| ‘The AMI ERI CA N 






TEACHER 














i 
HOVEMBER 
(1938 


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: 


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THE DAYTON SCHOOL CRISIS ° 


SCHOOL FOR BARBARIANS 
By Erika Mann 


FEDERAL AID FOR EDUCATION 
By Frank P. Graham 


BY THEIR WORKS 
By John W. Studebaker 


BOOK REVIEWS - - - - - - - DEPARTMENTS 


Published by the AMERICAN FEDERATION of TEACHERS 











Inside the Cover 





In light of the persecution of the Jews in 
Germany, the poem by Emma Lazarus, an 
American poet of Spanish-Jewish parentage, 
inscribed on the base of the Statue of Lib- 
erty takes on added significance: 

Give me your tired, your poor, 

Your huddled masses yearning to 

breathe free, 

The wretched refuse of your teeming 

shore, 

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed 

to me; 

I lift my lamp beside the golden door. 

Add to that a sentence from George 
Washington’s Thanksgiving Day Message of 
1795: 

. . humbly and fervently to beseech 
the kind Author of these blessings . . . to 
render this country more and more a safe 
and propitious asylum for the unfortunate 
of other countries.” 

A recent foreign press dispatch which 
appeared in the Chicago Daily News said 
(with no comment whatsoever) that Colonel 
Lindbergh would not have as much trouble 
finding housing facilities in Berlin because 





a number of well-to-do Jews were giving 
up their apartments. A Swedish language 
paper, Svae, of Worcester, Mass., recently 
said that “Colonel Lindbergh, as an Amer- 
ican and as an American of Swedish de- 
scent, should not choose to associate him- 
self with a nation for which neither the 
land of his birth nor the land of his an- 
cestry has anything but detestation.” 
*> * * 


One of the surprising (or not so surpris- 
ing) things about the Dayton school crisis 
was the number of students who wrote let- 
ters to the Dayton papers, indicating their 
indignation over the closing of the schools. 
One letter I thought worth reprinting. 

To the Editor of The Herald: 

In one of our classes this fall we had 
to make a scrapbook on the City of 
Dayton. We got some of our material 

from the Dayton Chamber of Com- 
merce. From it we learned that Day- 





ton factories have a value of $204,- 

933,808 and a city pay roll of $94,- 

569,708.81; that retail trade is $80,- 

493,000. We learned that bank clear- 

ings in 1937 were $179,817,747; that 

building permits in 1937 were $4,377,- 

120; that $12,000,000 is invested in 

hotels. We have a million-dollar art 

institute, 1,000 acres of parks, a 310- 

acre municipal airport and one of the 

finest “Y’s” in the country. 

All of this we put in our scrapbooks 
—and a few weeks later the schools 
close for LACK OF MONEY! Because 
the people of Dayton refase us money 
for our education, not only once but 
for five or six years, and now there is 
none at all. 

Dayton wants to be tops in things 
that make a lot of show and noise like 
aviation and things that are advertised 
all over the world, but it turns thumbs 
down on its boys and girls. 

—A DAYTON THIRTY-NINER. 
* * + 

I was intrigued by the Ford ad which 
appeared in Colliers, October 29. In a 
small box was the following message signed, 
“Henry Ford”: 

America knows but one direction, and 
that is—onward! Time will bring 
changes, but mot in the main course. 
The openings and opportunities for men 
and women who can do things, who 
know their jobs, are becoming more 
numerous. Our schools should bear 
this in mind and prepare their students 
for life. Every school should be a place 
where students learn by doing. 

Mr. Ford is not so lenient to labor or- 
ganizers (or men in his own plants) who 
wish to “learn by doing.” The N.L.R.B. 
reports throughout the country indicate that 
Mr. Ford fires workers who “learn by 
doing.” Educators as a group have been 
too kindly toward Mr. Ford. The N.E.A. 
at their Detroit convention in 1937 gave 
Mr. W. J. Cameron (Ford Sunday Evening 
Hour) more space on the program than 
most of the educators who spoke at the 
meeting. The only speaker (whose remarks 
were reported in the daily press) who 
struck out against “fixed minds” in our 
society at this convention was the dean of 
America’s educators, Dr. William Kilpatrick. 





































The Cincinnati Typographical Union an- 
nounces that the American Racing Record, 
which has been non-union for twenty years, 
has signed up for the union label; the union 
label should improve the “tips” which the 
paper prints. 

The Irish Sweepstakes was good to one 
union member, Charlie Cohen, a member of 
the New York I.L.G.W.U. since 1910. Mr. 
Cohen had a ticket on Archduke II, the 
favorite in the race. However, he sold half 
interest in the ticket to a gambling syndicate 
which paid him $15,000. When the race 
was run Archduke II trailed, and the ticket 
paid only $4,000, of which Mr. Cohen got 
half. As Mr. Cohen put it in the interview 
in Justice, the 1.L.G.W.U. weekly, “Being a 
building chairman, teaches you a great deal 
of common sense.” 


HAVE YOU SEEN THESE? 

The Unique Function of Education in 
American Democracy, published by 
the Educational Policies Committee of 
the N.E.A. Some of Mr. Beard’s fine 
handiwork; a must for all members of 
the A. F. of T. Educational Policies Com- 
mittee. 


Bring the Crisis into the Classroom, 
by Commissioner Studebaker. A swell 
job on the recent international crisis and 
the responsibility of the classroom teach- 
er. Write to the Office of Education for 
a copy. Also ask for a copy of Stude- 
baker’s, Can Discussion Muzzle Guns? 


The Federal Government and Education, 
by the President’s Advisory Committee. 
A fine 31-page pamphlet which analyzes 
public education in the United States and 
outlines the improvements suggested by 
the Committee. Very good for the lay 
public. May be secured in single copies 
(free) from the Advisory Committee on 
Education, Washington, D. C. May be 
obtained at 10 cents per copy in bundle 
lots from the U. S. Government Printing 
Office. 

Grorce T. GUERNSEY. 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 






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The 


MERICAN TEACHER 


Published by The American Federation of Teachers 





VOLUME XxXill 


NOVEMBER, 1938 


NUMBER 2 





IN THIS ISSUE: 


8 ere Coe John W. Studebaker 5 
os ash beg 0 wes + 9a ee LR Erika Mann 7 
Federal Aid for Education................... Frank P. Graham 9 
The Dayton School Crisis. ................0- A Dayton Teacher 11 
Curriculum Revision in Washington.......... Stanley F. Atwood 14 
ae ae x: SURE Oe Te FROM, ..o.0 ics ovensnawasenaenss 15 
Oe SN nn ob aresudeneceweentes Kermit Eby 16 


TS sy ease cammnake Wanda Taeschner 18 


Vocational Education Aided by A. F. of L........ Florence Clark 19 
DEPARTMENTS: 
Inside the Cover. ..... ssis sigan weal nace ke era gta eR oe ed ae 2 
saa es a eins Nake kt wh a aan ti we a 
The President’s Page, Every Member an Organizer............. 6 
Among the New Books: 
Youth Tell Their Story............... Doxey A. Wilkerson 21 
Were We Guinea Pigs?............... Leif Thorne-Thomsen 22 
They Still Draw Pictures!................. John J. DeBoer 23 
The Folklore of Capitalism................ Evelyn Sholund 24 
NS ee ee eee 25 
EER ICL EP EE en ee 28 
re a Sonees bbaeWsWenne ine SRK Cw hee aN eae 31 
i 1. sacha oiaban Rpaated Maa e eae cave aed 31 
Drawings by Chandler Montgomery 
—_——g—_—_ 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 
Grorce T. Guernsey, Editor 


ENTERED as second class matter October 18, 1933, at the post office at 
Chicago, Illinois, under the act of March 3, 1879. Acceptance for mailing 
at special rate of postage provided for in Section 1103, Act of February 28, 
1925, authorized November 3, 1926. 

SUBSCRIPTION: $1.00 for the year—Foreign $1.10—Single copies, 25c. 
Published monthly except June, July and August, at 506 S. Wabash Ave., 
Chicago, Ill. Subscribers are requested to give prompt notice of changes of 
address. Remittances should be made in postal or express money orders, 
draft, stamps, or check. 

Be 4s 








I’ the October issue of the American Association of Uni- 
versity Professors Bulletin, Professors Cummins and 
Larrabee of Union College provocatively discuss the ques- 
tion: “Individual versus Collective Bargaining for Pro- 
fessors.” Wittily the professors dispose of the idea that 
bargaining of any type is out of place or undignified. 
Recognizing that most teachers regard their work as more 
than a means of money-making, the professors suggest 
that the wages of teachers, like the wages of other em- 
ployees, are based on community demand and conditions, 
and fluctuate with changes in demand and conditions. The 
professors then demonstrate that bargaining is today im- 
possible on a person-to-person basis since the individual 
professor finds himself dealing “with the powerclad repre- 
sentative of a collective body, usually a large corporation, 
firmly embedded in the capital structure of our acquisitive 


NOVEMBER, 1938 


society, and ruled by a board of trustees who inevitably 
represent, by and large, the ‘giving classes.’”” The question 
therefore remains: what kind of collective bargaining? 
To the writers of the A. A. U. P. article, collective bar- 
gaining as represented by trade-union methods is as un- 
desirable for professors as individual bargaining. First, 
because professors lack the cohesion necessary to use these 
methods effectively; secondly, because professors will, 





through the use of such methods, permanently antagonize 
the administration with whom cooperation must be carried 
out. As explanation of the first difficulty hindering trade- 
union bargaining, the professors argue that most professors 
are “prima donnas,” and labor under the illusory notion 
that each is the exceptionally strong person who requires 
no assistance. Furthermore, 

they contend that the “demand 

for solidarity in the entire teach- 

ing profession from top to bot- 

tom” holds no interest for pro- \ \ i 
fessors. As explanation of the 

second difficulty, they argue that 

“face-saving is a necessity in academic diplomacy” and that 
tact is necessary to keep administrative officers from com- 
mitting themselves to impossible positions. The closing 
argument of the professors is that college teachers should be 
more reasonable than other human beings and should not 
descend “into the streets” until all resources of persuasion 
shall have been exhausted. 

Thorough comment on this analysis is impossible in 
these editorial columns, especially since the professors have, 
without quibbling, touched essential problems. But a 
number of fallacies may be briefly noted. For one thing, 
the professors take a rather static and somewhat outdated 
view of the nature of college professors. What they say 
about professorial individualism appears to be less true 
today than in 1928 and implies possibilities for action which 
are neglected. In the second place, no real analysis is made 
of the bases of attacks on professional needs and of the 
forces with which professors must contend and cooperate 
in order to protect and advance educational standards, 
academic freedom, and the interests of the profession. The 
result is that the whole question of bartering with an ad- 
ministration is conceived of in terms of “face-saving,” 
“reasoning,” and “friendly counsel.” That these are de- 
sirable is not to be gainsaid, but the question frequently 
is: are they possible? 
Finally, it is clear throughout the article that the writers 











regard trade-union bargaining as something that necessarily 
operates in extremes. They contrast A. A. U. P. and A. F. of 
T. handling of the Davis case as the difference between issu- 
ing a reasonable report and picketing, when the truth is 
that the A. F. of T. did both. Furthermore, before the A. F. 
of T. picketed and won a hearing before the Yale Corpora- 
tion—as the writers forget to mention—the A. F. of T. made 
numerous written requests for a conference on the case. 
The difference between a trade union and a professional 
organization, it appears to us, is not one of unreasonable- 
ness in dealing with the administration but of resourceful- 
ness in tactics and skill in mobilizing effective public 
opinion. However, what is perhaps most needed at the 
present time is cooperation and conference by the A. F. of T. 
and the A. A. U. P. in meeting mutual difficulties. Perhaps, 
out of such mediation will come the fusion of high ideals 
and economic realism which the writers of the article urge 
as necessary for collective bargaining in the college field. 


x** 


EATH rates among workers who receive less than 

$1,000 a year is twice that of the rest of the popula- 
tion, according to a study by Miss Josephine Roche of 
Colorado who heads the United States Public Health 
Service. 

In 30 per cent of serious illness among relief families, 
no physician’s care is received, the report shows, while in 
28 per cent of such illnesses in families just above the relief 
level, no physician’s care is received. Further statistics 
show that the babies of the poor die at a rate five times 
higher than the babies of the moderately well-to-do. On 
the whole, the report summarizes, medical care decreases 
sharply as the need for it increases. 

W.P.A. Administrator Harry L. Hopkins in another study 
on health found that the high mortality rate among babies, 
totalling more than 120,000 each year, can be blamed 
directly on poverty. One-half of the babies born into the 
U. S. each year are born into families of the depressed 
one-third of the nation. 

Poverty, he said, also is the sole cause why a large 
percentage of the children who survive are permanently 
crippled by disease and undernourishment. Also, the mor- 
tality among women in childbirth is higher in this country 
than in any of the leading 25 nations of the world, ex- 
cepting only Chile and Lithuania. 

Figures cited by Hopkins were gathered by the children’s 
department of the U. S. Department of Labor. 

In Milwaukee, labor unions have taken the matter of 
health of their members into their own hands. The Fed- 
erated Trades Council, local A. F. of L. central labor body, 
is completing plans for a cooperative labor hospital. 

Capitalized at $15,000, the new hospital will contain 
50 beds. The venture was undertaken to retaliate against 
the Milwaukee chapter of the American Medical Associa- 
tion, which expelled five local physicians for providing 


4 








Acting on instructions of the 
A.M.A., local hospitals refused to accept patients from 
the ousted doctors. 


group medical service. 


xx 
VIDENCE that organized boycotting of non-union prod- 
E ucts is effective is shown by a recent study of maga- 
zines, which have been placed on the “unfair list” by the 
printing-trades unions. 

Based on a survey by the Standard Statistics Company, 
the study shows that advertising lineage of the non-union 
publications was as much as 50 per cent off for the first 
eight months of the year. 

The unfair magazines are listed as the Curtis Group, 
which includes Saturday Evening Post, Ladies Home Jour- 
nal, and Country Gentleman, and Life and Time. The 
latter two are printed by the R. R. Donnelley & Sons 
Company, in Chicago, the largest non-union plant in the 
country. 

For the eight months period Time suffered a loss of 30 
per cent in advertising, while Life, the picture magazine, 
dropped 52 per cent in advertising. For the Curtis pub- 
lications gross revenues were down 57 per cent this year 
as compared to the 1929 level. Net earnings last year were 
$4,120,509, as compared to $1,128,482 for the first nine 
months of this year. 

While Standard Statistics blames the “business depres- 
sion” for the declining revenues, printing-trades labor 
officials point to the nationwide protests of organized labor 
against publications which consistently refuse to estab- 
lish union-shop working conditions in their plants. 

xk 

A’ we go to press, the National Academic Freedom com- 

mittee announces victories in three cases. In Texas 
the dismissal of John Woodruff and E. C. Barksdale, leaders 
of the Goose Creek local, was prevented. In Minnesota 
Clifford Herness, dismissed last June from the Bloomington 
Schools because of his activities as president of Local 492, 
has secured a temporary appointment as principal at Flood- 
wood, Minn. In New York thirteen teachers won a court 
decision ordering their reinstatement. 

In Goose Creek, Texas, complete victory was achieved 
through the agency of sympathetic board members and 
public support. The attempted dismissals of John Woodruff 
and E. C. Barksdale at the opening of the current semester 
came partly as a result of last spring’s successful campaign 
of the teachers to prevent the dismissal of six teachers and 


to secure a tenure contract for all. It came partly, also, asa ~ 


result of John Woodruff’s work in helping launch a teachers’ 


union, establish an independent teacher-labor paper, set up ~ 


: 
& 


a teachers’ cooperative filling station, and stimulate teachers 
to engage in political activity. Last spring in the school- 
board elections in Goose Creek, three labor candidates were 
easily elected. 

As the school year opened, Superintendent Harmon Low- 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


man demanded the outright dismissals of both Woodruff ~ 














IT ila es gt eee 









RAAT EMOTO 0 











is being paid today as well as a word against 
which bitter criticism is being directed. 

It is a big word capable of carrying a great deal 
of content. But among other things it is a word that 
stands for freedom of expression and free inquiry. 
Loyalty to the democratic idea cannot be instilled in 
the minds of young people by methods which are in- 
consistent with the democratic idea itself. By their 
works in the classroom and in the life of the com- 
munity the students learn what educators mean by 
democracy. On this basis, in part, learners make up 
their minds whether democracy is a way of life which 
appeals to them. 

The school where free discussion is discouraged, 
where inquiry into significant problems is hushed up, 
where teachers are forced to avoid the controversial 
or where teaching is itself dogmatic or dictatorial dis- 
credits the democratic idea in the eyes of students. 
The learners are much more impressed by the practice 
of democratic procedures than by description and ex- 
hortation. 

The best defense of our democratic tradition we 


Dirieice is a word to which much lip-service 








By Their Works 


John W. Studebaker, Commissioner of Education 


can have is schools devoted to the practice of demo- 
cratic principles of free speech, free inquiry, and respect 
for the right of the learners to learn. 

This places an obligation upon educators to make 
the classroom a place where young people experience 
freedom as well as study the history of free govern- 
ment. And it must be quite clear that such a class- 
room is not a protected preserve where the so-called 
teacher may hunt converts for his personal convictions. 
Rather, it is a place where the teacher helps the stu- 
dents to hunt the truth and to test it. 

We cannot permit anyone actuated by prejudice 
or vested interest to restrict this sacred search for 
truth. 

Students who have ground for saying either: “That 
teacher is trying to put something over on us” or 
“that teacher is afraid to let us find out for ourselves” 
are apt to question the sincerity of our professed loyalty 
to American democracy. 

If this is true, there must be a closing of the ranks 
of democratic-minded educators to resist in all prac- 
tical ways attempts from within or without the pro- 
fession to frustrate or to restrict free learning. 








and Barksdale. He charged both with non-cooperation and 
insubordination, although such a charge had no standing 
under the Tenure Agreement. As an instance of insubordina- 
tion, it was alleged that Barksdale had sought support of 
board members for a principal’s position left vacant by a 
leave of absence without first conferring with Superintendent 
Lowman. Mr. Woodruff was charged with the crime of hav- 
ing organized a meeting of parents and teachers on this 
matter. Superintendent Lowman, in asking outright dis- 
missal, suggested to board members that the tenure con- 
tract applied only under “normal” conditions. Publicity 
and conference with board members by union leaders caused 
the Board to decide by a vote of four to three on a public 
hearing such as is provided for in the Tenure Agreement. 
The hearing, which was held on October 10, was attended by 
400 members of the community. The teachers were repre- 
sented by an attorney retained by the Classroom Teachers 
Association, which frequently works cooperatively with the 
Goose Creek Teachers Union. The case of Woodruff was 
heard first. One of the trustees elected by labor moved to 
dismiss the charges on the ground that there was no evidence. 
The Board voted and by a ballot of four to three threw out 
the charges. A similar vote ordered the reinstatement of 
Barksdale. 

In Buffalo, N. Y., thirteen teachers, eleven of whom have 





NOVEMBER, 1938 


served from five to nineteen years, were dismissed on August 
8 of this year by the Depew Board of Education. The Board 
alleged that economy and non-residence were the bases of 
the action. Unsatisfactory though these reasons were, the 
Buffalo Teachers Union, Local 377, found still more unsatis- 
factory reasons upon investigation. It discovered that racial 
discrimination and a vengeful board member were actually 
at the bottom of the dismissals. The board member, who 
had been unsuccessful in 1934 in demanding the removal of 
a satisfactory teacher to make way for his own appointee, 
had campaigned for election to the Board in May, 1938, 
on the issue of the appointment of Polish teachers. Seeking 
to exploit a situation in which about half of the community 
population is Polish while few of the teachers are, the Board 
had dismissed thirteen non-Polish teachers. The Buffalo 
Teachers Union further found that the State Tenure Law 
passed in 1937 had been violated. The teachers, supported 
by the Union, Superintendent Crego, the Polish Everybody's 
Daily and other papers, brought suit. On September 21 
State-Supreme-Court-Justice Gold handed down a decision 
ordering the Depew Board to reinstate the teachers. Recent 
advices indicate that the Board, after reinstating the teach- 
ers on October 11, has filed an appeal and not permitted the 
teachers to return to their positions pending action on the 


appeal. 


the Presiden ts Page 











HE American Federation of Teachers celebrated its 

twenty-second birthday by holding one of the most 

unified and harmonious conventions in its history. 
The delegates recognized their historic mission to move 
forward in the task of serving and promoting the educa- 
tional needs of America. 

It is clear that in the larger sense we do not now have 
democratic education. There are 127,000 local school 
jurisdictions with the widest variations in educational op- 
portunity. In the single state of Iowa, for instance, the 
most prosperous district has 275 times the wealth per 
child of the most poverty-stricken. The poor worker in 
some districts must bear a financial load for schools alone 
80 per cent greater in some areas than in others. 

The President’s Advisory Committee on Education has 
summarized this situation by saying, “The level of educa- 
tional service that can be maintained under present circum- 
stances in many localities is below the minimum necessary 
for the preservation of democratic institutions.” 

These educational inequalities threaten the very theory 
on which democracy was founded. The result is that the 
accident of birth may determine whether a child has or 
has not adequate educational training. America was founded 
as a democracy. It was designed to prevent an hereditary 
aristocracy. Yet under present conditions the schools which 
were founded to perpetuate democracy may in fact be 
creating the very inequalities which they were designed 
to prevent. 

In the American Federation of Teachers, therefore, in 
organizing, we are doing battle for democracy. We are 
trying to realize freedom, truth, and justice in the national 
life. Our struggle for new and better schools, for ever 
higher educational policies is probably the basic struggle 
to perpetuate democracy in these United States. 

This means that one of the prime requisites in winning 
democratic education is organizing teachers. Indeed, the 
Convention this year was unanimous in the belief that this 
was one of our main tasks not because it was an end in 
itself but because of its significance for democratic edu- 
cation. 

During the past year we have spent about $17,000 in 
our organizing campaign and this year we may spend 





Every MEMBER AN ORGANIZER 





$19,000. We are in the process of trying to find out the 
most effective organizing method. At present we are using 
a combination of full-time and part-time paid organizers. 
It is too early to say how far we have perfected the best 
techniques. 

But one thing is sure, if we are to succeed in our or- 
ganizing goal, we need the cooperation of every member. 
If each member should become an active organizer and 
bring in an average of only one new member we would 
have sixty thousand at the time of the next Convention. 
Every local must not only have an active, efficient mem- 
bership committee which is seeking to enroll those within 
its own territory, but should try to start at least one new 
local elsewhere. 

Federal aid for education will be enacted into law during 
the coming session of Congress if we are alert to our op- 
portunity. The President of the United States is whole- 
heartedly behind federal aid, but it also demands your help. 
Every additional member which you bring into the Federa- 
tion means that our organization is that much more power- 
ful in its drive to impress Congress with the absolute neces- 
sity of this forward step. 

Will you do your part in organizing or are you afflicted 
with the disease of pernicious inertia? Good intentions are 
not enough. The bacteria of good intentions without action 
are like morphia and opiates. They make you feel good only 
as long as the effect lasts. 

At the start of this new year let each one of us resolve 
to do his or her part to bring in new members, to secure 
the enactment of federal aid for 
education. The responsibility rests 
on you who are reading these 
words: Wanted, every member an 
organizer, every organizer a “local” 
builder. 


JerRoME Davis 


























































C 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 



















=~ cazrrlClCrhOlTllClO 





@ ERIKA MANN 


The dark room hardly looks like a playroom. The boy 
is ten. But where are the toys, the Indian feathers, the 
games and story-books, full of adventure and spellbound 
princesses? The titles that catch the light from the door 
are those of the books read during the long “Comrades’ 
Evenings”’: 

Aviator’s Nest in the Elder-Bushes, Life Stories of 
German War Aces, The Infantry Marches On, The Book 
of German Colonies for the Young, Peter, the Soldier-Boy, 
and Sister Claire at the Front. 

She had to give him these books. She remembers it 
only too well—and his answer, when she asked whether 
he enjoyed them. “Of course,” he said, with his angry 
look, “what else is there to read?” 

Well, what else is there? And his playthings: maps, 
a short dagger, a little dangerous-looking revolver, a few 
tin soldiers, a bust of the Fiihrer, a gas mask. Gas masks 
have just been distributed among children, and the boy 
has been having fun with his. He did frighten her with 
the ugly thing; she found him, his face covered by the 
gas mask and its trunk, lying on the floor one day as 
though he were dead. When she ran up to him fearful and 
calling, he jumped up and laughed. “What nerves you 
have, Mother! What in the world will you do when the 
serious things begin to happen?” he cried, and, swinging 
the gas mask, went out. 


x*wr 


One boy’s family tried to recall their child. They gave 
him a birthday party, with ordinary, normal, “civilian” 
presents: a paintbox, a picture puzzle, a shining new 
bicycle—and lit twelve candles on his birthday cake. How 
they looked forward to that party! And it went off like 
a political conference. Six boys had been invited, and 
five of them came right on time. 

“Who’s missing?” the mother asked. 

“Can’t you see?” said the boy, “HE’s missing—Fritze- 
karl!” 

“What a pity!” she answered. That it should be just 
Fritzekarl! Two years older than her son, he was the 
leader in the Jungvolk, and his presence at the party was 
of great importance. If he did not appear, it was a sign 
of disfavor; the whole thing would be spoiled. 





1 This article is made up of selections from School for Barbarians 
by Erika Mann (New York: Modern Age Books, 160 pages, $.50). 
Erika Mann’s comprehensive picture of German youth can be ob- 
tained only by reading the whole book of which these excerpts give 
a limited view. 





NOVEMBER, 1938 


School for Barbarians’ 


The boys, in their Hitler Youth uniforms stood around 
the birthday table, not knowing quite what to do with 
the toys. The bicycle pleased all of them, with its bell 
(which they took turns ringing) and its rubber tires, which 
were so hard to get nowadays, and which the father had 
finally been able to obtain after using all his contacts in 
the Party, paying a high cash price, and emphasizing the 
fact that this was a wheel for a boy, a Jungvolk boy, and 
not for a girl who would never go to war! Now it stood 
there, complete with instructions and a copy of the German 
Cyclist, saying: “Boys on bicycles must try to remember 
the names of towns, rivers, mountains and lakes as well as 
the material and type of architecture of bridges, etc. They 
may be able to make use of this knowledge for the good 
of the Fatherland.” 

The bell rang, and the son dashed to the front door. A 
sharp voice came through, crying “Heil Hitler!” and the 
five boys at the table turned on their heels as the answer 
came in a voice already breaking, “Heil Hitler!” Their 
superior officer was received with the “German salute,” 
five hands raised, great composure, solemn faces. Solemnly, 
Fritzekarl gave the host his birthday present—a framed 
photograph of the Leader of the Reich Youth, Baldur von 
Schirach, with a facsimile autograph! The son clicked 
his heels as he received it. 

“I wish to speak to your father,” Fritzekarl said curtly. 

The mother answered in her friendly voice, “My. husband 
is not free just now—he’s upstairs working.” 

Fritzekarl attempted to keep the note of military com- 
mand in his shrill young voice. “Just the same, madam, 
I should prefer to speak to your husband for a moment. 

. .In the interest of your son.” 

His manner was correct, in spite of his tone. He bowed 
slightly to the mother as he finished his masterful little 
speech. 

“Fourteen years old!” she thought, “but the mechanism 
of power backs him up, and he knows it.” 

The son was blushing violently. “For goodness’ sake 
call him!” he said, stepping toward his mother. 

The father came down at once. 

“Heil, Hitler!” cried Fritzekarl. 

“Heil, Hitler!” repeated the man. “What can I do for 
,ou, Lieutenant?” 

“Pardon me,” says Fritzekarl, who doesn’t get the joke, 
and retains his martial stare, “but your son was absent 
from our last practice exercises. . . .” 

“Yes, I know,” the father interrupts at this point, “He 
had a cold.” 














“Tt was at your suggestion that he absented himself,” 
Fritzekarl continues, his voice breaking and going hoarse 
over the phrase, “You wrote me some sort of excuse, to 
say that he was staying home at your wish.” 

The father puts his weight first on one foot and then 
on the other. “As a matter of fact, it is my wish that he 
stay home when he has such a severe cold.” 

“Oh, I didn’t have such a bad cold at all,” the son breaks 
in. He is leaning on the handle-bars of the bicycle that his 
father had to fight for. “I could have gone, perfectly well.” 

The man looks at his son, a long look of surprise and 
pain and the resignation he has learned. “Well,” he says, 
and moves toward the door. 

But Fritzekarl stops him. “A moment, please,” he insists, 
but politely. “Your son was in school on that day and 
the following day. So he cannot have been really ill. Let 
me call your attention to the fact that he should have been 
present at practice and that it is my duty to report the 
absence!” 

“Oh, please—” the boy was speaking for his father, 
quickly, bargaining “—don’t do that, please! It won’t 
ever happen again—will it, father?—really, never again!” 

The father wanted to protest; he felt the despairing 
look of his wife, the outrage and embarrassment of the 
scene. “How dare you speak to me like that!” was what 
he was repeating in his mind. But he knew the conse- 
quences of such an argument, for himself, and for his son. 
Even if he could convince the Nazi authorities of his own 
part, and Fritzekarl’s rudeness, his son would still have 
to face the Jungvolk, paying for his father’s moment of 
“courage.” And so he only said, hestitatingly and stiffly, 
“No—it certainly will never happen again!” 

“TI thank you,” replied the fourteen-year-old superior of 
the treasonable son. The father was dismissed. 

He cannot air his resentment; he has to expect eaves- 
droppers and spies everywhere. His wife tells their son 
everything—not out of malice, but in the mistaken hope 
of reclaiming him this way. And the new maid is a person 
to be feared. She listens at doors, reads everything that’s 
lying around the house, and she happens to be having an 
affair with a Blockwart ; he could destroy a family single- 
handed. The boy would hardly denounce his own father, 
the man reflects, but if he repeats some remark to the maid, 
she will run to her Blockwart, the Gestapo (Secret State 
Police) will have it right away, and the doom will begin 
to move on them. Or, if they decide to dismiss the maid, 
her vengeance hanging over their heads may be even worse. 

With these conditions, nothing is to the point but care 
and extreme reticence. Families guard this reticence, and 
live side by side like strangers, or enemies. 


xx*k 


Association between “Aryan” and Jewish children is, 
of course, absolutely forbidden. 

A little Jewish girl is going down the main street of a 
small town. She is thirteen, and very pretty; and coming 





toward her is a boy she recognizes, a friend of pre-Hitler 
days, who used to play in the sand with her, and who is 
now wearing the uniform of the Hitler Youth. She waves 
at him, naturally and without thought. But he does not 
wave back; he approaches, his face set straight ahead, and 
dashes past as if he hasn’t seen her. Now she hurries home, 
head down in shame, not wanting to walk any more, after 
that! She hasn’t been home more than five minutes before 
he knocks at the door. 

“Look,” he begins, red-faced and stammering, “I only 
wanted to know how you are, Ruth. . .” 

She is shaken with joy, with fright and surprise. “You're 
mad to come here,” she whispers. ‘What if somebody 
saw you?” 

“It’s all right,” he answers. “Nobody saw me come. 
And you won’t tell; you’re no denouncer!”’ 

An extreme of respect lies in the phrase. She knows it, 
she can be proud of it. But what does it mean about the 
other, the free and powerful—his comrades of the Hitler 
Youth? Are they denouncers? Is he afraid of them? 

After he has left, the Jewish child stands at her window 
for a long time. Shall she tell her parents what has hap- 
pened, to please them? Why did he do it? And the visit 
itseli—was that the famous treason to his “group” that 
we always hear about?—a treason against National Social- 
ism? How is he now—ashamed or proud? 

x** 

The booklets called Volkisches Rechnen—a new term 
meaning “people’s arithmetic” or “national-political prob. 
lems of arithmetic”—account for this puzzling adjustment: 
sums in terms of bullet trajectories! Unfortunately, there 
is not much that can be done about national political 
problems with ordinary addition, subtraction, multiplica- 
tion, and division as they are usually taught in the public 
schools. In the secondary schools, more can be done. 
National Political Practice in Arithmetic Lessons sets the 
following problems: 


I. Germany had, according to the Versailles Treaty, to sur- 
render all her colonies. (An enumeration of colonies and man- 
dates, with estimates of population and area is given.) 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 





& 









h 
2 








A. What was Germany’s total loss in population and 
territory? 

B. How much did each mandatory power receive in territory 
and population ? 

C. How many times greater is the surrundered territory than 
the area of Germany? 

D. Compare the population of Germany with the population 
of the lost territories. 


II. A bombing plane can be loaded with one explosive bomb of 
35 kilograms, three bombs of 100 kilograms, four gas bombs of 150 
kilograms, and 200 incendiary bombs of one kilogram. 

A. What is the load capacity? 

B. What is the percentage of each type of bomb? 

C. How many incendiary bombs of 0.5 kilograms could be 
added if the load capacity were increased 50% ? 


III. An airplane flies at the rate of 240 kilometers per hour 
to a place at a distance of 210 kilometers in order to drop bombs. 
When may it be expected to return if the dropping of bombs 
takes 7.5 minutes? 


xk 


Every class in Roman Catholicism opens with the formu- 
la: “Heil Hitler! Blessed be Jesus Christ, in all Eternity, 
Amen,” and closes with: “Blessed be Jesus Christ, in all 
Eternity, Amen. Heil Hitler!” The sequence, sandwich- 
ing everything else between Heils, is enforced by an edict 
of January 5, 1934. And the Protestant religious lessons, 
which include the same formulas, must, according to the 
“Plan for Teaching Evangelical Religion in Public Schools 
in the National Socialist Spirit,” emphasize “that the ex- 
istence of our people, in their racial peculiarity, has been 
willed by God and that it is an act of unfaithfulness 
toward God if racial values are not considered or if they 
are destroyed.” 


Officially, the Nazis demand the recognition of Jesus. 
But they convert him into a hero without fear, a Siegfried 
of Nordic stamp who waged war on the Jews until he was 
killed by them. Side by side with the gentler words in- 


Federal Aid for 


@ FRANK P. GRAHAM 


the American system even before the adoption of 

the Constitution, has been continued in a long 
succession of congressional grants to the states for agri- 
cultural, vocational, and higher education, and will be a 
further fulfillment of the great American tradition of federal 
aid to the states for roads, agriculture, health, research, 
higher education, and social security. Failure to provide 
federal aid now for the elementary and secondary schools 
is a failure of the American system to follow through for 
the most basic of all our American institutions. It is a 
failure to carry forward the democratic idea of more equal 
educational opportunity for all American children. Equal 


| N EDERAL aid to education became an historic part of 





NOVEMBER, 1938 


tended for export, there are any number of Krause-like 
comments. The Fountain, in the Jan. 2, 1934, issue, de- 
clares: “How high Horst Wessel towers over that Jesus 
of Nazareth! That Jesus who pleaded that the bitter cup 
be taken from him! How unattainably high all Horst 
Wessels stand above this Jesus!” 


x*k 


That’s how things are. Hitler’s regime says: We have 
enemies in Germany, many of them, and we can only pray 
to Wotan that, as in the past, they will fear us more than 
we fear them. But we have youth on our side. That makes 
us strong. Also, we have the guns. 

They have the guns and that makes them strong. But 
the youth? There are proofs to the contrary. In this force 
of millions, who are supposed to be truly and irrevocably 
Nazi, the young men, the university men, are the first 
to show disappointment and disgust. They protest by leav- 
ing empty benches before Storm Leaders disguised as pro- 
fessors and by crowding the halls for those few who have 
a little knowledge of the extra-Nazi world. And these men 
were, yesterday, the State Youth. 

There are other signs. Voices find the outside world. 
They are voices of young workers, students, men of deep 
religious convictions, and their expressions are of wrath 
and hope. Here is the spectacle of a country—uneducated 
politically, seduced by romantic nationalism and a charlatan 
who said he was a savior—whose moral and spiritual re- 
sources as a country are now forced underground. The 
forces still live. In the past, they nourished all the great- 
ness of Germany. They survive; they cannot be withheld 
from the soul of a people; in the end, they are the highest 
concepts of human life, and they triumph, they emerge in 
the end. 


Education 


educational opportunity of the children who are to be 
citizens of both the states and the nation is the main 
responsibility of our constitutional republic of states and 
people. 

The main support of public education will continue 
to be by the states and localities. It is proposed merely 
to supplement the two billion dollars now provided by 
the states and localities with federal appropriations which, 
in the sixth year, for all purposes, will total 199 million 
dollars. Of this sum six millions will be for teacher educa- 
tion in a country in which one-fourth of the teachers have 
not gone beyond the high school. Six millions will be for 
rural libraries since of the forty-five million people without 





9 














access to public libraries, thirty-nine and one-half million 
live in rural areas. Fifteen millions will be for adult educa- 
tion in a nation of seventy-five million adults, of whom 
thirty-six million did not get beyond the eighth grade, 
fifteen million cannot read the daily newspaper intelli- 
gently, and more than three million cannot read at all, in 
spite of the fact that the conception of adult education has 
advanced from an exclusive concern with the immigrant, 
the unskilled, the underschooled, and the underprivileged to 
a concern for continuous and universal voluntary education 
of all adults. 

Most important of all, 140 millions in the sixth year 
are proposed for the elementary and secondary schools. 
The approximate 300 million dollars provided annually 
now for the less than 300,000 young men in the economically 
productive and socially desirable Civilian Conservation 
Corps emphasizes the far-reaching value of the modest 
140 million dollars proposed as federal aid to the states 
for the more than 26,300,000 children in the public schools. 

The terms of the control of public education will con- 
tinue to be in the hands of the states and localities. Pro- 
vision for local and state control is expressly written in 
the federal bill with the freedom and autonomy of the 
localities and states preserved as now in the selection of 
teachers and curriculum, the management of textbooks, 
school buses, health service, and the entire administration 
of the schools. 

The two main principles for the distribution of the 
federal funds will be equitable distribution between the 
races and democratic distribution among the states accord- 
ing to the economic ability of the states and the number 
of children per adult population. The following facts 
established by committee studies which make the basis 
for this principle will burn themselves into our American 
democratic consciousness and stir the people to action. 

In 1930 the farm people in the United States obtained 
9 per cent of the nation’s income and yet supported 31 
per cent of the nation’s children. Southeastern farm 
people with approximately 4,250,000 children received 2 
per cent of the national income while Northeastern non- 
farm people with approximately 8,500,000 children re- 
ceived 42 per cent of the national income. In three states 
less than $30 per child was invested in public education, 
while in three states more than $120 per child was invested. 
A higher tax rate is required to provide less than $30 per 
child in three states than is required to provide more than 
$120 per child in the three other states. In the states of 
the least economic ability the people pay the highest tax 
rate for the education of their children on the lowest plane 
in the nation. 

An economic, social, and cultural lag in any part of the 
country is an economic, social, and cultural damage to 
all parts of the country. Forty per cent of the children and 
youth, ten to twenty years old, on farms in 1920 were in 
cities at the end of the decade. Sixty per cent of this net 











migration was from Southern rural areas. While some 
regions are failing to reproduce their own population, the 
South has a 30 per cent excess of births over deaths. The 
region with less than a third of the population has more 
than 50 per cent of the excess of births over deaths in the 
nation. A large proportion of the children who in their 
non-productive years are supported and educated by rural 
people become in their economically creative years the 
producers in the vital industries and the citizens in the 
urban communities. The quality of the education in these 
rural areas is a matter of vital concern to the industries, the 
cities, and the people of the whole country. Economic 
inability and educational overload coincide in the same 
rural and sectional areas to fix educational inequality and 
to impair our national democracy. Just as within the 
states children in rural localities can have a fairer educa- 
tional opportunity only through state aid to those locali- 
ties, so children in the rural states can have a more equal 
educational opportunity only through federal aid to the 
states. Over half of the American states are rural states. 

Our corporate business structure, while drawing on all 
elements of the population, all sections of the country, and 
all the resources of the nation, concentrates the greatest 
wealth in the metropolitan areas with the least number of 
children per adult population. Much of the low-valued 
raw source of this wealth is back in the areas where there 
are the greatest proportion of children. These natural 
resources, these raw materials, the work of the people in 
these tributary areas contribute greatly to wealth at its 
levels of highest valuations and in its centers of greatest 
concentration where there are the least proportion of chil- 
dren. The federal government is the only agency which 
can redress this economic and educational imbalance be- 
tween the metropolitan areas of the greatest concentration 
of wealth and the rural areas of the greatest concentration 
of children per adult population. Three-fourths of the 
cost of public education is carried by taxation of property 
chiefly local. For the most part, taxation of agricultural 
property is taxation of the people on the farms where the 
tax is imposed. It cannot readily be shifted. Taxation 
of financial and industrial wealth, to an increasing extent 
in our integrated national industrial system, is shifted to 
the consumers of the whole nation. Since all sections, all 
resources, and all the people combine to produce the wealth 
concentrated in the great centers and since all the people 
as consumers help pay the taxes on this wealth, it is just 
that a little bit of the income from this wealth as federal 
aid to public education should go back to the states whence 
it came and where there are now the largest proportion 
of children whose equality and quality of education deter- 
mine the future of democracy in America. 

With democracy in retreat in many parts of the world, 
America can give a lift to the democratic hopes of the 
forgotten millions in all parts of the world with a new 
declaration for equitable and democratic federal aid to 
public education under state control. 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 












@ By a DAYTON TEACHER 


program, borrowing money, and encumbering the 

future, the board of education, Dayton, Ohio, 
decided to adopt a new policy. After all sources of revenue 
were exhausted, both state and local, says the board, “The 
board has no alternative—the schools must close, Saturday, 
October 29.” 

For some time the board has been threatening to change 
its policy of borrowing to “stave off the day of reckoning.” 
That day arrived. October 29 marked a day for the 
ascendency of one principle of school management over 
another. 

One principle is that schools should be kept open at all 
costs—borrow more money if necessary. 

The other is that the deeply indebted schools should 
now attempt a pay-as-you-go basis. When the money runs 
out, schools should be closed regardless of the consequences. 
This is the principle accepted for the time being. 

Dayton has long boasted of her achievements. She has 
been rightfully lauded for the work of the Wright brothers 
and her developments in aviation. She has been called the 
“National Cash Register town.” The closing of the schools 
presents another picture. 

Not since the 1913 flood has Dayton met with such a 
calamity. Thirty-four thousand children and 1,300 teachers 
and other employees were dismissed from their classes 
and work. 

Dayton is not proud of a situation that finds her public 
schools bankrupt. Dayton is not bankrupt, neither is 
Montgomery County, the state of Ohio or the United 
States—but there is no money for schools! Dayton is 
part of a government which has been spending billions for 
everything from battleships to de luxe dog pounds. 

The great trouble with Dayton is the indifference of its 
good citizenry. The school-board meeting, at which the 
new policy was adopted, found only two people represent- 
ing a general public of 217,000. Many of the citizenry 
are branding the Dayton board as one containing men and 
women who are crooked and making the mistake of think- 
ing that as private individuals they are insulating themselves. 

Democracy confers certain benefits. At the same time, 
however, it makes demands. One of these demands is an 
interest in public affairs. When this interest ceases, people 
are getting ready to say “Heil!” to the fellow who does 
their thinking. 

Dayton’s school crisis is only a surface indication of a 
deep and widespread condition. There are other groups 
who seem to accept public education with its rich content 


. FTER nearly seven years of operating on a limited 


NOVEMBER, 1938 


The Dayton School Crisis 


and universal distribution as affably as they do the blessings 
of sunshine, rain, and the constitutional benefits of this 
democracy that are so abundant. 

In 1934 the State of Ohio limited the taxes that could 
be levied on general property. By constitutional amend- 
ment the limitation was cut from fifteen mills to ten mills 
on the dollar. That cut represents a loss to the schools of 
one-third in the operating fund. During the depression the 
tax duplicate suffered a drop of approximately 25 per cent. 
Prior to the depression Dayton had a two-mill levy for 
school purposes. When this levy expired the voters of the 
city of Dayton refused to reapprove the levy—not only 
one time but at seven different elections. 

To partly counterbalance this loss the School Founda- 
tion program was enacted into law and put into effect in 
Ohio. This program furnishes about 40 per cent of the 
cost of the operation of city schools. Thus, 40 per cent 
was made to take the place of a revenue loss of slightly 
over 58 per cent. 

There are two outstanding reasons for Dayton’s situa- 
tion. One is represented by the apathy of her citizenry. 
The other reason confines itself to the actual operation of 
the state School Foundation program—inadequate as it is. 
As a matter of fact, there has been a consistent inability 
of the state to provide promptly and fully the amounts to 
which local school systems are entitled by law. At the 
present, Ohio finds itself indebted to the extent of $17,- 
000,000 for the Foundation program. 

The December distribution of state funds is very much 
in doubt. Dayton is supposed to receive $240,000 from 
that source. If this money is received, there is every pos- 
sibility that it will be in the form of certificates. Banks 
have been advised not to loan money on these certificates. 

Under the School Foundation program it is necessary 
to keep the schools open for 180 days to receive the full 
benefits. To have these 180 days, it would be necessary to 
go into debt $387,000. With one exception the board has 
opined that it will not do so. 

Many are saying that the 1938 school budget is out of 
line. The following table gives the facts: 


Actual Operating Number of 
Expenses School Days Enrollment 
1931-32 $3,178,508.39 190 33,427 
1934-35 2,399,477.14 180 34,970 
1938-39 2,825,000.00 160 34,074 


Just before the recent election the Taxation Committee 
of the Dayton Property Owners’ Association placed a 
political advertisement in the local papers in which it was 















shown that school operating costs have been gradually 
rising since 1918. Nothing was said about the fact that 
the enrollment had shown a rise in that time or that 
during that period the state had passed a law stating that 
the school boards shall provide free textbooks. 

In this advertisement it was not shown that it costs 
Dayton only $68 per year to educate the average public- 
school pupil. The same average cost for the United States 
is $78. It was not shown that Dayton is paying $11 per 
person to send its elementary-school children to classes 
while Cincinnati is paying $18 and other cities in Ohio a 
similar amount. It was not shown that it has been impos- 
sible for Dayton to conduct schools on a ten-month term 
since 1930. They did not show that Dayton has had to 
eliminate free kindergartens, night schools, supervisory 
staff, and use of the public buildings, and place a reduc- 
tion of 50 per cent on the purchase of school supplies. 

In the school year 1930-31, Dayton teachers received 
pay for thirty-eight weeks instead of the 
normal forty. Although advised that they, 


to thirty-one weeks. In that year, also, there was a 10 per 
cent over-all cut in salaries. This, plus the time lost, meant 
a total of 42% per cent off the normal ten months’ pay. 

In 1932-33, there was an additional 5 per cent over-all 
cut, with a school term of only eight months and two weeks. 
This meant a 15 per cent salary cut, besides six weeks’ less 
pay time. 

In 1933-34, a graduated cut was substituted for the over- 
all salary reduction—the cut being made 10 per cent on 
lower salary brackets and 15 per cent on higher salaries. 
Again the school term was only eight and one-half months. 

In 1934-35, conditions were the same as in the pre- 
ceding year—a salary reduction of from 10 to 15 per 
cent. 

In 1935-36, there were again eight and one-half months 
of school with the same salary cuts as in the two preceding 
years. In that year the schools opened three weeks late 
and closed three weeks early. 

In 1936-37, the schools started two weeks 
late, but shortened vacations made it pos- 





the teachers, were legally able to collect for 


sible to get in nine months’ work. The 





these two weeks’ pay, they preferred to con- 


PUBLIC SCHOOL 


graduated salary cuts were still in effect. 





sider this as their personal contribution to 
the schools. 

In 1931-32, the actual time of instruction 
totaled only seven months and three weeks. 
In the autumn of 1931 the schools opened 
on a basis of Monday, Wednesday, and 
Friday instruction in high schools and half 
days in the elementary schools. That cur- 
tailment, together with the fact that the 
schools closed in May, shortened the term 











In 1937-38, the school term again was 
nine months. A restoration of one third of 
the salary was voted in the spring of 1937, 
effective September 1. Restoration of the 
remaining two thirds was voted by the board 
prior to the September opening of schools, 
but it was made effective January 1. These 
restorations were approved at a time when 
business was still on the upgrade. Similar 
restorations had been made earlier in the 

















4 . 
eee ee, 




















THE AMERICAN TEACHER 








TREC OPT 


FP CER 2 


» VS ORNS ee 








sien Cts kt 





city government and in many lines of private business. The 
fact that the school term had not been restored to the normal 
ten months’ basis left the teachers with four weeks’ less pay 
than had been customary up to 1930. Thus, the teacher still 
had the equivalent of a 10 per cent salary reduction. Now, 
school pupils have lost forty-four weeks of school in the 
past seven years. 

Earlier in this article it was stated that there was one 
member of the school board who disagreed with the new 
policy of pay-as-you-go. Upon the closing of schools, this 
member, Richard L. Withrow, immediately prepared a 
petition to the Common Pleas Judge Null M. Hodapp in 
which he sought and received a temporary restraining 
order to prevent the closing of the educational system and 
a mandamus which would force the board to resume classes. 

The board, however, ignored this charge, since it did 
not solve the financial problem. As a result, the Judge 
ordered the board members, except Withrow, Superin- 
tendent Emerson H. Landis, and the Clerk-Treasurer, served 
with a citation for contempt of court. It was at the first 
hearing that the Judge made every attempt to show that 
the sin was with the board of education. 


Just prior to the hearing Mr. Withrow made the state- 
ment that 90 per cent of the Dayton teachers would be 
willing to teach in anticipation of salary payments in the 
future. He also said, “We have some bolsheviks in our 
teaching force who have come out flatfooted and refused 
to teach. . . .” 

In the meantime, Governor Martin L. Davey was asked 
to convene a special session of the legislature, to care for 
the emergency in which many schools in Ohio find them- 
selves. This he would not do. The signs of the times were 
pointing to the election of a new governor from the party 
of the opposition. He could see no good reason for making 
an easier path for the later governor-elect John W. Bricker. 

Even though facing the contempt of court charges, the 
majority of the board members stood adamant. Several, 
along with Landis, stated that they would go to jail before 
they would reopen schools with these charges hanging over 
their heads. 

Again the opposition commenced to see that placing 
the board members in jail would not put money in the 
treasury with which to start schools. Even an injunction 
by a court could not make bricks without the straw. 

At the second hearing, three proposals were up for 
agreement: 

1. Withdrawal of the contempt charges. (This was done.) 

2. Upholding of a statement by the entire group con- 
cerned that the board’s closing of schools was proper. 

3. Immediate mass meeting of all the teachers and 
principals of the fifty-two schools for the purpose of 
formulating an opinion. 

Withrow admitted that the funds for the operating 
expenses were not only all gone, but there was a deficit of 





NOVEMBER, 1938 
























se 





$62,000. It was agreed that a considerable part of school 
funds is earmarked by state law for bond retirement and 
interest, maintenance, and construction of buildings, and 
purchase of free textbooks. These funds could not legally 
be used for operation. 


On November 2, 1010 teachers and principals met at 
the National Cash Register auditorium to give their ap- 
proval to the pay-as-you-go policy of the board. Three 
teachers voted against the plan; one teacher did not vote. 
They said, “We accepted the drastic reductions in pay and 
heavy increases in the amount of work to be done because 
we thought it was our duty to serve the children at all costs. 
Now we have come to believe we were mistaken in our 
hopes of helping the children by these substantial gifts 
from our modest earnings. Instead of helping the children, 
as we thought, our practice actually has been harmful to 
them in the long run.” 

The next step was to dismiss the case from the action 
of the Common Pleas Court. It was found that Ohio had 
section 7610-1 in its general code which provides for the 
handling of an emergency of the city school system by the 
Probate Court. 

Thereupon the situation was placed in the lap of Judge 
William Wiseman of the Probate Court, despite the fact 
that the county commissioners insisted that they had no 
money with which to run the schools. The case is resting 
there. 

The board has decreed that they will have funds to 
resume school work on November 21. This action was made 
possible by reason of the acceleration of certain local tax 
collections. 

The board of education says that it has insufficient 
money to run the schools. The majority of the Dayton 
people say there is enough. Dayton says the State of 
Ohio must provide. Governor Davey says help yourself. 
Public education must be paid for if high standards are to be 
maintained not only in Dayton but in the United States. 

















@ STANLEY F. ATWOOD 


Lu about us are issues of the most momentous impor- 
tance. Prodigious economic forces are shaping the 
destinies of individuals and nations. Our best minds 

are wrestling, almost in desperation, with the reshaping of 
society. Science is creating agencies which will either elevate 
human life or utterly destroy it. Surely one might presume 
that the schools, an institution provided by society to 
preserve society, would find it their most urgent mission to 
convey to all children a sense of these economic realities, 
and a wisdom concerning them. 

What else could it mean to be educated? 

But it is not being done! 

The curriculum of the past, and to a great extent of today, 
is traditional rather than rational. We inherited it from the 
schools of ancient Greece and Rome whose chief objective 
was the training of orators. Like the curriculum of ancient 
times its main emphasis is upon linguistic ability and abstract 
academic learnings rather than upon purposeful activities 
pertaining to the present. Recent decades have seen the 
injection into the curriculum of modern history and science. 
In each case the price of admission has been adherence to the 
linguistic abstractions of the traditional academician. This 
tendency fitted perfectly into the desire of our economic 
royalists to preserve their advantageous economic position. 
Consequently, the present-day curriculum is inexcusably 
out of touch with the economic realities of our modern world. 


The continued existence of any society is dependent upon 
the intelligent adaptation of existing institutions to the 
changes inherent in a dynamic world. If the school is to 
fulfill its responsibility to society we must constantly revise 
our curriculum to provide school-directed experience that 
will lead to immediate and continuously progressive adjust- 
ment of the child within a changing society. 

What is being done in the State of Washington? 

The State of Washington, like most states of the Union, 
issues a course of study. While there is no objection to a 
course of study that furnishes the general guide lines to 
insure scope and sequence to the curriculum of the entire 
state, all too often teachers lacking in initiative choose to 
regard it as a Holy Bible that must be followed down to the 
last comma and period. This situation will prevail in the 
face of local learning situations that are crying for atten- 
tion and which could not possibly be included in a state 
course of study. 

The situation was particularly aggravated in our state due 
to the fact that a new course of study had been formulated 
just before the depression awakened the teachers to the 


Curriculum Revision in Washington 


need of new content in the curriculum if the school was 
to keep pace with the rapid changes in our national life. 

In December, 1935, the school administrators of the state, 
motivated by the activities of the National Society for the 
Study of the Curriculum, recognized the need for revision 
of the curriculum by appointing a curriculum commission 
composed of fifteen school administrators to study the 
problem. The work of this commission was carried on 
voluntarily without financial support by the state. 


In May, 1937, the curriculum commission, in coopera- 
tion with the State Department of Education, published a 
plan designed to stimulate curriculum revision on a state- 
wide basis. 

The four principles to guide the work of curriculum 
revision included: 

1. A definition of the curriculum as “school-directed experience 
leading to immediate and continuously progressive adjust- 
ment of the child to a changing society.” 

2. Children’s experiences are more vital when they are related 
to present issues, situations, events, and problems. 

3. The success of curriculum revision will rest upon the degree to 
which classroom teachers realize the need for and participate 
in the program. 

4. The curriculum is not something static but something which 
is growing with life and as there are changes in our social 
and economic life so must the curriculum change to meet 
the demands of the social body. 

The plan included definite machinery to facilitate the 

work of curriculum revision. 

Briefly stated, the plan provides for a regional curriculum 
committee in each of ten geographical areas of the state. 
This regional committee will direct curriculum activities 
within its own region. Each level of the school will be repre- 
sented on the regional committee and it is planned that some 
member of the curriculum commission will be directly in 
touch with the work of each regional committee. It is 
expected that this committee will organize small conference 
groups for discussion of curriculum problems which may be 
initiated by the local group itself or which may be submitted 
to them by the regional committee or by the state curriculum 
commission. 

The regional committee will serve as a clearing house for 
the activities of the local groups within the region. The 
regional committee will also serve as a medium through 
which these activities will be reported to the state curriculum 
commission. In turn, a report of the various regional activi- 
ties will be made available by the curriculum commission to 
the entire state by means of the Washington Curriculum 
Journal. This is a thirty-six-page printed publication issued 
quarterly. 





















































—a 


_ 








14 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 





— mee 1 le we 


= — Se "e 





eas 


ci 


ie 
se 
Ss 





The principles enunciated as a basis for the program are 
democratic principles that should stand up in practice and 
lead to real progress. The recognition of the importance of 
the classroom teachers to any program of real curriculum 
revision is particularly encouraging and speaks well for the 
enlightened viewpoint of the members of the curriculum 
commission. Already an awakening interest and confidence 
in their ability is discernible among the rank-and-file teach- 
ers of the state. 





The encroachment by local pressure groups upon the 
academic freedom of the individual teacher will undoubtedly 
hamper any tendency to change the content of the curricu- 
lum. Consequently curriculum revision of the present type, 
while it is a step in the right direction, will never be com- 
pletely effective until every possible safeguard is provided 
to protect the teacher in her exercise of the academic freedom 
that is so essential if the curriculum is to keep pace with 
a changing society. 


A. F. of L. Resolution on Federal Aid 


With the changes through which our nation grew from world 
colonies to a world power together with unparalleled technical 
change revolutionizing our work customs and standards of liv- 
ing, has come need for adapting our practices in dealing with 
public and social problems. A nation even with far-spread 
boundaries has been able to integrate its public life by rapid 
transportation and quick communications even with mass groups. 
A nation functioning as a unit naturally thinks of its educa- 
tional problems as of national concern and is mindful of the 
necessity for maintaining equal educational opportunity for all 
the citizens of this democracy. Education lays the basis for 
overcoming economic and social handicaps in backward states. 
Only federal grants can overcome existing obstacles in those 
areas where average incomes are lowest. With this fundamental 
thesis the American Federation of Labor is in full accord. We 
are equally convinced that federal grants should in no way 
interfere with local determination of local educational policies. 
The Advisory Committee’s recommendations rest upon this 
premise also, leaving to the states the determination of what 
is a public education institution as well as control over educa- 
tional policies. Regular and prescribed accounting to the Office 
of Education together with conferences for discussion of experi- 
ence are reasonable and practicable safeguards for such expendi- 
tures of federal funds. 

A bill was drafted incorporating the recommendations of the 
President’s Advisory Committee. The American Federation of 
Labor approved the general purposes of the measure and drafted 
amendments to those sections of the bill dealing with vocational 
education which we hope to have incorporated. We believe 
further that control of the allocation of these federal grants 
should follow the traditional democratic principles that are edu- 
cational tradition inseparable from our public-school system. 
Decisions on policies should be in the hands of representative 
agencies. Citizens should decide fundamental policies through 
their representatives.! 


Your committee notes with gratification the progress re- 
ported in the Executive Council’s Report in planning for 
better and more adequate educational opportunities for 
all. We realize that the future welfare of our nation depends 
upon our ability to plan and provide the kind of educa- 
tional facilities that will enable each one of us to meet the 
problems of our daily obligations and to grow to the full- 
ness of our stature. The proud claim of the labor move- 
ment is that we were instrumental in the establishment of 
our public-school policy and that we have a continuing 


J ae of the Proceedings of the American Federation of Labor, 1938, 


NOVEMBER, 1938 


responsibility for the development and betterment of edu- 
cational opportunities for all. 


The creation of the President’s Advisory Committee on 
Vocational Education, which was expanded into the Ad- 
visory Committee on Education grew out of organized la- 
bor’s protests against misdirection and abuses in vocational 
education. As it was impossible to make recommendations 
for vocational education without at the same time consider- 
ing what the national education plan should be, additional 
scope was given the President’s Committee. The basic 
recommendation of this Committee as reported by our Ex- 
ecutive Council is federal grants-in-aid for education. With 
the wide variation in average incomes for the citizens of 
New York, Pennsylvania, and California from those pre- 
vailing in Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas, it is im- 
possible to provide equal educational opportunities for all 
so long as these low income states must depend upon their 
own resources. Labor knows also that labor standards are 
depressed in these low income areas because many boys and 
girls are not given the education that would make them 
more resourceful and alert to opportunities for betterment. 
The key to raising all standards in these economically de- 
pressed areas is to provide them with the same educational 
opportunities existing in the wealthier communities. The 
result will be to raise economic as well as social standards. 


We recommend reaffirmation by this convention of the 
principle of federal grants-in-aid to public schools together 
with a national education plan which would put an end to 
those wide differences in educational opportunities for our 
people who live in the forty-eight states of the Union. Equal 
opportunities however are not identical opportunities, but 
each individual should be afforded opportunity to develop 
his talents and abilities to live and contribute to society. 
Such opportunities must be varied and liberal in content. 

We commend therefore the principles as set forth in the 
substitute measure for the Harrison-Fletcher bill, only on 
condition that the amendments? recommended by the Ameri- 
can Federation of Labor are embodied in the new measure. 





2Amendments recommended were for an Advisory Citizen’s Committee 
on Education, a Federal Advisory Committee on Vocational Education, 
maintenance of protective provisions and minimum standards, and adminis- 
tration committees for states and localities. 











Education for Democracy 


@ KERMIT EBY 


MERICANS pride themselves on their democratic 
A form of government, their guarantees of civil lib- 

erty, and their freedom from class consciousness. 
Few realize the years of struggle, beginning with the Magna 
Carta and continuing through the Petition of Rights and 
Bill of Rights, which made our heritage possible. Fewer 
still have read the arguments of Locke, Rousseau, and Mon- 
tesquieu for the democratic method. As a result, the evolu- 
tionary aspect of democracy is often lost, and a satisfied 
insistence on the status quo results. 

There is nothing new in such an attitude. The Barons 
who opposed King John in turn opposed further grants of 
liberty. The Whig business men and Puritans who be- 
headed Charles I as a tyrant opposed the right of suffrage 
for the worker. Full suffrage did not come in England 
until after the Reform Bills of 1832, 1867, and 1884. The 
same struggle was duplicated in America; the Negro is 
still not allowed to vote in many states. Today we are face 
to face with the fact that universal political suffrage is 
not enough. 

In any social evolution there must be an impetus. In 
earlier days, much was written about the rights of political 
man. Today the emphasis rests on the rights of “economic’”’ 
man. Then, as now, the groups who risked losses through 
change objected to each forward move. Persecu- 
tion of the idealist who seeks to free man is not 
a new phenomenon. 

Today the believer in democracy 
must face the risk of misun- 
derstanding. This is particu- 
larly true of the 
teacher, for as a be- 
liever in 


democracy 


» INDEPENDENCE 


16 


—o. 


Tms 1S 
FAR EROUGH 








CONSTITUTION 














he must point out the dangers of economic insecurity and 
demagogy. As a citizen he must work to preserve the right 
of free discussion and political action; for the elimination 
of the injustices on which revolution feeds. By doing so, he 
often finds himself criticized for exceeding his function as 
a teacher. The risk must be taken, for to do otherwise is to 
lose our democratic heritage by default. 

Unfortunately, teachers have not built up a tradi- 
tion for leadership. In many places they are politi- 
cally disfranchised by custom and their own ineptness. 
The first task today is to educate the public to ac- 
cept teachers as functional citizens. This can 
be done only by teachers insisting on their 
rights. Simultaneously with their po- 
litical liberation, teachers must fight 
each and every limitation 
of civil liberties; for it 
is only through 
the preservation 
of the 
right of 





4. 
TwIS 1s 
FAR ENOUGH 








eS 


~_ 





FREE SPEECH-FREE Mitt 





FREEDOM OF ASSEMBLAGE © free dis- 


cussion 
that the democratic 
method can be pre- 











served. 

In order to gain the experi- 
ence needed in functional democracy, 
the teacher should participate in his own 

organizations, form and direct their policies. 
Finally, he should affiliate for wider activities 
with those groups who have the same faith and desire the 
same ends. 

The most important step is the recognition, on the part 

of the teacher, that democracy is the expression of a great 
unattained ideal, the purpose of which is to create a political, 


FREEDOM OF WORSHIP 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


FREE Piet 





economic, and social order which will offer the most com- 
plete security to man. Freedom is never achieved: it must 
always be struggled for. 
Education for democracy does not end with 
one’s self. The teacher, by the very 
nature of his task, is committed to the 
preservation of the demo- 
cratic ideal in society. 
Democracy can- 
not be developed . 
through 
autocracy. 


TMS 15 




















THIS 15 ‘ ; 
FAR ENOUGH 























UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE 


The teach- 
er, face to 
face with his pu- 
pils, must respect 
the personality of each pupil; 
while recognizing the varia- 
tion in individual ability, each student 
must be guaranteed the right to develop 
to the fullest extent of his capacity. Scorn for 
the students who do not receive the highest mark 
is not a part of the democratic pattern. Perhaps the finest 
expression of the ideal is Christ’s teaching concerning the 
secredness of human personality. If we believed as He did, 
we would never humiliate; and we would always give help. 
The best training for democracy in life is democracy in 
tne classroom. Democracy in the classroom is best ex- 
fressed by a mutuality of experience in the learning process. 
Dogmatism and insistence on the teacher’s point of view 
only indicate the teacher’s intellectual insecurity. The 
great teachers of all ages and cultures were always humble in 
the presence of truth and always close in their contact with 
the students. Only a very little knowledge of the teachings 
of Christ, Confucius, and Socrates is needed to catch 
the spirit of their faith. Teaching at its best is always the 
search for understanding, motivated by a great hunger for 
truth and a greater idealism. 

The great teacher is always willing to answer the simplest 
questions; he never scorns the searching mind. To do so 
may crush not only the spirit of inquiry but the faith of 
the student in the honesty and fairness of his teacher as 
well. If we cannot be patient and fair after years of train- 





| ABOLITION OF SLAVERY 





PUBLIC SCHOOLS 


NOVEMBER, 1938 













SOCIAL SECURITY 








WAGES-HOURS LEGISLATION ing, how 

can we ex- 
pect to develop the 
spirit of fairness in 
the youth, who will be to- 








RIGHT OF COLLECTIVE 
BARGAINING 


morrow’s citizens? The ex- 
ample of one individual whose sense 
of justice is sharp may condition the 
lives of innumerable people. 

There is no better training for democracy than 
free discussion in the classroom. In such a discussion the 
teacher should act as the guide; each student should be en- 
couraged to participate and above all to speak frankly. In 
order to secure frankness, the feeling that marks are in- 
fluenced by the type of response given must be quickly dis- 
sipated. Pupils should learn early that they can disagree 
with the teacher without fear of ultimate punishment. Youth 
easily senses insecurity and hypocrisy. Good teaching is 
free from both. When a student asks his teacher a ques- 
tion, he expects an answer, not an evasion. Answers should 
always be given honestly as the teacher’s point of view. 
Inevitably, there will be an influence of the teacher on the 
pupil. No teacher, worthy of the name, is completely neu- 
tral, nor need there be an apology for the answer. 

The finest teaching is the unconscious influence of life 
on life. Modern educators so often forget that teaching 
is not only a matter of curricula, or even of equipment, 
but always at its best the contact of life with life, of spirit 
with spirit. 

Freedom and the democratic ideal are often denied when 
needed most. Freedom of speech, press, and assembly mean 
little when there is no controversy. During war and eco- 
nomic unrest, the democratic pattern receives its most severe 
tests. The temptation in time of crisis to give up liberty 
for dictatorship is always present. It is this temptation 
that must be resisted, for it is easier to lose freedom than to 
regain it; consequently, believers in democracy must be in- 
sistent in the protection of their fundamental liberties. 

As already intimated, American economic institutions are 
being severely tested by the depression and its greatest 
problem—the insecurity of the unemployed. Many men 
and groups, varying from the extreme Left to the extreme 
Right, are appealing to the insecure. The Communists and 


17 








the Liberty League are both insistent in their willingness 
to lead us out of our difficulties. Both deserve the same 
right. Al Smith and Earl Browder have equal claims on our 
indulgence. 

There is a great danger in limiting freedom. Deny the 
right of free speech to a Communist, and you are setting 
the precedent for denial of the same right to a Socialist or 
labor organizer. From such denials it is but a short step 
to one-party government and fascism. Voltaire expressed 
a great truth when he said, “I wholly disapprove of what you 
say and will defend to death your right to say it.” 


Public opinion in a democracy is like yeast. It is de- 
veloped in the club, church, school, barber shop, and across 
the back-yard fence. From its humble origin it rises to the 
top. Under dictatorship opinions are imposed from the 
top and forced into the channels of communication and 
thought. In order to function properly, the fermentation 
process must be kept up; that is, every avenue for public 
information must be kept open. In time of emergency, the 
only guarantee for the preservation of democracy is more 
democracy. 


Education needs to become a continuous process from 
birth to death. Every issue which affects society needs to 
be discussed by the people who are affected. Few of us real- 
ize the deadly intellectual devastation of repetitive propa- 
ganda. Modern dictatorship deadens the critical faculties 
of its citizenry by constant repetition of half-true for- 
mulas. Advertisers use these techniques. There is only 
one antidote to such a process, and that is free and con- 
tinuous discussion. Unless the believers in democracy sense 
their responsibility and develop the public forum, the apathy 
of great masses of people whose thinking processes have 
been standardized may spell our doom. 


Frankly, now as always, the status quo groups are in- 
trenching themselves to block the inevitable transition from 
industrial and economic autocracy to industrial and eco- 
nomic democracy. Enlightened opinion will not forever 
accept scarcity in the midst of plenty. If capitalism cannot 
solve the problems it has created, some other form of 
economic organization will. Institutions should be our ser- 
vants, not our masters. 


The problem of transition is again with us. If we wish 
to achieve our end by the democracy we praise so highly, 
we must be willing to continue the process that started 
when man first looked upward and will only end when 
the last spirit is unshackled. The freedom that we make 
secure today will be our guarantee of more freedom tomor- 
row. If we believe in democracy, we need to carry our 
belief into action and accept, as always, the risks which 
come through support of a great ideal. Man lives in his 
hopes for a better world. It is the vision without which 


people perish! 


A. F. of L. Backs A. F. of T. 
Educational Policies Work 


HAT member of the Teachers Union has not, at one 
Wi or another, met the following objections to the 

union from non-union teachers? “Labor seeks to 
dictate to the teacher what he shall teach.” “Teachers who 
affiliate with labor are interested only in the ‘bread and 
butter’ issues of education and tend to lower the standards 
of the profession.” “Organized labor is interested in further- 
ing its particular propaganda in the schools.” 

Let’s examine the record—the record in this case being 
the report of the recent convention of the American Federa- 
tion of Labor. In the first place the convention strongly 
commended the work of the Educational Policies Committee 
of the A. F. of T. with the following resolution: 


The committee . . . commends the Union Teachers of the 
Nation for attempting to determine in a practical and democratic 
manner how the public schools and universities may be of greater 
service in providing for the educational needs of the Nation. The 
teachers are to be commended for their willingness not only in 
recognizing their responsibility to the public in the actual work of 
instructing children, but also in recognizing that the community 
itself has an inherent right to determine policies and procedures 
in terms of local needs. 


The National Educational Policies Committee appreciates 
this stand not only because of the support which this 
approval gives to its program, but because the report of the 
Executive Committee of the American Federation of Labor 
reveals an outright recognition of the issues of American 
life and education; namely, that free public education in 
and of itself is not enough, that local initiation of and 
responsibility for policy are essential to a democratic school 
system, and that our schools are the bulwark of American 
democracy which is now threatened by the rise of totali- 
tarianism throughout the world. Furthermore, the report 
gives abundant evidence of a progressive educational policy 
at a time when few non-professional organizations either 
realize the need for or demand a program of education for 
democracy. 

The Educational Policies Committee sought to remind 
those interested in education through its call to locals and 
its report to the 1938 A. F. of T. convention that free public 
education could not be taken for granted nor was it enough. 
Members of the A. F. of T. need not be reminded here of 
the precarious financing of schools, of the threats to newer 
school methods and subjects, or that dictatorships use free 
public education systems for bolstering and preserving the 
power of a fascist-military state over the people. Therefore, 
we urged a program using platform, press, and radio to raise 
the issues and to excite and involve public interest in the 
problem of our educational system and in the necessity of 
local initiation and development of educational policy. On 
this issue the A. F. of L. convention stated “that the point 
of view of the lay citizen is quite as important in determining 
the quality and character of education as is the educator. 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


This relationship between the statutory body and the volun- 
tary agency so necessary to preserve our system of democ- 
racy, is equally indispensable in relating the educational 
profession with the community.” 


Organized labor (continues the A. F. of L. report) played a 
leading role in the establishment of our free public school system 
in America. . . . Labor recognizes that the changes in our con- 
temporary society have made new demands upon the schools. . . . 
The more complex our democratic society becomes, the greater the 
need for education as a protection for democratic government. 
The spread of totalitarianism is accompanied by the suppression 
of knowledge and the complete subservience of the individual to 
the state; democracy demands diffusion of knowledge and the 
training of children for full and free participation in the affairs 
of society. 

Your committee recognizes the important service which or- 
ganized teachers, in cooperation with labor, can play in protecting 
the school from political control and in providing proper standards 
of education. We are of one mind in our belief that school boards 
should represent all the people and that labor is entitled to ade- 
quate representation. No group, class or organization, moreover, 
should dominate the schools—not even the organized educators 
themselves. The schools belong to all the people of the nation and 
are a responsibility of all the people who constitute our Democracy. 
The convention unanimously adopted a resolution urging 

all its affiliated locals to assist the National Educational 


Policies Committee of the A. F. of T.: 

“Resolved: That the American Federation of Labor urge 
all affiliated bodies to cooperate with officers or committees 
of local teachers unions in their program of determining how 
the schools may be of greater service to the nation and how 
to provide for more adequate training for citizenship in a 
democracy ; and be it further 

“Resolved: That all local labor bodies through their com- 
mittees on education assist locals of the American Federation 
of Teachers in promoting a school system which is repre- 
sentative of the needs of the American people, effective in 
preserving true democratic government, and free from 
political control and exploitation.” 

With this, the attitude of labor, and the instructions of 
the conventions to local labor bodies each local of the 
A. F. of T. should launch now its community campaign to 
extend and enrich democratic education and to widen educa- 
tional opportunity. The committee proposed that this be 
done by establishing a speakers’ bureau to discuss the 
problems of democratic education before interested labor, 
civic, service, fraternal, church, and student groups. It 
further proposed that this discussion raise the issues of 
American life and education and invite criticisms and sug- 
gestions as to what the schools should be doing to prepare 
people to meet these problems. 

The next step taken by each local of the A. F. of T. that 
has not already done so should be to approach the president 
of the central labor council asking its endorsement and a 
letter of introduction to locals in order that they may be 
canvassed for an opportunity to appear before them. 

The Madison local reports great success in this direction 
and has proceeded from this first step to several others, 
including getting the cooperation of the Public Library in 
a display of public-school textbooks, the setting up of a 


NOVEMBER, 1938 


labor reading room, addition of more labor journals on the 
magazine shelf, and a “large conference between towns- 
people, union members, city librarians, members of the 
library board, and the local’s educational committee.” 

The Madison program has had results of importance to 
the schools and the community at large. The Madison 
Capital Times has assigned a reporter to the committee and 
has to date given great publicity to the findings of the groups 
studying textbooks. In the words of the Capital Times, 
“Many of the textbooks being used in Madison’s junior and 
senior high schools are filled with propaganda which glorifies 
big business, defends practically all types of monopolistic 
and corporate practices, and greatly exaggerates the oppor- 
tunities for promotion and success for all workers in modern 
industry and business.” 

There are reports of progress in launching similar cam- 
paigns from New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Cin- 
cinnati has written for help and specific suggestions. Each 
local of the A. F. of T. must assume its responsibility for a 
local program or the plan of the National Educational 
Policies Committee can never have the national consequences 
which are inherent in its program. 

WANDA TAESCHNER 


Vocational Education 


Aided by A. F. of L. 


HE American Federation of Labor, ever aware of 
the needs of vocational education and ever vigilant 
of some of the problems involved, undoubtedly 
would have considered phases of vocational education 
without the help of the American Federation of Teachers. 
However, it was significant and it should be satisfying to 
members of the A. F. of T. that the resolution on voca- 
tional education, passed by the A. F. of T. at Cedar Point 
and forwarded to the convention of the A. F. of L., was 
accepted in principle at Houston, Texas, as Resolution 
Number 65. 

The preamble of the resolution pointed out some of the 
beliefs (sometimes not based upon facts) which have 
caused the present increased demand for vocational educa- 
tion: the reduced number of skilled workers from abroad; 
the decline of the number of apprentices in training during 
the depression period; the false belief that unemployment 
can be decreased if the number of trained workers is in- 
creased. The preamble further contained a statement that 
for a school system to be truly democratic, it “should in- 
clude vocational education for all types of young people 
whether they plan to go into the professions or into the 
skilled trades.” 

It is the several items of the resolution itself that should 
prove of permanent help and value to all locals of inter- 
nationals affiliated with the American Federation of Labor 


19 








as well as to locals of the American Federation of Teachers, 
for in them are described certain desirable conditions 
which should be met by present programs of vocational 
education and by those contemplated for the future. Each 
item can be used as a criterion or standard against which 
unions can check the present condition of their local 
vocational-educational program and thus ascertain whether 
or not the desirable standard is met. 


Because these several items of the resolution have value 
for study classes and committee work of local unions, they 
are given here in full: 


Resolved, That the American Federation of Labor urge its affiliated 
bodies to study their local programs of vocational education and 
to attempt to mold the local program in keeping with the best 
scientific practice and the ideals of education, including: 

1. A scientific survey of occupations should precede the selection 
of the vocational subjects to be taught and should be carried on 
continuously to prevent the training of persons in obsolete jobs. 
2. The vocational training program should be built up slowly 
through experimentation and scientific study, with employers, 
workers, teachers, and others in the community cooperating. 
It should always be flexible and subject to change. 

3. The vocational training should be placed close to the terminal 
of the young person’s general education, should not be a sub- 
stitute for it, nor should it be longer than is necessary to gain 
the desired skills. This warning is necessary because young per- 
sons are not acceptable to industry and business in many instances 
until 17 or 18 years of age and because it is recalled that the 
bulk of the semi-skilled and unskilled jobs require but a few 
weeks’ or a few months’ training. 

4. Guidance (vocational as well as educational, including classes 
in occupations) based upon the best known practice should pre- 
cede the transfer to vocational courses and continue through to 
placement. 

5. The vocational courses must be accredited so far as their 
academic subjects are concerned in order that the students may 
transfer back to the general and technical courses which permit 
of entrance to college, without loss of academic credits. 

6. Teachers of academic subjects included in the vocational 
courses should meet the requirements established for teachers in 
the general academic courses. For those teaching the vocational 
subjects, rules and regulations should be established on a regular, 
civil service promotional basis, although it is recognized that it 
is necessary that different training and experience requirements be 
established. 

7. Vocational education must include not only vocational sub- 
jects and their related materials such as science and mathematics, 
but also further and adequate studies in the English language, 
social science, and other cultural subjects. 

8. The expansion of vocational education must be guarded by 
clear thinking and honest and open discussion by all involved. 


Study groups and committees of local unions can serve 
a real function by gathering objective data on each one 
of the eight items of the resolution. They can ascertain 
whether a scientific study of occupations has been made 
or is being used; whether specialists in the community 
are being consulted before a program of vocational educa- 
tion is started or expanded; at what age young people are 
given vocational training; what the nature of the training 
is and for how long it is given. They can investigate to see 
whether guidance is given and if it is, whether it is ade- 
quate and scientific. They can study the crediting of 
courses, the accrediting of teachers, and the nature of the 


20 


a 


entire offerings given young persons who are taking voca- 
tional training. If they are watching the situation closely, 
they will be able to tell whether the development of voca- 
tional education is secretive, so that hidden pressure groups 
may function, or open, filled with the scientific spirit and 
with a consideration of the interests of young people and 
the entire community. Research and study of the local 
situation will reveal whether the standards set up in the 
resolution prevail. If the study should reveal undesirable 
conditions the unions can then proceed to action with the 
facts in hand. 

That the American Federation of Labor believes that 
the local bodies of its affiliated internationals should study 
the situation is shown by its publication of a helpful 
pamphlet, A Guide for Vocational Education, based upon 
a series of articles published this past year in The American 
Federationist. The emphasis throughout the pamphlet is 
the need to know what is happening in the local com- 
munities. To assist in gathering facts a series of questions 
is included. 

Enlightened watchfulness is essential to prevent betrayal 
of young people such as that found by the American Fed- 
eration of Labor when Smith-Hughes funds had “been 
given schools located wholly within private industrial 
plants and operated in a manner which seriously affected 
wage earners, not only tending to overcrowd certain skilled 
trades, but in other ways to lower prevailing wages in 
these skilled trades, thereby increasing unemployment as 
well as lowering standards of living.’ 

The Education Committee of the American Federation 
of Labor, while agreeing in principle with the resolution 
as presented by the American Federation of Teachers, in- 
sisted that “labor’s welfare requires in connection with 
every school or vocational classroom, an advisory commit- 
tee consisting of equal representation of labor and manage- 
ment.”* No definition is given of management but using 
the usual connotation of the word, one might insert inter- 
ested employing groups. If labor is insisting upon equal 
representation with employers, it is failing to answer just 
what portion of the labor representation shall be teachers, 
whose interest and concern in this field cannot be ques- 
tioned. There can be no doubt that advisory committees 
are essential to the adequate functioning of certain 
branches of government. The question is not whether ad- 
visory committees shall exist but rather whether these 
advisory committees shall be made a battleground of con- 
flicting forces and vested interests, or whether they shall 
be so constituted that they will be concerned with the 
larger aspects of needs of young people and the welfare of 
the community, and whether in them will prevail compe- 
tency, expertness, and scientific procedures. 


FLORENCE CLARK 





1Report of the Proceedings of the American Federation of Labor, 
1938, p. 324. 
2Ibid, p. 492. 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 





PAPE TOY te Swe ® 








~— +--+ 
—_—— —— 





mong the New Books 








YOUTH TELL THEIR STORY, by Howarp M. BEL. 
Washington: American Council on Education. 273 pages. 
$1.50. 


HE problems of American youth in this period of social- 
T economic maladjustment have never been so compre- 
hensively and effectively set forth as by the young folk, 
themselves, in Youth Tell Their Story. Here are basic raw 
materials for use by “planners” who would improve the 
quality of American social life. Here, likewise, is a vital 
challenge to educators with social consciousness and vision. 

Youth Tell Their Story is the report of a sociological sur- 
vey of the conditions and attitudes of the youth of Mary- 
land. Its data were obtained by trained investigators 
through interviews with 13,528 young people between the 
ages of 16 and 24. The interviewees were selected in propor- 
tionate numbers from every type of community, social- 
economic stratum, and race. “Youth from cities, towns, 
villages, and the open country; young people from exclusive 
country clubs, middle-class neighborhoods, and blighted 
areas; students from colleges, high schools, vocational and 
parochial schools, along with young people who have never 
gone to school—all these were given their place in the com- 
posite picture of the younger generation of Maryland.” 
There can be no doubt of this sample’s representativeness 
of Maryland’s 250,000 youth. Further, as is demonstrated 
in the record, there is good reason to assume that the young 
people of this study are typical American youth. 

In scope, Youth Tell Their Story comprises an analysis 
of the conditions and experiences of young people in their 
homes, at school, at work, at play, and in the church, to- 
gether with their attitudes toward many social problems, 
especially the “youth problem.” It is a definite analysis, 
whose conclusions are buttressed by the abundant data of 
nearly 100 clear, simple tables, strikingly portrayed by 
nearly two dozen figures and over three dozen pictorial 
graphs, and richly “flavored” by scores of direct quotations 
from the young people themselves. The story they tell 
illuminates vividly the basic problems of our age. 

The general picture here revealed is one of extreme and 
“undemocratic” inequalities in educational opportunity; of a 
large and significant population group “stranded,” with 
nothing to do, between school and gainful employment; of 
serious exploitation in “dead-end” jobs for many of those 
who are employed; of neglected health; of ineffective 
schools; and of youthful cynicism, far too common defeat- 
ism, and a certain naiveté with regard to the major problems 


NOVEMBER, 1938 


of our times. That story cannot be summarized here, though 
certain of its implications merit comment. 

The one outstanding truth revealed by this survey of 
American youth, in fact, its constantly recurring theme, is 
“a striking concurrence of social and economic forces that 
tends to freeze social levels and groups into a sort of per- 
ennial status quo.” The disproportionately large number 
of sons and daughters of low-income families enjoy few or 
no home conveniences, lack hygienic care, are compelled by 
their economic circumstances to leave school in the early 
grades and seek employment. Such employment as they 
find is usually in “dead-end,” low-income jobs. Their 
resultant poverty comes, in turn, to be associated with 
many children, few home conveniences, limited educa- 
tional opportunity for their offspring—and so the cycle re- 
peats. Inthewordsoftheauthor: “What it seems to amount 
to is a sort of vicious circle of economic determinism.” 
This evidence of class stratification should be of great con- 
cern for all who still hope to achieve democracy in America. 
Obviously one vital need of America is far-reaching and 
fundamental planning for an imperiled younger generation 
which alone can give birth to our hope for a democratic 
land. 


There is also clear evidence here that our schools, particu- 
larly our hide-bound secondary schools, have failed dismally 
to function as a genuine and constructive force in the lives 
of large groups of youth. Again to quote the report: “Our 
data suggest that many schools are so organized at present 
that young people have to go through the whole school pro- 
gram [which their economic circumstances commonly pre- 
vent] before they can be led to see any genuine value in it. 
This inevitably creates a sense of inadequacy among the 
majority of young people who drop out shortly after com- 
pletion of the elementary school. The answer is the develop- 
ment of educational programs so closely related to everyday 
living that each school year, instead of being a means to 
some more or less remote end, becomes in fact an end in 
itself.” This indictment of the ineptness of our educational 


| 


LEARNING 

















programs is completely merited. Here, in Youth Tell Their 
Story, are fundamental curriculum materials for those who 
would build a truly vital school. 


Howard University Doxey A. WILKERSON 


x** 


WERE WE GUINEA PIGS? by the Crass or 1938, Unt- 
versITY HicH ScuHoot, The Ohio State University. New 
York: Henry Holt. 303 pages. $2.00. 


5 ew is a narrative and an evaluation of their educa- 
tion by the members of the graduating class of the 
University High School of Ohio State University. It 
covers six years of the students’ lives, beginning with 
the seventh grade, when the school started, and closing 
with graduation. For the writers there “was one out- 
standing reason for our writing a book. Our school is often 
misunderstood . . . so many attacks are made: ‘You do 
not have the fundamentals,’ ‘You are the guinea pigs of 
progressive theories of education,’ . . . ‘You talk and talk 
but never do anything,’ . . . ‘You are all problem chil- 
dren.’” In order to answer these attacks and to explain 
the school, the class decided to write a book. 

The book refutes these criticisms. Fifty-five high-school 
seniors worked together, without teacher supervision, to 
produce an intelligible, detailed, sincere account of their 
years in school. The fundamentals are there, it represents 
much more than talk, the workers are sane, and as for 
being guinea pigs, the authors seemed to be much less like 
guinea pigs than the recipients of the usual curriculum. 
It’s pleasant irony to find that the results of “experimenta- 
tion” seem more valuable and tangible than the results of 
the “tried and proven.” 

How could fifty-five young people manage such an enter- 
prise? Surely, one feels, after reading the foreword, teach- 
ers were hovering in the background, suggesting and stimu- 
lating, criticizing and pushing. For it’s a big job—three 
hundred pages—with many photographs and drawings. 
The contents of the book, the school experiences in the 
backgrounds of the writers, explain why it was possible. 

The first day of school in seventh grade the class with 
the teacher started planning for itself—planned what it 
wanted to study, how the study should be carried on and 
what the outcomes would be. From the first day of school 
to the last, committees were formed and put to work on the 
projects decided upon. In fact group planning, individual 
and committee activities, reports back to the group run 
through the school years like reinforcement rods in con- 
crete. Most of the studies and activities were close to 
the lives of the children. English, social studies, science, 
and the arts contributed to making their “house a home,” 
the dominant activity in the seventh grade. In furnishing 
the home economics suite, materials had to be tested, 
books had to be bought, decorations and furnishings decided 
upon and bought or made. This led to a study of the 





community in the eighth grade, particularly those aspects 
centering around transportation, communication, and public 
utilities. In the high-school years the unification of all the 
subjects broke down to a certain extent but all the classes 
tied in closely with the needs and interests of the students, 
with what was going on in other subjects and what had 
gone on before. In the eleventh year we find the social- 
studies class divided into two groups. One was the “Prob- 
lems Group” in which each person chose a particular 
problem that interested him and “in studying this modern 
subject ‘swooped down into the pond of history’ for the 
historical facts which he needed to complete his story.” 
The other group studied United States history chronologic- 
ally. The work of both groups was aimed at helping to 
formulate a picture of “the good society.”” During this year 
the English classes were concerned with trying to get an 
understanding of the authors of the books they were reading 
and trying to get a picture of the periods that produced the 
authors. Separate groups studied Shakespeare, modern 
drama, poetry. Representative records reveal a great quan- 
tity of reading, wide range both as regards type and period, 
and deepening maturity as the years go by. In the field 
of composition “each group decided the amount of writing 
per quarter and when it would be due.” Attention to the 
mechanical aspects of composition was largely individual. 
In science the study of the human body with particular 
emphasis on reproduction seemed to be the dominant note. 
Mathematics was concerned with the discipline of thinking 
and utilized current advertisements, news reports, and 
speeches. Perhaps this more or less random sampling has 
given an idea of the fabric of the authors’ school lives. 

These young people have lived in a Utopia. They come 
from homes with a median income of more than five thou- 
sand dollars a year, are sons and daughters of parents, 
most of whom have gone to college. Eighty per cent 
of their mothers are “home makers.” Their school, though 
crowded in the last years, is magnificently equipped with 
shops, studios, movable furniture and a large gym, theatre, 
and libraries. Their teachers were highly trained and care- 
fully selected. With them the pupils encountered reason, 
understanding, and encouragement. A feeling of “we” 
and “ours” pervaded the school. Their future is relatively 
secure. With their backgrounds, with the college educa- 
tion in store for them, they are in a position to occupy 
favored positions in life. One feels that though their 
social education within the school was complete, their par- 
ticipation in the life of the community, as revealed by 








THE AMERICAN TEACHER 








<M URES oy ee a 


the book, might have been more complete. Through 
participation in the very real world outside, these students 
might have found their democratic procedures tested and 
validated, their altruistic assumptions challenged. Can 
schools like this be a potent force for social betterment? 
Obviously, it will be a long time before there can be 
many of them; more money must be released for education 
and much antagonism overcome. How will these graduates, 
who have trained themselves, with the aid of teachers, to 
work cooperatively and who have become socially-minded, 
stand up in the fiercely individualistic, competitive world 
they are about to enter? 

Perhaps another book will be written by the same authors 
entitled “The Guinea Pigs Ten Years After Graduation.” 
Then we will be able to evaluate the social effectiveness 
of the school experiences that have become a part of their 
lives. 


Stanford University Letr THORNE-THOMSEN 


x* 


THEY STILL DRAW PICTURES! with introduction by 
Atpous Huxtey. New York: The Spanish Child Wel- 
fare Association of America, for the American Friends 
Service Committee (Quakers). 72 pages. $1.00. 


FEW days ago I witnessed a delightful assembly 
A program in which a group of elementary pupils 
presented, with comments, a remarkable series of colored 
drawings which they had made in their classes. The 
teacher had evidently given the children free rein in the 
selection of their themes and in the preparation of their 
comments about the drawings. The visiting parents were 
noticeably shocked, however, when two of the boys, hardly 
more than ten years old, showed pictures of bombing planes 
and expressed the wish that they might drop bombs on 
cities, the one on Spain and the other on Japan and on 
Hitler’s residence. 

In violent. contrast with those drawings are these sixty 
illustrations of drawings made by Spanish children during 
the war. Not two, but a majority of them contain repre- 
sentations of bombing planes. As Aldous Huxley points 
out in the introduction, “to the little boys and girls of 
Spain, the symbol of contemporary civilization, the one 
overwhelmingly significant fact in the world of today is 
the military plane—the plane that, when cities have anti- 
aircraft defenses, flies high and drops its load of fire and 
high explosive indiscriminately from the clouds; the 
plane that, when there is no defense, swoops low and 
turns its machine-guns on the panic-stricken men, women, 
and children in the streets.” 

Most of Aldous Huxley’s introduction deals with the 
evidences of creative growth revealed in the drawings. 
From the standpoint of developmental psychology—if 
not from the artistic point of view, concerning which this 
reviewer is not qualified to speak—his treatment is both 


NOVEMBER, 1938 


convincing and illuminating. But it would seem that most 
of this discussion is beside the point. For here certainly 
is evidence concerning the effects of civil war upon the 
child’s personality that makes any thought of artistic 
technicalities incidental if not trivial. 


Here is a little girl weeping under a tree while a baby 
lies dead in the public square after a bombing raid. There 
is a family including little children seeking shelter in the 
bitter cold of a subway during a bombardment. One 
particularly revealing picture represents a plane literally 
overshadowing the town it has set on fire (can there be 
any doubt as to the nature of the mental experience of 





THE SCHOOLMA’AM 


BY Frances R. Donovan 


A true close-up of the indirect rulers of 
America and incidentally the correction of 
that “old maid” libel. The author, her- 
self a teacher, knows how teachers look, 
act and think, and she writes with humor, 
animation, and no nonsense. “Fills a long- 
felt need. Entertaining and highly en- 
lightening.”—Chicago News. $2.50 


F. A. STOKES CO., 443 FOURTH AVE., NEW YORK 
























“It’s the BEST handy-sized 
dictionary!” 


‘*because it defines for me all the 

most commonly used words in 

speaking, reading 
and writing.”’ 


TUDENTS agree with teach- 
ers, secretaries, editors, that 
Webster's Collegiate is the best 
desk-size dictionary. Abridged 
from the “Supreme Authority" 
—WEBSTER'S NEW INTERNA- 
TIONAL DICTIONARY, Second 
Edition. 110,000 Entries. 1,800 
Illustrations; 1,300 Pages. $3.50 to $8.50, depend- 
ing on the bindings. At your bookdealer or direct 
from publishers. Write for FREE Quiz and Picture 
Game. G. & C. Merriam Co., Dept. E, Springfield, 
Mass. 


nw WEBSTER’S COLLEGIATE 
DICTIONARY, Fifth Edition 





























the child who drew this?). Covering his eyes to shut out 
the sight of falling bombs, a boy in another picture runs 
with dogs and sheep as frightened as himself. A ten-year- 
old boy has drawn a night scene, with a searchlight circling 
the sky, and an infant terrified by the tumult of the raid 
cries, “I cannot see mama!” 

The two boys in the Chicago assembly saw planes as 
opportunity for adventure; in Barcelona and Madrid the 
children know them as perpetual threats to their world. 
It is not primarily the desperate realism that distinguishes 
the tragic exhibit in this book. Nor even is it the knowl- 
edge of pain and grief that no child should be made to 
embrace. It is rather the shattering insecurity that speaks 
on every page, whether it be the battle scenes, or the 
bombardments, or the evacuations depicted here so fre- 
quently. Remarque spoke of the boys who fought in the 
World War as a generation old before their time, a gen- 
eration which had never known youth. But those boys 
were thrust into manhood at a time when they could 
accept independence, at whatever cost in the way of 
cynicism and disillusionment. The Spanish children, on 
the other hand, are being robbed of their childhood. If 
peace should ever come for them, can the years heal the 
dislocations which came even before the relative maturity 
of adolescence? 

In thus bringing the direct ravages of war to the very 
nursery, fascism commits crimes against childhood to 
which Prussian militarism did not stoop. For despite 
the neutrality of Aldous Huxley’s comments (induced 
perhaps by the non-partisan character of his sponsors), this 
is bitter anti-fascist testimony. “Who so shall offend one 
of these little ones, it were better that a millstone were 
hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the 
depth of the sea!” 


Chicago Teachers College Joun J. DEBoER 


xk 


THE FOLKLORE OF CAPITALISM, by THURMAN 


ArNoLD. New Haven: Yale University Press. 400 pages. 
$3.00. 
eat Folklore of Capitalism is directed toward an 
interpretation of the complexities of present-day 
society by referring to internal rather than external author- 
ity. To this end, criteria for judgment are based upon a 
consideration of the functioning of social institutions in 
terms of human needs rather than upon an adherence to a set 
of principles. Kilpatrick has described this process as the 
essence of the intellectual revolution of today and has indi- 
cated that an examination of basic assumptions is imperative. 
The “folklore” of capitalism is simply an analysis of current 
beliefs, or myths, from this frame of reference. A stand- 
ardization of attitudes is shown in all social structures, 
whether business organizations, clubs, or systems of gov- 
ernment. 
Most prevalent is the belief that society is made up of 


24 


“thinking men,” and that group free will prevails. The 
“thinking man” is somewhat ironically referred to by the 
author as one who “accepts sound and rejects unsound 
principle,” and who never sacrifices principle for expediency. 
Such men, he says, do not observe events, either past or 
present with the idea of learning from them, but rather “to 
show how their failures have been due to a failure to adopt 
the creed.” New organizations, having no creeds, tend to 
be interpreted in terms of old principles rather than by their 
services. When they do not conform, conflict arises, and 
their acceptance is delayed or denied. “For example, it was 
obviously necessary to form a governmental organization 
to feed people during the depression. There was no place 
in our creed for anything other than charity” from private 
organizations. Therefore, the feeding of those in need by 
the government violated that creed. In a similar way, con- 
flicts pertaining to the Supreme Court, government housing, 
and the control of agriculture have arisen. 

The folklore of 1937 has been interpreted as incorporating 
an attitude which encouraged industry, or business, and dis- 
couraged government. This resulted in the establishment of 
taboos which made men refuse “benefits obviously to their 
practical advantage, when tendered by government.” An 
example of this was shown in the opposition to relief, housing, 
railroad rates, labor unity, the Securities Exchange Act, 
etc. Our learning about government has become a “search 
for universal truth rather than a set of observations about 
the techniques of human organization.” It is believed that 
sound legal and economic principles are “the only means 
to national salvation,” and that opportune action or judg- 
ment based upon political expediency, whatever its tem- 
porary benefits, would lead to disaster. This type of thinking 
has been illustrated in the argument concerning child labor. 
“Child labor had to be debated, not on the basis of whether 
it was desirable for children to work, but in the light of its 
effects on the American home in ten years.” 


In a similar way, the author shows how the adherence 
to rational and moral principles not only impedes the process 
of learning as related to the distribution of goods, the nature 
of industrial organization, and the techniques and functions 
of government, but also results in a confused terminology 
of our culture. 

Nevertheless, in summarizing, he states that he has “no 
doubt as to the practical desirability of a society where 
principles and ideals are more important than individuals. 
It is an observable fact that such a society is more secure 
spiritually and hence more tolerant. Yet the belief that 
there is something peculiarly sacred about the logical content 
of these principles, that organizations must be molded to 
them, instead of the principles being molded to organiza- 
tional needs, is often the very thing which prevents these 
principles from functioning. The greatest destroyer of ideals 
is he who believes in them so strongly that he cannot fit 
them to practical needs.” 

Chicago Teachers Union EVELYN SHOLUND 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 








PO te I) A 


— ee | ae 


we wee Ww Fc 














The Teachers Union in Ac tion 








N*® E new locals of the American Federation of Teachers have been organ- 
ized since the listing of the locals in The American Teacher. 


No. 593 Federal and Adult Teachers of Montgomery, Ohio 

No. 594 Federal Adult Education Teachers Local of Trumbull County, Ohio 

No. 595 Waseca Teachers Federation of Waseca, Minn. 

No. 596 Seattle Federal Teachers’ Union of Seattle, Wash. 

No. 597 Terre Haute Federation of Workers’ Education Teachers of Terre Haute, Ind. 
No. 598 Federation of Workers’ Education Teachers of Indiana 

No. 599 Port Angeles Adult Education Teachers’ Federation of Washington 

No. 600 Des Moines Teachers Union of Iowa 

No. 601 Springfield (Ill.) Federation of Teachers 


Local No. 600, organized by William Card, organizer for the Wisconsin, Iowa, 
and Minnesota area, is the first local of the American Federation of Teachers in the 


State of Iowa. Des Moines, Iowa, is 
the city in which Commissioner Stude- 
baker was formerly superintendent of 
schools. 


ELYRIA, OHIO (No. 334)—With an 
estimated school deficit at the end of 1938 
of $16,441,000, A. F. of T. locals in Ohio 
have been working on the problem of get- 
ting a special session of the state legisla- 
ture called. The Elyria local points out in 
the recently circulated pamphlet, “Five 
Years of Expenditures—Schools, Cities and 
Counties,” released in September by the 
Ohio Chamber of Commerce, that nine of 
the eleven statistical tables deal with the 
schools and only fifteen lines with the city 
and county governments. The C. of C. re- 
port indicates that there was a “large jump 
in expenditures in 1936 . . . liberal state 
allowances (were) distributed among the 
school districts of the state . . .” These 
statistics are significant because the Ohio 
Chamber of Commerce is using the 1932-33 
school year as the base year. Using 1931 
as the base year, the Elyria local shows, 
the per pupil cost even by the Chamber of 
Commerce method has decreased 15 per 
cent in six years, and using the true per 
pupil cost, has declined 14.5 per cent. The 
Chamber of Commerce report (using 1933) 
indicates that school expenditures have in- 
creased 29.6 per cent in five years. Allow- 
ing for increase in students in those years, 
the union indicates that costs have in- 
creased only 14.4 per cent. All locals in 
Ohio are working on this problem, which is 
a problem that education throughout the 
country faces. 


x*r* 


LORAIN, OHIO (No. 584)—The Lo- 
rain County Federal Teachers Local was 
organized in July, 1938, has thirty members 
out of a possible thirty-two, and hopes to 


NOVEMBER, 1938 





make it 100 per cent soon. Regular meet- 
ings of the local started October 22. 


xx*«* 


WINNIPEG, MANITOBA, CANADA 
(No. 544)—At the beginning of the school 
year all the teachers in the Jewish schools 
of Winnipeg were organized by Local 544 
and an agreement with the schools on sal- 
ary increases was reached. Mr. S. Herbst 
who was assigned to the teachers by the 
Central Trades and Labor Council, was in- 
strumental in the organizational drive. He 
has been made business manager of Local 


544. 
x*r 


PATERSON, N. J. (No. 482)—The 
Paterson Teachers Union is supporting a 
graduated state income tax to help put the 
Mort Plan, which was passed by New Jer- 
sey in 1935, into effect. The law provides 
that the Plan cannot go into effect until 
some tax other than real-estate tax is 
adopted. Both the Democrats and Repub- 
licans in the state support the Mort Plan 
but oppose all new taxes. In Bergen Coun- 
ty, N. J., the children of Edgewater re- 
ceive $241.72 per capita education, while 
the children of Garfield get $64.65 per year 
per child. In the fight for a state income 
tax, The Paterson Teacher shows that the 
State of New Jersey “borrowed” the $4,- 
800,000 New Jersey Teachers’ Pension and 
Annuity Fund last April to help finance an 
“emergency” situation. 

A Paterson, N. J., grade teacher with ten 
years’ teaching experience in the Paterson 
schools has contributed $4,200 in withheld 
increments to the city in the last seven 
years. If she decided to take a sabbatical 
leave (for which she is eligible), she con- 
tributes $1,000 (over two-thirds of her sal- 
ary) for the substitute who replaces her 
and is left $200 for living expenses, travel, 
or study! 


STATE COLLEGE, PA. (No. 500)— 
In a statement of union objectives, the fol- 
lowing items were stressed: building and 
maintenance of a town hospital; sound and 
uniform system of faculty promotion and a 
uniform salary schedule for each rank; sab- 
batical leaves for assistant and associate 
professors and the inclusion of years served 
as instructor to be counted toward eligibil- 
ity for such leave. Under student welfare, 
the report stressed size of classes, more ade- 
quate housing, extended library services 
with open shelves and study facilities, an 
all-college, subsidized lecture program on 
which well-known writers, authors, states- 
men, and lecturers may appear, establish- 
ment of a student book exchange, and more 
scholarship opportunities for students. 

xkx*k 

EAST CHICAGO, IND. (No. 511)— 
The East Chicago Teachers Federation pub- 
lished a directory of all school employees. 
The fall dinner was held; a large number 
of teachers and prominent citizens of Lake 
County attended, including Congressman 
William T. Schulte, members of the Gary 
Board of Education, and principals of Gary 
schools. Lillian Herstein, Chicago, and 
Irvin R. Kuenzli, secretary-treasurer of 
the A. F. of T., were the speakers. 


xkx*k 

WISCONSIN STATE FEDERATION 
—The State Federation of Teachers, under 
the direction of E. C. DeBriae, legislative 
chairman, conducted a poll of all candi- 
dates for state office on ten questions of 
educational policy. Of 98 Democrats in 
Wisconsin only 15 responded to the ques- 
tionnaire; of 113 Republicans 30 responded ; 
while 74 Progressives out of 116 sent in 
their replies. The Wisconsin Union Teacher 
published a fine summary of the survey 
and made it available to Union teachers for 
the November election. 


xk**k 

DETROIT, MICH. (No. 231)— 
“Which Road to Peace” was the title of the 
peace rally sponsored by the Detroit Fed- 
eration of Teachers, the Detroit Teachers 
Association, and thirty civic, peace, and 
church organizations on November 11 at 
the auditorium of the Institute of Arts. 
Speakers were Dr. Quincy Wright, profes- 
sor of international law, University of Chi- 
cago, and Tucker P. Smith, labor secre- 
tary of the Keep America out of War Con- 
gress. 
The Teachers’ Voice points out that “the 
citizens of Detroit are disappointed in the 
activities of the Dies Committee. Here, in 
the home of the Black Legion, they had a 
right to expect something more valuable 
than the testimony that certain more or 
less prominent citizens had attended meet- 








ings for avowed humanitarian purposes. 
Since headlines sell newspapers, it is no 
cause for astonishment that the more sen- 
sational charges are sprinkled liberally over 
the front pages. However, the more rea- 
soned and thoughtful comment on the edi- 
torial pages indicates a decided 
doubt as to the relevance of the commit- 
tee’s findings and the good faith with which 
it has been conducted.” 
xx*k 

MADISON, WIS. (No. 223)—The 
report of the American People’s Cultural 
Committee, by Chairman William E. Bull, 
has been mimeographed and a few copies 
are available for distribution to the chair- 
men of the educational policies committees 
of other locals. Not only is there a full 
report of the work of this committee since 
its inception last spring, but a thirteen- 
point program for the future is listed. The 
program has received the unanimous en- 
dorsement of the Madison Federation of 
Labor and the cooperation of its Educa- 
tional Council. The committee has been 
especially successful in working with the 
librarians, arranging a textbook exhibit at 
the library, and securing front-page articles 
in the Madison Capital Times on the re- 
sults of the investigation of textbooks. 


xx* x 

PHILADELPHIA, PA. (No. 192)— 
The Philadelphia local reports that Allen 
Freelon, Negro art teacher listed in Who’s 
Who in American Art and in America’s 
Young Men, has recently been appointed 
art supervisor of vocational and junior high 
schools in that city. A graduate of the 
University of Pennsylvania, World War 
Veteran, and recipient of scholarships from 
the Barnes Foundation and the Pennsyl- 
vania Museum, Union Member Freelon’s 
appointment is a recognition of the prin- 
ciple that merit and not prejudice should 
govern promotions. It also provides Phila- 
delphia’s teachers with the constant advice 
of an outstanding artist and educator. 

Plans for 1938-39 include work on (1) 
professional problems; democratization of 
the schools, curriculum construction, exam- 
ination of the aims of textbooks, oversize 
classes; (2) legislative activity; tenure, 
state and federal aid, child welfare, elec- 
tions; (3) school budget; (4) building the 
Union’s membership; and (5) cooperation 
with other educational organizations— 
labor, teacher, and parent groups. 

Local 192 reports that the Court of 
Common Pleas has handed down decisions 
favorable to Sylvia Drasin, vice president 
for the elementary-school group of the 
A. F. of T., and Lillian Marcovitz, member 
of the local executive board. The victory 
establishes elementary-school salaries at 
from $1200 to $2400, special-class-teacher 
salaries at from $1500 to $2700, and the 
Philadelphia salary schedule for all classes 
of employees as found in the By-Laws and 
Rules of the Board of Education. The 
Union initiated the court action and was 
aided in legally establishing the salary 
schedule of Philadelphia by the Women 
Teachers Organization. 


26 


SPRINGFIELD, ILL. (No. 601)— 
Kermit Eby, executive-secretary of Local 1, 
spoke at the amalgamation dinner of 
Locals 545 and 574 which now form Local 
601. Other speakers at the celebration were 
Edward C. Lartz, president of the Spring- 
field Federation of Labor, and the two 
former presidents, Freeman Goodwin and 
Nell Plain. The new president, elected 
unanimously, was Louis H. McFadden. The 
Union now represents 75 per cent of all 
the teachers in the city. 


xx«rk 


CHATTANOOGA, TENN. (No. 246) 
— The Chattanooga- Hamilton County 
Teachers Federation is launching a mem- 
bership campaign under the direction of 
Stegar Hunt, is leading a fight for the 
merit system, and making a drive for the 
resumption of the county salary schedule. 
The local will also work for federal aid 
for schools and will sponsor a lecture series 
by nationally-known speakers. In their lec- 
ture series last year the teachers brought 
William E. Dodd to Chattanooga. 


xx** 

SEATTLE, WASH. (No. 200-No. 596) 
—Since 1936, Local 200 has been made up 
of public-school and W.P.A. adult-educa- 
tion teachers. Since January, 1938, each 
group has been meeting as a section once 
a month besides having a joint monthly 
meeting. Last year both sections agreed 
that the work could be carried on more 
effectively by a division into two locals, and 
the W.P.A. adult-education teachers formed 
Local 596. The two locals will continue to 
cooperate closely on mutual problems. 


xx*«r* 

SOUTH FORK, PA. (No. 488)—The 
Adams Township Federation of Teachers 
is planning a dinner meeting and a play 
to raise funds in order to purchase glasses 
for needy school children. An increase in 
membership is reported due to the aid of 
Mrs. Vivian Dahl, A. F. of T. organizer, 
and Mr. McBride, local A. F. of L. or- 


ganizer. 
xx*r* 
LONG BEACH, CALIF. (No. 456)— 


The Long Beach local announcements ap- 
pear in the Superintendent’s Bulletin each 
week and the school mailing system may 
be used by the Union. Dr. Oberholtzer has 
granted the Union the right to an Institute 
session with regular credit, providing the 
requirements are met. One Institute is be- 
ing planned for this year. The Superinten- 
dent has also promised that there will be 
no discrimination against teachers because 
of membership in the A. F. of T. 


xk 

MENA, ARK. (No. 194)—President 
Winifred Chappell reports a 100 per cent 
membership for the Commonwealth Col- 
lege local. During the winter term the 
teaching staff will devote its entire time 
to conducting extension classes for share- 
croppers, farmers, and industrial workers 
in union organizational methods, elementary 
economics, public speaking, and current 


events. This type of program will be more 
expensive than that ordinarily used by 
Commonwealth because of the traveling 
expenses and the lack of the “common 
eating table.” Contributions from union 
teachers in more conventional teaching sit- 
uations will be appreciated. 


xk 


ANDERSON, IND. (No. 519)—For 
more than twenty years attempts have been 
made in Anderson to establish the single- 
salary schedule. It was not until the estab- 
lishment of the Union last year, however, that 
the teachers gained the courage needed to 
examine the records at the State House and 
elsewhere for the necessary data. The re- 
sult was that the Union committee was able 
to go before the school board with all the 
facts and data, and with the cooperation 
of the board a single salary schedule was 
worked out. The Union was instrumental 
in getting contracts for three teachers who 
had not been given the opportunity to work 
out the probationary period. During the 
coming year the Union is going to concen- 
trate on the problem of over-crowded class- 
rooms, and will try to reduce the teacher- 
pupil load to less than forty pupils for the 
elementary-school classes and less than 
thirty for the high-school classes. 


x** 


KENOSHA, WIS. (No. 557)—The 
Kenosha Teacher, in providing election ma- 
terial for its readers, pointed out that dur- 
ing the past two years in Wisconsin high- 
school aids have been increased $2,420,000; 
elementary-school aid, $200,000; teachers 
colleges’ aid, $500,000; $200,000 provided 
for schools in distress; minimum salaries 
increased to a minimum of $80 a month 
in 1939 and $85 a month thereafter. It 
suggested that teachers check on how their 
representatives and assemblymen voted on 
restoring half the waiver on teachers’ sal- 
aries up to $3,000, on militarism at the 
State University, on high-school aid, on 
academic freedom, on tenure, on increasing 
the school year to nine months, on the 
question of replenishing the retirement fund. 

The Kenosha local reports that it has 
outgrown two meeting places, including the 
largest available room in the Dayton Hotel. 
It also reports a cordial meeting with the 
Board of Education and that it was the 
only teachers’ organization to participate 
in a “town-hall” meeting on the work and 
expenditures of the Community Chest. 

Howland Paddack of Kenosha was 
elected vice president of the Wisconsin Fed- 
eration of Teachers. 


x*e 


ATLANTA, GA. (No. 89)—An an- 
nouncement of the coming meeting of the 
Progressive Education Association in At- 
lanta, Ga., December 2 and 3, pointed out 
that locals of the A. F. of T. have cooper- 
ated with the Progressive Education Asso- 
ciation in carrying out activities of mutual 
interest. Many members of Local 89 are 
interested in the coming meetings of the 
Association and are looking forward to 
establishing its southern branch. 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 





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COLUMBUS, OHIO (No. 438)— 
William Van Til, whose book, The Danube 
Flows through Fascism (Scribners), was 
published recently, will resume the editor- 
ship of the News Bulletin, which, incident- 
ally, is one of the best bulletins sent to 
the national office. Reports of the summer 
meetings at Ohio State University indicate 
that Colston Warne, Amherst, Spencer Mil- 
ler Jr., Workers’ Educational Bureau, Keith 
Tyler and Edgar Dale, Ohio State Univer- 
sity, and Edward Packer, Toledo, spoke at 
the meetings, which were held for the Ad- 
ministrators’ Institute, the Progressive Edu- 
cation Institute, the W.P.A. Institute, and 
the Psychologists’ Convention. 


x** 


WILKES-BARRE, PA. (No. 577)— 
The Luzerne County Council of Teachers 
has been formed by the Hanover, Ashley, 
Luzerne Borough, and Luzerne County Fed- 
eral Teachers locals. At its first meeting, 
Mr. Lewis Alder, advisor on school law in 
the State Department of Education, ad- 
dressed 150 teachers on the status of the 
Pennsylvania Teacher Tenure Law. Sara 
Walsh of Local 192 spoke to the group on 
the role of the Pennsylvania Federation of 
Teachers in support of the Law. Dr. Gage 
of Bucknell Junior College was chairman of 
the meeting. 


x*«re 


EVANSTON, I.L. (No. 460)—The 
North Shore Teachers Union sponsored a 
panel jointly with the North Shore Pro- 
gressive Education Association on “What 
Does Organized Labo: Expect of the 
Schools?” as part of a convention on “Ele- 
mentary Education.” Also, during the eve- 
ning, a dinner was sponsered by the 
A. F. of T. at which the work of the Edu- 
cational Policies Committee o* the North 
Shore Local was explained by George T. 
Guernsey, chairman, and an iuddress was 
made by Dr. Paul Dieterich, charter mem- 
ber of Local 438, Columbus, Ohio, and a 
member of the Evaluation Committee of 
the Progressive Education Association. 
Plans are being made for a joint confer- 
ence on educational problems with the 
Council for Democratic Action, the North 
Shore Cooperative, the Progressive “duca- 
tion Association, and the Union at Drews 
Lake, Ill. 


xk 


NEW YORK, N. Y. (No. 5)—Profes- 
sor Harold J. Laski, member of the execu- 
tive committee of the British Labor Party, 
will speak on “The Role of the Schools in 
the Defense of Freedom and Democracy” 
on November 30. The meeting is spon- 
sored by the Academic Freedom Commit- 
tee of Local 5. 

The Union Teacher, published by the 
New York State Federation, Volume 1, 
No. 1, is off the press. Featured in the first 
issue is Dr. Bella V. Dodd’s appointment 
as a full-time organizer for the A. F. of T. 
Dr. Dodd resigned her instructorship at 
Hunter College in order to devote full time 
to union work. The issue also praises the 


NOVEMBER, 1938 


publicity work of the New Rochelle (No. 
280) Local. 

Three hundred teachers attended the 
Union Conference on “Early Childhood 
Education.” Participating in the conference 
were Dr. Andrus of the New York State 
Department of Education, Assistant Super- 
intendent Greerberg, Dr. Conroy of the 
Elementary School Principals Association, 
and Mrs. Schechter of the United Parents 
Association. 

x*x*«k 


CHICAGO, ILL. (No. 1)—Local 1 
elected the following slate of officers at the 
meeting of the Chicago division of the Illi- 
nois State Teachers Association: Lyle Wolf, 
president; Irvin A. Wilson, vice-president ; 
Helen Hurley, recording secretary; Dorothy 
Brenan, corresponding secretary; Mary 
Hunter, membership secretary; Michael 
Pollack, treasurer; Wanda Taeschner, legis- 
lative chairman; and Martha Raymoth, 
member of the executive board. The Chi- 
cago Union points out that it is not its 
policy to try to “control” the Chicago divi- 
sion but rather that it is the responsibility 
of all the members of the division to de- 
termine policy. 

Charlotte Carr, head resident of Hull 
House, and John Fewkes, president of 
Local 1, spoke at the first anniversary party 
of the Chicago Union Friday, October 28, 
before 3,000 teachers in Auditorium Thea- 
ter. 

Said Miss Carr: “If our bricklayers and 
if our teamsters have the social vision to 
play a part in making the American pro- 
gram a program which insures better hopes 
for our children, better wages for the heads 
of families and better education, certainly 
those persons formed into a union as 
trained teachers cannot afford to let the 
matter so technical as the problem of pub- 
lic education be carried on without taking 
their part as a part in a labor movement 
towards seeing that we have the best type 
of public education for all children in 
America.” 

The Union’s program for this year in- 
cludes complete pay restoration, a merit 
system, a program for progress in educa- 
tion, and defense against political control. 


xx*wnr 


CLEVELAND, OHIO (No. 279)— 
To achieve the passage of the one-mill levy 
needed to operate the Cleveland schools, 
Local 279 set up a committee representing 
every group employed by the Board of 
Education. This committee engaged the 
services of D. C. Van Buren, promotion 
expert, who planned an intensive five 
weeks’ program. The levy, which orig- 
inated in 1928, has never been defeated, 
but several requests for larger amounts 
have been successfully defeated by various 
real-estate groups. 

The Union maintained a speakers’ bu- 
reau of sixty-seven teachers who covered 
labor, political, and all parent-teachers’ 
meetings. Newspapers gave editorial sup- 
port to the campaign as did clergymen 
and fraternal and civic organizations. 


OHIO STATE FEDERATION—Na- 
tional Vice-President M. J. Eck has been 
busy with the work of the Ohio schools. 
A questionnaire was sent to all candidates 
for political office; a set of by-laws was 
drawn up for the State Federation and an 
attempt was made to get Governor Davey 
to call a special session of the legislature 
to consider the conditions of public educa- 
tion in Ohio. 


x*rk 


SPRINGFIELD, OHIO (No. 296)— 
In a town where the public schools were 
forced to close two years ago because they 
were unable to pay the teachers, the Union 
reports that the levy was passed by a four- 
teen to eight ratio. Approximately 90 per 
cent of the teachers of the city are mem- 
bers of No. 296. 


x* 


CHICAGO, ILL. (No. 346)—The 
Union of Chicago Teachers of Adult Educa- 
tion is conducting an organizing campaign 
and hopes to eliminate the “dual” wage 
system. 


x** 


NEW YORK, N. Y. (No. 537)—The 
New York Teachers Union has released the 
program for its meeting at the School of 
Education, New York University. The sub- 
ject of the conference will be “Society and 
Higher Education.” Dr. Harold J. Laski 
will open the conference with a talk on 
“The Place of the Teacher in the Modern 
State,” and Ordway Tead, chairman of the 
Board of Higher Education of New York 
City, will close the conference. Subjects to 
be discussed are “What Is Scholarship?” 
“Shall Universities in a Democracy Indoc- 
trinate?” “What Role Shall the College 
Play in Community Affairs?” “Vocational 
vs. Cultural Values in the Curriculum,” 
and “Who Shall Control the Educational 
Policy?” Other speakers scheduled at the 
conference are Colston Warne, Economics, 
Amherst; Ernest Reiss, Emeritus, Hunter; 
Joseph Allen, Mathematics, City College; 
Margaret Schlauch, English, New York 
University; Eduard Heimann, New School 
for Social Research; Harry Overstreet, Phil- 
osophy, City College; Dr. Alexander Fich- 
andler, principal, P. S. 136, Brooklyn; and 
Irving Adler, chairman, Educational Poli- 
cies, Local 5, New York City. 

The College Newsletter, which is pub- 
lished by Local 537, may be obtained by 
other locals and college members of the 
A. F. of T. by sending $1.00 to New York 
College Teachers Union, 235 Fourth Ave., 
New York City. 

President Jerome Davis spoke to the 
Union on November 3 on “Academic Free- 
dom” and pointed out that, “No college 
president has yet been found who is not, 
when asked, in favor of academic freedom; 
and the more flagrant their violation of it 
on one hand, the louder their protestations 
of their love for it on the other.” 

Dr. Robert C. Challman, chairman of the 
Union’s newly-formed Academic Freedom 
Committee, presided. 


27 





























On the Labor Pront 








Musical artists are proud of their affiliation with organized labor, 
Lawrence Tibbett, distinguished baritone, told delegates at the 
annual convention of the American Federation of Labor in Houston 
this year. 

Tibbett is president of the American Guild of Musical Artists, first 
vice president of the Radio Artists, and a member of the Actors 
Guild. 

Introduced by President William Green, Tibbett received a tre- 
mendous ovation from the convention delegates. He said: “Many 
people outside the rank and file of labor have the opinion that 
artists have no business with and in labor. Nothing could be further 
from the truth. Our cause is your cause and the cause of labor.” 

Another distinguished musician and fellow-trade-unionist, Jascha 
Heifetz, famed violinist, took occasion to reiterate the artists’ in- 
dorsement of the cause of organized labor. First vice president of 
the musical artists guild, Heifetz chided Yehudi Menuhin, another 
noted violinist, when he refused to join the guild before appearing 
as guest artist with the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra. The 
orchestra has a contract which provides that all guest artists must 
be members of the guild. 

The guild has a membership of 1,200, including practically every 
important artist in the country. On its membership rolls are such 
names as Grace Moore, Lily Pons, Richard Crooks, Mischa Elman, 
and Effrem Zimbalist. 


x*«nr 


Another artists’ union, the American Federation of Actors, an- 
nounced gains last month of 5,000 members, bringing the total mem- 
bership to 15,000 in the country. Since the beginning of the year 
more than 350 contracts have been signed, officials reported, in- 
cluding agreements with the New York and San Francisco world’s 
fairs. A contract for the San Francisco Fair has also been signed 
with the American Federation of Musicians. 


xk 


Backed by a resolution at the American Federation of Labor 
convention, the International Typographical Union and affiliated 
printing-trade groups are intensifying their organization drive 
against R. R. Donnelley and Sons Company, Chicago, the largest 
non-union printing plant in the country. 

Among leading publications printed by the Donnelley plant, which 
is also known as the Lakeside Press, are Time, Life and telephone 
books from cities throughout the country. 

Attempts by editors of Life to dupe union officials into indorse- 
ment of the publication were exposed recently by Chicago leaders 
of the Union’s Organizing committee. Evidence was given showing 
that trade-union officials were approached by representatives of the 
magazine with offers of free publicity for their organizations, which 
would make it appear that the union approved of the magazine. 

In one case, it was shown, the editors had approached a New 
York official of the I.T.U. for assistance in preparing an article on 
the Union Printers’ home at Colorado Springs, Colo. The scheme 
was immediately detected. 

Leaders of the Organizing committee also pointed out that the 
Donnelley Company sought to win favor of local trade unions and 
civic organizations by succeeding in placing one of its officials as 
head of the graphic-arts division of the Community Fund. Not a 
single printing-trade union was consulted on the appointment, labor 
officials said. 

The Chicago Printing Trades Unions called on union members all 
over the nation to back the campaign against the “scab” Donnelley 
plant by direct protests to editors of publications printed there. 

Charging the McCall Corporation with company unionism, the 


28 


International Photo-Engravers Union of North America is urging 
a boycott of its eight publications. The American Federation of 
Labor is seeking to enter into negotiations with the corporation 
through its Executive Council. 

The Corporation’s publications include McCall’s Magazine, 
McCall’s Needlework, McCall’s Quarterly, McCall’s Counter Book, 
McCall’s Fashion Sheet, McCall’s Ad Sheet, Red Book, and 
Blue Book. 

Teachers are being urged not to recommend books published by 
the American Book Company because of its defiance in preventing 
unionization of its large printing plants in Cincinnati, Ohio, and 
Bloomfield, N. J. The Allied Printing-Trades Council of Cincinnati 
has inaugurated an extensive publicity campaign urging trade union- 
ists in every state to bring pressure on local school boards not to 
purchase books published by the American Book Company. 

While the fiery Catholic priest, Father Charles E. Coughlin, in 
his weekly nationwide radio addresses speaks in defense of “social 
justice,” his publication, Social Justice, continues to be published 
in a non-union printing plant, labor leaders pointed out. 

Agreement by Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company officials that all 
future printing will be done only in union shops was announced 
recently following negotiations with the International Allied Print- 
ing Trades Association. 

Coincident with this agreement, the A. & P. ended forty years of 
open-shop labor practices in Chicago chain stores when it signed 
a union contract for some 2,700 employees in the chain’s 850 stores 
in the Chicago area. The contract, which provides pay increases 
amounting to $300,000 a year, a 48-hour week, vacations, and 
seniority rights, was won by the Retail Clerks International Pro- 
tective Association. 





“NEW DEAL WRECKED BY G. O. P.” 

So read a headline across the front page of the Chicago Tribune 
on November 9, the morning following elections. 

Yet figures appearing in the labor press throughout the country 
gave a somewhat different picture. 

The publication, Labor, official organ of the railway workers, 
found that the Democrats far outran the Republicans in election 
victories. Assuming that the November 8 vote was a Presidential 
election and allowing the Republicans the electoral vote in each 
state in which they elected a senator or governor, labor editors 
arrived at the following score: 

For the Democrats, 303 electoral votes; for the Republicans, 228; 
Democrat majority, 75. 


x* * 


Organized labor, progressive farmers, and hundreds of liberal 
groups succeeded in defeating anti-union bills in two west-coast 
states, California and Washington, in the November elections. 

In a third state, Oregon, wealthy farmers and manufacturers forced 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 





EE AEN Re RR 


— 








_— 





a similar measure through the polls, following an extensive propa- 
ganda campaign. 

Opposed vigorously by a united front of A. F. of L. and C. I. O. 
unions, the proposed pro-fascist measures in California and Wash- 
ington were killed by decisive majorities. At its convention, the 
California State Grange overwhelmingly rejected Proposition Num- 
ber 1 after George Schlemeyer, master of the Grange, characterized 
it as “pernicious and against democracy.” In California, the anti- 
union bili, designated as “Initiative No. 1,” was defeated by a 
plurality of more than 300,000 votes as New Deal candidates were 
swept into office. Throughout the pre-election campaign, labor 
bodies and liberal groups in the two states exposed the subversive 
character of the laws. 

In Oregon organized labor is facing a struggle for existence under 
the drastic provisions of the 1.ew law. Its provisions severely cur- 
tail picketing and boycotting, and outlaws jurisdictional disputes. 
The law also prohibits unions from raising any funds in excess of 
those needed for “legitimate requirements.” 

Earlier last month an Oregon circuit judge voided a municipal 
ordinance in Eugene, Ore., which required pickets to register with 
the city recorder and pay a $5.00 fee. The action was brought by 
the Central Labor Council. 

In Canada Anti-labor Premier Hepburn took another step to 
shackle trade unions when he banned women from picket lines in a 
strike at the Humberstone Shoe Company plant at Port Colbourne, 


Ontario. 
zkkk 


A significant victory for organized labor is seen in the recent 
action by President Roosevelt’s Railroad Fact-Finding Board in 
rejecting the proposed quarter-billion-dollar wage cut for railway 
workers. 

In its decisions the Board held that the wages of railway labor 
are not high even as compared with wages in other industries, and 
that a pay cut in the railroad industry would run counter to the 
trend of wage rates in industry generally. 

Also, the Board found that the proposed slash sought by railway 
executives would not meet the financial emergency of the railroads, 
since the savings would not be distributed merely to the needy 
roads, but also to security holders. The rejected plan provided for 
a fifteen-per-cent pay cut of the 1,000,000 employees on the coun- 


try’s major roads. 
xkxkk 


Focusing on education, delegates to the convention of the Indiana 
Federation of Labor urged the appointment of competent labor men 
on school boards and the enrollment of teachers in the American 
Federation of Teachers. 

Such action, the report said, would serve to eradicate the anti- 
labor bias from schools and colleges. The convention also recom- 
mended shortening the tenure period from five to three years to 
provide greater job security for teachers. 


x** 


Installation of labor-displacing machinery in the auto industry is 
ousting one out of every four workers. 

This is the result of a survey in Detroit by research experts of the 
United Automobile Workers. Other factors which are contributing 
to the reduction in the number of workers needed include the speed- 
ing-up of production lines and the smoother operation of the plants 
with the decrease in labor disputes, the study found. 

U. O. A. W. officials reported that the last word in labor-displacing 
machinery is being installed in the new Ford body plant now under 
construction at the River Rouge Works in Dearborn. Here huge 
presses, standing side by side, will stamp out whole body panels. 


xk 


Unity in the labor movement is appearing on many fronts in 
response to the plea of Daniel J. Tobin, head of the International 
Brotherhood of Teamsters, before the American Federation of 
Labor convention this year. 

In Portland, Ore., the International Longshoremen’s and Ware- 
housemen’s Union, C.1.0., voted a fifty-cent assessment to aid the 


NOVEMBER, 1938 


United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, A. F. of L., when 
its two locals went on strike, protesting a ten-per-cent wage cut. 

In Corpus Christi, Tex., local officers of the A. F. of L. have 
taken the leadership in a plan to set up a joint assembly of 
A. F. of L. and C.1L.O. unions. At the suggestion of C. H. Kelly, 
business agent of the Building Trades Council, A. F. of L., 128 
delegates representing 22 local unions drafted tentative plans for a 
new central body. 

In another move towards unity, The American Federationist in 
the November issue asserted that the A. F. of L. earnestly desires 
“honorable peace” with the C.1.0. Said the editorial, 

“There cax: be no question but that wage-earners throughout the 
country and the nation as a whole want a united labor movement. 
The American Federation believes the difficulties in the way of 
unity are not unsurmountable if there are sincere and disinterested 
efforts to make peace.” 





With the bulk of Christmas shopping still ahead, union members 
were advised to purchase only products which bear union labels, 
according to an announcement by the union-label trades department 
of the A. F. of L. 

To help consumers in recognizing union labels and finding 
approved products, a Union Label Catalogue-Directory has been 
issued. The directory is a 48-page book containing a complete list 
of all manufacturers of union-label and union-made products, and 
facsimiles of all union labels, shop cards, and service buttons. 


x*«n* 


Objections against hiring workers over 40 years of age is not 
justified according to a study by the International Labor Office 
at Geneva, Switzerland. 

In many instances, the report points out, older workers are 
preferable as long as their physical ability essential to the job is 
unimpaired. The older worker’s experience and reliability are his 
particular assets, while he may be especially valuable where quality, 
rather than quantity, is required. 

The study says further that while older workers are no more 
likely to lose their jobs than younger ones, once having lost their 
jobs, it is more difficult for them to find new employment. 


xx*«r* 


As Chairman Martin Dies’ Committee on Un-American Activities 
continues its blast against civil liberties, labor unions, together 
with progressive organizations throughout the country, are uniting 
to condemn its investigations. 

In Newark, N. J., A. J. Isserman, labor lawyer, has brought 
charges of perjury against one of the Committee’s leading wit- 
nesses, J. B. Mathews. A strike-breaking officer of Consumers’ 
Research, Inc., Mathews has made two appearances before the 
Dies Committee. In his second appearance Mathews gave false 
testimony concerning the Consumers’ Research strike, Isserman 


charged. 
Mathews, in his earlier testimony, named a long list of liberal 





organizations which he has said were “fronts” for the Communist 
party. He also portrayed Shirley Temple as a Communist dupe. 

Other witnesses before the Committee were being discredited. 
Harper Knowles, chairman of the California American Legion’s 
“radical research committee,” who charged prior to the New Deal 
victory in the state that cer‘ain Democratic candidates were Com- 
munists, has been disowned by his own organization. Dr. Henry 
Watters, department commander of the state Legion, said Knowles 
was not speaking for the Legion. 

Knowles was also used by the Dies Committee to bring attacks 
on Harry Bridges, head of the west-coast longshoremen’s union. 

In Representative Dies’ home state, J. H. Crossland, of the state 
industrial council and a member of the Oil Workers’ International 
Union, offered an apology for supporting Dies in the primaries. 
Crossland asked for a Congressional investigation of the Dies 
Committee. 

Said Crossland, “We're ashamed of Dies and take this opportunity 
to apologize. He has converted his committee into a bludgeon to 
kill off the friends of labor.” 

A sweeping investigation of the Dies Committee’s activities and 
the source of its funds was asked by Paul Y. Anderson, distinguished 
Washington correspondent and political columnist, in a nationwide 
radio broadcast. 

Anderson said reports are continuing that other congressmen will 
demand an investigation of the un-American Committee as soon as 
Congress convenes. He also said that a majority of newspaper cor- 
respondents considered the hearings “grossly unfair and not designed 
to elicit the truth.” 














Some time ago Ernest T. Weir, head of the National Steel Cor- 
poration and bitter foe of labor unions, filed a report with the 
Securities and Exchange Commission and asked that it be kept from 
prying eyes. The reason became apparent when the commission 
gave the report to newspaper men. It showed that Weir and the 
other top-flight officials of his company had secretly paid themselves 
a bonus of just under a million dollars. On September 27 the 
directors authorized a sale of 28,250 shares of common stock to the 
officials at $40 a share, or $33 a share less than the market price. 
Weir’s “dividend” was 5,000 shares, making his bonus $165,000. 

Had the stock been sold to the public and the money put in the 
company’s treasury, it would have been $935,000 better off, com- 
mission officials explained. 


xk 


The Wages and Hour Bill which went into effect on October 24, 
brought shorter hours for approximately 1,500,000 workers and in- 
creased the pay of 750,000, according to a statement made by 
Elmer F. Andrews, administrator of the Act. The Act provides that 
all workers covered by it shall not be paid less than 25 cents an hour, 
nor work more than 44 hours a week. The Act provides that on 
October 24, 1939, wages shall be no less than 30 cents an hour and 
after October 23, 1945, a minimum wage of 40 cents an hour will 
apply nationally. 


30 





John C. Gall, chief counsel for the National Association of Manu- 
facturers, told the N.A.M. members that it would be possible to cut 
the wages of workers making more than 25 cents an hour. The 
Postal Telegraph and Western Union messenger boys won a victory 
when Administrator Andrews ruled against the request of a number 
of telegraph companies to exempt about 20,000 messenger boys. 
Wages for these boys will be increased from seven dollars and eight 
dollars a week to eleven dollars a week. Julius Seilgman, “baron” 
of the pecan industry in Texas, applied for exception under the 
Wages and Hours Bill. Everett L. Looney, chairman of the Texas 
Industrial Commission, told Andrews that top wages in the pecan 
picking were ten cents an hour, average five cents an hour, and that 
Seilgman has made $800,000 in the last eight years. 


x** 

The report of the National Resources Committee to President 
Roosevelt has revealed that in 1935-36 one-third of the families in 
the United States had an annual average income of $471, which is 
about one-fifth of the amount necessary for a decent standard of 
living. 

According to the same report the middle third had an average 
income of $1,076, about one-half of the amount required for decent 
living standards. A small group of 5,387 individuals earning $100,000 
a year or more received almost twice as much as did the 2,123,534 
families and individuals who earned less than $250 a year. The top 
1 per cent of the people received $59,258,000,000, or a little more 
than 13 per cent of the aggregate national income. Eighty-seven 
incomes of more than $1,000,000 were reported while 70,130 persons 
or families reported annual incomes of $25,000 or more. Only one 
family out of eight had an income of $2,250 or more, considered the 
minimum for an adequate standard of living. 

By regions, the lowest average (median) income for all classes of 
families, from relief workers to millionaires, was in the South. The 
figure was $905. Next lowest was the mountain and plains area, 
with $1,040. The New England states had an average of $1,230; 
the North Central states, $1,260; and the Pacific Coast states, $1,335. 

Data for the survey were obtained from a study of 300,000 typical 
American families by the WPA project for the study of consumer 


purchases. 








The AMERICAN TEACHER 


Official Organ of 
THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 
506 South Wabash Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 
Organized April 15, 1916 


Affiliated with The American Federation of Labor 
Editor, Georce T. GUERNSEY 


Consulting Editor, Kermit Esy 


Editorial Board 
Mercepes L. NELSoNn 


Mary J. Herrick 
Irvin R. KUENZLI 


Georce E. AXTELLE 


Secretary-Treasurer 
Irvin R. KUENZLI 


President 
Jerome Davis 


Vice-Presidents 

Mary J. Herrick 
Lia A. HUNTER 
Ate B. MANN 
Mercepes L. NELSON 
Pau W. PREISLER 
Jort SEMAN 
STANTON E. SMITH 
Doxey A. WILKERSON 


Georce E. AXTELLE 

Harotp CHAPMAN Brown 
Joun D. Connors 

Micuaet J. Eck 

ARTHUR ELDER 

Mrs. Mary Foitey GrossMAN 
C. J. Henviey 








THE AMERICAN TEACHER 























THE CONTRIBUTORS 


STtaNLEY F. Atwoop is the head of the State Department of Edu- 
cation in the State of Washington. 

FLORENCE CLarK is head of the Vocational Education Committee 
of Local 1. 

Jerome Davis is president of the American Federation of Teach- 
ers. 
Joun J. DeBoer is a professor at the Chicago Teachers College. 

Kermit Epsy is executive-secretary of Local 1 in Chicago. 

Frank P. Grawam is president of the University of North Caro- 
lina and a member of the President’s Advisory Committee. 

Georce T. GUERNSEY is editor of The American Teacher. 

ErtkA Mann is the daughter of Thomas Mann. A pupil of Max 
Reinhardt, Miss Mann has written and directed the successful polit- 
ical cabaret, Peppermill, and has lectured widely on Nazi Germany 
since coming to America. 

EvELYN SHOLUND is a member of the Chicago Teachers Union and 
teaches at the Spaulding Elementary School for Crippled Children in 
Chicago. 

Joun W. SrupesBakeEr, United States commissioner of education, 
wrote his brief article, “By Their Works,” at the request of the 
editor of The American Teacher. 

WanpDA TAESCHNER is chairman of the national Educational Poli- 
cies Committee of the American Federation of Teachers. Miss 
Taeschner teaches at Farragut High School in Chicago. 

Ler THORNE-THOMSEN is a research and teaching fellow of the 
Language Arts Investigation at Stanford University. He taught last 
year at the North Shore Country Day School in Winnetka, II. 

Doxey A. WILKERSON is a member of the President’s Advisory 
Committee and of the Executive Council of the American Federation 
of Teachers. He is president of Local 440 and teaches at Howard 
University. 








BOOKS RECEIVED 


CASTLE CAMP, by Fyerm Hess. New York: The Macmillan 
Company. 226 pages. $2.00. 

CHILDREN’S LITERATURE BY GRADES AND TYPES, by 
Otte Derew. Boston: Ginn and Company. 706 pages. $3.25. 
CHRISTIANITY AND POLITICS, by Arperrt Hyma. Philadel- 

phia: J. B. Lippincott Company. 332 pages. $3.00. 

JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA, by Epwarp K. Strrone, Jr. Stan- 
ford University: Stanford University Press. 188 pages. Paper, 
$1.00; cloth, $1.50. 

MANKIND THROUGHOUT THE AGES, by Harotp Rvucc and 
Louise Kruecer. Boston: Ginn and Company. 584 pages. $1.28. 

ON GOING TO COLLEGE, A Sympostum. New York: Oxford 
University Press. 298 pages. $2.50. 

PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION OF SECOND-GENERATION 
JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA, by Recrnatp Bett. Stanford 
University: Stanford University Press. 116 pages. Paper, $1.00; 
cloth, $1.50. 

THE SCIENTIST IN ACTION, by W. H. Georce. New York: 
Emerson Books, Inc. 354 pages. $3.00. 

SPORTSMANLIKE DRIVING. Washington: American Automo- 
bile Association. 130 pages. 

VOCATIONAL APTITUDES OF SECOND-GENERATION JAPA- 
NESE IN THE UNITED STATES, by Epwarp K. Srrong, Jr., 
and REGINALD Bett. Stanford University: Stanford University 
Press. 184 pages. Paper, $1.00; cloth, $1.50. 

WHEN HOME AND SCHOOL GET TOGETHER, by Tracy W. 
Reppinc. New York: Association Press. 118 pages. $1.25. 





In order that The American Teacher may serve as a medium 
for the discussion of the educational problems of today, the 
contributors are not necessarily expressing the policies of the 
American Federation of Teachers. 














WHAT EVERY 
WELL INFORMED TEACHER 
SHOULD KNOW 


The How and Why of the A. F. of T. 


The following publications answer in convenient form 
questions concerning the aims and organization of the 
American Federation of Teachers. They are well suited 
for distribution to prospective members. Samples will be 
sent on request. 


ee 


. Information about the A. F. T. 


25c per hundred 


Six Major Purposes 25c per hundred 


3. Can Teachers Unions Be Called Out On Strike? 


25c per hundred 


. Why I Am a Member of the Teachers Union 


35¢ per hundred 


5. Six Reasons for Joining the A. F. T. 
(Jerome Davis) 25c per hundred 
6. Questions and Answers 35c per hundred 


7. The Historical Setting of the A. F. T. 


10. 


11. 


12. 


13. 


14. 


15. 
16. 


17. 


18. 


19. 


(Ruth Gillette Hardy) 35¢ per hundred 


Why I Am Glad to Be a Member of the 
A. F. T. 


(Goodman Watson) 35c per hundred 


The Constitution of the A. F. T. 
(Correct as of Oct. 1, 1937) $2.00 per hundred 


A Program of Action for Classroom 
Teachers $2.00 per hundred 


A Critical Evaluation of the A. F. T. 


(Aileen W. Robinson) 50c per copy 
Accomplishments of the A. F. T. 

60c per hundred 
Teachers Should Organize 
(Frank Baker) $2.00 per hundred 


A Golden Opportunity 
(Irvin R. Kuenzli) $2.00 per hundred 


Facts $2.00 per hundred 


Organized Labor and the Public Schools 
(Irvin R. Kuenzli) 75c per hundred 


Power—Participation and Union Orgenization 
(Elmer A. Benson) 50c per hundred 


A Challenge to Class-Room Teachers 
(Blotter) $1.00 per hundred 


The National Union of Teachers of E 
(Elsie V. Parker) $1.00 per hundred 


—_—-~> 


ORDER BY NUMBER FROM 


AMERICAN FEDERATION 
OF TEACHERS 


506 SOUTH WABASH AVENUE 
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 








NOVEMBER, 1938 





31 











PRIZE CONTEST 


Under the Auspices ot 
The American Federation of Teachers 


Open to Every High School Student in America 


On The Subject: 


Organized Labor - 
America’s Problem or Opportunity? 


First Prize: . . . . . . One Hundred and Twenty-five Dollars 
or aid toward visiting the World's Fair 
in New York, if preferred. 


Second Prize: .. . . . Seventy-five Dollars 
Third Prize: . ... . . Fifty Dollars 
Fourth Prize: . « « « « Twenty-five Dollars 





Conditions of the Contest: 


Each contestant must submit a me paper of from 1500 to 3000 
words (5 to 10 typewritten pages) on the subject: Organized Labor—America’s 
Problem or Opportunity? Each paper must carry the name and address of the 
contestant and the name and address of the high school he attends. 
Contestants must send their manuscripts to: 
CONTEST DEPARTMENT 
AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 
506 South Wabash Ave., Chicago, IIl. 


Manuscripts which do not reach this office by March 31, 1939, are in- 
eligible for the contest. Manuscripts will not be returned. The American 
Federation of Teachers reserves the right to publish any papers submitted. 





JUDGES— 
Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt 
William Green, President, American Federation of Labor 
Jerome Davis, President, American Federation of Teachers