartici- 
pants in an educational situation 
should initiate as well as_ receive. 
There is little mutuality or inter- 
change. Moreover, the process is in 
most instances not a part of a move- 
ment of a closely-knit group work- 
ing in a given direction. 


When students are now surveyed 
as to the method they prefer, large 
numbers will register in favor of dis- 
cussions. When discussions are pre- 
ceded by careful preparation, when 
stimulating papers furnish data, when 
the issue is clear, the leadership capa- 
ble and the field open to all, then you 
really produce an experience of a high 
order. Considerable will to act arises. 


It is a wise committee that has a 
few clear-cut proposals, when some- 


one in the group asks, “Well, what 
are we going to do about it?” It is 
easy to get a second meeting. There 


is the possibility of finding a nucleus 
that will work and stand for some- 
thing. Unfortunately, there is the con- 
stant temptation to depend on shal- 
low impressions, old experience and a 
ready volubility. Many conferences, 
especially those that take the student 
away from the campus, never result 
in the application of the new light to 
a thorny local problem. 


Group Discipline 


In a sense the class, the forum and 
the discussion involve a group, but not 
one that leads to the integration of 
mind and purpose in the direction of 
a goal. The new leadership group has 
unique attributes. It includes both 
students and faculty members. It is 
interdepartmental in its composition, 
the representation depending largely 
upon the nature of the problem to be 
solved. Disciplines are related to one 
another and applied. 

The economist does not ignore ethi- 
cal implications. The psychologist, 
going beyond scientific description of 
the mental process, lends a hand in 
framing social and educational objec- 
tives. The religionist welcomes the 
rigid scrutiny of science. This group 
factors out the elements in the total 
situation, and orders them according 
to the ease with which they submit 
to analysis and treatment. Special 
committee responsibilities are as- 
signed. Expert opinion is sought. Very 
specific goals appear. Candor takes 
the place of duplicity, courage the 
place of fear, mutuality the place of 
domination, disinterestedness the place 
of selfishness. 

Uncovering the actual facts, de- 
veloping new educational, social and 
economic creeds, making pronounce- 
ments and taking stands on issues 
call for group discipline and solidarity. 
Diligent but not censorious, the group 
becomes not another organization, but 
an organism in the community where 
it functions. Penalties for one means 
penalties for all. All the moral pres- 
sure that springs from scientific data, 
pitiless publicity and social action is 
brought to bear upon the situation. A 
spirit greater than the sum of the 
parts envelopes the whole. 

If there were space, one might out- 
line many current problems that would 
yield to such an approach. Suppose the 
issue were the rebuilding of the whole 
process of student government—atti- 
tudes and all. How much education, 
psychology, ethics, political science, 
etc., would it take to accomplish the 
task? Suppose it were any one of a 
number of possibilities—eliminating 
classroom dishonesty, reorganizing 





TEACHER 


HE AMERICAN 


the curriculum, setting up a five-year 
program for a social settlement, re- 
solving a race conflict, exposing ‘poli- 
tical corruption and electing the right 
alderman to the city council.. What an 
unlimited opportunity to relate sub- 
jects in terms of goals and purposes, 
and to make the campus and the com- 
munity a laboratory! 

Contrast with this what happens in 
the typical college, church or com- 
munity. The college is without clear- 
cut objectives. Faculties do not co- 
operate in the achievement of specific 
units of change. 

The most lamentable frozen asset 
in the intellectual world is the record 
of credits in the secretary’s office. Any 
clerk can inform a student whether 
or not he has completed his education. 
In the case of the church the mem- 
bers are often scattered over a wide 
area. Distance, individual interests 
and disruptive influences prevent them 
from becoming a dynamic force in 
meeting the problems indigenous to 
the community where the physical 
structure stands. Strangers, they drive 
by one another to their respective edi- 
fices to participate in worship. 


Let the minister draw the line 
sharply on some issue and call for ac- 
tion, and he will learn whether he 
faces a crowd or a fellowship. Pic- 
ture almost any municipal ward. How 
well do doctors, lawyers, ministers, 
educators, and those who work with 
their hands relate their training, ener- 
gies and equipment in the interests of 
public health, housing, and civic right- 
eousness. Their education did not 
give them the mental outlook or the 
techniques for cooperation. 


Progress 


evidences that group 
I shall refer briefly 


There are 
leadership works. 
to two instances. 

A professor in the state college 
mentioned above reported the situa- 
tion that led to an investigation of 
cribbing. “In 1929, on the way home 
from a conference, students in my car 
asked me if faculty men knew how 
much cribbing was done in quizzes 
and examinations. They stated that 
95 per cent would crib under certain 
circumstances. I didn’t believe it, but 
stated if it was as bad as that, we 
ought to do something. We agreed— 
so we tried.” 

As a result 2 Committee on Scholas- 
tic Ethics was organized, consisting 
of five students and five faculty mem- 
bers. Methods were worked out to 
observe the conduct of students. 3,552 
were observed in 241 quiz and exami- 
nation groups during two series of 
finals. During the first series 20.1 per 
cent gave evidence of cribbing, and an 
additional 10 per cent were suspected. 

During the second series 24.1 gave 
definite evidence, and an additional 
16 per cent were suspected. The fig- 
ures were analyzed in terms of years 
in school and the various colleges in 
the institution—Liberal Arts, Agricul- 
ture, Education, Engineering, and the 
like. Students were carefully inter- 
viewed to find out the circumstances 
under which they would crib. These 
were mentioned in a previous section. 


Turn to page 21 





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NOVEMBER-DECEMBER, 1935 


13 


Doing Things Together in a Democracy 


M. A. WIGHT 


Doing things together! Who is going to do them? 
I understand that the American Federation of Teachers 
is desirous of establishing an intimate contact with other 
workers of the community. If so, in what better way 
could this contact be made than through Workers’ 
Education ? 


Obviously, the workers feel the need for some kind 
of education. They want something that will help 
them, but are not just sure what. They are handicapped 
by the lack of available teachers. 


Education for Democracy 


The American Federation of Teachers indicates an 
interest in “Education for Democracy.” Where, other 
than to Workers’ Education, then, could the teachers 
turn to find a more immediate outlet in achieving their 
objective? It seems to me that the trained teacher, in 
effective cooperation with the American Federation of 
Labor, can do things together in Workers’ Education. 
I can visualize a council composed of both teachers and 
other workers as the guiding body in this venture. 


The Other Half 


Doing things together in a Democracy! What could 
one find better for a basic course in Workers’ Educa- 
tion? Have we been more successful in the practice of 
rugged individualism, or in the doing of things together, 
in America? In our democracy, have we learned to do 
things together effectively? Can we make “Democracy 
in Education” work? Can we make it work in labor 
organizations? It is my belief that we need to redis- 
cover and to apply the techniques for this job. 


Concrete Suggestions 


What matters would be considered in such a course? 
The following brief outline is suggested. 


1. The need for learning better the doing of things 
together as exhibited by the attempts and many failures 
in current organizations. 


2. The history of such attempts in the founding of 
our country and the early struggles of organized labor. 


3. A technique for doing things together. 


a. The setting up of such an organization that the 
whole group will intelligently decide what it 
wants. 

b. The selection of a leader who will 
Secure the cooperation of followers toward 
some goal which they come to find desirable. 
Direct the efforts of the group effectively and 
efficiently in the execution of what is wanted. 


4. The critical evaluation of this technique in group 
experience. What our fathers wanted as told in the Pre- 
amble to the Constitution. What labor organizations 
have wanted. How democratic were such groups? 
What kinds of leaders do we find? What makes a good 
leader? A good member of the group? 


The Workers’ Education class is a cooperative ven- 
ture on the part of both teacher and pupils. The teacher 
must get to know class members; he must be really 
interested in them. In what other way can he actually 
help fellow workers in the satisfaction of needs. Fail- 
ing in this, he can but present subject matter that is 
unrelated to the lives of students, subject matter that 
is lifeless and penetrates only skin deep. 


Visual Material 


By all means use some form of visual education. 
This will help you to be concrete. Use the printed 
word or picture to hold attention through the eye as 
well as the ear. Use it as a guide to discussion, a means 
to keeping discussion from wandering far afield. Use 
it to insure getting across something definite, to make 
class members feel that the class session was individ- 
ually helpful and worthwhile. 


Toward the Goal 


The future of democracy depends upon how well the 
teachers and all other workers learn to do things to- 
gether, learn what it is they really want, learn how best 
to go about getting it. If the American Federation of 
Teachers, in cooperation with the American Federation 
of Labor, succeeded in working this out in a small way, 
a great step would have been taken toward achieving 
the above. 





WHO’S WHO IN THIS ISSUE 








WILLIAM GREEN—President of the American Federa- 
tion of Labor. 


F. M. Goophvue—Member of staff of Seacroft. 


E. B. PenpLeEtoN—Former teacher in Ashtabula. 
Fired, went into brokerage business, elected to School 
Board by labor—takes office in January, 1936. . 


Wiicarp E. UpHaus—Executive Secretary, National 
Religion and Labor Foundation; member of New 
Haven A. F. of T. local. May be reached at 304 
Crown Street, New Haven, Conn. 


H. L. Larnam—Director, Character Research Service, 
Chicago ; author ; critic. 


M. J. Eck—President, Local 279, Cleveland. 


AnonymMous—A Teacher who had a ringside seat at 
the “Big Show.” 


M. A. WicuHt—Co-director Workers’ Ed. Council, 
Cleveland; Principal, Outhwaite (opportunity) 
School. 








14 





I have heard five Armistice Day speeches by radio to- 
day. They have varied from the resounding sophistries 
of professional statesmen, through the patter of the pro- 
fessional clerics, to the tail-twisting of Commander Ray 
Murphy of the Legionnaires. 

I was under arms at the time of the first Armistice. I 
know the hysteria, the unbelievable and inexpressible re- 
lief of that day. It was unbelievable and it was inex- 
pressible. All that anyone who carried a pack or shoul- 
dered a rifle could think was, “. . . it’s over, and I am 
still here!” There just wasn’t anything else to think. 
No single one of us but knew, down deep in what was 
left of his soul, that he would not let anyone consider 
war while he had a tongue in his head and a chance to 
vote. Noone of us but knew then that there was no dis- 
honor equal to the dishonor of filth and stink and fear 
through which we had gone. 

I am not a speaker, but I should like to make an Arm- 
istice Day speech. Just one—but | should like every 
one to hear me, and most of all to see me. 

For lam ateacher. And I teach ina school that has 
representatives of at least eleven of the great races and 
nationalities of the world. Living quietly and peacefully, 
and working perfectly safely and sanely together, they 
are a League of Nations. And I know enough of the 
world and have seen enough of its peoples to know that 
they are made up of just such boys and girls, multiplied 
the requisite number of times. 

I would bring Bernard, from Bavaria; and Nelson, 
from Sweden ; squat, dark Stanislaus, the Polish captain 
of our baseball team; Miale, the Greek; Tony, who is 
our crack soccer player; Sing, our Chinese boy; and 
George Washington Jones, our colored boy with the 
dancing feet and the broad grin—eleven of them | would 
take, one from each race; Pole, Lithuanian, German, 
Jew, English, Russian, Negro, a gawky Scotsman, and a 
red-headed Irishman, Chinese, and that disdainful mix- 
ture we call American—and spread them across the stage 
before you, for you to look your fill. And you would 
have to grin, in spite of the mist in your eyes, at their 
sheepish, embarrassed faces as they look a bit self- 
consciously at each other. But you would see no black 
looks, nor shifty scowls, for they are all safe with each 
other. They have played together and worked together 
—have allied themselves with and against each other in 
the ever-shifting alliances of boyhood’s games. They 
are perfectly frank about each other’s strengths and 
weaknesses, for they know each other—but they are not 
afraid, for there is nothing to fear. We of the schools 
do our best to see to it that there is no fear, if we can help 
it. 

And if you have any imagination within you, you are 
thrilled with the power and the possibilities there on the 
stage in front of you. And if you have any sense, you, 
too, know that Germany is only so many million Ber- 
nards, and Poland so many million Stanleys, and Italy, 
for all her swaggering Mussolini, only a lot of grinning, 
quick-heeled Tonys. There they are; multiply them as 
many times as you like. I could multiply them from 





thirty to a hundred times in our own High School. There 
they are; look at them. You were like that once ; so was 





TEACHER 


THE AMERICAN 


Fantasy N ovemberesque 


Anonymous 


I—until “‘they said” too many things, and I believed 
“them” and so became grown up. 

Now sit down back there, gang, while I talk to the 
rest. This is my day to talk. 

And you out there—take one more good look at them 
as they are now, for I can turn them into Hell-hounds 
with a very few words. They don’t even have to be put 
together very cleverly, those words, so long as | use three 
of them often enough. Talk about Open Sesame and 
Abacadabra! I can make more magic than that. 

My first magic word is—“defend.” 

Defend from what? Unfortunately, I don’t have even 
to mention what, so long as | make my reference big 
enough and vague enough. Defend—that’s all! And 
if I can give each of them a stick, purely for defense, 
mind you!, or, even better, a gun or a knife—I have 
made a soldier; for a soldier is the result of, and the 
epitome of fear. He was born of fear; he serves for 
fear ; he is disciplined by the so shaping of his fears that 
he dreads one fear more than any other—the fear of 
being thought afraid. I was a soldier, and I know. I 
have talked to soldiers—Fritz, Tommy, Pierre, Tony, 
Jock—all of us had one great fear, greater than the fear 
of stink and fear and mutilation—somehow on the field 
of battle you have lost the fear of the thing which started 
you out; the enemy from whom you were to defend 
yourself, you all too soon knew was nothing but a scared 
kid like yourself. You had substituted—no, even that 
isn’t true!—you had had substituted in you the great 
Fear, in place of the now-unimportant original. But the 
magic word, defend had started it. 

(Did you ever stop to wonder why it is that the militia 
or the police are the first to break in a strike? I doubt 
if the records can show where one unarmed striker ever 
started the bloodshed which has been such a blot upon 
our national banner. If you are honest, you will have 
to admit that it is the man behind the gun who has the 
fear. Talk to me of armaments for protection! The 
very size of the armament produces a perfect hysteria 
of fear.) 

Defend. That’s magic word number one. _Inciden- 
tally, it is word number one with the steel interests and 
the war makers, and the wholesalers who sell the “‘rods” 
to gunmen, for that matter. Ask my boys up here—we’ve 
armed them now—if they are defending themselves from 
the ones next them—from Bernard? That’s a laugh! 
Still, he has a gun, too—and maybe— 








It’s a good start. 

My next magic word is Honor. Let me give some of 
my boys a rank, a favored place. I shall do it with my 
mouth, mind you. Call them presidents, ambassadors, 
captains—make up your own names, and be careful that 
it does not mean a thing ; that it entails no privilege. Just 
give them a personal honor—which does not mean per- 
sonal honesty, nor square dealing, nor any of the things 
which used to go with the good old word, Honor. With 
nations it means a chip on the shoulder which must be 
knocked off—or which must NOT be knocked off, as the 
case may be. 

But we have given Tony a rank, and not Fritz ; George 
Washington Jones has it, and he’s black; while Stanley 








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NOVEMBER-DECEMBER, 1935 


hasn't, and he’s, of all things!, white. Whoopee! My 
magic is working! And if I can get twelve Stanleys to 
knock my Jones in the eye, | have a Ku Klux Klan; and 
if I can get fifteen Joneses to get sore about that, I have 
a swell war started. Verily, I am a magician. 

Now I’m going to add the most potent of all my magic 
words: Property! I’m going to give each something to 
own—bits of farmland down by the swamp, maybe. 
They are too lazy to work their own bits of land, or a 
game is much more important, or any of a dozen or more 
reasons they can find for not using their land—but just 
let me suggest to Matthew that Jake has a better piece of 
land than he has—or whisper to Jock that I saw Cyril 
digging on his (Jock’s) land, and my battle is on. That’s 
Jock’s land, and, by Gosh! ... 

And if I can get the message across to several of the 
boys, get them stewing because something is to be found 
on another’s property, I have started real trouble. Don’t 
believe it? Ask any lawyer. And if I can keep the 
magic word Honor buzzing on their lips, and suggest 
they’d better take their guns down there to defend their 
own property—you pick up the pieces ; I don’t want to. 

And they’re all the same healthy, happy, clean, 
straight-forward kids they were—only somehow, fear 
and honor and property have changed their looks and 
their actions. They're tense now, on their toes, hands 
curving just a little, eyes glittering, and the happy grins 
have changed to straight slashes across their faces 
white and tan and pink and brown skins have toned down 
to a gray—some of us will never forget that dirty gray! 
I’ve started something I can’t finish. 

And they'll take the punishment, when they are not 
the ones to be punished. J am the one; for they believe 
every one of the magic words as I said them. But I am 
old ; I might sell guns and coffins ; and I have to live, you 





15 


know. Besides, you expect it of me, for you still vote 
for big business and a return to old conditions, and 
against any approach toward a get-together of these mil- 
lions of Nels’ and Fritzes and Tonys where they can see 
that they have nothing to fear, each from the other. 
Nope !—you even call me on the carpet if, as a teacher, 
I venture to tell these kids that wars are always made by 
professional warmakers for a big profit. You know it 
is true; you read Congressional Investigations ; you are 
not satisfied with what is, but you are afraid of a change. 
You do not believe in War—oh, No!—but you do not 
believe in Peace and in the inherent love for peace that 
is in the breast of every man, woman, and child until 
some megalomaniac in a uniform, or some hired liar puts 
the fear into them. And it is too true that he who does 
not believe in peace puts his belief in, and his weight be- 
hind, war. 

I cannot even send each of these boys home, there to 
get the story of my tricks and my perfidy from his father 
and mother, for I would only send them home to you! 
You are of the old school, and you have been made to 
believe that some other nation is after your own. You 
believe that you have to defend yourself from the Jap 
or the Italian or the Negro or the Swede or the English- 
man or whatever. You know that you believe a lie, but 
you are afraid. So you fan the flame and you keep the 
fires burning—and twenty years from now your boy will 
fan the flame for his son! 

Armistice Day! We hear Taps. The notes, as they 
float through the air, sing the quietest, most thrilling 
serene aria music has to offer. But you and I, the 
grown-ups, the so-called adults, make of them a grue- 
some, blood-curdling call to arms because we refuse to 
believe. Weary God of Battles, strike us dumb! Take 
away our power, and let the kids take the reins! 





Fraternal Greetings 


México, D. F.., 
November 17, 1935. 


To the American Federation of 
Teachers of the U. S. 


Through our member, Professor Enrique Basulto Jar- 
amillo, who is leaving for your great country on a pleasure 
trip, we send cordial and fraternal greetings to the mem- 
bers of the American Federation of Teachers, wishing that 
this be the first step in developing closer relations between 
our two organizations, whose members are entrusted with 
the responsibility of building the culture foundations of 
the future generations of the peoples of two sister nations. 


We wish, at the same time, to convey to you our 
solidarity with your organization for working towards the 
fulfillment of the ideals and satisfactory solution of the 
problems of both organizations. 


Please accept our sincere wishes for the prosperity of 
the American Federation of Teachers and for the unifica- 
tion of the teachers of the American Continent. 


SALVADOR MONROY (Signed) 
Secretary General, 
Executive Committee of the National 
Confederation of Teachers Associations. 


December 10, 1935. 


Salvador Monroy, Secretary General, 

National Confederation of Teachers Associations, 
San Ildefonso Num. 36, 

Mexico, D.F. 


Dear Sir: 


Our organization is most grateful for the kind expres- 
sions conveyed in your November 17 communication. 


We in return send our warmest greetings to the Na- 
tional Confederation of Teachers Associations and express 
our sincere desire for a closer relationship between the 
teachers of our two great countries. 


As a second step in establishing a closer contact may 
we not suggest an exchange of fraternal delegates for our 
1936 conventions? 


No group could do more to promote a peaceful rela- 
tionship and an understanding between our countries than 
the organized teachers. May we accept that task as a 
solemn obligation. 


Fraternally, 


George Davis (signed) 
Sec.-Treas., 
AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS. 








Bad Company 


Damage suits have been filed by the Civil Liberties 
Union against Fred Cairns, the alleged leader of the 
vigilantes of Santa Rosa, Cal., for $25,000 in behalf 
of Jack Green, and $75,000 in behalf of Sol Nitz- 
berg, the two labor organizers, who late in August were 
tarred and feathered by a mob of more than 300 men. 
Mr. Cairns, significantly, is secretary of the Chamber 
of Commerce of Healdsburg, a town close to Santa 


Rosa. 
This Will Learn ’Em 


New York police moved with surprising severity 
against seventeen students arrested while picketing a 
theater showing “Red Salute.” Those arrested were 
charged with unlawful assembly, carrying with it a 
sentence of from six months to a year. It is the first 
time that pickets have ever been accused of more than 
disorderly conduct. 


One Way Out 


Troy, N. Y., Nov. 14 (AP).—Miss Lillian Bruce, 
35, of Lawrence, Mass., physical education instructor 
in the New Rochelle elementary schools, told Troy 
police today that fear of loss of her job caused her to 
attempt suicide. She jumped sixty feet from a bridge 
into the Hudson River last night. 


Wealth in Education—Education for Wealth 
Cleveland, Ohio. 
To the Editor of The Press: 

The Press of September 30 carried an item from 
Uhrichsville which ought to bring a blush of shame 
to the cheek of everybody in Ohio. I reproduce it: 

“Twice rejecting a suspended sentence on condition 
he send his son to school, Clyde Dallas today was sent 
to Tuscarawas county jail for 30 days and fined $20 
and costs by Mayor J. W. Lytle. Dallas said he needed 
his 16-year-old son to help in the mines.” 

Here we have a boy past 16 years of age, helping 
his father to build up wealth; helping to build up 
wealth, not only for his own family in particular, but 
for the nation as a whole in general—the very thing 
that “education” is supposed to teach us to do. 

And here we have a rapacious, highly-organized 
school crowd, assuring themselves of jobs by keeping 
the children under their thumbs for as many years as 
possible, preventing the boy from producing the wealth. 
And here we have a sensible, hard-working father, 
instinctively objecting to the wealth-prevention. 

And here, finally, we have a good-sized town’s 
mayor, probably anxious to please the school crowd, 
not only preventing the boy from producing the wealth, 
but now preventing the father from prodwving wealth 
as well. 

I ask you, what earthly chance have we for prosper- 
ity under such conditions as that? 

Joun McCartuy, 
2914 Bridge avenue. 


Propounding a Poser 
At the morning service Dr. Holcomb will discuss 
“If the Depression Is Disappearing, What Lessons Are 
We Learning?” Mrs. W. L. Walker will sing “Search 
Me, O God.”-—Memphis Evening Appeal. 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


So This Is America! 


A Good Idea 


Breaking a precedent of twenty years, the so-called 
rank-and-file group of the New Jersey State Teachers’ 
Association introduced an opposition slate of nom- 
inees at the evening session today of the eighty-first 
annual convention of the association. 


Two Days Later 


The election victory for administration forces of the 
New Jersey State Teachers’ Association closed the four 
days’ convention of that organization here yesterday, 
leaving no doubt by its decisiveness where control will 
reside for the next year. 

Dr. Leon N. Neulen, superintendent of schools of 
Camden, won as presidential candidate of the regulars. 


Down with N.R.A. 


East Stroudsburg, Pa. (AFLNS).—Due to lack of 
organization in proper unions, a breakdown in wages 
paid in Monroe county silk mills approaching unbe- 
lievable slavery is being experienced. 

Employees of the M. & G. Silk Mill of East Strouds- 
burg, a labor storm center for some time past, are 
reported to be paid in some instances wage rates of 
lower than 10 cents an hour. The L. A. W. Mill also 
recently asked workers to accept a 20 per cent wage 
reduction. 


Swear, Swear! 


Loyalty oath laws for teachers, despite opposition of 
teachers and liberals, were passed in seven states in 
this year’s legislative sessions, says the Committee on 
Academic Freedom of the American Civil Liberties 
Union. 

The drive for the legislation was headed by the 
Daughters of the American Revolution, and supported 
by the American Legion, the Hearst newspapers, the 
Chambers of Commerce, the Elks, and all the allegedly 
patriotic societies, says the survey. 

Introduced in sixteen states this year, bills were de- 
feated in seven and vetoed by governors in two. An 
unsuccessful effort was made to pass in the House 
of Representatives at Washington a resolution calling 
on the states to enact loyalty oath laws. In all, twenty 
states now have laws requiring teachers to take oaths 
of loyalty, ten of them affecting teachers in private 
and parochial, as well as public schools, and four of 
them applying to aliens as well as to citizens. 


“School Activities” 
Extra-Curricular Magazine Says 


The cancer in public schools — “Contestitis” — is 
steadily developing. Essay and similar competitions 
(usually promoted by commercial or “educational” in- 
terests that recognize that one of the best channels of 
propaganda is the school contest) and “instructional” 
contests in both curricular subjects and extra-curricular 
activities, have developed to a point where the “suc- 
cess” of many schools (and school officials and teach- 
ers) is measured by the number of ribbons, medals, 
cups, trips, championships, and other gee-gaws won. 





ee ee ee ie 











1935 


NovVEMBER-DECEMBER, 


17 


They Say 


Did you ever notice that the most violent critics of 
teachers for going into politics are politicians? 


Witt1AM McANpDREW. 





“What one must demand from the school in the 
first place is something negative; it should not sup- 
press in the young a feeling of independence, a joy of 
living, personal initiative, and the urge for knowledge. 
This most important demand the schools of the United 
States fulfill in a most satisfactory manner, in contrast 
to the schools of the greater part of Europe. 


ALBERT EINSTEIN. 





It was for a world of competitive gain that we or- 
ganized our education. And we made out a good case 
for the system. It was truth because it worked; it 
had pragmatic sanction. Now we question the whole 
regime by which we have lived, or, to admit the very 
least, we agree that we pushed it too far. Competi- 
tion drove us to combination and monopoly, then to 
speculation, over-development and unbalanced produc- 
tion, and finally to wide-spread disaster and unprece- 
dented unemployment. 


What wonder that we ask ourselves what to do about 
education in the future? Our youngsters face a world 
which seems to promise them very little. “Room at 
the top?”, they re-echo; “why there’s no room even at 
the very bottom of the heap. Give us bread and cir- 
cuses.” From the ranks of youth came the Fascist 
movements of the western world. They want some- 
thing to tie to—somebody to believe in, to trust, and 
to follow. 

C. A. Dyxstra, City Manager, Cincinnati. 





“Over a large part of Europe today it is, in effect, 
a crime to be a Jew, a Roman Catholic (or indeed a 
votary of any religion worthy of the name), a Free- 
mason, a Socialist, or a Trade Unionist: a word, or 
even a glance, may earn a fate in comparison with 
which the life of the convicted malefactor in other 
climes is happy and rational. 

“The Trade Union and Labor Movement through- 
out the world has a special and tragic interest in the 
fate of all those victims of our modern Neros. In 
the first place, it has for more than a century done a 
tremendous amount of work, through bad times and 
good, in maintaining the ideals of democracy and free- 
dom. In the second place, it has seen its champions in 
Fascist states singled out for specially virulent forms 
of persecution. In Italy, in Germany, and in Austria, 
the robber bands of the Fascist dictators have directed 
the full force of their attack on the workers’ organiza- 
tions. Hundreds of Trade Union leaders have been 
murdered offhand. Thousands more, in prisons and 
concentration camps, have expiated, in their endurance 
of unmentionable tortures, the crime of having devoted 
their lives to the service of their fellow workers.” 


Str WALTER CITRINE, 


General Secretary of the British Trades 
Union Congress. 


Men in public office should never make predictions, 
but it seems desirable this evening to begin with two. 
The first one is this: Social change will continue in 
every field of human activity until the end of time. 
The second one is this: Our institutions—notably our 
economic and political institutions—will adapt them- 
selves to social change or they will vanish, 


Henry A. WaL Lace, Secretary of Agriculture. 





“If the task of education is to build citizens who can 
finish and develop the greatest free government the 
world has ever seen, then I want to lay this down as a 
postulate, and I am going to try to put it in a very crisp 
sentence. .. . My belief is that there is no greater peril, 
no greater illusion than that merely teaching people to 


read educates them.” 
NewrTon D. Baker. 





“Who is wise enough to say, ‘This is the truth and 
there can be no other?’ The heresies of yesterday are 
the accepted commonplaces of today. 


“Our forefathers recognized that you cannot have 
one rule of free speech for this man and another for 
that. That was why they wrote into the Constitution, 
as the supreme law of the land, an absolute guarantee 
of free speech for all, without discrimination and with- 
out favor. 


“If we abandon that principle, there will be no stop- 
ping until we have destroyed altogether the greatest 
heritage of the English-speaking people.” 


Lioyp K. Garrison, 
Dean of Law School, U. of Wisconsin. 





“Our population is becoming more and more adult, 
which means corresponding increase in competition for 
jobs. The young men and women must be kept in the 
educational fold for a longer period to ease the pressure 
of job competition among adults. The unsynchronized 
progress of science, government, politics, economic life 
and education presents our greatest problem. The 
process of speeding up politics, economics and sociology 
is developing, and education must be likewise changed.” 


F,. L. Hovpe. 





“As a matter of fact, our labor unions have a better 
understanding of what is good for business today than 
our Chambers of Commerce have. It is simply a fact 
that a man could not rise to leadership in organized 
labor without giving some attention to the common 
interest, whereas,. until the passing of the age of 
scarcity, it was possible to rise to leadership in busi- 
ness and think solely in terms of special interest. 


“The trouble is, that most business men developed 
theories of business during a time, now passed, when 
business could get more if the masses got less—when 
an employer could make more profits if his employes 


got less wages. E. A. Firene. 








18 


American Federation of Teachers 


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


506 South Wabash Ave., Chicago, III. 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


Democracy in Education 


Education for Democracy 








Teachers and Taxes 


Before the depression the study of tax problems 
and their consequent support of schools was rarely, 
if ever, made by teacher organizations. 

Taxation was an academic study to be used only 
for classroom purposes—but the six long years of the 
depression have had their effect. 

Teachers have been aroused as never before. They 
have seen tax duplicates shrink, tax rates cut, con- 
stitutional tax limitation laws passed, with the result 
that school services ‘were drastically reduced, many 
teachers eliminated from service, numerous vital sub- 
jects taken from the curriculum, and last but not least, 
salaries, which even in the most prosperous times never 
were very high, have been reduced—in many cases 
to a mere pittance. 

All of these events have had an effect which is be- 
coming more obvious from day to day. Witness the 
many teachers who years ago rarely thought about 
taxation now panicky with fear of further pay cuts, 
requesting the legislatures of their respective states 
to save the tottering tax structures. 

What is worse, teacher organizations, driven to des- 
peration by the economic circumstances of their mem- 
bers, are now pushing certain emergency tax measures 
which are without question unsocial in their nature. 
In urging the adoption of these unsocial tax measures 
during this emergency, they do not realize that they 
are playing directly into the hands of powerful reac- 
tionary interests who, for years, have been working 
to pass the burden of taxation to those least able to 
stand it. 

But notwithstanding these false moves to remedy a 
fundamental evil, it is hoped that the shock received 
by teachers during this depression will change their 
attitude from smug indifference to a militant desire to 
study and correct the evils and shortcomings of the 
present system of taxation for school support. 

Teachers must capitalize their experience of past 
years and fight for the enactment of just and ade- 
quate tax laws. 

But what has experience taught them? 


Many have learned that some of the so-called friends 
of education are not greatly concerned with the social 
services rendered by the schools, but that they are 
vitally interested in the selfish returns which mani- 
fest themselves in dividend checks. 

Many times during the depression have teachers 
listened to the demagogic and sentimental appeals of 
Chambers of Commerce, and Real Estate groups that 
the tax burden is crushing small property owners: 
“Reduce the duplicate! Cut down the tax rate! By 
constitutional action limit real estate to a lower 
millage !” 


RR 


Any one familiar with the activities of Chambers 
of Commerce and Realty groups know they have spe- 
cial agents in nearly every community, whose duty 
it is to make a continuous survey of the activities and 
finances of every governmental unit. 


They pursue the same activities along State and 
Federal lines. Their expert lobbyists watch all bills 
which in any way affect their rights; and in many in- 
stances these lobbyists propose certain bills that shift 
the tax burden from their employers to those least 
able to bear the burden. 


If teacher organizations and other public employee 
groups expect to secure a semblance of justice in mat- 
ters of taxation and adequate support for governmental 
agencies, they must use similar tactics. 


Now is the time to begin a militant and aggressive 
campaign against the enemies of education. 


Is your local doing anything to combat the tax 
chiselers in your community? If not, now is the time 
to get busy. 


The following committees are suggested : 


1. A Budget Committee. This committee should 
make a thorough analysis of sources of income of your 
school district. It should make a study for compara- 
tive purposes, of receipts and expenditures over a 
period of at least six years. New budgets should be 
carefully scrutinized to secure adequate provisions for 
salary restorations. 


2. A Legislative Committee. This committee should 
make a thorough study of the principles of taxation. 
It must watch all pending legislation and recommend 
various measures needed for adequate school support. 
It is its duty to watch all legislation dealing with school 
finances and teacher problems. 


3. Public Relations Committee. This committee 
should investigate all the groups both for and against 
education. It must secure the cooperation of interested 
groups in the carrying out of the local’s program and 
must also win over the support of opposition groups 
wherever possible. 


4. Publicity Committee. This committee is to pub- 
licize the program of the local throughout the com- 
munity. As such it must work in close cooperation 
with the various committees to secure best results. It 
should also be the duty of this committee to sell to the 
public higher educational standards, and a greater re- 
spect for teachers and the teaching profession. 


—M. J. ECK 














‘ev 





1935 


NOVEMBER-DECEMBER, 


19 


A. F. of L. Education Committee Report 


Upon that portion of the report of the Executive 
Council under the above caption, page 147, the com- 
mittee reported as follows: 


Public education, available to all the citizens and 
supported by all the citizens, is the foundation of our 
democratic way of life. This ideal American labor 
early recognized; this goal it has steadfastly cham- 
pioned. 

Through the depression our public school system 
has been seriously handicapped due to a drastic re- 
trenchment in public funds. In many sections of the 
country equality of educational opportunity has been 
denied to the children of many of our people. Such 
a situation is inconsistent with our fundamental prin- 
ciples; its continuance will have grave social conse- 
quences. 

The economic crisis has wrought great havoc with 
our schools. The public schools have, in fact, been 
closed in many localities. 


State Function 


We recognize full well that education is essentially 
a State function. But, as has been stated by numerous 
conventions of the A. F. of L., if and when the state 
and local resources are so inadequate as to make im- 
possible the maintenance of the public schools in any 
community, the Federal Government should during such 
an emergency render aid to the states, to assure to 
every child adequate schools and schooling. 


During an emergency such as this, we must use 
extraordinary methods. The Federal Government 
must act in the school crises as it would in any other 
crisis ; render adequate emergency aid. 

Unless adequate emergency aid is rendered imme- 
diately, millions of children will be denied an oppor- 
tunity to a free public school education; thousands of 
schools must be closed. 


Action Needed 


We can not stop at this time and debate whether 
a more equitable system of taxation will in the future 
sufficiently augment the resources of the states and 
their political subdivisions as to enable them to main- 
tain a school system without federal aid. A study to 
determine our permanent policy on this question must 
be undertaken and this committee recommends that 
the permanent Committee on Education of the A. F. of 
L. be asked to undertake this study at the earliest pos- 
sible moment. We recognize that an attack on our 
schools is an attack on the most fundamental Amer- 
ican institution ; that those who would destroy or in any 
way hamper the usefulness of the schools would de- 
stroy American democracy itself. 

We recognize that the depletion of State revenues 
makes it impossible for States to maintain their schools. 
Then, too, the high refinance rate on State and munici- 
pal commercial paper increases a State’s difficulty. 
This cost of debt service in some States is so high as 
to use 44 per cent of the total funds appropriated for 
educational purposes. And the worst feature of this is 
that this cost is continually rising, for the interest 
accumulated one year demands more funds for inter- 
est the next. 


To assure a rapid control of educational funds by 
the States which appropriated them, money must be 
made available to those States at a low interest rate. 


Ways and Means 


We have at previous conventions declared that this 
emergency aid should be given in any or all of the 
following forms: 

1. Direct grants to the States of funds to enable 
them to keep open their schools; such funds to be 
administered by the States in accordance with State 
law provided that the fundamental principle of equita- 
ble opportunity for all persons be observed in the ad- 
ministration of these funds. 

2. Loans to educational institutions at a low rate of 
interest to enable them to maintain themselves at a 
high degree of efficiency so as to render the best possi- 
ble public service. 

3. Refinancing State and municipal commercial paper 
at a low rate of interest so as to prevent further cur- 
tailment of educational work. 


4. Continued appropriations from the Work Relief 
Funds for the emergency education program in Work- 
ers’ Education Forums. 

With the improvement in general economic condi- 
tions we insist that such inequalities be righted and 
that a tax base be found which will assure the con- 
tinuity of our educational services against such inequal- 
ities in the future. 


Public Forums 


The necessity for such educational reorganization 
is the more necessary as the clear trend in America is 
toward a greater emphasis upon the public school sys- 
tem for the education of the democracy. The plan 
for a nation-wide system of public forums as outlined 
by Commissioner Studebaker before this Convention 
and as endorsed two years ago by this Federation, but 
waits on an up-turn in business and an informed public 
demand. 

In his inspiring address to the convention, Commis- 
sioner Studebaker, speaking of the Forum as a medium 
of public education, said: “So I think the time has 
come when we must extend organized, systematic, 
competently managed education into adult life. “ 

We must discuss our problems and share our expe- 
riences if we are to improve our democracy.” 

Your committee is in hearty accord with this idea 
presented by the Commissioner of Education and 
bespeaks for it your active support. 


The schools of our nation must afford every child 
an opportunity for adequate schooling. Children must 
be kept in schools and out of the factories. We com- 
mend the plan of, the National Youth Administration 
to devote itself solely to planning for the welfare of 
youth and its opposition to the exploitation of children. 


Your committee would refer the Convention to the 
clear definition of educational problems and issue as set 
forth a year ago in the Executive Council’s report; it 
remains as the considered goal of labor’s educational 
effort. 

To be continued 








Technological changes in American 
industry during recent years have revo- 
lutionized the jobs of thousands of 
women wage earners at factory ma- 
chine or work bench. Though these 
new methods have proved advan- 
tageous to manufacturers in the form 
of reduced labor costs and increased 
production, and have brought benefits 
to some women workers, in many in- 
stances women have been forced to 
bear the brunt of the changes, through 
their decreased earnings or loss of em- 
ployment, according to a study made, 
at the direction of Secretary of Labor 
Frances Perkins, by the Women’s Bu- 
reau, U. S. Department of Labor. The 
study was made by Mrs. Ethel L. Best 
of the Bureau staff. 

To add to the scant information avail- 
able on the effects of technological 
changes on women, the study covered 
factories of certain types of such 
changes where women were most in- 
volved. Data concerning 250 techno- 
logical improvements that had taken 
place between 1921 and 1931, most of 
them in the more recent 5-year period, 
were secured from visits to 115 plants 
in 32 Eastern and Middle-western cities. 
Home visits were made to 1,035 women 
to secure additional information con- 
cerning the effects of the changes on in- 
dividual workers. 


Machines 


An exceedingly serious problem has 
arisen from the rapidity of technological 
improvement in American manufactur- 
ing, resulting in an increased capacity 
to produce, especially during a depres- 
sion period when the public is unable 
to buy enough goods to keep machines 
and workers steadily employed, the bul- 
letin points out. As new and improved 
labor-saving machinery, better tools, 
and more efficient plant routing and use 
of man power are instituted by manage- 
ment, the amount one worker can pro- 
duce is increased enormously. How- 
ever, a large number of workers are dis- 
placed and their purchasing power is 
decreased during the period in which 
they are seeking reemployment in the 
same or other lines of work. As a 
superintendent in a knitting mill ex- 
pressed it: “Before long we won't need 
workers, the machines are so perfect; 
but unfortunately machines don’t wear 
stockings.” 

The object of every technological 
change studied by the Women’s Bureau 
was more efficient and cheaper pro- 
duction of goods, either through re- 
duction of cost per unit of output 
or through increased production per 
worker. Judged by the standard of 
lower labor costs, the different changes 
were successful in all but 10 of 187 cases 
reported. Success was also shown in 
the increase of production in the ma- 
jority of cases. Seventy per cent of the 
cases reported showed. production in- 


creases, ranging from less than 10 to 
over 1,000 per cent. 


The steady trend toward the in- 
creased mechanization of the human 
factor in industry is shown by the 
predominating types of technological 
changes discussed in the report. Per- 
haps the most frequently found and 
widely distributed change was that of 
improved lay-out and better planning 
and routing of work. Conveyors or 
moving belts have been put into use in 
all industries wherever possible and 
often their introduction has caused con- 
siderable change in the work itself. The 
installation of new and improved ma- 
chinery has been constantly carried on 
in all types of industry. The change 
might be from an old to a new machine, 
from a hand-feed machine to an auto- 
matic feed, from a single operating ma- 
chine to a multiple. 

Whatever the change there was fre- 
quently combined with it a change in 
personnel, the investigation reveals. 
Either the number employed was de- 
creased, or women were substituted for 
men, or, more rarely, men for women. 
The replacement of men by women on 
specific operations at a lower wage was 
a common practice. 


Unemployment 


In consideration of our country’s 
present serious unemployment situation 
the employment data included in the 
study are exceedingly significant. Be- 
fore the technological changes de- 
scribed took place, 6,401 workers were 
employed on the processes involved; 6 
months or more after the change went 
into effect only 3,604 persons were em- 
ployed on the same processes, a de- 
crease of 44 per cent. In every case 
this decrease was reported to be due 
to improved technology and not to less- 
ened factory output. A comparison of 
the changes effected in employment and 
production shows that employment in- 
creases in less than one-tenth of the 
cases reported and decreased or re- 


mained stationary in the other nine-, 


tenths, while production increased in 
seven-tenths and decreased or remained 
stationary in three-tenths. 

The report on their earnings by the 
women affected by the various changes 
showed nearly one-half to be receiving 
less after the change than before, while 
about one-fifth experienced no change 
in earnings, and three-tenths earned 
more. Increases in average hourly 
earnings of as much as 30 per cent oc- 
curred chiefly in the lowest wage group 
(less than $16) and corresponding de- 
creases chiefly in the highest ($20 and 
more), thus concentrating earnings 
much more closely around an average 
wage than was the case before the 
change. 

The comments of the workers on the 
change were unfavorable in a majority 
of cases, due partly, without doubt, to 
a very general dislike of change. 
Among the reasons for the unfavorable 
opinion noted were an increase in diffi- 
culty of operation, a decrease in pay, 
the strain of “keeping up with the ma- 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


Effects of Technological Changes On Women 
Workers Studied By U. S. Women’s Bureau 


chine,” the lack of rest periods, and the 
tedium of machine tending. On the 
other hand, many women found the new 
work lighter physically and enjoyed the 
variety when they alternated on differ- 
ent operations. 


Examples 


Many concrete illustrations in spe- 
cific industries of the detailed effects of 
changes in the way of more efficient 
and cheaper production of goods, num- 
ber of workers employed, their wages, 
and conditions of employment are pre- 
sented in the bulletin. 

For example, with the many goods 
now sold in package form, such as 
cereals, soap flakes, and so forth, the 
demand for cheap methods of filling 
and wrapping has increased. In one 
such plant reporting improved machin- 
ery the operator’s work is reduced to 
merely feeding the flat unformed boxes 
to the machine, which without further 
assistance from human hands forms the 
box, fills it, inserts a slip, seals the box, 
and pushes it onto a moving belt that 
carries it to a packing room. Five new 
machines with 20 girls now do the work 
formerly done by 24 of the old type of 
machines operated by 48 girls. 

In a candy factory the introduction of 
a moving belt and changed method of 
packing increased the daily output per 
girl from 100 to 190 boxes. 

A change from hand to machine la- 
beling and wrapping of bottles in an- 
other factory caused a reduction in the 
force to 6 girls to operate the machine 
which took the place of 15 girls on the 
hand method, while output was in- 
creased from 2,016 to 26,000 daily. 
Some of the displaced girls were trans- 
ferred to other jobs, but all, whether 
transferred to the new machine or to 
other work, received a cut in pay, 
amounting in the majority of cases to 
25 per cent. One woman when inter- 
viewed on the changed methods in her 
plant remarked, “They talk about lost 
hours, lost motion—all it is to me is 
lost money.” 

The report on a change in method 
of striping automobile bodies shows 
that formerly this decorative work was 
done free-hand by highly skilled men, 
whereas now it is done with a mechan- 
ical gun-like device, that with a little 
practice can be operated by anyone. 
With the hand method, the average 
time for striping a car was | hour and 
12 minutes; now this has been cut down 
to 12 minutes. Where formerly the 
plant would employ 22 skilled men for 
striping, today with the gun the same 
work is done by 1 man and 4 girls. 
Where formerly, because the wages of 
skilled painters had been $1.50 to $1.75 
an hour, the cost of striping 1 car was 
about $1.77; now the cost has been de- 
creased to 12 cents, with the earnings 
of a girl on steady work averaging 60 
cents an hour. One woman who was 
placed on striping an automobile said 
it was the best job she had ever had 
and that the work was easy and clean. 

















NoVEMBER-DECEMBER, 


1935 





tickle the curiosity. 
find the author’s name on page 23. 


All this forwardness and self- 
reliance, cover self-government; 
proceed on the belief that as peo- 
ple have made a government they 
can make another; that their 
union and law are not in their 
memory, but in their blood and 
condition. If they unmake a law, 
they can easily make a new one. 
In Mr. Webster’s imagination, 
the American Union was a huge 
Prince Rupert’s drop, which will 
snap into atoms if so much as the 
smallest end be shivered off. 
Now the fact is quite different 
from this. The people are loyal, 
law-abiding. They prefer order, 
and have no taste for misrule and 
uproar... . 


We began with freedom, and 
are defended from shocks now 
for a century by the facility with 
which, through popular assem- 
blies, every necessary measure of 
reform can instantly be carried. 
A congress is a standing insur- 
rection, and escapes the violence 
of accumulated grievance... . 
The men and women all over this 
land shrill their exclamations of 
impatience and indignation at 
what is short-coming or is unbe- 





WHO SAID IT? 


A Hearst-baiting quotation presented to stimulate the mind and 
If the passage sounds just too, too Red, you will 


coming in the government—at 
the want of humanity, of moral- 
ity—ever on the grounds of gen- 
eral justice. 

We have much to learn, much 
to correct—a great deal of lying 
vanity. The spread eagle must 
fold his foolish wings and be less 
of a peacock; must keep his wings 
to carry the thunderbolt when he 
is commanded. Our national flag 
is not affecting as it should be, 
because it does not represent the 
population of the United States, 
but some Baltimore or Chicago 
or Cincinnati or Philadelphia cau- 
cus; not union or justice, but self- 
ishness and cunning... . 

In this country, with our prac- 
tical understanding, there is, at 
present, a great sensualism, a 
headlong devotion to trade and to 
conquest of the continent—to 
each man as large a share of the 
same as he can carve for himself 
—an extravagant confidence in 
our talent and activity, which be- 
comes, whilst successful, a scorn- 
ful materialism—but with the 
fault, of course, that it has no 
depth, no reserved force whereon 
to fall back when a reverse comes. 








Campus Issues 
Continued from page 12 


The preliminary investigation proved 
rather conclusively that the original 
estimate on the amount of cribbing 
had been too high, but the returns 
were so impressive that the president 
of the college and the Student Coun- 
cil authorizd the Committee to con- 
tinue its work. One of the practical 
consequences of the general campus 
awakening was that students and 
faculty, recognizing the class relation 
between cribbing and educational aims 
and methods, organized a dozen stu- 
dent-faculty committees in as many 
departments and schools to study the 
place of education in our present so- 
ciety, and the relation of the particu- 
lar departments and schools to the 
entire system. With loyal adminis- 
trative support and student coopera- 
tion we may expect many improve- 
ments in this institution. 

The second example of student-fac- 
ulty cooperation is found in a promi- 
nent eastern church college. Two 
years ago the president appointed a 
faculty committee to rethink the pur- 

se of Christian higher education. 

is group reported progress to the 
entire faculty. The introduction of 
the statement finally adopted laid the 
foundation for educational reconstruc- 
tion in the areas of intellect, culture, 
vocation, health, social behavior and 
character. 
See College regards its 
educational task as a cooperative 
quest for complete Christian living. 


To this end, the purpose of the 

College, with its resources of equip- 

ment, curriculum and personnel, is 

conceived to be the development of 
those ideas, ideals, attitudes, habits 
and skills in each student which will 
make for his creative and effective 
participation in the modern world.” 

Living up to the ideal of a “coop- 
erative quest” the college augmented 
the faculty committee of four to a 
student-faculty committee of fifteen. 
On the student side both sexes and all 
four classes are represented; on the 
faculty side the Dean of Women, the 
Registrar and professors in religion, 
education, psychology, philosophy, po- 
litical science, biology and mathema- 
tics are included. 

The first step taken by the larger 
committee was a survey of student and 
faculty opinion to discover the un- 
solved problems standing in the way 
of achieving the new purpose. Four 
stood out quite clearly: an unsatis- 
factory chapel situation, dishonesty in 
the classroom and in the preparation 
of assignments, an improper balance 
in courses and a lack of a social pro- 
gram. The committee has agreed to 
begin with the fundamental problem 
of intellectual integrity, dealing not 
only with cheating but with all the 
systems that are an outgrowth. 

I have been closely related to this 
committee for a number of weeks. 
Working with candor, earnestness, a 
sense of humor and a definiteness of 


21 


purpose, this group furnishes a bright 
spot on the educational scene. The 
committee knows it has the moral sup- 
port of the administration and an in- 
creasing interest on the part of stu- 
dents. Such experiments do make 
one feel that the issues of personal 
and social living might be met if in- 
dividuals could learn to surrender and 
relate their skills and energies in the 
achievement of definite goals. 





Education in Mexico 
Continued from page 11 


Narciso Brissols, Secretary for Pub- 
lic Education, speaks plainly and em- 
phaticaily, declaring that in the field of 
science and general educational culture 
Mexican educators have adopted an 
attitude of confidence and certainty and 
are capacitated to do the work well. 


“But the same does not hold good 
when considering education in the 
strictly social field—the spiritual, ar- 
tistic and moral aspects of life, because 
in dealing with them neither is there 
so much certainty as to the validity 
of the achievements of western civili- 
zation nor are we to overlook the fact 
that the native before the conquest had 
and preserved all of the characteristics 
of a true culture although they were 
undeveloped and dormant. 


“An harmonious conception of life, 
a rich spiritual organization, and a 
strong system of moral doctrines were 
the definite elements of Indian cul- 
ture.” (Memoria 2:32, 1932.) 


This competent critic continues by 
saying: 

“Our effort is exerted more to ob- 
tain external forms of occidental civ- 
ilization rather than its spiritual ele- 
ments. We claim to gain from a utili- 
tarian civilization like that of Europe 
the enormous power which for the sake 
of material progress offers to dominate 
and control the forces of nature, using 
them to improve the external condi- 
tions of life. But we struggle to pre- 
serve in the soul of the native all of 
the virtues in which without argument 
he surpasses all moral types of con- 
temporaneous' capitalism — discipline, 
co-operation, harmony and industrious- 
ness.” (Memoria 2:33, 1932.) 


Begins Early 

Even for primary education a solid 
foundation is laid in the doctrine that 
no man can live to himself, because 
human life,develops in communities or 
homogeneous social groups. The day 
for the dictator. and the tyrant has 
passed; strength now belongs to those 
who give themselves in service to those 
with whom they live. 


“The popular aphorism, ‘The big fish 
eats the little ones,’ has been rejected 
as a standard of relations for the cul- 
tured man and it is not allowable to 
leave the weak to perish. Our deepest 
desire is to live a rich, optimistic, gen- 
erous life. We wish to realize the 
Christian precept which says, ‘Let us 
love one another,’ as a basis of mutual, 
effective and constructive co-operation; 
but it must not be depressing or nega- 
tive.” (Boletin 9:35, Sept.-Oct., 1930.) 








22 


Following out the broad social- 
ethical program thus outlined you dis- 
cover that the teaching activities in 
behalf of morality are made up pri- 
marily of ‘community and _ group 
projects. 


Vocational 


A report of the work done in the 
Industrial and Commercial School of 
Orizaba in the state of Vera Cruz af- 
firms that the social activities of the 
school and of the economic system 
afford opportunity to the pupils for the 
development of initiative. There are 
numerous vital efforts at the cultiva- 
tion of civic righteousness, fraternity 
and co-operation. Morality and econ- 
omy are exhibited in constructive and 
partiotic action with consideration al- 
ways for the social standards of the 
country, for its primary resources and 
for the specific social problems of 
Mexico. All classes of people are given 
consideration, especially the working- 
man and the lowly. Generous aid 1s 
rendered to fellow citizens and to suf- 
ferers in other parts of the world. 
(Boletin 8:226-7, Oct.-Nov.-Dec., 1929.) 


According to Circular number 64 
the Society for the Protection of Ani- 
mals is given the privilege of access 
to the primary and_ kindergarten 
schools of the nation for the purpose 
of promoting its work among children. 
(Boletin 8:31, Oct.-Nov.-Dec., 1929.) 


In 1929 2,000 packets representing 
the goodwill of American children 
were distributed in Mexico. In return 
the Mexican children sent a large con- 
tribution of “museum chests” to the 
children of the United States. (Boletin 
8:29-30, Oct.-Nov.-Dec., 1929.) 


The Family 


Particular organizations are set up 
for the sake of cultivating family life. 
“For the purpose of watching over the 
health and well-being of children, as- 
suring happiness in the family at a time 
suitable for preparing future genera- 
tions to take the place of those now 
living by reason of the physical and 
moral virtues which the nation awaits 
for its positive improvement, let there 
be, on this date, established a society 
under the titles, The Caracuaro Com- 
mittee in Behalf of Childhood.” (Bole- 
tin 10:23, May, 1931.) 


Peace 


Education for peace is not neglected. 
In the Department of Primary and 
Normal Schools the plan of the Peace 
Committee which was used in Mexico 
City was announced through school 
inspectors so as to promote certain 
activities in behalf of world peace, not 
only for one week in July but through- 
out the year. Children’s leagues were 
to be organized and correspondence 
with children in other nations arranged 
for. (Boletin 9:54, July, 1930.) 


The celebration of the cessation of 
hostilities in the World War is held 
on November 11, with the suspension 
of school work followed by total si- 
lence for two minutes. All schools are 


to undertake specified activities in be- 
half of universal peace. 
105, 1931.) 


(Memoria, p. 


Temperance 


A surprising amount of effort is spent 
on the fight against alcoholism. The 
complete program for the organization 
is to be found on pages 141-9, Boletin, 
volume 8, for September, 1929. This 
campaign is launched within the school 
system of the nation. 


The message of the President of the 
Republic was distributed to the pupils 
of the nation during 1929, along with 
instructions for teachers on procedure 
for organizing the pupils for protect- 
tion against alcohol. 


In a report from one community the 
following passage occurs: “In order 
to relieve the people from the physical 
and moral misery and ruin which the 
enemy alcohol induces and to create 
on the other hand health habits, thrift 
and honor, thus contributing directly 
to the welfare of the race, there is 
hereby established in this town an as- 
sociation entitled, “The Anti-alcoholic 
Committee of Caracuaro.” (Boletin 
10:26, May, 1931.) 


The village of Langanilia sent in to 
headquarters an interesting message 
“By the use of sports and program 
held in the open air theater the people 
of the village were so well entertained 


that not one was found drunk the 
whole day from 9 A.M. to 6 P.M.” 
(Boletin 8:162, Sept, 1929.) 


The children’s alcoholic oath was set 
up in an intensive campaign in 1931; 
the day was November 20, the anni- 
versary of the Revolution. A contest 
was held, in which all children present 
took part, for the purpose of determin- 
ing the formula which would best serve 
for the Children’s Oath. “It was deeply 
impressive and significant to hear the 
combined voices of thousands of chil- 
dren who took the pledge before the 
First Magistrate of the Nation to com- 
bat alcoholism for the good of the 
country. This contest provided other 
activities which the schools know how 
to direct so as to combat alcoholism.” 
(Memoria, p. 104, 1931.) 


A similar demonstration had been 
reviewed by the President in 1929. 


Thrift 


Thrift education is conducted through 
the National Pupil Treasury for Thrift 
and Loans. This organization was 
founded in 1925 and is conducted as a 
specific feature of the Department of 
Public Education. It receives deposits 
from pupils and teachers and makes 
loans to co-operative organizations in 
which they are members. 


“Thrift tends to develop in the child 
his personality, assisting him to discern 
the value of thrift as a factor in prog- 
ress and preparing him to become in 
the near future a useful member of 
society.” (Memoria 2:119, 1932.) 


Extra-curricular 


Student activities in school organiza- 
tions are emphatically required. “Every 
democracy should maintain liberty and 
responsibility, comprehension and ful- 
filment of duties; but in the school 
only do the pupils learn to carry out 
orders. 


“HE 





TEACHER 


AMERICAN 


“Consequently there should be es- 
tablished in all educational institutions 
student government in which the pu- 
pils have the largest opportunity for 


participation, a government. which re- 
sponds really to the needs of the 
school, with actual duties to be per- 


formed and rights to be administered, 
so as to set up a situation in itself 
democratic, such that it may permit the 
pupils to develop initiative, the acquisi- 
tion of ideals that control the lite of 
the institution.” (Boletin 9:38-9, Sept.- 
Oct., 1930.) 


In a certain school the pupils are 
organized in 15 groups. In each group 
is established a society of pupils spe- 
cially for the promotion of morality 
among its members; they share in the 
discharge of such duties as cleanliness 
and domestic care of the classroom and 
assembly. There is training also in the 
current social practices established 
among themselves and such as are in 
vogue in other groups. (Memoria 1 :268, 


1932.) 


In instructional matters a few de- 
tails may be noted. Among the ideals 
set up for the teaching of history is 
the following: “To secure satisfactory 
ideals of personal and social conduct.” 
(Memoria 2:58, 1932.) 


“7 — Education for character — The 
history of Chemistry is filled with ex- 
amples of great men who disinterest- 
edly and with complete dedication and 
preseverance have devoted their lives 
to the work of investigation in the 
field of Chemistry. The teacher should 
cite the examples of the great chemists 
of all periods that have contributed to 
the development and progress of this 
branch of science.” (Boletin 10:43, 
March, 1931.) 


Among the requirements set up for 
texts in reading, the important item 
is: “From all of this incidentally and 
without insistence it should be possible 
to draw suggestions relative to hygiene, 
cleanliness, neatness, good manners, 
punctuality, affable manners, disinter- 
estedness and courtesy toward all.” 
(Boletin 9:11, July, 1930.) 


Occasional specific references are 
made to the character of the teacher. 
The Director of Education in Tlaxcala 
commends the faculty members in the 
Cultural Mission as to the following 
points: immaculate morality, aggres- 
sive spirit, preparation for their spe- 
cialty, tact in winning the esteem of 
student-teachers, recognition of the 
value of time. (Boletin 9:40, July, 1930.) 


Moral Codes 


The most prominent contribution to 
the instructional aspect of moral edu- 
cation is published in the Boletin for 
June, 193l1—a code for school children. 
A translation of this code prepared by 
the present writer appeared in School 
and Society for January 7, 1933. This 
code follows very closely the outline 
of the prize-winning code prepared by 
Professor (now President) W. J. 
Hutchins for elementary school pupils. 
A few items have been added, but one 
could have wished that some writer 
had ventured to produce a code re- 
flecting more exactly the peculiarities 
of Mexican culture. 




















ac ow ao 


r=} 


la 
1€ 


‘- 


of 
e 





NOVEMBER-DECEMBER, 


In connection with this Mexican 
code there is no hint as to a method 
for its use. Very probably a well- 
rounded theory of ethical instruction 
for Mexican children has not been pre- 
pared. However, the program for 
moral education in Mexico already 
adopted has many features that many 
of us will consider superior to any use 
that can be made of a code. 


On the whole it is evident that very 
much serious thinking on social and 
ethical problems is taking place in the 
sister republic. The primary burden 
for ethical progress in the nation un- 
doubtedly rests on the schools of the 
Republic. Educational leadership has 
on the whole sensed the essential points 
of emphasis, stressing activities car- 
ried on under supervision far more 
than verbal instruction. Only one text 
on “Education Civica” has been dis- 
covered in lists of books appearing in 
these publications here reviewed. 


Since so much confidence is placed 
by Mexican patriots in the aboriginal 
culture of the Mexican people we 
should welcome an extensive review 
of the social and ethical values of this 
culture in its relation to the present 
educational program of the Depart- 
ment of Public Education. No one 
need seek further than the educational 
leaders of Mexico for an exposition of 
the indigenous ethical culture of the 
Mexican Republic. 


H. L. LatHam. 


California to Try 
Labor College 


A resident Labor College in Cali- 
fornia, with an all-year program, has 
become a real probability with the 
organization last week of the Western 
Labor College Association, projecting 
the establishment of “a non-factional 
and non-sectarian school dedicated to 
the cause of Labor and the common 
people, and aiming to prepare its stu- 
dents for active participation and lead- 
ership in those various economic, polit- 
ical and cultural activities which may 
be inclusively described as the ‘farmer- 
labor movement’.” 


The Executive Committee includes 
I. Feinberg, International Vice-Presi- 
dent of the International Ladies’ Gar- 
ment Workers’ Union; A. Alan Clark, 
Director of the Oakland Labor Col- 
lege (sponsored by the Central Labor 
Council and the Building Trades Coun- 
cil of Alameda County); Dr. John L. 
Kerchen of the Extension Division, 
University of California; Milen Demp- 
ster, Secretary of the Socialist Party 
of California; Stanley Most of Beverly 
Hills; and Samuel S. White, former 
manager of the San Francisco Joint 
Board of the ILGWU. 





Who said It?—Ralph Waldo 
Emerson in Old South Church, 
March 30, 1878, in the course of 
an address entitled “The Fortune 
of the Republic.” 





1935 


23 











6. 


A Detroit Suggestion 


INITIAL TEST 

Underline the correct answer. 
How much do you know about your local teachers’ 
organization ? 
a. A little. 
b. Nothing. 
c. Too much. 
Why do you belong to it? 
a. Because I almost have to. 
b. Because it’s the thing to do. 
c. I don’t know, 
How often do you attend meetings ? 
a. When I can’t get out of it. 
b. When my superiors request me to. 
c. Whenever I have any idea of what is up. 
Why in your opinion do administrators usually han- 
dle its affairs? 
a. It’s one of those things. 


b. It is proper that those in responsible positions see 
that things are run properly. 


c. Because the teachers let them. 


How often do you participate in the discussion, if 
there is any? 


a. Never. 


b. I always try to assist the chairman in seeing that 
things run smoothly. 


c. When things get too raw. 


How often do you, or would you, openly disagree 
with policies laid down by the organization? 


a. Never! Do I look foolish? 
b. I have never yet seen any occasion to do so. 


c. More often than is good for me. 


Would you like to see your teachers’ organization a 
live affair controlled by classroom teachers in the 
interests of education? 


a. Of course, but I’m realistic. 
b. No; such a change would be disastrous. 
c. Would I! 


Score your own papers. 


If the majority of your answers are (a), you are an 


average teacher (God help you!). If at least four out 
of the seven answers are (b), you are in line for pro- 
motion. Those who score more than four correct (b) 
answers have a career ahead of them. 


If most of your answers are (c) you deserve a better 


organization. Join the Detroit Federation of Teachers. 














THE AMERICAN TEACHER 











BOOKS PUBLICATIONS 


MASTERING THE TOOLS OF THE TRADE, by Jean Carter. .2 





uw 


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AN INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN TRADE 
UntonisM. By Elsie Gluck ; 35c ; Affili- a 
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East 35th Street, New York, N. Y. 
‘ EDUCATION AND THE WORKER-STUDENT 

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Miss Gluck has given a survey of trade ee es ee SW, I nn sg kas ea sapie cesses seacensned 25c 
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discussion of some of the problems 

arising out of present-day develop- Te m2 Sil aia Sona ial 

questions and references for further WORKERS’ CLASSES, by Olga Law Plunder................. 25c 

reading on subjects mentioned but not 

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ane neae of Jake Mihail’ Diner, CAN THE WORK-WEEK SHRINK AND WAGES GROW? 

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is sent E tional Direct 

ee eee THE WORKER GOES TO MARKET, by Caroline Ware........ 25¢ 

' Union League. A SERIES OF EIGHT OUTLINES FOR STUDY 


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Unemployment and Its Problems 





CAN THE WorK-WEEK SHRINK AND 


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25c; Affiliated Schools for Workers, , , 
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An attempt to answer this important Problems of the Textile Industry 
question is made in a thiry-six page by Georce MITCHELL 
printed pamphlet in which Miss Pollak ; 
has revised and brought up to date the Changes in the N.R.A. and Their Effect Upon the Worker 
material formerly presented in Js There by THERESA WoLFson 


a Shrinking Week and a Growing Wage? 


She presents in very simple language a (Four additional outlines on subjects of current interest are in 


picture of some phases of present-day preparation.) 

economic and industrial life, together > ' ; ie at, 

with some historical background. The NOTE: Price for single outline is 10c. 

pamphlet is recommended for workers Price for entire series is 40c. 

who are just beginning, the study of If individual Titles are bought in quantities of ten or 


economic problems. Ae 
more, price is 5c per copy. ] 





ANNOTATED LIST OF MATERIAL FOR WORKERS’ 


a aceite ie enti te. CLASSES. SUGGESTED READING LIST OF NOVELS, 
stitution, Washington, D. C., 1935, 199 PLAYS, BIOGRAPHIES, POETRY DEALING WITH | 
pp., $1.50. SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS. | 
The NRA is dead, but as a historical NOTE: Prices do not include postage. If you are ordering 
curiosity, which was designed to pin the 
one copy of 25c pamphlet, enclose 28c. If you are 


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President, and failed, will command the A bill wil be sent you. In both cases payment in 
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mists for generations to come. New 
Federal Organizations is a valuable con- 
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the NRA and a valuable manual of the 
NRA agencies while a working reality. 
Mr. Schmeckebier opens his book with 





a chronological list of the NRA agen- 

cies established between March 4, 1933, AFFILIATED SCHOOL FOR WORKERS, INC. 
‘ and July 1, 1934, and then proceeds to 
explain in simple language the legisla- 302 East 35th Street 
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greatly to the value of the book. 








er rr rr ee ee ee ee ee COU CU os Ae -" 




















NOVEMBER-DECEMBER, 


SoctaL Stupies. William McAndrew, edi- 


tor. Little, Brown and Company. 
$1.60. 465 pages. Reviewed by H. L 
Latham. 


Fifteen competent persons have con- 
tributed their best thought to a guide 
book for young people. This is not a 
series of homilies, nor a picture gal- 
lery of horrible examples. It is an 
exhibit of actions and policies that 
have been approved experimentally. 


Thought attitudes, adjustments in 
school, use of time, choice of foods, 
management of clubs, home, loafing, 
citizenship and hundreds of matters 
that enter every student’s life are judi- 
ciously treated. Of course these topics 
are well known in our tradition; it is 
the treatment that is distinctive. Illus- 
trative material is abundant. Vivid ap- 
preciation of the student’s thought 
world is a marked feature. Stimulus to 
reflection is never absent. Balanced 
decisions are made easy. Solutions for 
a vast number of life problems are 
proposed. The book fits. It should 
easily be the best seller in its field. 


The book can be used in a wide 
variety of teaching plans. It will work 
into such courses as guidance, English 
composition, public speaking, citizen- 
ship or a Freshman orientation course. 
It will serve as a reference book and 
as a bibliography in many schools. 
Teachers might well absorb its spirit 
as a protection against awkward not 
to say exasperating techniques in try- 
ing to direct pupil conduct. Once you 
begin using the volume as a source of 
inspiring quotations it will not long 
remain out of reach. 





Cuitp Psycuo.ocy. George D. Stoddard 
and Beth L. Wellman. The Macmillan 
Company, New York, N. Y. 419 pp. 
$2.50. Reviewed by H. L. Latham. 


The full title of this book might 
have been, A Summary and Criticism 
of Recent Experimental Studies in 
Child Psychology. The bibliography 
includes 493 titles and presumably 
every one of them has been treated in 
the body of the text. This feature 
alone is a valuable contribution to seri- 
ous child study. 


After commenting on the trends in 
child psychology and the methods of 
research the following topics are dis- 
cussed at length: motor and mental 
development, social behavior, play, ar- 
tistic ability, personality, character 
and adjustment. 


This volume issues from the child 
welfare research station of the Univer- 
sity of Iowa—another valuable contri- 
bution by leaders in child research. It 
is not only authentic, well-balanced 
and adequate but it is a book that has 
many obvious uses. For one thing it 
isa remarkable time saver; the author 
index is at hand for those who wish 
immediate information on the investi- 
gations of a given author. It should 
be at least a supplementary reading 
text for every elementary college 
course in child study. It should be 
mastered by anyone who contemplates 
engaging in child research projects. 

riters in child problems would bet- 
ter know the latest findings here re- 
corded. The general reader can inform 


1935 


himself speedily respecting the pres- 
ent-day advance in well-grounded con- 
clusions about child nature. 





Tuurstone, L. L. The Vectors of Mind. 
Chicago, The University Press, 1935. 
$4.00. Reviewed by H. I 


This volume is the fruitage of long 
experience in the application of mathe- 
matics to psychological investigations. 
It is a volume of applied mathematics, 
devoted wholly to techniques for in- 
terpreting statistical data. The reader 
is supposed to have had training in 
calculus and analytical geometry. 


The central problem is how to dis- 
cover the traits or abilities displayed 
in certain recorded phenomena of hu- 
man behavior and how to ascertain 
their interrelations in a discrete group 
of behavior factors. 


The author has begun with the fun- 
damentals of his subject and has built 
a structure showing gradation of data. 
The style is wholly adapted to his pur- 
pose. Investigators who need the tools 
here provided will greatly appreciate 
them, for the practical value of this 
pioneer extension of mathematics is 
sure to be demonstrated. 





Tryon, Rotta M. The Social Sciences as 
School Subjects. New York, 
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1935. 541 
pages. $3.00. Reviewed by H. L. 
Latham. 


This is a guidebook for the adminis- 
trator and teacher of social science 
subjects below the college level. The 
author summarizes the suggestions of 
several national organizations, and 
then treats the following topics: His- 
tory, political science, economics, soci- 
ology and social science, as recognized 
school subjects. Lastly appears a dis- 
cussion of methods, particularly the 
organization of these subjects for 
teaching purposes. 

The treatment seems to have pene- 
trated to the basic problems of the 
subject; it is provided with ample 
documentation. Many of the reports 
of studies in this field yield a vast 
amount of data pertinent to the prob- 
lems considered. 

Several methods of approach to 
these studies are listed: the chrono- 
logical, psychological, the spiral, and 
the biographical methods. The follow- 
ing plans for organizing materials are 
described: in terms of significant topics, 
the type study, the problem, the project 
method, the unit of understanding and 
he contract plan. 

The author’s position is that of an 
impartial narrator of findings. His 
work consequently deserves the con- 
fidence and thanks of all his readers. 





Curti, Merve. The Social Ideas of Amer- 
ican Educators. Part X. Report of 
the Commission on the Social 
Studies, American Historical Asso- 
ciation. Charles Scribner's Sons, 
New York, 1935. 613 pages. $3.00. 
Reviewed by H. L. Latham. 


This book furnishes good reasons 
for believing that the historian can in- 
terpret a man better than the auto- 


25 


biographer. A dozen or more of great 
American educators are presented in 
these pages. Their social philosophies 
are admirably pieced together and ex- 
plained. 


The story is told in two periods, 
with a dividing line falling at a point 
just previous to the Civil War, and 
reaches from the post-colonial period 
to the present time. The treatment is 
broad, ample, impartial and revealing. 

Special chapters are set aside for 
comprehensive topics, including the 
education of women, education in the 
south, and post-war educational pat- 
terns. The list of conspicuous edu- 
cators begins with Horace Mann and 
ends with John Dewey, but many sig- 
nificant educational leaders are given 
honorable mention. 

Since great thinkers have great in- 
fluence on men, we may comprehend 
our own educational history and fore- 
cast our future by scrutinizing the 
educational policies and social ideals of 
educators. This volume should be in 
the alcoves consulted by teachers, so- 
ciologists and interpreters of Ameri- 
can civilization, 

The sources of data are amply indi- 
cated in the footnotes, and the biblio- 
graphical notes at the end of the vol- 
ume are invaluable for the research 
student. 





Rich Man, Poor MAN, Harper & Broth- 
ers, New York, 1935, 85 pp. $1. By 
Rylis Alexander Goslin and Omar 
Pancoast Goslin. Reviewed by Mi- 
chael B. Scheler. 


Ex-President Hoover in his recent 
book, The Challenge to Liberty, speaks 
of the American System as the best sys- 
tem in the world, but he conveniently 
fails to inform his readers as to who con- 
trols this best social and economic sys- 
tem and in whose benefit it is being run. 
Well, Rich Man, Poor Man, inadvertently 
no doubt, serves as an appropriate and 
sensible answer to the arguments of 
Mr. Hoover and his kind. The charts, 
the illustrations, the figures, the mine 
of information assembled in this vol- 
ume of 85 pages are veritable eye-open- 
ers and prove conclusively as to what 
is the American System and for whom 
it is the best. Here is a sample of what 
the authors say concerning the condi- 
tions in this country in the so-called 
years of prosperity: 

“Nineteen million, four hundred thou- 
sand workers receiv ed less than a thou- 
sand dollars a year”—in 1929. And they 
continue: “Eighty-one out of every 
100 got less than $2,000. Only 15 re- 
ceived between $2,000 and $5,000. That 
leaves only 4 men out of the 100 to 
enjoy an income of more than $5,000. 
If you were lucky enough to have an 
income of $25,000 or more, you were 
one of 13 people out of 10,000, or 1 of 
the 1% of the people who received 20% 


‘ of the national income.” 


And it was estimated that no worker 
could support his family comfortably, 
at 1929 prices, at less than $35 a week, 
or $1,820 a year. 

Rich Man, Poor Man clearly, graphic- 
ally unfolds the causes of our periodic 
crises, depressions, waves of unemploy- 
ment, wars, and proves why the rich get 
richer and the poor poorer. The au- 









26 


thors offer a plan for the rational re- 
adjustment of our economy whereby 
the poor will be enabled to obtain an 
equitable share of our economic wealth 
and social benefits. Incidentally, Rich 
Man, Poor Man represents the program- 
matic platform of the newly-formed so- 
ciety, The People’s League for Economic 
Security, with headquarters at 123 W. 
85th St., New York. The membership 
fee is $1 a year, which includes all the 
literature to be issued by the League 
throughout the year. Stuart Chase, 
Henry Pratt Fairchild, Harry A. Over- 
street, and other notables are the spon- 
sors of the League and its movement, 
and their names speak adequately for 
the high motives and objectives of their 
League. 





FREEDOM OF THE Press, by George Seldes; 
The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianap- 
olis & New York; 1935; $2.75; 380 pp. 
Reviewed by Michael B. Scheler. 


Democracy is inconceivable without 
a free press—so we are told in thou- 
sands of textbooks, classrooms and 
sermons; and in thousands of edi- 
torials we are continually reassured 
that the American public is receiving 
its news free and uninfluenced by sini- 
ster forces. However, thousands upon 
thousands of progressives in our 
midst—or “reds” if you prefer to 
classify them as such—have for years 
questioned the veracity of these widely 
held notions and have pointed out the 
ever-increasing discrepancies in the 
reporting of the daily news and de- 
viations from the genuine spirit of a 
free press on the part of the majority 
of our newspapers. First Upton Sin- 
clair in his Brass Check and now 
George Seldes, newspaperman since 
1909 and correspondent who traveled 
the world over to cover the major 
events of a good part of this century 
for American and some foreign news- 
papers, arrays a mass of documentary 
evidence in his Freedom of the Press 
which confirm the suspicions of our 
radicals that the American press is 
not as free as we are frequently told 
by our editors and that a good part of 
the American newspapers, both in 
their editorial and news policies, are 
influenced by political, financial and 
industrial groups who seek to advance 
their own selfish interest to the detri- 
ment of public welfare. .. . 

On his first job as reporter for the 
Pittsburgh Leader in 1909, Mr. Seldes 
was already confronted with the bitter 
fact that even in the reporting of ele- 
mentary daily events only news satis- 
factory to advertisers find their place 
in the news columns while unpleasant 
facts are unceremoniously discarded. 
In reporting an automobile accident in 
which a driver and a truck of an ad- 
vertiser were involved, Mr. Seldes 
found to his amazement that the next 
day his mention of the advertiser's 
name was stricken out from his report. 
And as he proceeded with his work 
in the newspaper world, Mr. Seldes 
learned that the suppression of certain 
news was quite as important a part 
of the duties of our newspaper editors 
as the publication of other news. Mr. 
Seldes’ book is literally packed with 
proof showing that the violation of the 
tenets and spirit of a free press is a 
widespread practice in American news- 





paperdom. I will recite in my own 
way some of the major facts in Mr. 
Seldes’ indictment against the Ameri- 
can press. 

Upton Sinclair’s exposures of the 
scandalous conditions in the meat in- 
dustry in his Jungle were suppressed 
by the American press, with but few 
notable exceptions. During the agita- 
tion for pure food laws and for the 
regulation of the patent medicine in- 
dustry, which periodically agitate the 
American scene, the advocates of such 
legislation are generally held up for 
ridicule in the columns of the press, 
and the reason for this is obvious: 
forty-five per cent of the general ad- 
vertising in the press comes from food 
and patent-drug manufacturers. The 
influence of the patent medicine con- 
spiracy was keenly felt in the recent 
campaign for the Tugwell Bill, de- 
signed to regulate the advertising of 
foods, drugs and cosmetics, and its de- 
feat was attributed to it. 

During the intensive advertising 
drives of the manufacturers of the 
Lucky Strike and Camel cigarettes, 
when the public was “informed” that 
the smoking of a cigarette was prefer- 
able to the partaking of candy, Dr. 
Ben Jablons, who was authorized by 
the American Medical Association, 
made a statement in which he said 
that “excessive use of tobacco to kill 
the appetite is a double-edged sword, 
for nicotine poisoning and starvation 
both leave dire results in their “train”; 
and his statement was suppressed by 
the press, with few exceptions. 

Whenever the public is roused by 
the periodic agitation for public own- 
ership of the public utilities industries 
or the regulation of the munitions in- 
dustry, the interests concerned do not 
hesitate in pouring out millions of dol- 
lars in the form of full-page advertise- 
ments in the press with the chief 
design to “influence” the editorial and 
news tenor of the press and thus to 
counteract the effects of public owner- 
ship propaganda. What success the 
financial and industrial magnates at- 
tained by this indirect method of “sub- 
sidizing the press”—and in thousands 
of instances by direct methods of gain- 
ing possession of newspapers by pur- 
chase or by “buying off” the pub- 
lishers and editors—will be seen from 
a perusal of the fifty-two volumes of 
evidence collected by the Federal 
Trade Commission in its investigation 
of public utilities in their relation to 
the American press, which were pub- 
lished in 1934. Here are some of the 
major revelations of this investigation 
concerning our “free” press. Out of 
223 editors of Illinois newspapers, 191 
declared themselves against public 
ownership of public utilities. In Bos- 
ton nearly all newspapers were bought 
by the power trust. In New York 
City the owner of three big news- 
papers was listed as a mouthpiece of 
the utilities. The majority of the edi- 
tors of North and South Dakota news- 
papers agreed to run propaganda of 
the utilities if “paid for.” In Ohio, 625 
out of 700 newspapers were “reached” 
or corrupted by the utilities. And so 
on through the forty-eight states. How 
did the “control” of the newspapers 
“reached” express itself? In editorial 
attacks on and in special articles 


HE AMERICAN TEACHER 


against the policies of the Roosevelt 
administration, the Muscle Shoals and 
Boulder Dam project; in continuous 
vituperation of senators, representa- 
tives and publicists favoring public 
ownership of public utilities; in attacks 
of state bills intended to regulate the 
power companies; and in the periodic 
whipping up of “red scares” and of 
“communist infiltration” in our free in- 
stitutions. Most of the newspapers 
either entirely suppressed the findings 
of the Federal Trade Commission or 
buried sketchy items among the finan- 
cial news, which the average reader 
never reads. The proceedings of the 
Nye Committee, investigating the ex- 
tent of the profits of the munitions in- 
dustry, received the same scant notice 
in the American press, with few ex- 
ceptions. ... 

What is the attitude of the Ameri- 
can press in the incessant struggles 
between capital and labor? Invariably 
the majority of the papers will be 
found on the side of capital and 
against labor. Rarely was a major 
strike supported by the press. The de- 
liberate fabrication of lies and the 
whipping up of “public sentiment” 
against the strikers in the San Fran- 
cisco general strike in 1934 on the part 
of the majority of the newspapers 
throughout the country, which resulted 
in its failure, proves conclusively what 
little sympathy organized labor may 
and should expect from the “free” 
press. Tom Mooney, Sacco and Van- 
zetti, and the dozens of other martyrs 
in the cause of labor emancipation 
from wage slavery never received fair 
play in the capitalist newspapers, with 
but few notable exceptions. During 
the early years of the present crisis, 
few were the newspapers who did not 
hide the effects of unemployment, who 
did not distort the figures of the un- 
employed, and who did not deliber- 
ately instil in the public mind a false 
sense of security. As a result, when 
the banks failed in 1932 and 1933, it 
is the workers who lost most of their 
earnings and suffered more keenly. 


While the columns of the American 
press are largely closed to the spokes- 
men of the labor and radical move- 
ment, they are liberally extended to 
the propagandists of American and 
European finance capital, imperialism 
and reaction. The New York Times 
served for several years as the mouth- 
piece of the Czarist White Guardists 
until exposed by the New Republic. 
Two years after the Bolshevik Revolu- 
tion, it reported no less than ninety- 
one times that the Soviets “were tot- 
tering to their fall.” Again an out- 
spoken apologist of Mussolini and all 
his dastardly deeds, in the person of 
its correspondent, Arnaldo Cortesi, has 
had for a number of years free play 
in the columns of this great news- 
paper. William Randolph Hearst, too, 
through his ownership of a chain of 
newspapers going into millions ol 
American homes in strategic parts of 
the United States, has, unfortunately, 
employed often in the past and is en- 
gaged in employing at the present 
time his intrenched powers in the jour- 
nalistic world in behalf of imperialism, 
reaction and fascism..For years the 
mouthpiece of the worst brand of 
American imperialism—to which his 











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NOVEMBER-DECEMBER, 


vicious diatribes against Spain, Mexico 
and Japan testify—Mr. Hearst has 
now deemed advisable, for reasons of 
his own, to lend his newspapers to the 
yoicing of the anti-Soviet designs and 
hatreds of Hitler and his cohorts. Ac- 
cordingly, Communism and _ Soviet 
Russia have become the new obses- 
sions of Hearst and of his associates. 


While the reading of Freedom of the 
Press leaves the mentally advanced 
reader in a depressed mood—cruelly 
exploding a notion many of us have 
cherished since childhood, namely, that 
in this land of the free the press is free 
—Mr. Seldes sees no ground for alarm. 
In the first place, the fact remains 
that dozens of great newspapers re- 
main uncontaminated despite the pow- 
erful pressure of all forms of tempta- 
tion. They thus continue to serve as 
the best exemplars of the spirit of a 
free press and will function as a bea- 
con light for those who wish to follow 
in their path. In the second place, 
while we are still free from fascism, 
the workers have the opportunity to 
build up their own press, either as in- 
dependent ventures or as organs of 
their trade unions, and thus develop a 
powerful antidote against the vicious 
influence of the kept press. In the 
third place, a new force has come into 
being which promises to revolutionize 
the character and policies of the Amer- 
ican press, this is, The American 
Newspaper Guild, the trade union of 
American newspapermen and editorial 
writers. Its code of ethics calls for a 
genuine free press, its program calls 
for economic and social standards for 
the newspapermen and women com- 
mensurate with their calling and train- 
ing, and for the sole control of the 
news and editorials by those who 
write them. The American Newspaper 
Guild has already enrolled thousands 
of members and has shown its mettle 
in dozens of scuffles with the publish- 
ers on the picket line. It is the hope 
of many of its leaders to have the 
American Newspaper Guild affiliated 
with the American Federation of 
Labor, and as a recent vote on this 
proposition within the Guild indicated, 
the time is not far away when the 
American Newspaper Guild will be- 
come a fighting unit of the A. F. of L. 
All these factors and forces, therefor, 
make the case for a free press in the 
United States hopeful. 


Freedom of the Press is an extreme- 
ly valuable study, written in a grip- 
ping style, and should adorn the li- 
brary of every friend of freedom in all 
domains of human life. 





Report OF THE NATIONAL SurveY oF Po- 
TENTIAL Propuct Capacity. Prepared 
under the sponsorship of the New 
York City Housing Authority and 
Works Division of the Emergency Re- 
lief Bureau, City of New York. Har- 
old Loeb, director. 247 pp. Reviewed 
by Joel Seidman. 


What volume of goods and services 
might be produced in the United 
States if physical factors and knowl- 
edge alone limited production? This 
is the fascinating question that Harold 
Loeb and his associates attempt to an- 
swer statistically. 


1935 

To aid them in their study, a master 
chart or flow-sheet was designed, 
showing actual production, capacity 


production, and desirable production. 
The flow of goods from raw materials 
to finished products was shown on the 
chart, and each commodity considered 
in relation to the entire economy. 
Sources of raw material, adequacy of 
transportation facilities, capacity of 
manufacturing equipment, availability 
of power and labor supply—these and 
similar factors were studied in detail. 


The authors found that we were 
able to produce many commodities in 
quantities greater than any possible de- 
mand. Transportation facilities were 
found to be far ahead of the need. In 
the case of housing, on the other hand, 
it was estimated that from five to ten 
years would be required to house ade- 
quately the section of the population 
whose present living conditions are de- 
plorable. The capacity of the food- 
processing industries exceed both 
available supplies of raw materials and 
budget needs. The textile and clothing 
industry were equipped in 1929 to pro- 
duce double the quantity § actually 
turned out. ; 





In 1929, the year of greatest national 
income, goods and services to the 
value of $93,000,000,000 were produced. 
The authors estimate that $135,000,- 
000,000 could have been our national 
income that year, and that the loss to 
the consumer therefore totalled $42,- 
000,000,000. As our national income 
decreased during the depression, this 
estimated loss to the consumer reached 
a peak of $70,000,000,000 in 1932. For 
the five years from 1929 to 1933, in- 
clusive, the estimated loss reaches the 
staggering total of $287,000,000,000. 
“Tt is obvious,” the authors assert, 
“that this period represents an orgy of 
extravagance probably without prece- 
dent in the history of the world.” 


Nor would it require an onerous 
work schedule to produce these values. 
The rapid increase in productivity per 
worker, both in manufacturing and 
agriculture, suggests that working 
hours can be successively curtailed in 
the future without diminishing produc- 
tion. A more rational method of dis- 
tribution could drastically reduce the 
army of workers now required for 
wholesale and retail trade. The au- 
thors estimate that, under 1929 condi- 
tions, we have in our customary work- 
ing force almost a million more 
workers than are required to produce 
the goods and services which total 
$135,000,000,000 in the budget. The po- 
tential working force exceeds by 13,- 
000,000 the required number. 


Production is kept far below the 
possible figure, the authors believe, be- 
cause competition now forces enter- 
prisers to reduce wage costs, thereby 
lowering purchasing power. Instead 
of production being governed by a 
grossly inadequate national income 
largely consisting of wages, they argue 
that wages should be based on the 
goods and services that can be pro- 
vided. This can be done, quite obvi- 
ously, only if our existing profit 
economy is replaced by a system of 
production for use. This means the re- 
placement of capitalism by a coopera- 
tive commonwealth. 


27 


“The Western World,” Harold Loeb 
concludes, “is stultified by a conven- 
tion which has come down from the 
long ages of scarcity. It does not yet 
realize that modern technology has 
abolished the necessity of withholding 
from consumption most items of the 
human budget.” 


Help Wanted 


Michael B. Scheler, 475 Wyona St., 
Brooklyn, N. Y., editor, author and 
student of the labor movement, is plan- 
ning an American labor encyclopedia to 
include all available documents such as 
constitutions, programs and declara- 
tions of principles of labor and radical 
organizations as well as biographical 
data on leaders in this movement. He 
would be glad to hear from persons who 
can contribute relevant material (out- 
of-print books, pamphlets, periodicals, 
etc., concerning the labor movement; 
photographs and intimate sketches of 
pioneers of all social movements) as 
well as personal assistance in carrying 
forward this projected work. Full cred- 
it will be cheerfully given and con- 
tributed material, if desired, returned 
as soon as checked and copied. 





Roap To War. By Walter Millis. Bos- 
ton and New York; Houghton Miff- 
lin Company, 1935. 460 pages. Re- 
viewed by F. Melvyn Lawson. 


It may be tragic to realize that it has 
taken eighteen years for American 
readers to be presented with a compre- 
hensive background for our entrance 
into the greatest war of all time, but 
it is true, nevertheless. Walter Millis, 
whose Martial Spirit established him as 
one of this country’s keenest students 
of the Spanish-American war period, 
now gives thoughtful Americans an 
even more penetrating analysis of the 
forces and events which sucked us into 
the European maelstrom during the 
second decade of the twentieth century. 
His latest work, well named, Road to 
War, is an intensive study of America 
during the historic months before our 
formal declaration of hostilities with 
Germany. Through this account he 
presents in detail a picture of the inter- 
action of events between Europe and 
America from 1914-1917 as no former 
student of this period has done. 


The book seeks neither to be a white- 
wash nor a denunciation. It merely at- 
tempts to hack through the underbrush 
of prejudice, propaganda, and misrep- 
resentation which long has obscured 
the real road America was travelling 
during those hectic three years prior to 
the Spring of 1917, and to allow the 
facts to speak for themselves. How ar- 
ticulate those facts are cannot be de- 
scribed in a brief review. The reader 
must come to grips with them himself. 


The whole account is so skillfully in- 


_tegrated that the story has no well de- 


fined hero in the romantic sense of the 
word. But it is interesting to find that 
one widely known American person- 
ality who was well nigh disfigured by 
the relentless barbs of persecution dur- 
ing the war era, is made whole again 
by the perspective which only the years 
can bring, and is revealed as seeing 
America’s tragic path more clearly than 
many of his associates who were 











28 


thought to possess considerably more 
insight. The man was William Jen- 
nings Bryan, and his pronouncements 
from the State Department which were 
so bitterly condemned or contemptu- 
ously received when issued, now appear 
as gems of prophetic vision. The 
Bryan-scoffers who have contended 
that the “Commoner” was a pitiful 
choice for the first cabinet position may 
yet be forced to eat crow. In fact, had 
Mr. Wilson been half as fortunate in his 
choice of an ambassador to the Court 
of St. James as he was in his selection 
of a Secretary of State, perhaps both 
he and the American people would have 
less to regret. 

In view of the present situation in 
Europe and its potential effects upon 
the daily lives of every person in the 
United States, the facts presented in 
Road to War should be the common prop- 
erty of every American citizen. Unless 
they become so, there is already consid- 
erable evidence to prove that this coun- 
try may unwittingly walk the same 
highway toward the coming world war 
that it did in the last. 


New Frontiers, Authentic Re- 
search Magazine, to Be 
Launched January 1 


A new weapon in the armory of 
fighters for the cause of labor and the 
new social order is announced by the 
League for Industrial Democracy, 112 
East 19th Street, N. oa 

New Frontiers, announced as “peri- 
odical studies in economics and poli- 
tics”, will be edited by a distinguished 
board of experts in the field of re- 
search and the new social orientation. 
Early issues of the publication will be 
devoted to detailed studies of the 
white collar and professional workers 
under capitalism, industrial unionism, 
the Negro worker in America today, 
federal appropriations for recovery, 
social security legislation, credit as an 
‘ instrument of social control, and other 
topics. 

Ten monthly numbers will be issued 
during the year. In addition, subscrib- 
ers will receive free a full-sized vol- 
ume on economics or social politics 
written by a recognized expert. Sub- 
scription price is $2.50 for publication 
and book, but paid up members of the 
League for Industrial Democracy will 
get both free. 


On the editorial board are Frederick 
V. Field, Mary Dublin, Mary Fox, 
Abram Harris, Sidney Hook, Harry 
W. Laidler, Joseph P. Lash, Robert 
Morss Lovett, Alonzo Myers, Orlie 
Pell, Carl Raushenbush, Esther Rau- 
shenbush, Joel Seidman, Maxwell S. 
Stewart, Walter Wilson, Robert G. 
Woolbert, Theresa Wolfson. 


Today new frontiers again lie 
ahead, and we must back our way 
throtigh the present-day jungle of fear 
and suspicion and ignorance, poverty 
and anti-unionism and war and fas- 
cism. The implements to be used in 
making the road include knowledge, 
understanding, facts, RESEARCH. 
That's why the League for Industrial 
Democracy, a pioneer in education 
and struggle for labor’s rights, has 
sponsored New Frontiers. 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 





You May Be Nextl . . . . «© © «© «© @ « 
Deteei Wour feet . ww wt tl tl lw wt te AO Cr 





From THE NEW YORK TEACHER 
72 Fifth Avenue., New York 


THE PORTEOUS CASE: A Challenge to Teachers and the 


Community. 
Published by The Teachers’ Union. 10 cents. 


The Teachers Union presents a new publication. In thirty-one tight pages 
are crowded the history of the now famous Porteous case, a critical exami- 
nation of the evidence brought forth in the trial, a blasting exposé of the 
star-chamber methods of investigation followed by the Board of Superin- 
tendents, an analysis of the significance of the case for school-children, 
parents, teachers, and the community at large, and a description of the line 
of action that must now be taken in defense of a wronged teacher and a 
threatened system of education. 


Any attempt to write a résumé of this little masterpiece of concentration 
would be futile. To omit any of the facts presented would be to throw the 
story off balance; to attempt to sharpen the fine edge of argument would 
be but to gather filings. No dust lies upon this brief. Its lines are clear, 
its story bald, its argument sharp, its appeal ringing. Rather the reviewer 
is likely to add, injecting words for exclamation marks, running comments 
of amazement, anger, bewilderment, and applause. 


To the devotee of penny-dreadfuls, we recommend a wild tale of poison- 
letters, plots of baby stealing, threats thrown by an unknown voice across 
telephone wires in the dead of night, curses slung on desks by an unseen 
hand, skeletons found hanging on doors at the witching hour, sluggings 
administered by thugs on dark New York streets, and attacks (in self- 
defense) reminiscent of the fate of Abelard. To the addict of detective 
tales we recommend an exercise in discovering the villain and his motives. 
To the humorist we recommend a five word classic which pierces a darkly 
serious section to inject a laugh that shakes the reader out of the story into 
sanity. To the logician and the legalist we recommend, on the one hand, 
an examination of the absurdity and confusion which administrators still 
foist upon teachers and teaching in all the grandeur of authority, and on 
the other, the sure light directed by the writers through the thick fog cloak- 


ing malicious design. 


We recommend this slight pamphlet, our little David, for its courageous 
stand—and its sure victory. 


May we quote the challenge? 


“The case of Mrs. Henrietta Porteous is a challenge to every teacher in 
New York City, to every parent, and to every individual concerned with 
the education of the children in our city. It is not only a case of a great 
injustice done to a capable teacher who has performed her work conscien- 
tiously and earnestly; it is a case that shows that all is not well in New 
York City’s educational system, a system that affects the lives, progress, and 
future of 1,250,000 children as well as of 35,000 teachers. The assumption 
on the part of the teachers of the right to think for themselves, to express 
themselves, to act in defense of their interests, to exercise the ordinary 
rights of citizenship'is a crime, in the eyes of the authorities, that has to be 
punished, no matter what methods have to be used. 


“The educational authorities have had their say in the case of Mrs. 
Porteous and of certain other teachers in P. S. 174, Brooklyn; it is now 
the duty of parents, teachers, and all progressive-minded forces in the com- 
munity to take up the challenge, to express an opinion, and to see to it that 
certain decisive changes are effected. Public education, as conducted by 


the Mandels, is on trial!” 
M. L. 


OTHER UNION PUBLICATIONS 


10 cents 























NovEMBER-DECEMBER, 1935 


The Social Frontier 


A Journal of Educational Criticism and Reconstruction 
GEORGE S. COUNTS, Editor 


Here at last is a Journal which no intelligent layman 
or teacher can afford to miss. * * * 

The sixth anniversary of the Depression still finds the 
school almost exclusively limited to teaching the three 
R’s and fundamental conservatism. Clearly, the trans- 
formation of the school into a socially reconstructive 
agency concerns more than the professional educators. 
It is a task which concerns not only teachers but also 
intelligent laymen. 

The Social Frontier provides an arena for reasoned 
attack upon the great social and educational problems of 
the emerging age. It makes no claim to neutrality. On 
the contrary, it affirms emphatically that the way out lies 
FORWARD AND TO THE LEFT. With all the 
vigor it can command, the Journal combats those forces 
in the school and out that tend to limit the spread of so- 
cially significant ideas. The articles in The Social Fron- 
tier are devoted to a constructive review of the whole 
complex of American culture as it relates to the develop- 
ment of human personality. 


THEY SAY - - - 


“If you prefer to have your pet theories of education 
challenged ; if you like to be kept from mentally sitting 
down ....; if you don’t mind being made to realize that 
you have not concerned yourself seriously enough with 
this or that question, then you will probably enjoy The 
Social Frontier.’ —The Christian Science Monitor 


“Brilliant and effective. .... I can hardly imagine a more 
exhilarating or rewarding experience, for an open- 
minded teacher who is eager to learn, than a careful and 
consistent examination of The Social Frontier.” 
—Dr. Bernard Clausen 
Chairman of Community Forum, Pittsburgh, Pa. 


“We are devoting the major part of each teachers’ meet- 
ing to a discussion of current socio-economic issues. In 
this connection The Social Frontier is a dependable 
spark plug—quotations therefrom never fail to produce 
a kick.” —A Superintendent of Schools 


“The most promising and interestingly realistic educa- 
tional journal of our generation.” 
—Harry Elmer Barnes, New York World-Telegram 


In forthcoming issues: 


The Educational Frontier of the Churches. 
—George A. Coe 


A Doctor Looks at Our Profit Economy. 
—Frankwood E. Williams 


Collectivism and the Federal Constitution. 
—Harold J. Laski 
Social Trends in Contemporary Art. 
—Lewis Mumford 
Must Civilization Commit Suicide? 
—Benjamin Ginsburg 
The Social Science Curriculum. 
—Charles A. Beard 


Economists Adrift. 
—Ferdinand Lundberg 


A Monthly Article by John Dewey 
Also articles by: 


Sidney Hook 
William H. Kilpatrick 
Broadus Mitchell 
Jesse H. Newlon 
Harry A. Overstreet 
E. C, Lindeman 


Boyd H. Bode 
Lewis Corey 
Joseph K. Hart 
Henry P. Fairchild 
Louis M. Hacker 
Harold Rugg 





THE SOCIAL FRONTIER 
534 West 124th Street 
New York City 


Please enter my name for: 


*Canada $2.50 





A year’s subscription to The Social Frontier, for which I enclose $2.00*.................:- a 


ss ope kiten a keeee 


eoecoeeeeeeeoseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeseeeeeoeeees 


ceeeere eee eee eee eee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeens 














30 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


EDUCATION FOR SOCIAL CONTROL 
THE ANNALS, NOVEMBER, 1935 


Edited by Harold Benjamin, Ph.D. 


Professor of Education, University of Minnesota 
@ 


A volume containing 20 articles edited specially 
for teachers and dealing with the most important 
issues now confronting educators. Problems, ob- 
jectives, methods, agencies and foreign experience 
in the field covered by the above title are all sur- 
veyed in a publication of approximately 260 pages. 


$2.00 


The American Academy of Political and Social Science 
3457 Walnut Street ys Philadelphia 


























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Wabash Ave., Chicago, Illinois. 


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NY@\ YAN aN Ya\ivaxivaxt 


NiL@\ NAN Y@N aN YANN YON YaXhYaxl/axyex 


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| Published by 
AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 


506 South Wabash Avenue 
Chicago, Illinois 








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