> NATIONAL "EDUCATION s ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES Lehane aa 2 ‘ «i - Be RP ag Bi ew ‘ee Re . ' * oe wie. ght : we om aa t | ee : a i ‘ or ee aoe aii ROT ne OIE sy Peet eee eta ¢ ‘ + 4 2 Ft September 1937 Greetings from President Woodruff * The Detroit Convention * Education and the General Welfare * Rich Land—Poor Land * Language-——a Living Force in Education “¥ H. Armstrong Roberts & Vividl y Told Cumulative Story of the progress of civilization from the ancient days of the caveman to the modern social scene is clearly, engagingly, and impressively presented in the new social-studies series— Our Ways of Living. Those Pupils of Grades Three to Six inclusive who study the four books of this series learn the fundamentals of intelligent citi- zenship, the ways of living in other countries, the influence of geography and history on human life, the amazing importance of inventions and machines, and the cultural and spirit- ual effect of the arts and sciences. The Unit ficrangement of the Books is carefully constructed as a series of short, dramatic stories leading to a social concept or idea explicitly stated in a summing-up which is easily grasped by the pupil. OUR WAYS OF LIVING BY HOWARD E. WILSON, FLORENCE E. WILSON, BESSIE P. ERB and others Ways of Living in Many Lands . Where Our Ways of Living Come From NEW YORK 4,500,000 Copies Sold Designed for supplemen- tary use in English work in Grades Ii through XIl. Each book provides ex- ercises in language work suitable for the grade. The books may be used in conjunction with any textbook. This fact, in part, accounts for the de- sirability and popularity of the series. Workbooks for all Grades and Subjects Send for Free Catalog SHARP’S SERIES OF ENGLISH EXERCISES 11 Books... A Book for Each Grade $1.16 $1.28 AMERICAN BOOK CINCINNATI CHICAGO BOSTON Living in the Age of Machines . Richer Ways of Living . COMPANY ATLANTA DALLAS $1.48 $1.52 SAN FRANCISCO THE SHARP SERIES Language Practice for Third Grade... .14c Drill and Test material Language Practice for Fourth Grade.. .14c Drill and Test material hamgueee Gppetes een Peeks... .....600% 14c Fifth grade Language Drills and Tests............. 14c Sixth grade ed 6 on.c- 0 05 see een eee 25c¢ Seventh grade IN 5 5.5.6 ccs oa stsee ces cio 25c¢ Eighth grade is ss sb balép 0d oe 28c Book I for High School, [X grade POET OTE CTT TOOT E 28c Book II for High School, X grade en, gs cena ecennese oe 28c¢ Book III for High School, XI grade EASE Te TUCO E 28c Book IV for High School, XII grade Prices subject to usual school discount A Teacher’s Manual for each book contains brief directions and correct answers for each group of exercises. These books lay great stress on the fundamen- tals, save teachers’ and pupils’ time, create a new classroom interest and add no additional cost to the pupil. WEBSTER PUBLISHING CO. 1808 Washington Ave., St. Louis, Mo. NEW BOOKS TALKING PICTURES—How They Are Made— How to Appreciate Them... Barrett C. Kiesling The first textbook to carry picture production through all the processes from story selection to the final editing of the film. DRIVE AND LIVE Fitzgerald—Hoftman—Bayston Teach the drivers of tomorrow safety attitudes and correct principles and practices of driving through Drive and Live. Complete information provided—excellent study aids and suggested activities. LIVING LONG AGO AND NOW Joy M. Lacey A. textbook-workbook for the elementary school combining basic social studies information with teaching-learning exercises. Write for further information JOHNSON PUBLISHING COMPANY Richmond Atlanta Dallas New York Chicago IOV MIAN V AO’F =, ae ———— eee Between Edztor and Reader © OUR FAMILY OF JOURNAL READERS, greetings Tend best wishes for the new school year! May you who take up teaching for the first time find in it a great and satisfying way of life. May you who return to a service already familiar, find in our association with youth new joy and faith. The abiding truths of teaching are simple: That education is guided growth. That the task of the teacher is to awaken purpose and aspiration in the learner, to arouse him to take responsibility for his. own life and to awaken the higher forces within. That next comes the whole brotherhood of humanity and the Golden Rule. That finally the child shall be aware that he lives in a world of law and order in harmony with which he shall find his own happiness. The best teaching is al- ways personal work on behalf of character and human welfare. The reach of the American school is now so great that in spite of the con- fusion outside, the teacher may do his daily work in the assurance that a new civilization is being born among the thirty million young people in the classrooms and that the quality of that civili- zation will depend upon today’s teaching. HE OPENING OF SCHOOL is a good time to check joan plan of life and work. Here is an eight- point program for 1937-38: [1] To keep myself fit—physically, mentally, and spiritually. [2] To plan well the daily task and to do it with joy. [3] To develop an experimental attitude and to realize that the school wants inventors, not merely those who can run the machine as it is. [4] To give constantly in my teaching such personal guidance as will develop in pupils a sound sense of values. [5] To exert among adults an influence in behalf of informed and active citizenship. [6] To do some definite thing to improve the profession of teaching. [7] To become acquainted with the life and writings of Horace Mann. [8] To select some one civic problem and to study it continuously and thoroly. The articles herein printed are the expressions of the writers and not a statement of policy of the Association unless set by resolution. a eee Se The Journal goes to all members of the National Education Association The payment of $2 active membership dues entitles attend all meetings of the Association and its departments, to vote for delegates to the Representative Assembly, to hold office, and to oe THE JOURNAL. The payment of $5 instead of $2 entitles a active member, in addition to the privileges of the $2 member- ship, to receive the Research Bulletins and the Annual Volume of Addresses and Proceedings. The payment of $100 gives the priv- lleges of the $5 active membership for life. Subscription to non- members is $2 per year; single copies, 25 cents. Advertising rates application. Please report at once any change of address, giving old as well as new address. THE JOURNAL is a member of the Educational Press Association of America. Publis shed monthly, except June, July, and August, by the National Education Association of the United States, 1201 Sixteenth Street, N. W., Washington, . C. Entered as second-class matter October 23, 1920, at the Dostoffice at Washington, D. C., under the act of August 24, 1912. eceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in ection 1103, act of October 3, 1917, authorized January 26, 1921. a member to VOLUME 26, NUMBER 6; al “Tourn ofthe NATIONAL EDUCATION JOY ELMER MORGAN, Editor H. A. ALLAN, Business Manager ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES VOLUME 26 NUMBER 6 CONTENTS FOR SEPTEMBER 1937 Detroit Convention Notes. . . Education and the General Welfare Then and Now in the NEA Resolutions Adopted at Detroit . . . A National Education Association . . The Challenge of Our Changing Times Tools for Tomorrow’s World Rich Land—Poor Land f The Advisory Committee on Education Principles of Academic Freedom Cultivating Goodwill in the Community The School and Democracy Alcohol and Narcotic Drugs The Horace Mann Centennial Horace Mann and the American Ideal of Education . Organization and Reorganization Ideas from Detroit . The Tenure Committee at Work A Challenge to Educational Statesmanship School Health and Physical Education . Officers for 1937-38, National Education Aaaaintion Membership in Education Associations—1937 Greetings from President Woodruff Our First Professional Opportunity The “Red Rider” Repealed . . . How They Did It... . Education and Our National Life Educational Policies Commission Language—a Living Force in Education Personality Can Be’ Cultivated The Teacher’s Voice . . Highschool Discussion Groups Notes and Announcements JOY ELMER MORGAN 163 . HENRY A. WALLACE 164 . « ORVILLE C. PRATT 165 168 J. W. STUDEBAKER 170 BROOKS FLETCHER 171 HALFORD E. LUCCOCK 172 STUART CHASE 173 FLOYD W. REEVES 176 177 . J. B. EDMONSON” 178 . EDMUND E. DAY 179 HAVEN EMERSON 181 183 A. E. MORGAN 184 185 186 DONALD DUSHANE __ 187 NEWTON EDWARDS 188 Bian 188 189 190 CAROLINE S. WOODRUFF _IQI . WILLARD E, GIVENS 1g2 193 .T. D. MARTIN 194 195 196 HOWARD R. DRIGGS 197 . NATHAN G. MEYER = 205 ALBERT KILBURN RIDOUT 207 FRANCIS L. BACON 209 210 Published by the NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION of the UNITED STATES 1201 Sixteenth Street, N. W., Washington, D. C. CAROLINE S. WOODRUFF, President WILLARD E. GIVENS, Executive Secretary J. W. CRABTREE, Secretary-emeritus Directors of Divisions Accounts & Records....... Mary J. Winfree Publications............ Joy Elmer Morgan ce te ee. Pere ee Ki A. Allan Roeseatcll. ccessiecisue.- William G. Carr Classroom Service........... Agnes Winn Associate Director. ...Frank W. Hubbard Field Service...... Charl Ormond Williams Rural Service . Howard A. Dawson Membership.......... T. D. Martin Secretary’s Office . Harriett M. Chase Secretaries of Departments Located at Deans of Women .Kathryn G. Heath Elem. School Principals. ...Eva G. Pinkston SEPTEMBER 1937 School Administrators Supvrs. & Dirs. of Instr... . NEA Headquarters ..S. D. Shankland .Mary F. Hazell [ A-99 | NOW THE STREAMLINE IN TEACHING Today’s streamlined liner moves with a new ease and swiftness to her destination. Now comes a new classroom technique designed to lend like facility to teaching. This modern method is geared to daily les- son sheets or guide sheets duplicated by the Mimeograph Process. Classroom material is transmitted to pupils with a precision and sure- ness which cleanly printed impressions alone can give. For teacher and pupil alike, think what this streamline method means. Factual booklet, *A Solution,” sent free to teachers. Address Edu- cational Department, A. B. Dick Company, Chicago. — «ta ein Va RR PN te Nr NTO Stelios: THE JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION @ see a0 = 2 % nN. i” o : oe ‘ m Ny tay gt \ ec =: as ) j ane P aN - > a oy We) >e ~ k ; : an ! Ve x % ire nile : ee : alibi aN {fo Ze RAI k | i Bree 5 ipod Mita 353" | 9 : Ree My be Jig * . ‘ SMG Ny ie oe 5 eee 2 2 ‘ i t \ \ » » pe OE os OS sr rece 3 } i, br i VOLUME 26, ournal VOLUME 26 of the NATIONAL * EDUCATION * ASSOCIATION OF * THE * UNITED * STATES—SEPTEMBER 1937 NUMBER 6 DETROIT CONVENTION NOTES HE DETROIT CONVENTION marks a turning point in the life of the Association comparable to the reorganizations of 1870 and 1920. It was notable: For the deepening appreciation of the relationship between education and democracy and the growing determination to make democracy effective thru edu- cation. For the Horace Mann Centennial celebration, which ran like a precious thread thruout the week in various addresses, coming to its climax in the presentation of the Horace Mann drama, “Testament of Faith,” writ- ten and presented by Antioch College. For the report of progress made in the campaign for federal aid for free public schools. For the largest attendance registration since the Los Angeles convention in 1931. For the strength of its program, which included a member of the President’s Cabinet; a prominent United States Senator; a leading member of the United States House of Representatives; the chair- man of the TVA; and Stuart Chase, noted author and champion of conservation. For the unfailing fairness, goodwill, and tact of Presi- dent Pratt’s presiding, and for the timeliness and straight-forwardness of his official address. For the patience, poise, and good sportsmanship with which the representative assembly handled the adoption of the revised charter and the revision of the bylaws. For the high quality and efficiency of the teachers and staff of the Detroit schools as the hosts of the convention. For increasing interest in teacher welfare, including salaries, tenure, freedom of teaching, and retirement. For the more active part taken by classroom teachers in the affairs of the Association. For committee reports, which showed an increasing amount of careful cooperative labor on the problems of the profession. For substantial gains in reported membership, for the national goal of 10 percent increase adopted for NUMBER 6; SEPTEMBER 1937 1937-38, and for the widely expressed determination to work earnestly for large increases in order that all the teachers of the nation may go forward together. For its financial report showing a balanced budget for the Association and providing for a return to the pre- depression salary scale for the headquarters staff. For a revival of interest in rural education as a field requiring sustained special attention. For the widening attention given to adult education as a regular part of the program of tax-supported education. For the successful culmination of the negotiations which unite our large body of workers in the fields of school health and physical education into a strong department within the Association. For the strong program and growth in membership of the Department of Elementary School Principals. For the powerful growth of the movement for high- school reform led by the Association’s Department of Secondary School Principals. For the meeting of the National Association of Stu- dent Officers bringing fine young leaders from every part of the country as guests of Detroit highschool students. For the adoption of a special resolution calling for the appointment of an Association committee on coop- eratives and credit unions. For the adoption of a strong resolution in opposition to war calling for an amendment to the federal con- stitution which would require a vote of the people to declare war except in case of actual invasion. For a period of most comfortable and attractive weather. As I TaLKeED with delegates in hotel lobbies and on the trains, they reported a most profitable week and were returning to their communities refreshed and in- spired. The steady growth in purpose and power of democracy’s teaching staff is one of the most hearten- ing phases of the world’s life. —Joy ELMER Morcan. [ 163 | Education and the General Welfare HONORABLE HENRY A. WALLACE HE OBJECTIVE of all our American T educator should be to create in the hearts of our people a desire for a higher standard of living. At the same time, the minds and the wills of our people must be trained in methods which will make it possible for the next generation to obtain from our soil, our resources, our factories, and our dis- tribution systems, the abundance which is necessary to fulfil these desires. Most educators would define a higher standard of living as consisting not merely of the wider distribution of mere automobiles, radios, and electric refrig- erators, but also of the wider distribu- tion of physical, mental, and emotional health. Just as important as vitamins in the diet is the presence in the emo- tional life of confidence and joyous faith in the future. I believe that at least 95 percent of the children of the United States are sufficiently well-equipped by heredity so that, if given adequate food, training, and jobs they will lead happy and useful lives. It is a splendid thing that in the United States so many of our teachers are sincerely devoted to the ideal of democracy. They believe that every child, no matter how poor his parents, is entitled to twelve years of schooling. They believe also that when the chil- dren finish school, it should be possible in a country as rich as ours for them to find jobs that will enable them, in case they are trained to work with effective competence, to lead happy, decent lives, confident of the future... . In the United States the forces which have made a new deal inevitable are the rapid growth of technology on one hand and the rapid growth of corporations, labor unions, and farm organizations on the other. The people who have been in position to make new inventions and to utilize them have made extraordinary profits. In those lines of activity where the new technology is most important, an hour of man labor will turn out two, three, or even four times as much goods as at the beginning of the century. In this way corporate income has been enormously increased and labor unions have been organized to divert a larger [ 164 | Secretary of Agriculture share of the products of industry to organized labor. Perhaps a third or maybe a half of our population have greatly benefited by the new technology put to work by the great corporations. Perhaps a fifth or a fourth of our people are relatively worse¢ off. To serve the general welfare it is es- sential that the schools of the United States give more definite instruction about the soil, population, and income. Not one city person in a thousand ap- preciates the terrible way in which the soils of the United States have been mistreated during the past 150 years. It is time to get our house in order. We have begun to tackle this job in a truly resolute way during the past three years. In 1936 the Triple A carried on a vast soil conservation program on 68 percent of all the crop land in the United States. New seedings of legumes were made on 30,000,000 acres. Thirty million acres were diverted out of soil-depleting uses into soil-conserving uses... . In Denmark, where education for the general welfare is probably more effec- tively approached than in any other country, great emphasis has been laid on farmers’ owning their own land and handling their own business thru their own cooperative buying and selling or- ganizations. In this country nearly half of our farmers are tenants and nearly half of those who own their farms are so much in debt that they are very little better off than tenants. Most tenant farmers, outside of those who are re- lated to the landlord, move every two or three years. Until we have security of tenure, and farm families stay in the same communities for more than ten years, we cannot build up satisfactory schools, churches, and cooperative or- ganizations. Over large parts of this country there can never be satisfactory salaries for school teachers until there is security of tenure for farmers. School teachers and farm leaders might well make common cause in attacking the tenancy problem. For the first time we have stopped de- fending tenancy as a necessary evil, and | have started doing something about it As fast as the federal government gains | experience and the tenants and the tep. ants’ children receive the education | necessary to make them good farmers worthy to own their own land it is to be hoped that we can start on the road to making this a nation of farmers who stay on the same land year after year.... | Our system of public education mus permit citizens of all ages to get accurate | information and opportunity for hones | debate as to the solution of our common problems. May I direct your attention to the work of the Department of Agri- culture in stimulating group discussion of agricultural problems, to the high caliber of the conference work done by the farmers’ committees which partici- pated in the crop control plan, and to the | farreaching importance of the experi- | mental efforts which have been made | during the past two years thru the Office of Education, in the development of pub- lic forum demonstration centers. . .. We have the resources, the technology, the economic organization, and the be- lief in democracy to enable us to attain a stable and increasing abundance in the United States such as the world has never seen. We have been wandering in | the wilderness. The Promised Land lies | spread before us. We can take possession | of it as soon as we have determined with | our wills that we can whip the giants | that stand in the way. It will take time to do the job completely and the edv- cators can use that time to train our peo- ple in the belief that our farms and factories can be used for greater pro ductivity and greater economic security; that our farmers and city workers can be given security of tenure and stability of income; that an ever-normal granary can be made workable in the interest of pro ducers and consumers; that there can be an increasing balanced abundance of the good things of life; that we can look to the future with confidence and joy, by understanding the past and holding firm to the democratic process of achiev- ing the general welfare—From an ad- dress before the Detroit convention of the National Education Association. THE JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION N ew cc a _ and ut it, Zains ‘ten. ation mers to be id to ) stay must ' Irate | nest mon ition \ gri- sion high e by rtici- > the peri- nade )ffice pub- logy, > be- ttain e in | has 1g in 1 lies ssion with | lants time edu- peo- and pro- rity; n be ry of r can pro- can -e of look JOY, ding 11ev- _ad- n of L. TION Then and Now in the National Education Association The new President, Caroline S. Woodruff, accepts the gavel from President Pratt. HIS YEAR, 1937, is especially a cen- T econ year for education. In 1837 Horace Mann began his epochal career for the establishment of free, tax-supported public schools. In that year Froebel started the first kinder- garten; and the legislature of Massa- chusetts created what Cubberley called ‘the first real State Board of Education in the United States.” While the educational renaissance of 1837 centered in Massachusetts, its in- fluence was widespread. Ohio estab- lished the office of State Superintend- ent; Indiana chartered DePauw Uni- versity; and Michigan organized its State University. The growing appre- ciation of the importance of education was well-expressed by Daniel Webster in a speech he made at Madison, In- diana, in 1837. “On the diffusion of education among the people,” he said, “rests the preservation and perpetuation of our free institutions.” The new interest in education was doubtless due in part to the political success of Andrew Jackson and his new deal with the extension of manhood suf- frage and the introduction of the spoils system. Thoughtful leaders viewed uni- versal education as an absolute essen- tial if the new democracy were to sur- vive. The score of years from 1837 to 1857 VOLUME 26, NUMBER 6; was a period of crude public-school beginnings in the wake of the advanc- ing frontier. Teachers were poorly pre- pared and even more poorly paid. They managed to exist by working at other jobs a part of the time and by boarding around with school patrons. Yet the ap- pearance of the Webster speller and the McGuffey readers shows that real prog- ress was being made. By 1857 there were about 100,000 teachers in the public schools. However, sectionalism and the question of slavery were becoming increasingly dominant. The conflicting issues of the approach- ing Civil War were absorbing the at- tention of people largely to the exclusion of other interests. It was in this atmos- phere of uncertainty and strife that a small but devoted group of educators met at Philadelphia eighty years ago and organized what is now the National Education Association. The next twenty-year period from 1857 to 1877 was one of war and recov- ery from war, in many respects similar to the interval since the World War. In 1877 the nation had reached about the same stage of emergence from a se- vere postwar depression as we have at- tained with our depression. Education- ally, it was largely a time of stagnation. Among other indications of this is the fact that in five different years the Na- SEPTEMBER 1937 Presidential Address by ORVILLE C. PRATT tional Education Association held no meeting. That is why this is the 75th instead of the 80th anniversary meeting. James Truslow Adams has called this period “the nation at dead center.” Edu- cation, along with other cultural inter- ests, marked time. The score of years from 1877 to 1897 was a period of renewed educational growth and vigor, marking the transi- tion to presentday problems. The tech- nological unemployment of children caused the highschools to double in attendance between 1880 and 1890, a performance which they have dupli- cated each decade since then. An evi- dence of the greater interest which pa- trons of the schools were beginning to take was the formation of the “parent teacher association” in 1897. Notwith- standing the inestimable value of this association—now the National Congress of Parents and Teachers—to education, its much greater potential value is as yet only dimly realized by educators. The twenty years from 1897 to 1917 were years of unparalleled advancement in science and in its offspring, industry. They were years, too, of unparalleled growth in education, altho the growth was in quantity more than in quality. Thruout the sixty years of its existence to 1917, the National Education Asso- ciation had grown only slowly, with a membership chiefly among school ad- ministrators. In this brief running sketch, we come now to the score of years just ending, the period from 1917 to 1937. It began with our rather blind and thoughtless entrance into the World War; the war, ironically enough, as we now view it, to end war and to make the world safe for democracy. In the begin- ning of this period occurred that great forward step of the Association, its re- organization on a representative basis. Under the impetus of this change the membership in the Association grew rapidly to about 200,000. During the depression years, there was a loss of membership and only this year has it again mounted above the predepression level. [ 165 | In this the centennial year for public education and the 8oth for our Associa- tion, as we honor the prophetic vision of Horace Mann and view the educa- tional achievements since his time, it seems to be a propitious time to give thought to some additional forward steps which the National Education As- sociation ought to take. The most im- mediate and practical forward step, as I view it, is a vast upsurge in member- ship similar to that which followed the reorganization of twenty years ago. How can such an increase in membership be brought about? It seems to me that the answer is: By convincing teachers gen- erally that the National Education As- sociation is of direct practical benefit to them, that membership in it is an in- vestment yielding generous returns. Teachers will be thus convinced if the National Education Association will make the attainment of the various phases of teacher welfare its major ob- jective and vigorously set about its ac- complishment. Take the troublesome problem of teacher tenure as an exam- ple. It is troublesome because it involves a delicate balance of social values. The schools exist for the pupils, and their rights must be safeguarded. On the other hand, one of the commonest ways by which the rights of children are vio- lated is thru the insecurity of teachers in their positions. The representative assembly has re- peatedly adopted resolutions favoring teacher tenure and the Association has a tenure committee. This committee is composed of capable educators deeply interested in securing reasonable tenure for teachers. What more can be done? In my opinion there ought to be in the headquarters in Washington some one person free to devote his entire time to the matter of tenure. This person should be an expert in tenure, versed in its history. He ought to know in detail the provisions of the various teacher-tenure laws. He should know by investigation on the ground just how well each of these laws functions and in what re- spects it is defective. Such a person should be made available as an expert consultant to the tenure committees of the National Education Association and of the various state associations. The function of this expert on teacher tenure would be purely advisory. His relation to a tenure committee would be similar | 166 | to that of a lawyer to his client. Out of his greater knowledge and experience he would give advice as requested. The decision as to what should be done would rest wholly with the committee. In this suggestion for the employ- ment of an expert on tenure, there is im- plied no criticism whatever of existing tenure committees. The difficulty in the present situation is that the edu- cators who are members of tenure com- mittees, have fulltime jobs as teachers and consequently can devote only a small fraction of their time to tenure. They have done a fine piece of work in demonstrating the need for effective tenure laws. In my opinion, the Na- tional Education Association ought now to supplement their work by furnishing the expert aid by which the passage of suitable tenure laws by state legislatures can be more speedily attained. What has been said about the need for expert service in the field of tenure to be furnished by the National Edu- cation Association is quite as true of salaries, retirement, or any other phase of teacher welfare. Take, for instance, the matter of salaries. The Association has available uptodate statistics about salaries and has printed several pam- phlets relating to salary schedules. When the revision of salary schedules is up for consideration in a city, however, it would greatly facilitate correct action if an expert on salaries could go to the city from headquarters in Washington. He would be there in the capacity of an expert consultant available to the ad- ministration and to salary committees to answer such questions s: Is a single salary schedule advisable? Should the quality of teaching be a recognized fac- tor in the schedule? By what increments should additional education be recog- nized? Over how many years should increments based on experience extend? What portion of the school budget ought to go to salaries? How should the salaries of teachers compare with those of other governmental employees? What salaries can the city well afford to pay? Much the same is true of teacher re- tirement. In these days when social security is in the forefront of public discussion, the time is ripe for the pas- sage of teacher retirement laws in all the states which do not have them. The National Education Association has pub- lished material on retirement, but again | it would be much more helpful and ef. | fective if it would make available the services of an expert on retirement, This | year our legislature in the state of Washington enacted a new teacher re. tirement law. Now that we have it, no one knows certainly what parts of it mean. It would have been a simpler and better law if we had had expert assist. ance in framing it. 1 am happy to report that the NEA has taken steps to furnish such expert service in the fields of tenure, salaries, and retirement next year. The Department of Classroom Teach- ers plans to extend its field service with a view to increasing membership in the National Education Association. With that plan I am in entire accord, and the expert services which I am recommend- ing and which the NEA is undertak- ing will make a large increase in teacher membership easier to attain. Up to this point we have discussed the timeliness and desirability of a large in- crease in the membership of the Na- tional Education Association and the ways by which it can be done. Let us now turn to a consideration of why it should be done. There ought to be, in the United States, one dominant, powerful, and all- inclusive educational organization which on occasion could speak authoritatively for education as a whole. Its being all- inclusive is a necessary prerequisite to its being dominant and powerful. With a membership of only one-fifth of the nation’s teachers, the National Educa- tion Association cannot presume to rep- resent or speak for all of them and so is rightfully considered to express a mere minority opinion. This is the first weakness which needs to be remedied and the definite objective of teacher wel- fare in all its phases is the open door to its attainment. Teachers are specialists and like all specialists are subject to the temptations of narrowness. The right kind of a specialist is a broad man sharpened to a point. Breadth of view is quite as es- sential as depth; seeing one’s work in perspective is as important as knowing it in intimate detail. Just as the Amer- ican Medical Association and the Amer- ican Bar Association speak with author- ity on matters of medicine and law, so there must be in America an organiza- tion of educators who can speak with equal effectiveness. THE JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION T orge this mak thei teacl ucat clas: like mot else den ie tio! tio ber Te nd ef. le the . This ite of er re. it, no of it T and ASSist- "eport nish nure, each- with n the With d the rend- rtak- acher d the e in- Na- the t us hy it ited I all- hich ively - all- O its th a the uca- rep- 1 so Sa first died wel- loor | all ons fa | to es- in ing 1er- 1er- \or- $0 zZa- ith IN There has been no dearth of national organizations of educators aspiring t his role. With a single exception all of these organizations other than the NEA make more or less the mistake, fatal to their aspirations, of leaving classroom teachers out of account. A national ed- ycational organization which excludes classroom teachers from membership is like a nation which excludes the com- mon man from the franchise. Whatever ese it may be, such a nation is not a democracy. Among these other national educa- tional organizations, the single excep- tion which seeks classroom teacher mem- bership is the American Federation of Teachers affliated with the American Federation of Labor. This organization is to be commended for the value it _ places on classroom teacher membership and for the aggressive way in which it seeks teacher welfare. Its underlying philosophy, however, differs from ours. We vision teaching as being, at least potentially, a profession. As with other true professions, we believe that educa- tion should have its own nationwide, independent organization, free from en- tangling alliances whether with labor or with capital. Every situation should be frankly faced. Perhaps what is now going on in the labor world may have a lesson for us. The present bid for power by the CIO is due to the feeling of a segment of labor that the interests of labor were not being looked after aggressively enough. The National Education Asso- ciation is in danger of finding the fertile field of classroom teacher membership sown and reaped by another organiza- tion if it fails of aggressiveness in fur- thering teacher welfare. An educator’s loyalty, like that of a citizen, should be double. First should come his loyalty to the interests and welfare of education as of national con- cern, as the conserver of the social her- itage, and the preserver of American democracy. It is this broad function which the National Education Asso- ciation must fulfil or eventually give place to some other national organiza- tion which will. The second loyalty of an educator should be to his immediate local group; to the problems and interests held in common with others similarly situated. This local or class loyalty is necessarily VOLUME 26, NUMBER 6; United States Senator Josh Lee, whose able address at the Detroit convention, entitled, “The Elimination of War,” will appear in a later issue of THE JouRNAL. of secondaty importance since its objectives cannot be fully attained until the nationwide loyalty receives proper recog- nition. It is at this point that organized edu- cation has chiefly failed. Our brethren, the college teachers (of whom I was once one) have formed the American Association of University Professors. Relatively few of them belong to the National Education Association altho higher education cannot thrive unless education below college level is thriving. No matter how well paid a professor may be or how well endowed his insti- tution, his work will suffer if the pub- lic schools are handicapped by inade- quate financial support. The Progressive Education Associa- tion has done a splendid piece of work in making education more realistic, in emphasizing the here and now, and in seeing that experience precedes sym- bols. But that vision of possible progress for education should not prevent pro- gressive educators from participating thru the National Education Associa- tion in the formulation of large-scale, long-range national educational policies. Please note that I am not criticising the organizations mentioned or the many similar ones which might be mentioned. Tle: point I am attempting to make is that teachers too generally have joined educational organizations to secure certain rather narrowly spe- cific ends in which they were interested and have not so clearly recognized the many objectives which they. have in common with all educators. I have previously indicated my belief that, if the National Education Asso- ciation is to become truly national, it must enlist the great majority of class- room teachers in its membership. Class- room teachers already far outnumber all other educators in membership and will inevitably henceforth determine the policies of the Association. If the present trend toward disintegration into class- conscious groups is to be ended, the policies of the National Education As- SEPTEMBER 1937 sociation must be broadly based, allinclu- sive, with education as a unitary influ- ence in America in the forefront. The great advantage of the United States in the modern world is that it consists of one nation instead of many as in war- mad Europe. Education will have a sim- ilar advantage in our nation when, in addition to our present special interest groups, educators generally vision the need for and the possibilities of a great national organization to which all be- long. The present Educational Policies Commission points the way to the kind of continuous research needed for long- range planning. In addition to the specific objectives of special groups, the unique function of education in Amer- ica must be widely understood by the citizenry. It is not enough for people generally to have a blind traditional belief in the value of education; rather they must clearly comprehend the direct relationship between education and the preservation and prosperity of our na- tion. Each of us, within the limits of his opportunities needs to be a missionary for education. We all need to be fired with something of the prophetic zeal and missionary spirit of Horace Mann. As educators we know that in what- ever respects America may fall short of the abundant life, education of the right kind and in a broad sense offers the only road to improvement. We have not always been as aggressive as we might well be in stressing this general truth. Too many of us have been more inter- ested in getting for ourselves and our groups a larger piece of such pie as there was, rather than in increasing the size of the pie which, when fairly di- vided, would give everyone a larger piece. We need to do our very utmost to make education the best instrument we possibly can for national growth; and along with making it fully worthy [ 167 | of liberal support, we need to set about practically to see that such support is forthcoming. The surest way to attain special group objectives is to work en- thusiastically and unitedly for educa- tion as a whole. In order to make sure that the Na- tional Education Association has the unity and the balanced wholeness of viewpoint which is imperative, we need to centralize our work in the headquar- ters at Washington. In no other way can it be properly coordinated and_har- monized. No organization can be effec- tive if it has more than one head, and the Executive Secretary should be the one to carry out the policies of the representative assembly. The President is merely the temporary interpreter for the Association, giving the steering wheel a slight pull in this direction or in that. He is, as the barkers at the county fairs used to say of themselves, “here today and gone tomorrow.” Con- sistency of policy must depend upon the leadership of the Executive Secretary. At the end of a year of close associa- tion with Mr. Givens, I am happy to affirm that he is a leader whom we may fittingly follow. I am sure that he is sympathetic with the aspirations and the ultimate destiny of classroom teach- ers in the National Education Associa- tion. I am equally confident that he visions the National Education Asso- ciation as the unified and effective pol- icymaking agency for education as a whole, with all lesser educational inter- ests in balanced cooperation. I doubt if we educators fully realize what education has done for our nation or what the National Education Asso- ciation has done for education. Our deep-rooted faith in American institu- tions and our relative freedom from social turmoil are due far more to uni- versal education than to all other causes combined. The same is true of our stand- ard of living. It may be a mixed blessing, but we have five-sixths of the world’s automobiles and three-fourths of its telephones and radios. Our homes are better and larger, require less work, have more electrical gadgets and bath- tubs than those of any other nation. As a nation we are gradually learning the economic wisdom of the widest pos- sible distribution of the good things of life. We equally eschew dictators of every breed, communist, fascist, or nazi. We reserve the right to grumble and complain, but below the surface we know that we are better off than any other people in the world. Teachers, too, are better off. Back in 1870 the average salary of teachers was only $189; by 1910 it had risen to $485 and now it is about $1250. Too small, to be sure, but as elsewhere in life, the important thing is not so much where we are as the direction in which we are going. Our National Education Association has a long and honorable past, replete with worthwhile accomplishments for education. What it has been able to ac- complish is only a faint indication of what it can do when it enrols in its membership the great majority of teach. ers of every kind. Education is worthy | of all the idealism and intelligence 4 all of America’s teachers. If the edy. | cators of America would unitedly sup. | port the National Education Associa. | tion, we could make more educational | advance in the next decade than has been made in a generation. | In conclusion, I wish to tell you hoy | keenly I appreciate the high position | of trust in which you placed me this year. The National Education Associa. | tion is not a one-man institution. No | one man has the vision or ability to guide it well or wisely. In the multitude of counsel there is wisdom. If wisdom is to be found at all, it is most likely to emerge in the work of associated minds. It is my honor and responsibility to preside over your minds in association this week. I trust I may have your sympathetic cooperation and that the outcome of our deliberations may be to the lasting benefit of education. We, individually, fill our little niches in the world and cease to be. But education in | the modern world constantly grows in importance. Perhaps this week we car make certain adjustments that will en- hance its standing and influence in our | great nation. | As Horace Mann said a century ago: | ““Tf ever there was a cause, if ever there can be a cause, worthy to be upheld by all of toil or sacrifice that the human hand or heart can endure, it is the cause of education.” RESOLUTIONS Adopted at DETROIT ouTH EpucaTIon AND GuIDANCE— Y The National Education Associa- tion reafirms its recommendation for establishment by act of Congress of an adequately supported permanent Division of Youth Education and Guidance in the United States Office of Education. All organizations concerned with youth problems are urged to cooperate to the full extent of their resources with the National Education Association and the United States Office of Education in a concerted effort to coordinate into a single division all of the agencies of government intended to aid youth educationally. [II] Apvutt Epucation—The education of adults for effective citizenship is a func- tion of public education. The Association, [ 168 | therefore, urges financial support for this phase of education by local, state, and fed- eral governments proportionate to the demonstrated needs for such education. [III] Feperat Aip—The National Edu- cation Association directs its officers to continue efforts to secure liberal federal aid for education proportionate to educational need and to equalize the burden of sup- port for education. The Association in- dorses the principles of federal aid as ex- pressed in the provisions of the Harrison- Black-Fletcher Bill. [IV] Rurat Epucation—The mainte- nance of adequate schools for rural chil- dren being a matter of state and national concern, the National Education Associa- tion urges its officers and members to seek and to develop means for promoting the | welfare of schools in rural areas, and to expand the services of the Association in the field of rural education as rapidly as | possible. [V] ApyustMENT oF TEACHER SUPPLY AND DemManp—The National Education Association recommends that a committee | be appointed to study the problem of ad- justing the supply of adequately trained teachers to the demand for teachers, to the end that recommendations may be made regarding the establishment of a bal- ance between the number of qualified can- didates for teaching and the prospective demand for teachers. [VI] Opposition to War—In further ance of its adopted policy of opposition to THE JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION wa Qa. = nw tio! ex th tic Wi g the nd to on in lly as UPPLY cation nittee of ad- ained rs, to ry be a bal- 1 can- ective rther- ion to TION war as a method of settling international disputes, the National Education Associa- tion advocates the following as possible means for maintaining peace in the world: [1] Education for peace including the truth about the causes of war and the means of alleviating such causes. [2] The teaching of war aims and the extent to which these have been attained thru warfare. [3] Nationalization of the war muni- tions industry to take the profits out of war and the preparations for war. [4] An amendment to the Constitution to provide that, except in case of actual invasion, war may be declared only by vote of the people. [5] An amendment to the Constitution to legalize a universal draft act in case of war that would automatically draft the material and industrial resources of the country for the successful prosecution of the war. [VII] Teacher Tenure—The National Education Association reaffirms its stands in full support of tenure for teachers as a means of insuring to the children of the land the best possible instruction. The As- sociation approves the continuance of the present tenure committee and its program and policies. [VIII] Apvisory ComMiITTEE on Epv- catloN—The National Education Associa- tion highly commends the appointment of the Advisory Committee on Education by the President of the United States. The Association urges all state and local asso- ciations to give careful appraisal to the significant research being undertaken by the Advisory Committee. [IX] INDEPENDENCE oF EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATIVE ORGANIZATION—The Na- tional Education Association reaffirms its position with reference to the necessity for independence of education in the admin- istrative organization of the federal, state, and local governments. The Association herewith registers its opposition to the administrative merging of education with functions generally classified as welfare services, ; [X] OatHs—The National Education Association reaffirms its opposition to ef- forts to require members of the teaching profession to take discriminatory oaths. [XI] Rapto Epucation—As a means of providing an added educational opportu- nity for boys and girls, especially in rural schools, the National Education Associa- tion urges the further development of edu- cational programs by radio which can be used to enrich the regular school work. These programs should be controled by the regular educational agencies which are Primarily concerned with the welfare of the child. VOLUME 26, NUMBER 6; [XII] Appratsa, CommirteEE—The Na- tional Education Association recommends that the President be authorized to appoint an Appraisal Committee whose duty it shall be to make a critical appraisal of the work of the 76th Annual Convention and of all subsequent annual conventions. The committee shall be representative of the membership of the Association and shall consist of nine persons, three to serve for one year, three for two years, and three for three years, and thereafter three per- sons shall be appointed each year for terms of three years. The first nine members appointed to the committee shall draw lots to determine the lengths of their terms. The report of the Appraisal Committee shall be made available to the members of the Association. [XIII] INporsEMENTs AND APPRECIA- Tions—[1] American Education Week— The National Education Association urges that American Education Week be ob- served in the schools. The theme for the celebration, November 7-13, 1937, “Educa- tion and Our National Life,” is of vital interest and significance not only to the profession but to the future of American democracy itself. [2] Educational Policies Commission— The National Education Association in- dorses the work and reports of the Educa- tional Policies Commission and recom- mends that teachers, individually and thru their associations, give careful considera- tion and wide publicity to the findings and recommendations of the Commis- sion. [3] Horace Mann Centennial — The National Education Association heartily commends the Horace Mann Centennial Committee for its effective work. In view of the distinguished service of Horace Mann to democracy, the Association re- quests the United States Post Office De- partment to issue a special stamp in commemoration of the Horace Mann Centennial. [4] Honoring Educational Leaders— In view of the values resulting from the Horace Mann Centennial nationally, and in the belief that localities, states, and groups of states have an added oppor- tunity to further the cause of their schools by honoring their educational pioneers, the National Education Association rec- ommends the commemoration of the lives of such educational leaders. As a notable example of this policy, attention is called to the General Beadle Centennial Cele- bration now in progress in the Northwest states. [5] Repeal of the Red Rider—The Na- tional Education Association appreciates the efforts of members of the United States Congress, the newspapers, and all agencies SEPTEMBER 1937 participating in the movement which led to the repeal of the “Red Rider” restric- tion upon the schools of the District of Columbia. [6] Kindergarten—The National Edu- cation Association recognizes the influence of the kindergarten upon the schools in the wholesome development of children, and urges that an appreciation of the value of this contribution be accorded this de- partment on its one-hundredth anniver- sary. [7] Restoration of Educational Pro- grams—The National Education Associa- tion commends the steps toward restora- tion of educational programs that have been made during the past year, and urges the several states and individual school units to continue this forward movement. [8] Education for Public Service—This Association indorses the development of systems of training for service in public office. [9] Membership—The Association rec- ommends to the officers of teacher-training institutions the plan of student member- ship in the National Education Associa- tion which is now in operation, and urges that seniors in these institutions be given an opportunity to participate in this proj- ect which establishes for them an active connection with their national professional organization. [10] Calendar Reform—The National Education Association indorses the move- ment for a simplified calendar as _pro- posed by the Council of the League of Nations. The Association recommends that the members be kept informed as to the latest developments in the progress of this movement for a world calendar. [11] Teacher Education—The Associa- tion indorses the proposal of the Ameri- can Council on Education that studies be made of the present status of teacher education. [12] Foundation ‘:* the Blind—The National Education .\ssociation indorses the work of the Americ20 Foundation for the Blind and special tribute to Helen Keller which is being planned for 1938. [13] Appreciation—The National Edu- cation Association expresses its apprecia- tion of the hospitality and courtesy of the City of Detroit extended thru the various school organizations, the Detroit Conven- tion and Tourist Bureau, and other civic organizations. The Association also ten- ders its appreciation to the press, the National Broadcasting Company, to the Columbia Broadcasting System, and to all who contributed to the success of this con- vention —R. L. Hunt, chairman; ]. O. Powers, secretary—Adopted at the Detroit convention of the Association, July 1, 1937. [ 169 | mar eR Ac | | A National EDUCATION ASSOCIATION J. W. STUDEBAKER United States Commissioner of Education URING THE PasT YEAR the Educa- D tional Policies Commission of the NEA, made up of twenty national leaders, has faced squarely the preblem of a national professional or- ganization for teachers. The findings of the Commission, published in a bulletin entitled 4 National Organization for Education, are worth careful considera- tion by the members of our profession. I commend them to you for earnest study. The potential dangers of class and group conflicts arising out of competing economic interests suggest the vital im- portance of a demonstration by at least one professional group that cooperative effort can be motivated by and directed toward consideration for the general welfare. All educators in the United States should take the time to think thru carefully, the educational implications of recent political developments abroad. Too few of us perceive that the front line of defense against attacks upon edu- cational ideals must be a closely knit and inclusive professional organization. The latest issue of the Educational Directory of the U. S. Office of Educa- tion lists 542 state and national educa- tional associations. Of these, 121 are statewide, while 421 are national or re- gional in scope. During the past two decades teachers organizations have multiplied rapidly, but during recent months there has developed on the part of many leaders a tendency to question the advisability of increasing the num- ber of professional groups and to sug- gest that it might be a wiser policy for our profession to develop fewer but larger and better professional organiza- tions. I, myself, hold to this opinion. We need to develop a national asso- ciation which has its roots out in the local communities and which has as its branches strong, vigorous state associa- tions; a national association which is democratic from top to bottom, in which all members of the profession may find [ 170 | opportunities for effective service; an organization which is strong in its unity but diverse in its interests and in its activities; an organization which can speak with a single voice for the pro- fession; but an organization which serves every teacher in the nation and which gives each member an opportu- nity to work personally upon the specific problems of his greatest interest. The association must not be dom- inated by any particular group or level of the profession. We are all workers in a common cause. Classroom teachers, administrators, supervisors, principals, teachers of Latin, teachers of mathe- matics, and college presidents—all are members of the same profession. Each should have opportunity to play his part in solving our common problems and each should have opportunity to work within our national professional organization on our common problems as well as on those particular problems which are peculiar to his special field. A year ago I placed myself definitely on record as favoring a coinclusive membership by which a teacher, when he joins -his local association, becomes automatically a member of his state and national groups. Under the present ar- rangement we squander too much time and energy in the enrolment of mem- bers and in the collection of dues. A simplified procedure needs to be worked out at once. Every teacher profits by the work of his professional organizations —local, state, and national—and every teacher should pay his share of the cost of the services these groups render. Educationally, the most significant and at the same time the most perilous fact in our political-economic situation is that too many people are losing faith in education as democracy’s greatest defense against the breakdown of our system of selfgovernment. In the face of widespread desertion of educational ideals from without and discontent over the insufficiencies of our own educa- tional system from within, the time has come to shelve our internal differences, our conflicting interests, and by consoli- dating our forces proceed to the great task before us. The immediate step before us is the consolidation of our forces into one all- inclusive, national professional organ- ization, with the overlapping and dupli- cation of function eliminated and at least some unity of purpose assured. This does not mean that individuality and variety must be sacrificed. It does mean that major differences are to be composed within the common pursuit of a common truth and in an order of preference which bears some relation- ship to the social relevancy of the issue. In the last analysis, increasing pro- fessional strength thru unity of purpose can come only as more and more of us in education perceive and understand the unique function of our profession in a democracy. We have no justification for our existence unless we can constantly demonstrate continuing progress toward the goal of increasing control thru self- government over all the conditions of life. As social illiteracy is reduced, the evils and maladjustments from which we suffer will gradually disappear and the ideals of democracy as a richer and fuller life for all will be in part achieved. As our predecessors fought and, for all practical purposes, won the battle for universal education, so we in these days must unite for the du. ation of the war against social and civic illiteracy. In union is our strength; in an improved national organization, our power.— From an address before the Detroit convention of the NEA. EDUCATIONAL SERVICES cannot be maintained or improved unless teachers are in a position to resist the subtle and overt pressures which would turn the school into a sounding board for vested interests. I see no chance of resisting these pressures if our own ranks are split by the conflicting interests, jealousies, and contradictory demands of rival groups—COMMISSIONER STUDEBAKER. THE JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION ¥ q since the beginning of the human race, has been the problem of knowing how to adjust themselves to an ever-changing environment. With ‘ nethird of our population ill-clad, ill- housed, and underfed, it is evident that the problem most seriously challenging us today is the same old problem that has challenged every generation. Our chief hope of solving this age-old problem of survival, of adjustment to an ever-changing environment, is thru the application of new knowledge. Today we must face the challenge of financing the researches that will make this new knowledge available and of financing the distribution of this knowl- edge to the masses, thru education. It was in the hope of meeting this challenge, in some degree, that I intro- duced in the national House of Repre- sentatives, 2 Bill providing federal aid to education, known as the Harrison- Black-Fletcher Bill, companion to the one introduced in the United States Sen- ate by the distinguished Senators Har- rison and Black. And may I say to the credit of the Senate Committee that the Bill was approved unanimously. The Bill was temporarily blocked in the House Committee by the undemo- cratic device known as the “secret bal- lot,” a method of killing legislation which, in my opinion, is un-American, unfair, and should be disapproved by every thinking, patriotic citizen of the nation who believes that legislation should be considered above-board, in the open on its merits so that the people who elect us to Congress may know exactly what we are doing and why we are doing it. There is no place for legis- lative secrecy in a democracy on legis- lation in behalf of the children of today whose education and thinking may de- termine America’s destiny tomorrow. Ever since the land grants for the support of public schools—totaling more than 241,000 square miles, which is nearly six times the area of my native state, Ohio—granted in 1802, the fed- eral government has increased its sup- port to schools. At no time has there been cause for criticism of the federal Sovernment’s policy, for never at any time has the federal government at- tempted to dictate or control in any way teaching methods or subject taught. The New Deal is responsible for more T: PROBLEM Of men and women, The Challenge of OUR CHANGING TIMES HONORABLE BROOKS FLETCHER United States Congressman from Ohio generous financial federal aid to educa- tion in its various phases thru this emer- gency than has been sponsored by any previous administration and it has ren- dered this great service to education without ever once interfering with local selfgovernment in education. The great need for federal aid to edu- cation is proved by the fact that only as recently as twenty-four months ago there were 42,000 schools without sufh- cient funds to operate a normal school term, resulting in tragedy for three and a half million school children and over a hundred thousand teachers. The first question the average young person is asked when he applies for a job is, “Are you a highschool graduate?” Thousands of employers refuse to hire anyone today unless the applicant has at least a highschool education. Yet we deny millions the opportunity to secure a highschool education and this too in face of the fact that we have passed legislation denying young people under eighteen a chance to work. Is it any wonder, in view of these facts, that our penitentiaries are filling up? The fed- eral Department of Justice reports that crime costs more than twelve billion dollars annually and most of the crim- inals belong to the ignorant, illiterate, uneducated class. Why not spend some of the money for education that we spend to finance crime? Why are we compelled to have federal aid to education? Because corporations own and control natural resources and industries and because the stockholders of these corporations reside in states other than those in which the resources and industries are located, many of the states find themselves impoverished and powerless to retain thru taxation a suf- ficient amount of income produced within their borders to support ade- quate schools and other public services. The superior taxpaying ability of many of the socalled rich states who VOLUME 26, NUMBER 6; SEPTEMBER 1937 are able to finance their schools is partly due to the exploitation of the produc- tivity of the poorer states. The purpose of the Harrison-Black- Fletcher Bill is, thru the services of the federal government, to transfer some of the tax money from those sections where the money has been concen- trated in greatest abundance to help give ° educational opportunity in those sections where children are most numerous. In our seven largest cities, of the pop- ulation consisting chiefly of American stock, the birthrate is 40 percent short of the rate required or necessary to maintain a stable population. In all cities having over a hundred thousand in population, the deficiency in birthrate averages over 20 percent. Even in the smaller cities the deficiency in births is about 8 percent. But farm families are producing about 50 percent more chil- dren than are required to replace the farm population and the rural nonfarm families rear children at the rate of 30 percent greater than’ the number re- quired to replace themselves. Thus the sections of the nation least able to sup- port public schools are the sections pro- ducing practically all of the nation’s fu- ture increase in population. After personally visiting the schools in every state of the union, and after devot- ing years to this subject in all of its phases, I do not today know a single argument based upon actual fact that offers convincing reason why the federal government should not, as a matter of selfpreservation, approve federal aid to schools. In my opinion, President Roose- velt is rendering the schools of the na- tion a great service in appointing a committee to make available all the facts on this subject. It is either educate or perish. I think most of us will admit the truth of the statement that “civilization is a race between education and catas- trophe.”—From an address before the Detroit convention of the NEA. [171 ] Tools for Tomorrow's World HE CENTRAL IDEA around which the World’s Fair in New York City in 1939 is being organized, “Tools for Tomorrow’s World,” gives an im- aginative picture of the task of educa- tion in a changing world. There is end- less fascination in the array of scientific and mechanical tools which are avail- able for the building of the physical structure of tomorrow’s world. Yet if the only tools, or the principal ones, in the shaping of tomorrow’s world are mechanical inventions, the vision of the future may well be a picture of hell. What will be the value of television if _all we can see is human slaughter like that now going on in Spain? What will be the boon of a more efficient way of picking cotton if ten million people have no money to buy the shirts and dresses made possible? Education must develop different types of tools for the shaping of any future world that will be worth build- ing or living in. Its task is human en- gineering, to create the directing minds so that the mechanized achievements of tomorrow will be a blessing and not a means of collective suicide. One such indispensable tool is the in- dividual personality who can say “I” as well as the collective word “we.” It is the development of individual minds not shaped by some vast biscuit cutter, minds which can have color and integ- rity to stand against social pressures and taboos. This task calls for more than an educational assembly line where stand- ardized parts are put together. Another tool for tomorrow’s world must be freedom of speech and thought. Where freedom of thought and speech has perished, as in Germany and Italy, schools and universities become corpses or empty mausoleums. Certainly not for a generation has education been chal- lenged as it is today, in its function of bringing mind and thought to bear on the problems of today. That right roots so deep in the American tradition that it ought to be obvious, but it has become a battle ground, an inheritance to be won over again. The campaign for suppres- sion or repression of thought and speech, with its manifestations of teachers’ oaths [ 172 ] HALFORD E. LUCCOCK and witch hunting, at the behest of some selfappointed Caesars, either a legisla- ture, or newspaper publisher, or over- heated professional patriots, constitutes a veritable barbarian invasion of American schoolrooms and campuses, The effort has been to substitute inflammation of the prejudices for information of the mind. Such a threat calls for courage and solidarity among teachers and for a renewed devotion to the task of plac- ing knowledge and skill at the service of the nation. It is important to remem- ber that teachers’ oaths legislation in Germany and Italy was a first means by which fascism got its death grip on the intellectual and spiritual life of those countries. A third tool for a secure and endur- able world of tomorrow is democracy, now threatened as never before in his- tory since its appearance as a way of life. Of course we still applaud democ- racy. But the surest way to lose it is to take it for granted and to underestimate the price that must be paid for its con- tinuance. We must clinch this truth, that the only way to save democracy is to make it work for widespread human welfare and security. Freedom is an empty boon if it is merely political free- dom, if it means merely the freedom to starve or work at a socially insignificant task at an inadequate wage. We dare not forget two things. First, that democracy caved in in Europe under the weight of unemployment. The future of democ- racy in America rests partly on the will- ingness and ability to make the eco- nomic and social changes necessary to eradicate unemployment. The second fact is that democracy requires peace. The conscription bill before this last session of Congress has made it only too plain that when the United States enters war it becomes a military dictatorship. Another tool is the data and fact brought thru education to the people, which will enable us to bring up our social thinking into line with the real- ities of the material framework of our civilization. We are in an intermeshed, ‘ interdependent world, industrially and mechanically. We need minds geared to that reality. We cannot adequately meet the needs of such a collectivist reality by mouthing over the shibboleths of eight- eenth century individualism. We must acknowledge that there has been a fail- ure of education to prepare mankind ty understand and to direct the new kind of society which the last half century has brought into being. “The world,” says Romaine Rolland, “has become a unity and for this high destiny mankind is not yet fit.” We must prepare for an effective democracy by teaching in terms of the economic and social realities on which it depends. The whole process of education must present the actual facts about our world so that social thinking and action may be geared to the present realities of our life and fitted to direct them. If this is to be accomplished, there must be no yielding to the seductive picture of education recently presented, of a back-tracking to the middle ages, where in a philosophic calm, the main content of education would be authority and tradition remote from the urgent complexities of contemporary life. This is too much like regulating life at the nod of a mummy. Among the resources for the making of adequate intellectual and_ spiritual tools for tomorrow’s world are those of faith in a spiritual order of life. Today, as in the first Christian century, the words apply, “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” An effective de- mocracy has its roots in a high valuation of the worth of man, and that in turn has its roots in a religious outlook on life and a faith in the ultimate vindica- tion of man’s highest values. With a faith in a moral purpose in the universe, we go out to the struggle for a fairer future, not as on a fantastic whim or 4 quixotic enterprise, but energized by the conviction that we are in league with the final Power in the universe—From an address before the Vesper Service, De- troit convention of the National Educa- tion Association. THE JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION RIC b, 4 . <6 be a BEGINNING CONTROL ON GULLY SHOWN OPPOSITE P 4 “) 3 : F ma Be SNES eet : a sae “we NN ei STRIP PLANTING SAVES LAND, BRINGS GOOD CROPS T HE FARMER’s FUTURE DEPENDS UPON CARE OF HIS LANDS LAN Stuart Chase We attach great importance just now to the preservation of our democratic system of selfgovernment. It is well that we do this. But how can democratic civi- lization survive if the soil itself is im- poverished and destroyed? Let us as a part of our processes of education lead every child to love the soil and to appre- ciate its relationship to human welfare. Let every child who is old enough to understand it read the following state- ments by Stuart Chase. Circulate your copy of THE JouRNAL among influential citizens who will also be interested in this article. ERE Is a sloping cellar door. Take H a watering can and sprinkle a quart of water at its top. Meas- ure the amount which slides off. Except for a little evaporation, the whole quart will be at the bottom almost instantly. Now tack a piece of thick carpet on the door. Pour the quart of water on the carpet. Your measuring trough at the bottom will be lucky if it receives the merest trickle at first. Observe that the trickle continues for a long time. This is the story of water erosion in its simplest form. The cellar door is any land with a slope; the canful of water Photos by Soil Conservation, U.S. Department of Agriculture — POO TY LACK OF CARE RESULTS IN INCREASING EROSION Sm se a RAPID DRAINAGE OVER LARGE AREAS BRINGS FLOC MISUSE OF THE SOIL FINALLY RESULTS IN DUST .STORMS is rainfall; the bare boards are bare plowed fields; the carpet is natural cover, either grass or forest. In the first case most of the water comes down, dis- solving the rich top soil and taking it along. In the second case, the cover absorbs the water, puts much of it into ground storage to be slowly released over periods of scanty rainfall. Almost no soil comes down. Broadly speaking, American agricul- ture is a bare cellar door with no carpet on it. When the carpet is in place, floods recede to a minimum; the evil effects of drought are greatly reduced. Nature is in balance. In the spring of 1936, Amer- ica suffered unprecedented floods with losses running into hundreds of lives and scores of millions of dollars. In the summer of 1936, she suffered a drought only less severe in some areas than that of 1934, in other areas worse. These agonizing calamities were not natural but man-made. They were linked to- gether as parts of the same hydrologic cycle. They were to be confidently ex- pected, considering the wanton destruc- tion of forest and grass cover in the past. Failing drastic preventive action by an aroused nation, they may be confidently expected with ever-increasing severity in the future—unless the laws of physics change so that cellar doors will hold water. But the flat lands are comparatively safe? No. The Dust Bowl is flat enough, but there people measure visibility by street blocks. On a good day you can see a dozen blocks, on a bad day half a block—thru a choking pall of good top soil against which the strongest motor headlights are powerless, and children coming home from school get lost as in a blizzard. The story runs that a Nebraska farmer was sitting on his porch during a dust storm. When asked what he was watching so intently he said: “I’m counting the Kansas farms as they go by.” The people of America have been sitting on their porches watching their continent go by. Kansas farms are good farms and North America is a good continent. Its beauty, its wealth of natural resources, its great north-and- south wedge laid against the temperate zone, make it perhaps the best con- tinent on earth. It is a pity that we should sit on our porches while this [ 174 | great good continent goes out from under us. It is our homeland. It is where our children must stay. When it is lost, in the sense of a hospitable environment, where shall we live? Many Kansas farms have gone; the whole Dust Bowl is going. Governor Marland of Okla- homa told me recently that a third of the land in his state had been ruined by wind or water erosion. In Stewart County, Georgia, I have looked into gullies 200 feet deep, covering 40,000 acres of what was once firm, fine cot- ton land. Probably ten million Americans have lost their resource base in land, water, or mineral deposit, and have no longer any means of livelihood. The forests which used to furnish fuel and timber have been cut over, burned over, and abandoned. The natural grass lands on which their stock were wont to feed have been over-grazed, plowed where the plow should never have gone. Now those lands dissolve in blinding clouds of dust. The tobacco, cotton, wheat, and corn fields which used to give them livelihood have been mined of their fertility by the one-crop system, streaked with finger erosion, gashed with gullies. (Said one old farmer to a TVA soil expert in Alabama: “Well, stranger, COMPARE THE ABILITY OF THESE TWO FOREST LANDS TO HOLD MOISTURE THE JOURNAL OF THE you can't tell me nothing about farm- ing; I’ve run thru three farms and pretty well used up this one.”) The wild crea- tures they used to trap and hunt for a living have been mowed down by swivel guns, poisoned by polluted waters, ex- terminated by drainage projects which have made fortunes for speculators, but foreclosures for farmers and tax delin- quencies for local governments. The mines and oil fields which they used to operate have been exploited with fan- tastic haste and waste and abandoned, leaving good ore and oil forever irre- claimable underground. Three million jobs on the land gone, ten million people to be provided for somehow. Three billion tons of solid continent are washed into the oceans every year by soil erosion, largely man-made. It would take a train of freight cars 475,000 miles long to cart this continental slice away. Such a train would girdle the equator nineteen times. One hundred million acres of formerly cultivated land has been ruined, according to the Soil Conservation Service. Another 125 mil- lion acres has lost the greater part of its top soil; another 100 million acres is seriously depleted. Nine million acres of good grass land has been reduced to desert by wind erosion, and serious dam- NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION OKLAHOMA REFUGEES FROM THE DUST BOWL, IN A MIGRANT CAMP IN CALIFORNIA \ MADONNA OF THE REFUGEE CAMP Photos by Resettlement Administration age is reported on 80 million more. On a single day 300 million tons of rich top soil was lifted by the wind from the Great Plains and deposited where it would create the most damage and dis- comfort. People began to die of dust pneumonia. The primeval balance is gone forever. Living in the power age we cannot hope to recapture nature’s equilibrium of 1630 before the coming of the white man. Our problem is to find a new equilibrium which will meet nature’s minimum demands, and at the same time allow us the benefits of the ma- chine. For 300 years we have outraged nature, until her patience is exhausted. The brutal, careless missiles we hurled at her forests, grasses, waters, wild life, are turning into boomerangs. Like the prodigal son we are coming to the end of our legacy. At whatever cost, what- ‘ver upsetting of legal niceties, the minimum which nature demands must be met. Fortunately scientists have already provided the outline. You will find it fully documented in the reports of the National Resources Board. You will find many of the technics already being put into energetic practice by the Soil Conservation Service, the Forest Service, the TVA, the Biological Survey, the CCC boys, the Resettlement Adminis- tration, the new triple A, where farm- ers cooperate with the government to save soil and water. The principles are clear. Land, waters, cover crops, soils, artesian basins, swamps, wild life—nature has linked together in one great wheel, one or- ganic whole. Birds are not only beauti- ful to look upon, but of vital importance in the control of insect pests and rodents. Our task is to see that the wheel re- volves and that what is taken away from the land is replaced. We must see that minerals are returned to the soil as fast as they are taken out by cropping; see that the soil itself is held in place by con- troling erosion; see that forests are maintained on the steep slopes, grass on the less steep, and that plowed land is retained by terracing, contour plowing, check dams, rotation; see that the lum- ber supply is placed on a selfperpetuat- ing basis, that the great plains are re- stricted to grazing without overgrazing, that flood waters are held on the land by headwater reservoirs, that artesian basins are. kept full to balance the supply in times of scanty rainfall; that swamps and marshes are not needlessly drained; that the Gatling-gun hunter is ruthlessly repressed. In short, we must keep land, water, wild life at par, and cease living on our capital. On these terms man and nature can work to- gether. VOLUME 26, NUMBER 6; SEPTEMBER 1937 = St. Paul preached in the city of Antioch, thundering against its sins. It was a noble metropolis of 400,000 people; the pleasure gardens of Daphne were among the wonders of the world. Today it is a miserable Syrian town of 30,000. Archeologists reconstruct its ancient grandeur after digging thru 18 feet of packed gravel. Antioch perished not for its sins but by erosion on the Tauris and Lebanon rivers. The restrain- ing terraces were neglected and the floods and silt came down. There is no philosophical difference between the fate of Antioch in Syria and the fate of Garden City in Kansas. There is, however, a considerable mechanical dif- ference. The simple Syrian plowed four roods in a day, the simple Kansan atop his tractor plows 117. Inanimate energy enables us to telescope the old pattern. For our sins we can perish thirty times as fast. The great wheel turns. A continent is situs, a place to live, and far more than a bread factory. People do not make continents; continents make peo- ple. The age-long strength of Russia is due to her latitude, climate, resources, sweep. The strength of England is due to her position on the sea. The strength of our nation is due to the continent of North America. It has molded us, nour- ished us, fed its abundant vitality into our veins. We are its children, lost and homeless without its strong arms about us. Shall we destroy it? —From an address by Stuart Chase, based on his recent book of the same title, given before the Detroit conven- tion of the National Education Associa- tion. [ 175 | | | | | The Advisory Committee on Education N APRIL 19, 1937, President Roose- () velt sent a letter to me as chair- man of the Advisory Committee on Education, in which he referred to the numerous bills now pending in Congress in connection with educational matters, and requested the Committee to give more extended consideration to the whole subject of federal relationship to state and local conduct of education. The Committee accepted this responsi- bility, and it is expected that its report will be completed in time for early con- sideration next winter by the President and the Congress. The Committee has been engaged during the past few weeks in the formu- lation of its plans for necessary studies and in making suitable arrangements to proceed with the work requested by the President. It is eminently fitting and appropriate that these plans and arrange- ments should now be brought to the at- tention of the National Education Asso- ciation, at the beginning of its 75th annual convention as the national pro- fessional association covering the entire field of education. The importance of the task the Presi- dent has given the Advisory Committee on Education requires no emphasis be- fore this group. The scope of the Com- mittee’s assignment is in some ways even broader than that of the former National Advisory Committee on Education ap- pointed by President Hoover. The report of that Committee in 1931 has been of major importance in bring- ing the fundamental issues in the field of federal relations to education to the attention of educators and of the public. Many events, however, have transpired in the intervening years. The exigencies of widespread break- down in our national economic life made it necessary in 1933 for the federal government to come to the financial support of many local governmental services. This is a familiar story, but the extent to which it has been necessary for the federal government to enter into new and unaccustomed relationships to public education in order to meet public needs and public demands, has not been commonly realized. First of all, it was necessary to provide [ 176 | FLOYD W. REEVES funds to keep schools open in many rural areas. Federal aid of this type amounted to $21,800,922 during the fiscal years 1934 and 1935. For the first time, there was implied recognition of a federal obligation to maintain at least a low minimum of educational opportunity thruout the nation, reliev- ing the strain of acute local financial distress. Second, as a part of a general program designed to stimulate useful public works, aid was extended in the financ- ing of thousands of school buildings. Up to the end of 1936, the Public Works Administration made loans totaling $84,271,822 for the construction and re- pair of educational buildings, supple- mented by outright grants to the amount of $213,832,458. Facilities have been pro- vided for our growing population, and many outworn, hazardous, and obsolete buildings have been replaced. Third, the program of student aid under the National Youth Adminis- tration has been carried on for the past two years at a total estimated cost of $52,663,546. More than 435,000 needy students received aid from this program at its peak during the school year just closed. Fourth, the emergency education pro- gram of the Works Progress Adminis- tration has given employment to as many as 42,000 unemployed teachers in recent months and has offered instruc- tion during the same period to enrol- ments in excess of 2,000,000. Fifth, approximately 1,500,000 of the young men of the nation have already passed thru the ranks of the Civilian Conservation Corps, which was first es- tablished as a form of work relief but has acquired educational objectives of increasing breadth and of great public interest. At the same time that these develop- ments have been taking place, the fed- eral government has continued and ex- tended its older and more familiar types of aid to vocational education in the highschools, to agricultural exten- sion work for the men, women, and THE JOURNAL OF children of rural areas, and to the land grant colleges. The major permanent federal pro- gram in the field of education that has been under consideration this year is undoubtedly that proposed by the Har- rison - Black - Fletcher Bill. Other pro- posals that are pending but which have received less attention include a num- ber of bills to provide federal aid for special educational purposes. Among these may be noted the various bills to provide aid for the education of crippled children, to promote adult civic educa- tion, to provide for nursery schools and other forms of pre-grade education, to promote conservation education, and to provide federal support for libraries. This brief review of existing activities and of proposed legislation in the field of federal relations to education indi- cates the present necessity for a reexam- ination of the entire subject and sup- plies the background for the work of the Advisory Committee on Education. Since the Committee’s assignment calls for a completed report by next December, the Committee has been forced to move rapidly. It is expected that the major part of the staff work for the Committee will be completed during the next three months. Plans have been developed for brief but comprehensive studies of the financ- ing of education; of educational ad- ministration as a major phase of state government; of the quality of existing educational programs in the states; of the new and emergency federal edu- cation programs; of education in special federal jurisdictions; and of the social, economic, and governmental factors basic to a consideration of federal rela- tions to education. We realize fully that satisfactory solu- tions for the problems of federal rela- tions to education can be obtained only thru the cooperative studies of many agencies, organizations, and individuals. I appreciate greatly the opportunity to make this statement to the members of the National Education Association, and hope much that we shall continue to have your active interest and coopera- tion.—From an address before the De- troit convention, NEA. THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION Princeples of Academic Freedom pom—The cause of academic free- dom, like the cause of free speech in general, is the cause of effective de- mocracy. Both freedoms exist to pro- mote the rule of intelligence in our democratic affairs. How academic freedom serves—Aca- demic freedom is at bottom the free- dom —and_ obligation—to study and learn, and to share what is learned. It means actual opportunity to study and conclude on the basis of intelligence rather than of any alternative. This holds as truly of student activities as of classrooms and lecture halls. Freedom of teaching exists to promote such intel- ligent study and learning. This practice of intelligent study is necessary to the proper working of de- mocracy as of no other type of society. The pupils and students of today as the active citizens of tomorrow must learn to think about vital problems independ- ently, as we say, each for himself, for anything less is not thinking. Academic freedom means, then, the freedom of each teacher in a democratic society to work without interference for the fair- minded study of all pertinent problems by the young citizens under his care. On no other basis can human individuality be well built or democratic affairs be well conducted. The need for such intelligent study is peculiarly urgent today. In a changing world, with new situations continually arising, the citizens must be continually discriminating between what still re- mains good and what is now outworn, between what is accordingly to be re- tained and what has to be remade or discarded. Our young people as citizens- in-the-making must accordingly be learning to appraise the strengths and limitations of our historic traditions and institutions so that, as later need may arise, they can do their part to keep these abreast of the changing need. No custom or institution, however cher- ished, can in advance claim exemption from this study and criticism. We never know beforehand where conditions may call for remaking. Academic freedom of study, suited to be sure to the age of the pupil or student, becomes in this way an ? rn T» BASIC PURPOSE OF ACADEMIC FREE- This body of principles, which consti- tuted the major part of the Detroit re- port of the NEA Committee on Aca- demic Freedom, Henry Lester Smith, chairman, is of such importance that it should be carefully considered by every teacher. Without respect for truth and freedom to learn, selfgovernment cannot survive. absolute essential for democratic educa- tion in a changing society. Academic freedom serves still further. At the very heart of the democratic process lies the factor of intellectual in- tegrity, for without it democratic dis- cussion becomes a sham, and _ social cooperation a fraud. A democratic edu- cation must then foster intellectual in- tegrity as crucial both to its own very essence and to that of democracy itself. The teacher must accordingly embody and express this integrity, for only thus can its growth and acceptance be pro- moted in others. Any suspicion there- fore that the teacher is externally con- troled or influenced in reaching his opinions or in expressing them freely must call in question his intellectual integrity and so work against the desired integrity in all whom he influences. In these and other ways academic free- dom of teaching becomes essential to the proper guidance of the young by the old. Without it, neither effectual social intelligence nor essential intellectual integrity is probable of realization. In this way does academic freedom lie at the very heart of any proper teaching. Teachers’ correlative obligations—The justification of academic freedom as set out above lies in the kind of study it tends to promote. If a teacher wilfully or carelessly permits some bias or preju- dice of his own, or even his carefully reached convictions by the way he teaches them, persistently to mar the process of fair-minded study on the part of his pupils or students, then in like degree may that teacher’s fitness to teach be questioned. The principle thus in- voked furnishes no basis for the exclu- sion of any topic or problem from study, but relates wholly to the question of its fair-minded consideration. Academic freedom and tenure —If VOLUME 26, NUMBER 6; SEPTEMBER 1937 teachers are to be free from improper outside pressures and so live above sus- picion in the integrity of their teaching, they must feel secure of tenure so long as they maintain proper professional standards. Threats to tenure, even when indirect, may put an improper pressure upon teachers to decide their teaching on other than professional considera- tions. Whether the school shall make its just contribution to our democratic process becomes thus conditioned upon adequately safeguarded tenure. Apart from such tenure, academic freedom can have no assured outlook. Academic freedom and community opinion—In many communities there are parents and citizens who for various reasons oppose the teaching of contro- versial issues. Prudence and a just con- sideration for the feelings of others might therefore conflict with the teach- er’s positive duty to teach adequately the youth under his care. What to do will vary with conditions. As a rule, intelli- gent tact will serve better than down- right conflict; but there are times when a resolute stand must be taken against unwarranted interference, even at the expense of personal sacrifice. Lay censorship of teaching materials— Adequate teaching, especially in the social area, will involve the use of suit- able reading materials. Any external re- striction placed upon the choice of such suitable books or other reading materials is clearly an interference with proper study and teaching. When, therefore, schoolboards or other lay authorities censor or prescribe what reading mate- rials schools or teachers shall or shall not use with their classes, they violate the principles of academic freedom and interfere with the presumptively best preparation for democratic citizenship. Existing laws often grant to lay bodies the legal right thus to interfere. It is the moral and social propriety of exer- cising this legal privilege that is here called into question. Teachers’ rights and correlative duties as citizens—Teachers are citizens and have the full legal rights of all citizens. This includes the right to freedom of speech and the right to live their own lives within the law as to them shall [ 177 | scem wise. From these considerations teachers have the same legal right as other citizens to express publicly any opinion they may hold, to ally them- selves with organizations of their own choosing, and otherwise to take part in political campaigns and the like. But teachers have duties as well as rights. In fact, rights are never absolute, but are always to be exercised with due re- gard to all their consequences. In par- ticular, the exercise of a teacher’s rights as citizen should not interferé with the proper discharge of his duties to his school. What constitutes interference will differ from community to com- munity. No one rule can be laid down. The general test will be the actual edu- cative effects, upon the pupils and others, that follow from the conduct of the teacher outside of school hours. The good teacher will be sensitive that these effects be not bad. School officials and academic freedom —The out-of-school rights of school off- cials stand on much the same footing as those of teachers discussed above. School officials have all the rights of other cit- izens, but like teachers they, too, should not allow the exercise of their rights to interfere with their school duties Cultivating HE TEACHER is a most important agent for cultivating goodwill on the part of the patrons of a school. In order to be successful in this work, the teacher should give special consider- ation to some of the requirements for teachers that parents would define. The list given herewith may have value as a basis for an appraisal of practices that affect favorably the school’s program for cultivating the goodwill of a com- munity. {1| Parents want teachers to treat them with a marked degree of courtesy and respect when they visit the school. [2] Parents want teachers to be sufh- ciently interested in knowing them as parents to take advantage of oppor- tunities to meet and to talk with them about their children. |3| Parents want teachers to know their children well enough to appreciate their virtues as well as their faults. |4| Parents want teachers to treat [ 178 | Three members of the NEA resolu- tions committec, J. O. Powers, Amy H. Hinrichs, and R. L. Hunt. reasonably consid- ered. It may hap- pen that public pressure in tend- ency or fact, will force offi- cials to refrain un- duly from exercising their citizenship rights; or that such pressure may force them as officials to put improper re- straints upon the their schools. In either such case academic freedom is in a true sense threatened, and the principles formulated above for teachers come therein to apply also to school officials. Trials on academic freedom and other related charges—The foregoing princi- ples of tenure and academic freedom are not intended to afford protection to a teacher or other educator against any legitimate charge of professional incom- petency or unprofessional conduct. The educational profession should be sensi- Goodwill in the J. B. Edmonson school teachers in their children with dignity and respect, and they particularly resent the use of terms of contempt. [5] Parents want teachers to give them a reasonable amount of warning concerning any unusual expenditure of money for books, supplies, or social af- fairs. |6| Parents want teachers to inform them concerning any impending crisis in a pupil’s school relations before the situation becomes very serious. |7| Parents want teachers to give spe- cial attention to the protection of the health of their children. [8] Parents want teachers to empha- size the mastery of certain fundamental skills in reading, writing, and other tool subjects and to emphasize the train- ing of children in certain effective habits of study appropriate to various levels of learning. tive to the obligations herein imposed to help root out such incompetency or unprofessional conduct. However, so great are the dangers to academic free- dom that may be concealed under charges of incompetency or unprofes- sional conduct, and so prone are laymen to discount the need for academic free- dom, that all trials or hearings where academic freedom is a possible factor should, if the accused so wishes, be pub- licly conducted. Due notice should al- ways be given, with charges precisely formulated. And legal provision should always be made for the professional peers of the accused to share in the actual decision. Community [g| Parents want teachers to place special emphasis on instruction in mat- ters of honesty, fairness, cooperation, respect for the rights of other, purity of speech, and other desirable qualities of conduct. [10] Parents want teachers to train their children in such a way as to en- able them to make reasonable progress in their school subjects, and if pupils are not successful parents want the teachers to be able to diagnose their difficulties. [ir] Parents want teachers to de- velop a spirit of goodwill and success in the school groups, so that their children will like to go to school. [12] Parents want teachers to assign home work in such a way that it will be selfmotivated. Unless this is done the parents must enforce study “by the rod.” [13] Parents want teachers to express a greater degree of confidence in the children than the parents may seem to possess. THE JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION The SCHOOL and DEMOCRACY ow CAN OUR SCHOOLS contribute H to a better social order? If we are to deal intelligently with this question, we must first recognize and accept certain fundamental truths. The frst of these is that formally organized education is always regarded by the society which provides it as a means of transmitting and perpetuating the ex- isting culture. From the crude initia- tion and ceremonial rites of the primi- tive tribe to the most elaborate educa- tional undertakings of contemporary industrial society, the core purpose is the same. Incoming youths are to be given those skills, habits, interests, atti- tudes, and ideals which will assure later effective participation in adult life with no serious disturbance of the existing social organization and with a substan- tial measure of satisfaction to the indi- viduals so trained. In short, general education is designed to be a basic guar- antee of cultural continuity. The pri- mary role of the education of youth in all societies is thus fundamentally con- servative. This does not mean that the schools are doomed to failure in any attempt to deal constructively with the social sys- tem in which they are set. It does mean that the schools’ undertakings must not appear to be revolutionary; they must concede the prevailing fundamental so- cial philosophy and try for improve- ments within this frame of reference. The second fundamental truth which must be recognized and accepted if we are to deal intelligently with the rela- tionship of the American schools to social reform is this: The American people still believe in democracy and are not yet ready to take any substitute. What democracy means to the Amer- ican people is not entirely clear. At times little more than a slogan or a catchword seems to be involved. Certainly a wide Variety of institutional forms and prac- tices bear the label. Is democracy merely a form of government? The answer certainly is “no.” Does it comprehend ¢conomic as well as political arrange- ments and procedures? Most people Would say “yes” but with ideas of pro- ceeding slowly in extensions of the dem- Edmund E. Day ocratic principle on the economic side. Lincoln’s “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” is prob- ably the best concise statement we yet have of American democratic ideals, but even this leaves us with complicated and exceedingly difficult questions of ways and means in the necessary im- provement of contemporary society. At the risk of being quite inadequate I venture to identify two elements of American democracy which seem to be both traditional and essential. The first of these is a broad and expanding humanitarianism. In principle, if not always in practice, we recognize the dignity and worth of the individual. We think of the state as a means of im- proving the lot of the individual, not of the individual as a means of improving the position of the state. We believe that government succeeds best which pro- vides most generally for its citizens those opportunities necessary for satisfying and worthwhile living. Individual dis- tress, suffering, frustration, unhappi- ness, these in our view must be regarded as matters of social concern. A second essential ingredient of Amer- ican democracy is to be found in ac- cepted ideas regarding appropriate ways of adjusting social differences. If con- troversial issues arise, we believe in measures of discussion, debate, persua- sion, compromise, balloting to ascertain majority views, acceptance of decisions so reached, always with the privilege of appraisal and review. Certain hardwon civil liberties safeguard these traditional ways of settling social questions and building social programs. A resort to force is the negation of the entire process. Does present American democracy display satisfactorily a broad and ex- panding humanitarianism and a con- sistent use of peaceful ways of resolving social conflicts? The answer is all too obviously, “no.” Democracy has not yet been achieved. A long hard road lies ahead for those who would still hold VOLUME 26, NUMBER 6; SEPTEMBER 1937 fast to their democratic aspirations. Happily, the faith of the American peo- ple remains relatively undisturbed. De- mocracy on this side of the water is still thought to be an ideal worth fight- ing for. We can now see, I trust, the setting in which our original question has to be considered: “How can our schools im- prove the social order?” The answer is to be found in undertakings accepting the American democratic ideal and de- signed to give that ideal more satisfac- tory fulfillment in American life. Here is no revolutionary program. Yet poten- tially it is a program of profound im- portance. The preservation and im- provement of the democracy we have had and happily still possess is an under- taking that should at the same time enlist the finest enthusiasms of the schoolmen and the deepest impulses of the nation. One of the great unrealized opportunities of the American school lies in better training for truly demo- cratic citizenship. As a nation for generations we lived thru a period of rapid physical expan- sion. Like an adolescent, our existence for a time was dominated by sheer body growth. Now the physical frame is largely set and we face the task of bring- ing the primary functions of healthy national life into effective unity. Basic adjustments are in order, but in bring- ing them to pass it is extremely im- portant that the social organism be not destroyed. An adequately unified nation genuinely democratic in form and hu- manitarian in purpose should be the ultimate goal. The attainment of this goal is impossible unless the American school can be made to function more efficiently in the training of citizens. What can the schools do to educate our youth for the more effective dis- charge of their duties as citizens in a democracy? At least seven distinguish- able objectives are to be recognized. All seven involve concrete discernible edu- cational outcomes. The first objective is to sensitize the student to the existing social situation with its wide disparities of human cir- cumstance. It is of great importance [ 179 | that young people become aware of the extraordinary range of conditions under which men live. Most of us see clearly only what lies in the field of immediate personal experience. We look at society with a lens of exceedingly short focus. What lies at a distance is recognized only dimly if at all. It is highly desir- able that the area within which the indi- vidual “has a feel” for the experience of others be greatly expanded. What is it like to be a farm laborer? A textile factory operative? A rolling mill hand? What does it mean to rise from the bottom? What is involved in living for years at the bottom? What is it like to have a home in a slum area? To survive a flood? To come thru a dust storm? Vivid records of these and a host of other human experiences can be brought to the attention of young people thru the schools. The second objective is to cultivate in the student impulses to do something constructive about those phases of the situation which appear to be unsatisfac- tory. If the result of sensitizing the student to the social situation is merely to increase acuteness of observation or curiosity or interest, not enough has been accomplished. A broad and ex- panding humanitarianism should be the personal possession of all. This is not likely to be the case if the schools do nothing to build humanitarianism into the ideals of the young. Fortunately among adolescents sympathies run strong and the desire to do good is readily elicited. This brings us to the third objective, namely, to give to the student as far as possible an understanding of | social structure and social process. The difh- culties that encompass this part of the program are obvious. With the experts —the economists, political scientists, so- ciologists, and their like—disagreeing as much as they do in their interpretations of social phenomena, the path of the educator undertaking to deal with the social studies is a thorny one. Unfortu- nately the social sciences are still in an early stage of development. This has to be frankly recognized in attempts to give understanding in the social field. The fourth objective is intimately re- lated to the third. It is to acquaint the student with the difficulties of arriving at truth in the social field. The reporting of social events is characteristically loose | 180 | and inaccurate, when not purposely colored or dishonest. Let the students find out how wellnigh impossible it is to ascertain just what happens in the course of a labor dispute. Let them fol- low, thru a variety of journals of differ- ing economic and political attitudes, the day-to-day record of the occurrences in a local strike. The typical conflict of testimony of eye-witnesses, say of an automobile accident, should be critically examined. The arts of propaganda and or modern advertising should be made known. The time has come to equip the individual citizen in the democratic state with reasonable defenses against the hidden and often subtle pressures of mass thinking and feeling exerted now- adays thru press, radio, and film. A healthy measure of skepticism about so- called social facts may well be induced in our youths as a part of their training for more effective participation in demo- cratic ways of living. If this is accomplished, it should not be difficult to work toward the fifth ob- jective, namely, to inculcate tolerance of honest differences of opinion regarding social situations and the measures which these situations suggest. Tolerance is, of course, one of the hallmarks of the truly democratic society, and lack of tolerance one of the sharply distinguish- ing traits of the authoritarian state. Tol- erance does not imply an absence of belief and conviction; in fact, were there no conflicting beliefs and convictions it would be impossible to exhibit tolerance. Toleration is a habit of mind requiring practice. It should constitute an impor- tant part of the training of citizens in a democracy. A sixth objective is to habituate the student to willing and effective cooper- ative group activity. Here, as in the de- velopment of tolerance, a reconciliation must be effected between two desirable and to some extent conflicting outcomes. It is important that young people gain confidence in their own individual pow- ers. This calls for a measure of success in competition with others. A certain degree of selfreliance is highly impor- tant; it is not likely to come except thru demonstrated individual achievement. At the same time this desirable develop- ment of the self should not be allowed to run to excesses of selfassertiveness and domination. Democracy must have its leaders but they should be leaders who THE JOURNAL OF work in the spirit of cooperation. In the schools of democracy successful co- operation should be a part of the experi- ence of all youth. Finally, as a seventh objective, it is of the utmost importance to develop in youth an unswerving loyalty to demo- cratic ideals and to the American demo- cratic tradition. As a people we have come to take our privileges all too lightly. We have no concrete vivid im- pressions of how we should be individu- ally affected if our heritage of civil lib- erties were suddenly lost. Most of us have no notion of the century-long struggle thru which our present priy- ileges were won. It is high time that the drama of this historic record be pre- sented adequately in our schools. Here, in my opinion, is one of the most im- portant openings for new educational film. Certainly no stone should be left unturned in the effort to give youth a full realization of what democracy means, of the privileges which it affords, of the ways and means thru which with work and patience it is to be more suc- cessfully achieved. Here is a task that challenges the best the schools have to offer. Let it not be thought that responsiblity for the attainment of the objectives | have briefly described devolves largely upon the social studies. If you have com- prehended the nature of the ends to be sought, you must have seen that the en- tire curriculum—using curriculum in the broadest sense— 1s involved. Formal studies of all sorts, school assemblies, student organizations, off-campus activ- ities, after-school play, all have their con- tributions to make. The entire life of the school should, in fact, be a youthful experience in democratic living. So are citizens for the democratic state success- fully to be trained. How can our schools contribute to a better social order? The answer to me is clear: By working more effectively in the cause of American democracy. The need is crying. The time is pressing. The outcome is of supreme importance. So far as the schools are concerned, what is most needed is a new program designed really to train citizens for democratic ways of social living. Let the schoolmen of the country bend to the task. It is worthy of the best they have to offer.— From an address before the Detroit con- vention, NEA. THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION Alcohol and Narcotic Drugs An urgent problem in health education HAVEN EMERSON, M.D. to human health from alcohol in the USA is greater than can be justly charged to any other, commonly used drug substance, or to all of the so- called narcotic drugs combined, as they are availed of by the laity today. Facts concerning the effects of alcohol as a chemical of great industrial value or as a dietary or medicinal drug, will not of themselves be of educational signifi- cance unless emotional attitudes in rela- tion to its beverage use are also consid- ered. Conduct and behavior are determined more by traditional and imitative emo- tional and social patterns than by inde- pendent thought and decisions based upon reasoned consideration of facts. The object of education should be more the development of habits and the ca- pacity of thoughtful consideration of causes and objectives in the conduct of life, than the acquisition of facts or means necessary for earning a liveli- hood. If we were to replace the word tem- perance, with its present connotation, by moderation or selfcontrol, and then di- rect our major emphasis in character training and bodily use toward a way of life, marked by selfdiscipline rather than by selfexpression, we should make some progress toward a philosophy of education within which teaching about alcohol and narcotics would be in- cluded, together with many other mat- ters of human choice and opportunity. It seems to me that the guidance of the mind and conduct of life of the child toward independent practices of thought, moderation, selfcontrol, and selfdetermination is the goal to be at- tained. Without a sound introduction to human biology, thru study of the struc- ture and function of simpler forms of life, education in the ways of living which assure the best achievement in personal and social health cannot be developed. Modern medical knowledge about Te acTuaL and potential damage VOLUME 26, NUMBER 6; the effects of alcohol on man began a little more than fifty years ago. In 1883 Schmiedeberg of Strassbourg reported alcohol to be a depressant nar- cotic drug and not a stimulant. What- ever the dilution, strength, or amount of alcohol ingested the effect is one re- sulting from depression. There has been universal medical acceptance and cor- roboration of these observations. Almost at the same time Kraepelin, the psychiatrist of Heidelberg, observed that the chief, if not the sole effect of alcohol was on the central nervous sys- tem. It is therefore with the results of the depression of the higher functions of the brain that society and the individual are mainly concerned. The studies of Atwater and his asso- ciates in Washington in 1900 and there- after established the fact that while alcohol can be used as a fuel with pro- duction of energy in the human body, it cannot properly be considered a food, since it is incapable of storage in the human body and can in no way share in the building, growth, or repair of any tissues of the body. Furthermore, even when used as it may be to replace 20 percent of the caloric needs of the body usually supplied by food stuffs, the toxic effects caused disturbance of bodily function of serious importance. These physiologists, and a generation of work- ers since them, have shown that the use of alcohol even in the restricted sense of a fuel is physiologically unsound. In 1918 Benedict and Dodge from the Nutrition Laboratory of the Carnegie Foundation in Boston made their classi- cal observations upon the Psychological Effects of Alcohol. They found that even in amounts so small as to escape appreciation of any subjective effect from alcohol by the user, there could always be shown a delay of from 6 to 10 percent in reaction time, inaccuracies or unreliabilities in simple mental proc- esses, and definite inferiority of human performance. These highly refined ex- periments with the most delicate instru- SEPTEMBER 1937 ments of psychological research con- firmed the cruder tests which have shown that in every form of physical competition, in industry, under mili- tary conditions, and in athletic sports the use of alcohol, even in amounts well within the limits of social moderation, is responsible for a lower level of ac- complishment. In 1924 the latest of recent additions to our knowledge came in the report on Alcohol and Human Efficiency by Pro- fessor Walter Miles, now of Yale Uni- versity but then working under the Carnegie Foundation. Miles demon- strated conclusively the loss in human efficiency both mental and physical from the use of a pint of 2.75 percent beer or its equivalent. Facts concerning the effects of bever- age alcohol upon man, as at present taught in medical schools of this coun- try, may be briefly summarized. Alcohol in no form or amount is necessary to the growth, development, or function of any normal human being. The use of alcohol by normal persons of any age has not been shown to improve health, or the function of procreation, lactation, resistance to disease, digestion or endurance, or any bodily or mental activity. Alcohol as a depressant and nar- cotic drug has a limited field of useful- ness in the treatment of disease, but has been largely replaced by more effective drugs lacking habit-forming tendencies. The effect of alcohol is first upon the most highly developed functions of the human mind, namely, judgment, dis- cretion, selfcontrol, and in general the qualities of inhibition. As the percent- age of alcohol is increased in the blood other mental functions are supressed until finally coma and death result. Alcohol is the cause of a number of acute and chronic illnesses. It causes a considerable number of deaths, about twice as many as are reported as due to alcohol; it complicates the management of many forms of infection, accident, and operative procedures, and its regu- lar and continued use shortens the ex- pectancy of life in proportion to the amount used. About 10 percent of all new admissions to hospitals for mental disease are for alcoholic psychoses. The chief personal and social danger [ 181 | in the use of alcohol is not drunkenness, disease, and premature death, but the disturbance of conduct and the inferior- ity of performance in the ordinary situa- tions of life, due to the depression of the higher centers of the brain and the re- sultant removal of necessary and desir- able inhibitions. Human stock has prob- ably not been injured or adversely modi- fied by the long use of alcohol, altho the effects upon the individual are often devastating. Impairment of reason, weakening of the will, of selfcontrol, and judgment, and loss of physical skill and endurance can be demonstrated as usual results of ingestion of alcohol in amounts well within the limits of its ordinary social usage. Why is alcohol so much used and its effects so sought after? The reason for the use of alcohol is mainly the sensa- tion of escape from unpleasant reality, a state of sensibility which consists of a false sense of exaggerated wellbeing. Persons unable or unwilling to face the hardships, annoyances, anxieties, and emotional conflicts of individual and so- cial adjustments in life find in alcohol temporary and occasional relief, and commonly become so dependent upon it as to become chronic drinkers even if not drunkards. Neurotics and _ psy- chotics often become regular users of alcohol. The use of alcohol is the commonest contributory factor in that letting down and weakening of selfcontrol and dis- cretion that leads to looseness in sex con- duct and to the acquisition of syphilis and gonorrhea. Since we have recognized as socially desirable, even at the cost of much wast- age and hazard to individuals, the privi- lege of unlimited access to all kinds of food and drink including beverage alco- hol, we must prepare children for the exercise of choice in their selection of what they put into their own mouths. No one but the individual concerned can be held responsible for this decision. Alcohol can be so moderately used as to cause little or no direct harm to the body and mind of the user, or damage to others or to the user’s progeny. Sound practice in the use of alcoholic bever- ages should be based on the following: [1] Alcohol should not be used by persons immature in body or mind or lacking a stable nervous system. | 182 | [2| By adults with sound nervous systems, alcohol if used should be of low concentration (less than 10 percent), taken slowly either with or after meals, never on an empty stomach except on a physician’s order. [3] With these precautions, its use should be only after completion of the day’s work or responsibilities. [4] It should not be used by persons likely to be called upon unexpectedly for maximum exertion, skill, exposure, fa- tigue, or judgment. In summary, the ideas and facts upon which it appears to me that the teaching about alcohol and the narcotic drugs should be based are as follows: [1] Upon a sound understanding of the effects of alcohol on man depends the ethical basis of his choice of conduct. [2] Acquaintance with the essentials of growth, structure, and function of liv- ing matter and creatures should precede presentation of the complicated prob- lems involved in the effects of drugs on normal and abnormal human behavior and performance. Alcohol and other drugs can probably be, and often are, used in a dietary way without observ- able damage to the individual. Habitual use is likely to develop addiction, and benefits health in no way. [3] Personal choice of conduct in the use of drink as of food should be based on education, not on law, even tho it can be demonstrated conclusively that death rates and sick rates and the eco- nomic wellbeing of a community or na- tion are unfavorable in proportion to the per capita consumption of alcohol. [4] Personal example in the teacher is desirable; teaching without conviction as to the truth of what is taught is edu- cationally unsound. The teaching of the effects of alcohol and the narcotics in school should be kept in proportion, and not segregated as a special topic, un- related to biology or other fields of edu- cation. The following review of the rest of the narcotic drugs may be useful. The socalled narcotic drugs as they concern social customs and personal habits, fall into three groups: those banned by law for general dietary use, those widely ac- cepted as suitable for indiscriminate commercial exploitation, and alcohol which is variously considered as out- lawed or a source of government and private revenue. By international agreement, opium, coca, and cannabis indica, are excluded from commerce except as needed and |i- censed to be used medicinally, Tea and coffee should be considered as stimulants, not as narcotics. From moderate use no obvious harm results. When used, as not infrequently, in place of food and to abolish the sensation of fatigue, which should be corrected by rest and not by further expenditure of energy, their use leads to a variety of digestive, nutritional, and psychical dis- turbances. Their habitual dietary use is not easy to relate to any specific mor- bidity or mortality but there is no bene- fit to health to be expected from their inclusion at meals or other times. Tobacco has a toxic property result- ing in a rise of blood pressure and sensa- tions variously interpreted as of stimula- tion and relaxation. Habit in the use of these three drugs is difficult to separate from addiction. By addiction is meant such habitual use or dependence upon a drug that its dis- continuance cannot be voluntarily and promptly accomplished without appre- ciable physical or psychical distress. The capacity of man to adjust him- self to a great variety of unfavorable en- vironmental factors, natural and artifi- cial, is one of the points of his chief distinction from all other creatures. Adaptation to the several drugs consid- ered adds nothing to the excellence of man’s body or mind, but on the contrary causes hazards to health, and inferiority of performance of significant degree. Each of these drugs has its major ef- fect on or thru the nervous system, and each interferes more with the stability and normal reactions and performance of the child and of persons of immature nervous development, than with those of the wellbalanced, mature, and well- nourished adult. From the above facts, abstinence from such food and drink as serves no useful purpose in the economy of the normal body is indicated. Personally, I believe there is so much more to be given to and taken out of life by a body and mind, by thought, action, and emotions unaffected by any drugs that I advise abstinence from all such and believe their use should be dis- couraged by an educated public opin- ion—From an address before the De- partment of School Health and Physical Education, Detroit convention, NEA. THE JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION The Horace Mann Centennial we spirIT of Horace Mann ran like a precious thread thruout the Detroit convention. There were several able addresses on his life and references to his work in many others. In his official report Secretary Givens suggested the scope of the Centennial by enumerating its activities as follows: Committees appointed in states, cities, and civic and professional groups. Thousands of schools taking part in the birthday celebration on May 4. More than 3000 schools taking part in Centennial commencement programs. Hundreds of articles in educational and lay press, including 28 pages in THE Jour- NAL. Hundreds of addresses thruout the na- tion, including speech in U. S. Congress by John W. McCormack of Mass. Radio programs thruout the country, in- cluding several in the NEA series. Special Horace Mann Life Memberships during 1937 in the NEA. More than 100,000 copies distributed of the Centennial book, Horace Mann: His Ideas and Ideals by Joy Elmer Morgan. 4500 copies of the 600-page reprint of the Life of Horace Mann by his wife, dis- tributed by the Committee. 3000 copies of the Chautauqua Text- book on Horace Mann, reprinted as a sou- venir edition in connection with the Life Membership Dinner of the NEA. Hundreds of thousands of copies of Horace Mann’s Letter to School Children distributed. A Centennial edition of B. A. Hinsdale’s 325-page biography, Horace Mann and the Common School Revival in the United States, published by Scribner’s. A biography by E. I. F. Williams, Horace Mann, Educational published by Macmillan. Essays by Payson Smith, A. E. Winship, and William T. Harris, entitled Horace Mann and Our Schools, published for the Centennial by the American Book Co. Kappa Delta Pi lecture, 4 Century of the Universal School, by William C. Bag- ley, published by Macmillan. Testament of Faith, a three-act play published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc. Those Who Bear the Torch, a pageant by the Horace Mann School of Teachers College, published by the Centennial Com- mittee, Statesman, Horace Mann Memorial Relief by the late Lorado Taft. Horace Mann Poster by Norman T. A. Munder of Enoch Pratt Library, Balti- VOLUME 26, NUMBER 6; more; and many portraits of Mann made available for school and classroom walls. Addresses devoted to the life and con- tributions of Mann were delivered: At the Life Membership Dinner— “Horace Mann and the American Ideal of Education” by Arthur E. Morgan. |See p184. | Before the National Council of Education —‘Some of the Less Wellknown Episodes in the Career of Horace Mann” by E. I. F. Williams, of Heidelberg College, author, Horace Mann: Educational Statesman. At the luncheon meeting of Kappa Delta Pi—The Life and Work of Horace Mann” by Payson Smith, chairman of the Horace Mann Centennial Committee. In introducing Dr. Smith, Chairman William C. Bagley pointed out that the Horace Mann Centennial is one of the most im- portant celebrations not only in American history but in all history because of the relation of free public education to the sur- vival and success of democracy. Before the Department of Elementary School Principals—“Horace Mann, an Ex- ponent of Education for a Richer and Fuller Life” by Eugene B. Elliott, state superintendent of public instruction, Mich. On the final afternoon of the conven- tion A. D. Henderson, president of An- tioch College, introduced the Horace Mann drama, “Testament of Faith,” with an appropriate address. He said, in closing: Mann spent the last six years of his life at Antioch. Again he worked prodigiously. Again he fought against ignorance, jeal- ousy, and religious bigotry. He struggled to raise the necessary finances. Repeatedly he sacrificed his own salary, and dipped into his own savings, just as he had done in Massachusetts. Part of the attraction of Yellow Springs had been its reputation as a health resort, but bodily suffering con- tinued to handicap his physical efforts. Shortly after he and his friends retrieved the college from a sale at bankruptcy, and launched it anew in the spring of 1859, his fragile body failed and only his spirit re- mained to the institution. The drama, “Testament of Faith,” written and presented by Antioch Col- lege, was deeply appreciated by a large audience. The Antioch Players may tour with this play in the fall; queries SEPTEMBER 1937 concerning bookings should be ad- dressed to Antioch College. The report of the Committee on the Horace Mann Centennial, which was adopted by the Representative Assem- bly on June 30, recommended: First, that the Committee go forward with its work on the Horace Mann Cen tennial and that it be instructed to make plans for the Centennial celebration in 1939 of the first public normal school. Second, that the NEA JourNnat continue as the official organ of the Centennial. Third, that the secretary of the Commit- tee be instructed to go forward with the publication of materials relating to Horace Mann, including special suggestions for American Education Week 1937. Fourth, that there be special events in all 1937 summer commemorate Horace Mann’s pioneer service in the edu- cation of teachers. Fifth, that on November 9 of American Education Week, which has been desig- nated as Horace Mann Day, there be in every community a public dinner with suitable addresses honoring Horace Mann. Sixth, that the various states and com munities take advantage of the Centennial to pay tribute to both educators and lay- men who helped to found and build up their schools. schools to Seventh, that as a continuation of Horace Mann’s work in the selection and prepara- tion of teachers, there be established in each community “Future Teachers ot America” groups which will seek to inter est the most promising young people in teaching as a career. Eighth, that there be widespread circula tion of material relating to the life and service of Horace Mann reaching especially members of boards of education and of legislatures, and civic leaders. Ninth, that provision be made in the school curriculum at various levels for a continuing study of the school as a social institution, and of educational leaders as builders of the nation. Tenth, that in the naming of new schools, first consideration be given to Horace Mann as the founder of the free public-school system in America. Eleventh, that all libraries be urged to maintain complete collections of material on the life and writings of Horace Mann. Twelfth, that Horace Mann’s birthday on May 4 be celebrated each year in order that every child may learn to honor him as the father of our free schools as we honor Washington as the father of the nation. [ 183 | HORACE MANN aad the American Ideal of Education ARTHUR E. MORGAN HE TENDENCY of men to seek for security and success in some spe- cialized way is forever with us. The achievement of universality and good proportion must be forever pur- sued and won anew or it will be lost. It is like a crop which must be culti- vated and harvested each year. This is true in education as elsewhere. The quickest returns usually come from specialization. If all the energy of a man’s mind is committed to progress in one narrow sector of his life, his progress may be more spectacular and often more immediately rewarding eco- nomically or socially than tho he should use his energies to advance the whole of his life in the best possible proportion. Yet in that spectacular advance along too narrow a front, if it is not sustained by the moderate development of the en- tire personality, the success may be very short lived. A society made up of such highly specialized persons may have a sudden flowering of power and of cul- ture, but in the unrestricted trend to specialization the element of common culture and common experience may be- come so restricted that the cohesive and stabilizing qualities of society may be in- adequate, and the society as a whole may disintegrate. ... In a modern democratic industrial so- ciety where opportunity is relatively abundant, and education in some de- gree almost universal, this process of specialization may affect so nearly the whole population that most intelligent men may pour their energies into some narrow fields of achievement, and there may tend to disappear gradually that common background or understanding of the common problems and conditions of life, which is essential to the unity and integrity of society. I am of the opinion that a modern democracy, to a greater degree perhaps than any other form of society, needs to hold fast to a large degree of generalization. In addi- tion to the special callings they pursue [ 184 | and the special cultural interests they may develop, it is of vital importance that men and women in a democracy should hold passionately to the pursuit of all-round, well-proportioned person- ality as the basis for sound individual and social living. The nation this year is celebrating the Centennial of the American public- school system, and is giving honor to Horace Mann, the father and founder of that system. Perhaps more than any other educational leader of his day, Hor- ace Mann held passionately to this ideal of a full and well-proportioned develop- ment of the entire personality. He saw that no single element of achievement taken by itself would make a good life. [Dr. Morgan then quoted at length, chiefly from Horace Mann’s inaugural address as president of Antioch College in 1853. | It may seem that I have been thresh- ing over old straw, that the principles I have emphasized by quotations from Horace Mann are now universally ac- cepted. That I believe is not the case. It is so difficult to see life as a whole and to see all its elements in good perspective, and it is so emotionally satisfying to find some great simplification, that we con- stantly tend to emphasize some elements of personal development at the expense of others. For instance, let me quote from the recent book, The Higher Learning in America, by President Hutchins of the University of Chicago. He says: Education implies teaching. Teaching implies knowledge. Knowledge is truth. The truth is everywhere the same. Hence education should be everywhere the same. . . . If education is rightly understood, it will be understood as the cultivation of the intellect. The cultivation of the intellect is the same good for all men in all societies. It is, moreover, the good for which all other goods are only means. . . . Material prosperity, peace and civil order, justice, and the moral virtues are means to the cul- tivation of the intellect. In discussing a proper curriculum for undergraduate education President Hutchins continues: We have excluded body-building and character-building. We have excluded the social graces and the tricks of trade. Following an educational philosophy which has many converts today, he would see formal education as con- cerned with only a part of the vital con- cerns of living. Much as I admire his in- tellectual vigor, I find myself in sharp disagreement with President Hutchins on the matter. In my opinion we need constantly to re-emphasize the idea that education must concern itself with the whole of human personality in all vital relations to individuals and to society and to the physical world. At any time a great climax of culture or power may be achieved by specialized concentra- tion on a few elements of personality, but these climaxes tend to be evanescent and to leave behind cultural or even physical deserts. It were better that human progress should be somewhat slower, but that it should be more gen- eralized and more solidly grounded. . . . Centuries ago the Chinese drilled salt wells and oil wells much as we do now, with ingenious but primitive equip- ment. When the oil-bearing formation was known to be two thousand feet below the surface, the drilling of a well might be a project extending over generations, since primitive tools made slow progress. For many years the sur- plus energies of a family would be spent in boring deep into the earth. Those who began a drilling knew that they, and perhaps their children, would never see it finished. When finally the oil sands would be reached, the family would be economically secure, thanks to the work of parents and grand- parents. That process required fore- thought, a family loyalty, and sustained persistence of purpose. It would be well if we should achieve similar forethought and purpose, not limited to immediate family welfare, applied not only to economic competence, but to all those factors of human interest which make life have value. Nothing less than an inclusive pattern for education will serve that purpose, and seldom has the world needed that pattern more than today.—From an address before the Life Membership Dinner at the Detroit con- vention of the NEA. THE JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION by voluntary organization in America is one of the most char- acteristic phases of our national growth and is represented at its best by coopera- tive efforts to improve education in the ‘nterest of enlightened democracy. It is therefore fitting during this year of the Horace Mann Centennial to recall some of the starting and turning points in the history of professional organization. Prior to 1830 there had been no educa- tional association, barring one or two temporary gatherings. First came the American Institute of Instruction, born in the Massachusetts State House, Au- gust 19, 1830. A. E. Winship wrote in the 1906 Proceedings: “The American Institute of Instruc- tion was largely responsible for giving Horace Mann to the educational leader- ship of America. If it had done nothing more, this alone is all-sufficient reward for its existence. Mr. Mann was in 1830 a member of the Massachusetts legisla- ture, and Francis Wayland, president of Brown University, from which Mann had graduated, was presiding over the American Institute of Instruction in the Massachusetts State House. Of course, Mr. Mann was there and was intensely interested in what was being planned, and this inspiration was largely in- fluential in leading him into educa- tional work for life.” The American Institute of Instruction was primarily a New England group. Leaders felt the need for an organiza- tion which would reach beyond New England and a convention of teachers and superintendents of public schools was held at Philadelphia in October 1849. This convention, which elected as its president Horace Mann—then a mem- ber of Congress—became the American Association for the Advancement of Education and met again in 1850. The American Association for the Advance- ment of Education continued its meet- ings for some time. Its eighth meeting was held at Detroit in 1856. Then came in 1857 the organization at Philadelphia of the National Teachers Association, Which gradually took the place of the American Association. The National Teachers Association continued its meetings annually until 870, when the name was changed to the National Educational Association. T* COOPERATIVE SPIRIT engendered Organization avd Reorganization Along with this change of name went an integration which brought into the Association the American Normal School Association and the National Association of School Superintendents. This was the beginning of the depart- mental organization, the four depart- ments being School Superintendence, Normal Schools, Elementary Schools, and Higher Instruction. The Association continued to grow thru the years, changing its bylaws and adding departments. In 1886 it was incorporated under the laws of the Dis- trict of Columbia and continued to operate as a District corporation until 1906 when it was incorporated under special act of Congress as the National Education Association of the United States. The Congressional charter was adopted at the fiftieth anniversary con- vention, July 10, 1907. During the next ten years the Asso- ciation became so large that it was difficult to transact its business affairs in the general convention meetings. Na- tional concern over education was in- creasing rapidly. There accordingly grew up a demand for a representative type of organization. An amendment was secured to the Congressional char- ter, and the powers which had been vested in the active members were transferred to a representative assembly, by action taken at the Salt Lake City meeting in 1920 and later ratified by the various state education associations. Under the plan adopted at Salt Lake City, the representative assembly had a considerable number of exofficio dele- gates, including state superintendents and past presidents of the National Edu- cation Association. Past presidents and former U. S. Commissioners of Educa- tion were also members of the Associa- tion’s board of directors. There was some objection to this plan at the Salt Lake City convention and there has been a steadily growing movement to reduce the number of exofficio members in the official bodies. At the Washington convention in 1934 the bylaws were amended to remove past presidents and state superintendents as exofficio mem- bers from the representative assembly. A move was then started to secure a VOLUME 26, NUMBER 63 SEPTEMBER 1937 further amendment to the charter which would enable the Association thru its bylaws to control a number of matters which had formerly been specified in the charter, thus obtaining greater flexi- bility. The necessary charter revision bill passed both houses of Congress un- animously this session and was signed by the President on June 14, 1937. Under the revised charter the com- mittee on reorganization proposed a number of changes in the bylaws. One of these recommended an increase in the size of the executive committee from five to seven members. As finally adopted at Detroit this amendment pro- vided for an executive committee of nine members, including the president, the first vicepresident, the treasurer, the chairman of the board of trustees, two members to be chosen annually by the board of directors, and three members elected by the representative assembly for the term of one year. Another important change provides three-year terms for members of the board of directors so that one-third are elected each year. The major parliamentary battle cen- tered around the exofficio status of past presidents on the board of directors. The provision including past presidents as exofficio members of the board of directors which had been in the charter was omitted from the charter in the revision. A motion was made to adopt a bylaw which would restore to the board of directors all past presidents elected before the charter was changed, a total of 22 now living. After much discussion this motion was finally de- feated, so that past presidents are no longer exofficio members of the board of directors. The general effect of these changes is to enlarge the executive committee, bringing several classroom teachers onto it, and to make the board of directors almost entirely an elective body. These changes are part of a larger tendency toward democratization and growth. As in 1870 and the early 1920’s there is a marked increase of interest in the Asso- ciation and the promise of a new epoch of expansion and integration. —Joy Eimer Morcan. [ 185 | Ww T. T. Atten—Officials of the Social Security Board have expressed the opinion that among the most likely and most im- mediate results of the development of in- terest in problems of social security will be a rapid growth in the number of teacher retirement systems. To secure and retain the services of able and competent teachers states and cities that have until now been lax in this regard will have to keep up with their neighbors. Mary R. Bearp—Happiness thru _vio- lence is a romantic dream. . . . But what assurance have the pleaders for the rational way that their plea will be heard and that the decision of history as it is being shaped now in America will be on their side? The assurance lies in the high tribunal that hears our cause and in the law that this tribunal possesses for application to all pleas. The tribunal consists of all the public-spirited, socially-minded men and women thruout the land, the great and the humble, all in their places and func- tions responding to the necessities and possibilities of our common social life. The law which they have for application is the American heritage of noble traditions sur- viving and gaining strength thru the trials of independence-winning, constitution- making, criticism-functioning, democracy- establishing, union-preserving, slavery-erad- icating, organized-labor-accepting, civiliza- tion-enriching, knowledge-acquiring, and fulfilment-striving to the latest hour in which this huge convention assembles for the consideration of society’s interest in human values. Emmett A. Berrs—Trends in reading instruction are in the direction of better prepared teachers, more nearly adequate instructional materials, and a better under- standing of the needs, interests, and capa- cities of the learner. Lyman Bryson—The education of all our children at public expense has not been merely the result of our rising standard of living; it has also been one of the causes of that rise. In the same way, public money spent on the improvement of the lives of men and women will increase both their demands and their productiveness. It will also provide for them the satisfactions that go beyond physical comforts and material goods. RaymMonp L. Buett—The only way. to reconcile the security of the United States with the American sense of justice is thru a policy of positive action with like-minded powers. Frankitin Dunnam—Your first objec- tive in finding the place of radio in educa- [ 186 | EAS from Detroit tion is to study the limitations and powers of the medium itself. Your second objective is to study the application of materials upon your audience. Eucene B. Ertiorr—In formulating a basis for salaries one fundamental idea should be in the minds of those who con- trol the purse strings. If we are going to maintain a democracy in this country, it will be maintained only thru proper edu- cational facilities, with teachers encouraged to the extent that they will carry on the growth of the profession while in service. Joun Guy Fow.xes—To be effective, the imposition of higher standards, both personal and professional, must come from ourselves. Adequate salaries, pro- tected or indefinite tenure, are essential in the improvement of the social and eco- nomic status of the teaching profession. However, qualifications of teachers and compulsory retirement ages are so inextri- cably intertwined with salaries -and_pro- tected tenure that the question might well be raised as to whether it is not desirable for teachers to exert equal effort toward the enactment of legislation pertaining to all four of these factors. Cuares B. GLENN—The development of character is from within and may be compared to the growth of a plant. No wise gardener gives himself undue concern about the coming of the branches, the leaves, and the fruit. Instead, he prepares the soil properly, sees that the plant has the proper heat, moisture and sunshine- atmosphere, and in due time these develop. Nothing could be more absurd or foolish than, in his impatience, to pin on leaves, branches, and fruit, and yet, in the past, our efforts in character development closely resemble this procedure. Paut G. HorrmMan—In 1936 there were approximately 38,000 fatalities in highway transportation divided about equally be- tween motorists and pedestrians. There were approximately 1,000,000 nonfatal in- juries. The property damage was approxi- mately $800,000,000, and when you add to this, doctor bills, hospitalization, and lost time, you reach a grand total of more than $1,250,000,000 in actual cash losses. Wituim H. Jonnson—We are deter- mined to make better citizens and drivers Ww for tomorrow of the boys and girls of today by teaching that there is no such thing as an accident. If responsibility can be placed on someone for neglect or faulty workmanship it is not an accident. Horace M. Katten—An ideal is not 4 condition, and a principle is not an event. Life is a process of change, not a state of things. Ideals define the directions in which we want the change to go. . Only sentimentalists and Utopians can imagine a time when the struggle is over and life nevertheless goes on, a beatitude, The cooperative movement has nothing in common with those imaginings. It is not a vague Utopia. It is not the happy haven of angelic hierarchies. It is, like political democracy, a method of keeping open and multiplying the ways to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Mark A. May—In the motion picture are combined the two great channels of learning, sight and sound—which enriched by color, music, and dramatic effects— present the lessons of school and life with a power and a vitality that is unequaled by any other medium of education. Autce R. Mortson—Whatever the fu- ture careers for our boys and girls, we must ever remember that character and personality must come first—and we teach- ers must realize more than ever before our splendid and grave responsibility of living the highest life possible—for, as has been said of religion, character must be caught, not taught. Hersert R. Srorz—The education which prepares boys and girls for making a living often neglects their deeply rooted needs for personal significance in relation to their fellows and in relation to the plan of the universe. For the great majority, happiness and security will depend upon successful participation in family and small group activities rather than upon successful competition in the economic field, or upon academic or professional eminence. Marian L. Tetrorp—Children can be saved from death thru accident, from tragic disabilities that arbitrarily set the limits of their activities, thru safety edu- cation. All who aid them in requiring the attitude and skills which we know they must have if they are to protect themselves are making a significant contribution to society. Marcaret L. Wurte—The one justifica- tion for any method or device used in the teaching of reading is one which teaches a child how to read, develops a genuine interest in reading, and guides him in what to read. THE JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION The Tenure Committee at Work ue COMMITTEE ON TENURE of the National Education Association is organized in two divisions—a small executive or core committee and a large advisory committee. The execu- tive committee consists of the chairman and six members. The active work of the committee is carried on by this ex- ecutive group. The members of the ad- visory committee, residing in the vari- ous states, represent the cause of tenure in their states and, by correspondence and otherwise, furnish valuable infor- mation and advice to the executive com- mittee. During the past year the execu- tive committee has been active in its efforts to carry out the tenure program of the National Education Association. Three meetings of the executive com- mittee and one meeting of the advisory committee have been held. There have been a number of conferences and ad- dresses by members of the executive committee. The volume of committee correspondence is constantly increasing, and every effort has been made to an- swer each inquiry fully and promptly. Fifty years ago the National Educa- tion Association went on record as fa- voring tenure for teachers. Since then, from time to time, resolutions have been passed by the Association reafirm- ing its position in favor of security for teachers thru sound tenure laws, and for a number of years an active Com- mittee on Tenure has been maintained. Today the purpose of the committee is threefold: [1] It studies tenure laws and practices, using the case method, in order to under- stand the true situation and to further ten- ure in definite, purposeful ways. [2] It assists educational groups, both local and state, to secure and maintain tenure legislation. Maintaining tenure se- curity is a very serious nationwide problem at the present time. [3] Thru its meetings, investigations, 'epresentatives on programs, and publica- tions, this committee is trying to establish among both our own educational workers and the general public a better under- standing of the principles of justice and ‘conomy involved in tenure, and the great need of sound tenure laws. The chief duty of this committee is to assist teachers thru- out the country to secure and maintain the DONALD DUSHANE Chairman much-needed and best possible tenure pro- tection. In promoting these purposes the NEA does not institute or conduct a legisla- tive campaign in any state. This would not be helpful. In order to be effective, a tenure campaign must be organized and carried on by state organizations. The NEA Committee on Tenure, however, has been of assistance in a number of states in giving advice as to organiza- tion and procedure, in evaluating pro- posed tenure bills, and in participating in tenure discussions at state teachers meetings. Since the Portland meeting a year ago progress along the lines of permanent tenure has been made in nine different state legislatures. Five states—Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—adopted new tenure laws and three states—California, Minnesota, and New York—strengthened or ex- panded existing tenure regulations. Ne- braska passed a continuing contract law. In several other states tenure laws were considered by the legislatures but not passed. After securing the long-hoped-for ten- ure legislation many teachers feel that security has been won and that no fur- ther efforts will be needed in this field. In this they are mistaken, for experi- ence has shown that after a tenure bill has been passed, active measures of de- fense are essential to prevent repeal or Ww weakening of the law, and here again the NEA Tenure Committee continues to assist the teachers to maintain the existing laws and to secure better and more inclusive tenure legislation. One of the most difficult problems of the Tenure Committee has been the in- vestigation of cases of discharged teach- ers. Innumerable letters must be writ- ten, conflicting evidence sought and evaluated, personal interviews arranged, and conclusions based on the evidence carefully drawn. The Highland Park case is typical. The schools in Highland Park, Michi- gan, are governed by a schoolboard of six members, three of whom are elected annually by the taxpayers. In the spring of 1936 three candidates indorsed by the Classroom Teachers Association of Highland Park were defeated, and dur- ing the early summer when appoint- ments for the ensuing year were con- sidered, six teachers who were leaders and officers in the Association were not reappointed. Upon request, the NEA Tenure Com- mittee made a thoro investigation and reported that these six teachers were competent and highly regarded in their community and that their discharge was obviously due not to inability or neglect of duty but primarily to their activities during the schoolboard elec- tion campaign. One of the teachers was reinstated during the investigation by the tenure committee. It was with a great deal of satisfac- tion, therefore, that delegates to the De- troit convention read the following: FIVE TEACHERS GET OLD JOBS Highland Park Dispute Settled at Last The lengthy and bitter fight over the tenure of five teachers, which has em- broiled teachers, schoolboard members, and parents in Highland Park for more than three years, appeared to be closed today. * The suburb’s board of education Thursday night reappointed the five teachers whose contracts were not renewed last fall because of alleged political activity against the administration. They are Miss Agnes Carpenter, Miss Mary Huss, N. R. Menold, Isaac DeVoe and Miss Jean Armour MacKay. *In a session which lasted nearly five hours, the board in its annual meeting authorized a blanket salary increase of 5 percent. The five reemployed teachers will resume their former jobs at the new salary rate. No changes in personnel are contemplated, board members said, and teachers who assumed the positions of the five will be assigned elsewhere. Tue Detroir News—Friday, July 2, 1937. VOLUME 26, NUMBER 6; SEPTEMBER 1937 [ 187 | A CHALLENGE to Educational Statesmanship NEWTON EARLY A CENTURY AGO, Horace Mann expressed a deep-seated and abiding conviction of the common man in America when he de- clared that, above all other devices of human origin, education is the great equalizer of the condition of men. Free opportunity for intellectual development and cultural growth has been funda- mental in the American tradition in edu- cation. It has been a cardinal principle of American democracy that a free edu- cation is the birthright of every Ameri- can child. As in no other nation in the world, we have opened the doors of our schools to children of every race and every creed regardless of economic status or of social class. And yet, despite all that we have done or that we are doing, the most devastating criticism that can be directed against the American educa- tional system is its widespread failure to provide equality of opportunity. ... The inequalities of opportunity which characterize the American educational system today result primarily from the unequal distribution of the educational load, from the unequal distribution of the national income, and from the long- established tradition that the schools should be supported from local and state revenues... . There are striking differences in the educational load carried by the economi- cally productive age group in the various regions of this country. For every thou- sand persons 20 to 64, there are in the Southeast 426 children 5 to 13 years of age. For the other regions the ratios are as follows: Southwest, 380; Northwest, 350; Middle States, 297; Northeast, 295; and Far West, 236. Stated in other terms, the productive workers of the Southeast carry a burden of child support and edu- cation at the elementary-school level 80 percent greater than that carried by the productive workers of the Far West, and 44 percent greater than that carried by the Northeast or the Middle States. The school population is distributed even more unevenly among the several states than among the various regions. In South Carolina, for example, the [ 188 | EDWARDS adult population is carrying an educa- tional load more than twice as great as that carried by the adult population of California or New York, and nearly twice as great as that of Illinois. In South Carolina, North Carolina, New Mexico, Alabama, West Virginia, and Utah, the child population in need of care and education per thousand adults, is from 70 to 100 percent greater than in the state of New York. ... For some decades the future voters of this country will come in disproportion- ately large numbers from the under- privileged elements in American life, from Southern white and Negro tenant farms, from farmers living on marginal and submarginal lands, from unskilled labor in the great cities. One may well ask, what attitude toward economic, social, and political policies will these sons and daughters of farmers and |a- borers take? Will they insist on an extension of the authority of govern- ment and, if so, what form of govern- ment will they approve? Will they swing to the right, to the left, or will they pur- sue the middle way? To such questions as these the future holds the answers, and the answers may in part be deter- mined by what takes place in American schools and by the policy of the federal government with respect to the educa- tion of its citizens—From an address be- fore the Detroit convention, NEA. School Health and Physical Education MOST SIGNIFICANT forward step was A completed at Detroit, by which the American Physical Educa- tion Association becomes affiliated with the National Education Association as a department, merging for a trial period of five years with the Association’s De- partment of School Health and Physical Education. This is in keeping with the growing movement to enlist the entire teaching profession in one all-inclusive organization. It reflects credit upon the officers of the American Physical Educa- tion Association, the National Educa- tion Association, and the Department of School Health and Physical Education. It is an example likely to be followed by other groups. The Association for the Advancement of Physical Education—later the Amer- ican Physical Education Association— was founded November 27, 1885, in Brooklyn, New York. The founder and chief builder was Dr. William G. An- derson, who issued the invitations for the first meeting. For the half century since its founding the American Physical Education As- sociation has worked to advance the physical and mental health of the na- tion’s children. It has encouraged school and college activities to promote the de- velopment of health and has helped in the training of teachers for leadership in this important field. The new department has its own magazine in The Journal of Health and Physical Education. This periodical be- gan publication in September 1896 as The American Physical Education Re- view, and as the official organ of the movement has been a powerful force for the advancement of school health and physical education. The NEA’s Department of School Health and Physical Education had its beginning as the Department of Child Study—later the Department of Child Hygiene—which was created at the As- bury Park meeting of the NEA in 1894. In 1895 the Department of Physical Ed- ucation—later the Department of Physi- cal and Health Education—was organ- ized at Denver. In July 1924 these two departments were united under the name of the Department of School Health and Physical Education. The merger of this department with the American Physical Education As- sociation will multiply the strength and usefulness of both groups. Within this new department there are to be three divisions: Health Education; Physical Education; and Recreation. To workers in these fields who have not been taking part in organization activities this new forward movement comes as a chal- lenge. The Department will hold its na tional meeting in Atlanta in April 193°. THE JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION OFFICERS fr 1937-38 National Education Association Caroline $. Woodruff, president, principal, State Normal School, Castleton, Vt. Willard E. Givens, executive secretary, 1201 16th St., N. W., Washington, D. C. J. W. Crabtree, secretary emeritus, 1201 16th St., N. W., Washington, D. C. R. E. Offenhauer, treasurer, supt. of schools, Lima, Ohio HONORARY PRESIDENTS John Dewey, professor emeritus of philos- ophy, Columbia University, New York Mrs. Susan M. Dorsey, 1506 Arapahoe St., Los Angeles, Calif. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Caroline S. Woodruff, president Orville C. Pratt, first vicepresident, supt. of schools, Spokane, Wash. Joseph H. Saunders, chairman, Board of Trustees, supt. of schools, Newport News, Va. R. E. Offenhauer, treasurer Amy H. Hinrichs, principal, Audubon School, New Orleans, La. Fred D. Cram, professor, Iowa State Teachers College, Cedar Falls, lowa Myrtle Hooper Dahl, teacher, R.F.D. 2, Mound, Minn. Reuben T. Shaw, teacher, 1327 Real Estate Trust Building, Philadelphia, Pa. David A. Van Buskirk, supt. of schools, Hastings, Mich. BOARD OF TRUSTEES Joseph H. Saunders, chairman Caroline S. Woodruff, president Edgar G. Doudna, secretary, Board of Normal School Regents, Madison, Wis. A. 1. Whittenberg, 2002 South 5th St., Springfield, Ill. Florence Hale, editor, The Grade Teacher, Hotel Davenport, Stamford, Conn. VICEPRESIDENTS Orville C. Pratt, first vicepresident Andrew Avery, county supt. of schools, Bainbridge, Ga. Evlyn Chasteen, teacher, 536 32nd Street, Oakland, Calif. J. J. Guenther, teacher, Technical High- school, Omaha, Nebr. H. Claude Hardy, supt. of schools, White Plains, N. Y. Harley W. Holmes, supt. of schools, Mar- shall, Mich. - L. Hunt, supt. of schools, Madison, S. Dak. Frank A. Jensen, supt., LaSalle-Peru Twp. Highschool and Junior College, LaSalle, Ill. Daisy Lord, teacher, 1027 West Main Street, Waterbury, Conn. Raymond H. Snyder, president, Normal School, Albion, Idaho B. C. Tighe, principal, senior highschool, 1o21 8th St., Fargo, N. Dak. N. Elliot Willis, principal, junior high- school, 171 Woodside Ave., Winthrop, Mass. STATE DIRECTORS Alabama—L. Frazer Banks, ass’t supt. of schools, Birmingham Alaska—Everett R. Erickson, professor, University of Alaska, College Arizona—Harold W. Smith, supt. of schools, Glendale Arkansas—W. E. Phipps, state commis- sioner of education, Little Rock California—Helen Holt, teacher, 1543 B Santa Clara Ave., Alameda Colorado—W. B. Mooney, exec. sec., Colo- rado Education Association, Denver Connecticut—Helen T. Collins, principal, Lovell School, New Haven Delaware—H. V. Holloway, state supt. of public instruction, Dover District of Columbia—Hugh Smith, prin- cipal, Jefferson Jr. Highschool, Wash- ington Florida—James S. Rickards, exec. sec., Florida Education Association, Talla- hassee Georgia—M. D. Collins, state supt. of schools, Atlanta Hawau—Earl L. McTaggart, exec. sec., Hawaii Education Association, Hono- lulu Idaho—W. D. Vincent, supt. of schools, Boise Illinois—John W. Thalman, supt., Town- ship Secondary Schools, Waukegan Indiana—Charles O. Williams, secretary, State Teachers Association, Indianapolis lowa—Fred D. Cram, professor, Iowa State Teachers College, Cedar Falls, Iowa Kansas—F. L. Schlagle, supt. of schools, Kansas City Kentucky—D. Y. Dunn, supt., Fayette County schools, Lexington Louisiana—J. N. Poche, supervisor, St. Charles Parish Schools, Hahnville Maine—William B. Jack, supt. of schools, Portland Maryland—Eugene W. Pruitt, county supt. of schools, Frederick VOLUME 26, NUMBER 6; SEPTEMBER 1937 Massachusetts — Annie C. Woodward, teacher, 78 Highland Ave., Somerville Michigan—Grover Stout, principal, Win- gert School, Detroit Minnesota—Daisy Brown, teacher, 407 South 6th St., Stillwater Mississippi—H.V.Cooper, supt. of schools, Vicksburg Missouri—Thomas J. Walker, associate sec., State Teachers Association, Colum. bia Montana—M. P. Moe, exec. sec., Montana Education Association, Helena Nebraska — Alice Robinson, dean of women, State Teachers College, Kearney Nevada—C. Layton Galbraith, supt. of schools, McGill New Hampshire—Lyle Wilson Ewing, head, English Department, Claremont New Jersey—Lester A. Rodes, supervising principal of schools, South River New Mexico—D. N. Pope, exec. sec., N. Mex. Educational Association, Santa Fe New York—Frederick H. Law, chairman, Dept. of English, Stuyvesant High- school, New York North Carolina—El\mer H. Garinger, prin- cipal, Central Highschool, Charlotte North Dakota—L. A. White, supt. of schools, Minot Ohio—B. F. Stanton, supt. of schools, Alliance Oklahoma—Kate Frank, teacher, Central Highschool, Muskogee Oregon—C. R. Bowman, county supt. of schools, Medford Pennsylvania—). Werbert Kelley, exec. sec., State Education Association, Harris- burg Rhode Island—James F. Rockett, state di- rector of education, Providence South Carolina—A. C. Flora, supt. of schools, Columbia South Dakota—S. B. Nissen, editor, SDEA Journal, Sioux Falls Tennessee—S. L. Ragsdale, principal, Humes Highschool, Memphis Texas—Rush M. Caldwell, teacher, Wood- row Wilson Highschool, Dallas Utah—N. Howard Jensen, principal, Cen- tral School, Tooele Vermont—Joseph A. Wiggin, principal, Highschool, Brattleboro Virginia—Mrs. Edith B. Joynes, principal, Washington-Gatewood Schools, Norfolk Washington—Cora Oleson, teacher, Rid- path Hotel, Spokane West Virginia—W. W. Trent, state supt. of schools, Charleston Wisconsin—Amanda H. Schuette, director of commercial education, 220 South Van Buren St., Green Bay W yoming—H. H. Moyer, principal, High- school, Rawlins [ 189 | Membership in Education Associations—1937 Ps ceseseheudiar Siccblate 19,455! 3,225 Rentucky.............. 17.833 1,170 Louisiana.......<. 13.210! 756 Maine..... 6.119 1,200 Maryland....... Massachusetts..... Kansas : 27,583 | 4.184 | 3 DRICDIGAM:. ... < o.56552 33,027 | 5,673 II, Minnesota......... 21,913! 2,805 a. Mississippi....... 14,932 | 705 | jo 24,199 6,409 | is; Montana..........5. 221 27 25 69 7 14 14 | 30 54 57 907 30 15 39 39 183 19 | 23 42 2 34 14 29 116 118 273 34 13 IOI 118 976 14 32 77 74 866 6 | 49 25 28 712 24 20 129 132 5,648 | 511 508 II 38 23 | 29 po ae 13,989! | 2,210 | 2,012 14 27 104 100 | are 870! 686 652 75 3 7 6 New Hampshire..... 2,949 355 420 14 28 17 14 New Jersey......... 6,662 6,464 24 I9 188 1890 | New Mexico...... 4,500! | 602 592 13 33 39 40 CS ee 78,512 | 10,623 | 11,435 | 15 26 332 340 North Carolina...... 23,455 506 | 758 3 53 69 66 North Dakota.......| 8,121! 621 | 642 | 8 44 57 56 MI hes cacew a ae 42,890! 15,300 | 16,722 39 Il 481 491 Oblahoia.........<... - 9 | 1,503 8 | 8,856 1,54 43 62 | 84 ee ae 7,508! 2,726 3.4006 45 8 62 64 Pennsylvania....... 62,2211 | 20,273 19,998 | 32 14 324 426 Philippine Islands... .| 26,850 | 56 | 97 «(| 2 57 | 27 28 Puerto Rico.........| 5,000 | 35 | 44 | I 56 | 25 23 Rhode Island........ | 4,379 arr | 206 | 5 52 | 14 13 South Carolina..... 13,072 516 | 646 5 51 25 26 south Dakota....... 9,024 805 720 | 8 42 41 4! ‘Penmessee............ | 19,348! 1,638 1,665 9 40 68 67 ee rer wares | 44,523 2,970 3,060 7 46 285 285 | 16,246 17,219 89 18,458° | 18,200! 1028 12, 000° 13.450° | 1028 | 6,286 6,468 1068 21 ,000° 21,000° 7 29,148 32,031 | 97 14,814 15,749 | 7 12,02 11,668! | 78 23,146° 23,624 | 98 4.773 5,031 89 II ,608 12,028 86 700° 7O2 |} 81 2,690 2,789 | 95 27,300 27,500 | 1018 3.742 S733. | 83 46,1398 47,5018 616 17,616 19,5753 83 3,890 4,531 | 56 37,932 39,889 93 17,948! 19,0425 | tors 5,009 4,965 66 63,337 60,813 4,400 4,300° | 08 12,4745 13,087! 100 7,502 | 7,281 81 14, 804° 16,1725 84 24,061° 26, 2633 59 " a io sais es nei i a3 : | Membership in National Education Association Membership in State Associations | iit eral ; p States and Number of | | Percent cf | . Life Membership ercent of ‘ other units teachers | May 31, | May 31, teachers — : 2 Jan, 1, May 31, teachers — | 1936 | 1937 members | 1937 1936 1937 members 1937 | | 1937 May 31, May 31, 1937 | | | 1936 1937 1 2 3 e + =< 6 | 7 8 9 10 11 UB GHEE a opal ccecdcbisesss 50d 917,977 | 165,415 | 181,228 | Ben eka ae 5,030 5,264 723,6013 754, 7838 Me) Wire as cand 2 18,341! 1,139 1,571 9 41 69 72 15,990! 17,1814 04 PMR ac) 205 6) 54,0106). 271 168 263 97 I 8 9 WN ics ea coteas pate ous ss SiR eis aes coe ahs koe Ragone American Samoa..... 47 oO 2 6 47 ° SE, EE ODI: aearrmen e arae eaaene | a ree 3,497! 1,781 1,830 53 5 st 52 3,222 3.497 | 100 PRERAUBAB oo ossis.e se 5 12,699! 337 358 3 54 65 63 5,215! 6,252 49 So ee 40,428 | 16,082 16,218 40 9 459 467 34,245 34,828 86 Canal Zone............| 198 | 12 II 6 50 3 a ee eee EERO AR Fee ee ee error are a 9,277! | 4,781 | 3,672 40 10 72 77 8,149 | 8,860 96 Connecticut......... | 10,580! , 200 . 295 12 36 61 60 10,610 | 10,534 99 Delaware......... 1,716! | 627 777 45 7 20 19 1,628° | I,796° 1058 District of Columbia. | 2,935 | i. 325 I, 383 47 6 90 99 2,078 2, 239° 7 oo re | 12,400! 1,067 | 1,285 10 39 63 61 8,730! 10, 500° 85 re eee ere | or | Me Sie venard A eto ateragavaieiete 12 Gy Hee errs parce. eae eee Georgia............. 20,783! | 1,007 | 1,520 7 | 45 70 74 14,5008 |} 14,984! 72 i a ra rt) 2 I 55 o Rn | (rere cee | | emearea Bae ah. ss | | ey ERC 2,970! 2.506 2,546 86 2 127 128 2,498¢ 2,402¢ | 81 INNES scacdvacaiss 0.5, 3k Sa) 4,588! 743, | 836 18 24 29 2 4,200 4.386 96 RENN cane ala sesace 2.0)) 47.179! 10,498 | tt, 993 24 18 248 249 42,930 | 44,126 | 904 ee ee 21,983 5.592 | 6,032 | 27 17 | 142 145 15,48. BU atateratiass wt 5 18,795 rei vairet es heen art 4,886! 2,604 53 4 29 27 i re 2,944 503 607 21 22 18 18 II soos aso 0 sic oh 16,974 2,350 2,330 14 31 89 ol Virgin Islands.......| 119 10 7 6 48 10 6 Washington......... 11,476! 3,582 4,292 37 12 53 53 West Virginia 16, 200! ieee 1,579 1,724 II 37 74 76 Wisconsin........... | 21,852! 6,208 6,433 29 16 79 124 ee | 2,678! 659 620 23 21 | 30 28 HIS table shows the facts regarding pro- fessional organizations and indicates the relative standing of each of the states with respect to membership in both national and state associations. The total membership in the National Education Association was 165,- 415 on May 31, 1936, and 181,228 on ef 31, 1937. This latter figure is 20 percent of the 917,977 teachers in the United States and territories. The Life Membership in the National Education Association was 5030 on May 31, 1936, and 5264 on May 31, 1937. The figures for state associations for Jan- uary 1, 1936, show a membership in these associations of 723,601. This figure for May 31, 1937, is 754,783 which is 85 percent of the 890,323 teachers in the forty-eight states, —" of Columbia, Hawaii, and Puerto ico. In the United States in 1936, 18 percent of the teachers of the country were enroled in the National Education Association; the cor- responding percent for 1937, given at the head of column 5, is 20. The percent of teachers enroled in state associations in 1936 was 83, and in 1937, 85, the percent given at the head of column 11. The preceding percents are based upon the number of teachers in each state in 1933-34, as reported by the U. S. De- partment of Interior, Office of Education. The figures of column 2 include teachers, principals, and supervisors in public ele- mentary and secondary schools. The figures for state associations are based on signed reports from officers of those associations. e The letter ‘‘e’’ indicates that the figure is an estimate. 1 Figure furnished by officials of state asso- ciations. 2 Less than one percent. 3 Total for reported and estimated member- ships. 4 Membership in colored state teachers asso- ciation is an estimate. Figure includes enrol- 4,887 4,886 100 2, 6a5 2,678 gor 16,8985 16,967! 100 ore ree ere aire Seiten acs a seals 15,0625 15,595° 96 19,955 20,427 | 93 1,907 2,119 79 ment in both white and colored associations (separate organizations). 5Includes enrolment in both white and colored associations (separate organizations). 6 The rank of the New York State Associa- tion is lowered by the fact that New York City teachers at present work wholly thru local organizations. There are approximately 45,000 teachers in this state outside of New York City. When this figure rather than the one given in column 2 is used in calculating the percent of teachers who are members 106 percent is obtained. This would change the rank in 12 to two. 7Calculated using number of teachers in the forty-eight states, District of Columbia, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. 8’ The percents in excess of 100 percent are accounted for by the fact that members are enroled among laymen and _ teachers in rivate schools and institutions of higher earning. THE JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION ~ HE OPENING of public schools in America is like the coming of a great new day. This very month in every classroom all over the land—in the little one-room rural school, out among the hill towns, on the isolated plains, and in the crowded city school— everywhere we are welcoming the eager new faces and are happy at the return of the familiar ones brightened by summer sun and play. Nothing that happens in the whole nation makes so much differ- ence in the daily lives of so many people as this return to school of thirty million children and youth, two million of whom are little ones leaving for the first time the family circle and coming with expectancy out into the larger family—the school—of which they have long been dreaming. And we ask our- selves again, what shall be our gift this year to the children and youth that come to us and how shall their eager expectancy be fulfilled? Watching this mighty return to the nation’s schools it is no wonder that teachers are fired with new zeal to shoulder the responsibility which this age entrusts to them and that others take new hope and new faith in the oncoming generation. To be the leader of this National Edu- cation Association is to accept a solemn trust that lifts one above the interests of locality or of group to a broader respon- sibility to the profession as a whole and to the nation itself. In accepting this trust I have dedicated myself to the work of the entire Association and to the profession it represents. The National Education Association is the instrument thru which our com- mon efforts are made effective on a na- tionwide basis. It is two hundred thou- sind people working together for a common end. It is our own energies striving to do by group action what we are powerless to do alone. We all have days when our best efforts seem to fail. We find ourselves working against odds (00 great to handle alone. We need the stimulation and the encouragement that come from others with problems akin ‘0 ours. It has been so all down thru the centuries. The story of civilization is one magnificent narrative of men and vomen working together to bring their best dreams to a realization. Greetings from PRESIDENT WOODRUFF There is a great saying of Goethe's, “Be a whole, or join a whole.” The first half of it is a mere counsel of perfection which does not regard possibilities. ... It is therefore, perpetually important to bear the second clause in mind, “Join a whole.” Our blessed whole is the teaching profession. . . . « And when the wholeness sought by an individual is found in loyal identification of him- self with the best tendencies of his profession, it is astonishing what dignity and power become his. ... Thru union with our fellow teachers we become powerful. Since, then, we cannot each be a whole, let us join a whole, and so attain that dignity, that superiority to our own detached selves, which comes only thru wholehearted loyalty to our profession. The spirit of generations of conse- crated school men and women is actuat- ing the work of the National Education Association. In its eighty years of exist- ence it has been a mighty factor in the improvement of education in the United States. From a handful of less than ten thousand members twenty years ago it has grown to two hundred thousand today. It has developed leadership, es- tablished ideals, fashioned policies; it has awakened public interest and sup- port, set standards for school buildings, encouraged curriculum revision, im- proved administration, and helped to safeguard children. It has also become a leader in developing a consciousness of the tremendous potential value of the public school in shaping an understand- ing among the nations of the world. Today we are working in an era of expanding professional vision and en- terprise. Are we ready to face the full implications of professional organiza- tion? Are we ready to meet our obliga- tions to it, to give leadership, and to make sacrifices, if need be, for the com- mon good and for the ideals to which our profession is dedicated? In a work of this magnitude there will always be differing opinions on many subjects. It should be so. It makes for democracy and it makes for growth, but if we hold firm the great objective of us all—the highest welfare of all the children in America—our work will constitute a harmonious year of action, however VOLUME 26, NUMBER 6; SEPTEMBER 1937 —GeorcE Herpert PALmMeEr. widely we may differ in our procedure. The public believes in the teaching profession in proportion as teachers themselves dignify it. Membership and active participation in local, state, and national education associations measures to a great extent the interest of teachers in their own advancement and in the improvement of education in general. Today the National Education Asso- ciation, with its two hundred thousand members, is doing a gigantic work, in the benefits of which all who are en- gaged in any educational work are shar- ing. What could not be accomplished if the entire educational forces of this country — one million strong — were united in one great enterprise! An awakened and united teaching profes- sion alone can win the struggle for teachers’ rights and privileges, for the welfare of little children, and for the adequate support of the public schools of the nation. Therefore, in our effort to make this an outstanding year for the Association, we invite, yes, we urge, the active co- operation of every person engaged in education in whatever field he may be working. The beginning teacher, espe- cially, we welcome into the teaching profession and into the fellowship of this Association. And as we start out this new year may we join hands and work together for the highest welfare of all the nation’s schools as well as for our ideals of democracy. | ror | OUR FIRST PROFESSIONAL OPPORTUNITY HE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIA- TION is a cooperative enterprise. Its achievements during the past year have been reported from month to month in the pages of this Journa. The Association has given leadership and has made progress along so many lines that it is not possible here to name them all. In the struggle for federal aid for education, more progress was made and the measures came nearer the final stage of enactment than during any year in the long history of this important move- ment. We shall go steadily forward with this campaign, confident that we are nearing one of the greatest victories in the history of American education. In the field of teacher welfare we shall continue to emphasize fundamental lines of policy. The repeal of the Red Rider by Congress on May 24—the day the Supreme Court handed down its decision on Social Security—marks a turning point in the attack on freedom of teaching. The Red Rider, a pernicious interference with freedom of teaching in the District of Columbia, sneaked into an appropriation bill at the last minute, is the most significant threat of its kind in the history of American democracy, the only such threat coming at the hands of Congress. Its repeal—after two years of sustained effort during which its original sponsor, Congressman Blanton of Texas, was defeated at the polls—is a source of satisfaction to members of WILLARD E. GIVENS Congress and to teachers and other citi- zens. It is a triumph for democracy. Following the lead of Congress the states may well give consideration to the re- peal of any similar laws which exist in their borders. [See next page. | The Association has continued its ef- forts to improve salaries, to strengthen tenure, and to secure suitable retirement systems for teachers. Now that security for all has become a major national pur- pose, our schools may well set a worthy example by providing for the old age of those who carry the responsible task of education. The whole field of teacher welfare is one of the first ccncerns of the Association. It will push forward to make every possible gain in this area. The Association is doing a mighty work to build up public understanding of the importance of education and of its relation to democracy. This popular appreciation of education is fundamen- tal to the stability of the schools and prepares the soil for the major activities of all our professional organizations. The Horace Mann Centennial is being widely observed thruout the country, under the direction of the Association’s committee, in a series of events which interpret to the people the significance of the common school. In the birthday celebrations on May 4, in thousands of commencement exercises, in the publi- cation of important literature on the life Ww The National Education Association is dedicated to the upbuilding of democratic civilization and supported by the loyal cooperation of the teachers of the United States to advance the interests of the teaching profession, pro- mote the welfare of children, and foster the education of all the people. —FROM THE “WELCOME” SIGN AT NEA HEADQUARTERS. [ 192 ] and services of Horace Mann, in plans for Horace Mann Day during American Education Week, the Centennial is proy- ing to be the greatest celebration in the history of American education. American Education Week is steadily growing in power. It is creating a litera- ture of educational interpretation. It reaches into millions of homes and brings millions of interested citizens into the schools. The plans and mate- rials prepared by the Association’s staff are based on years of experience in con- ducting this important enterprise. The Association’s two weekly radio programs under the title, “Our Amer- ican Schools,” have a large following and are helping to dramatize educa- tional needs and achievements to the people. The Association’s JourNnat reaches ar and wide. It supports all the activities of the Association and strengthens the common mind of our great profession. It is a powerful instrument for promot- ing teacher growth. Thru special articles by leaders in the profession, reports of conventions, and accounts of educational progress and current trends, Tue Jour- NAL serves as a great national clearing- house. All these activities are yours. They are supported by your membership and your active interest. Great tho they are, the needs are greater still. The continued growth of the Association depends upon the loyal cooperation of its thousands of members, many of whom have given their best to the Association over long years. We as a profession cannot realize our full possibilities until we awaken our associates to carry their share of the common load. This is the “first profes- sional opportunity” of the new school year. More members mean more service, more growth, more advance. But there is something even more fundamental than that. These are times of sweeping transition and if people do not voluntarily interest themselves in matters which concern their own future, they may expect the control of their lives to pass into the hands of others. THE JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION A ii a nr \N ? The Red Rider” Repealed an important victory for academic freedom. The frank acknowledge- ment by the United States Congress that it was a mistake to try to limit freedom of learning in the schools of the District of Columbia sets an exam- ple state legislatures may well follow. The rider attached to the 1935 Appro- priation Bill for the District of Colum- bia stipulated that “Hereafter no part of any appropriation for the public schools shall be available for the pay- ment of the salary of any person teach- ing or advocating communism.” For nearly two years every teacher, janitor, cafeteria assistant, and other school employee in the District of Co- lumbia was compelled to sign a state- ment monthly before receiving his sal- ary, asserting that during the preceding weeks he had complied with this law in and out of school. Under the influence of this legislation the children of the District of Columbia were denied the opportunity of receiving in the schools any information or consideration of Russia’s social, economic, or political problems. The morale of the entire school system was weakened. As soon as the pernicious nature of the “Red Rider” became evident, the Education Association of the District of Columbia inaugurated a vigorous cam- paign for its repeal. The National Edu- cation Association joined in this cam- paign and played no small part in its eventual success, as is evidenced by the following excerpt from a letter received shortly after the rider was repealed: T= REPEAL of the “Red Rider” is Perhaps only a few of us realize to the fullest the tremendous task you have done so well in your long and arduous efforts to secure repeal of the “Red Rider.” Everyone, however, is gratefully apprecia- tive and realizes what it means to have a strong group like the NEA employ its nationwide contacts to support and strengthen our local efforts—A. Grace Lind, president, Education Association of the District of Columbia. ; In its efforts to secure repeal of the Red Rider” the National Education Association employed personal contacts; correspondence; addresses before wom- en's clubs, parent-teacher associations, church groups, and other civic organi- zations; resolutions urging repeal; news- paper publicity; and radio broadcasts. Commenting on the NEA radio pro- grams, The Washington Post said: The case of the “Little Red Rider,” which not long ago was just a local issue, assumed nationwide status last night when it was kidded over a coast-to-coast hookup known, aptly enough, as the red network of the National Broadcasting Co. All the key stations, I am told, were tuned in when, for a quarter of an hour, the come- dians of the National Education Associa- tion turned their pedantic wit upon the District’s shame. . . . The National Edu- cation Association’s broadcast was by far the most effective of several national efforts to aid repeal of the “Little Red Rider.” The National Education Association also enlisted the cooperation of leaders in state and local associations. On Feb- ruary 9 the following telegram was sent to the secretaries of the state teachers associations: Senate has voted straight repeal of “Red Rider.” The House, fearing misunder- standings back home, has adopted a highly unsatisfactory amendment. Conference committee being appointed now to har- monize action of Senate and House. Im- mediate action needed. Have leading citi- zens wire senators and_ representatives urging outright repeal. On February 15 Secretary Givens wrote to all Congressmen who failed to vote on February 8 for outright repeal urging them on behalf of the teachers of the nation to use their influence to secure complete repeal. He called atten- tion to the fact that the McCormack Amendment, H. R. 148, passed Feb- ruary 8 by the House, was highly unsat- isfactory, since it merely “turned the ‘Red Rider’ pink” and left an unwar- ranted insinuation against the patriot- ism and loyalty of the teachers of the District of Columbia. The fight to secure repeal lasted for more than a year and at times the pros- pects of success were dark and gloomy. In January 1937 Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana and Representa- tive Ambrose J. Kennedy of Maryland introduced bills calling for outright re- peal. The Senate promptly passed the Wheeler Bill unanimously without roll call, but the House hesitated and after a stormy session on February 8 passed an amendment deleting the word “teach” from the original law and add- ing a clause relieving the teachers from the necessity of signing the obnoxious monthly statement. This was the “Pink Rider” to which Secretary Givens’ letter refers. The bill, having been passed in two different forms, was sent to a conference committee and for more than three months the issue was deadlocked. Dur- ing this period the Education’ Associa- tion of the District of Columbia, the National Education Association, and their allies worked vigorously to con- vince members of Congress that out- right repeal was the only satisfactory solution and that a vote for repeal would not be misinterpreted as approving communism. Eventually a bill calling for outright repeal was drafted with the following clause added: “Provided, however, that nothing herein shall be construed as permitting the advocat- ing of communism.” This bill passed the Senate on May 20 and the House on May 24. On May 28 it was signed by the President. A VICTORY FOR FREEDOM OF TEACHING—Announcement in the press of the repeal of the “Red Rider” was accompanied by the following statement from Secretary Givens: “With the repeal of the socalled ‘Little Red Rider’ which met its fate at the hands of Congress today goes the most significant threat ever made to freedom of learning in the United States—the only threat of its kind ever made in our national legislative halls, and more pernicious than any of the few attempts made by communities and states to censor education in special fields or to dictate its policies in accordance with the interests of high pressure minorities. The ‘Little Red Rider’ was a mistake from the standpoint of those who cherish Amer- ican institutions and who are concerned for the perpetuation of American democ- racy. The National Education Association, on behalf of the country’s million teachers, congratulates Congress upon its action and expresses appreciation for relief from an onerous, un-American restriction upon their services to youth.” VOLUME 26, NUMBER 6; SEPTEMBER 1937 | 193 | HOW THEY DID IT HE MEMBERSHIP GOAL, “At Least T: 10 Percent Increase in Every State,” was adopted by the Port- land convention. The Victory Honor Roll on this page shows that twenty states and Alaska achieved the goal. A letter sent to each state director in those states which had achieved the goal asked what technics had been found most effective. The replies indicate that aggressive leadership, teamwork, and a definite enrolment plan are the essen- tial factors in membership progress. Ex- amination of the Victory Honor Roll suggests that conventions also help to in- crease membership, but even in Louisi- ana and Michigan the inspiring mem- bership growth would not have taken place without careful planning on the part of local leaders. State Director J. N. Poche from Louisiana writes: I am most grateful to the splendid men who helped in our campaign for member- ships in the NEA. To them, I feel, is due the credit for the fine showing made by Louisiana this year. Of course, having the Department of Superintendence conven- tion at New Orleans aided us materially. I selected a leader among the school forces in each congressional district to be held responsible for the results in his district. State Director Grover Stout of Michi- gan followed a similar procedure. His plan included: [1] Appointing an influential NEA En- rolment Committee; [2] contacting the superintendents of the state at their fall meeting, and asking them to stress NEA membership among their teachers and board members; [3] publicity for NEA membership in the Detroit Educational News; and [4] personal contacts and talks here, there, and everywhere, urging NEA membership. Kentucky made the largest percent of gain made by any state without the aid of an NEA convention and the results achieved in this state, therefore, show what can be done by local leadership and determined effort. Dr. Taylor, the state director, appreciating the importance of careful planning, prepared definitely to get results. He writes: Last year I went to every one of the dis- trict educational meetings in Kentucky and talked to the teachers on the National Ed- ucation Association, its aims and its pur- [ 194 | ASS Victory Honor Roti STATES WHICH INCREASED THEIR NEA MEM- BERSHIP TEN PERCENT OR MORE If BR yy ct Sg £m §§ STATE State Director 5 = & - a ar Louisiana...... J.N.Poche..... 3,907 417 Kentucky. ...2. 6. Trayek. 6. Baa 82 Michigan....... Grover Stout.... 11,273 99 ee M.D.Collins ... 1,520 39 Alabama... «3.5 J.D. Williams... 1,571 38 North Carolina . . Guy B. Phillips. . 758 34 South Carolina .. A.C. Flora .. 646 2 Cnempe i Sk. Austin Landreth. 3,406 25 Delaware....... H. V. Holloway . 777 24 Mississippi. ..... H. V. Cooper 866 23 Vermont ....... Joseph A. Wiggin 607 21 a James S. Rickards 1,285 20 Washington..... E.W.Campbell . 4,292 20 eee. E.R. Erickson .. 263 20 Utah. .N. Howard Jensen 2,604 19 New Hampshire . L. W. Ewing. 420 18 Montana ....... M.P.Moe...... 598 17 ME ca cea W.D. Vincent .. 836 16 Maryland....... Eugene W. Pruitt 1,071 15 are tod Saat John W.Thalman 11,523 10 Agusan.) 55:3: W.E. Phipps 358 10 Sy poses, and what it would mean to Ken- tucky if the program that it was sponsoring could be carried out. This year I appointed a committee in each of the districts of Ken- tucky to sponsor more active participation of the teachers in that area in the National Education Association. These committees were composed of some of the most capable and most active schoolmen and _ school- women in Kentucky. The increase is the direct result of the good work of the eleven committees in Kentucky. In Georgia, State Superintendent Col- lins followed a similar plan. He ap- pointed as his campaign committee six members from the state-at-large, two members from each of the ten congres- sional districts in Georgia, and added Past President Sutton and Vicepresident Avery. This is his significant comment: We have several school systems in Georgia which are one hundred percent in NEA membership, and in practically every instance it is where a superintendent has been appointed as a member of the Mem- bership Campaign Committee. W. D. Vincent, Idaho, writes: state director for -the use of the “ [1] We prepared a complete explam, tion of the individual benefits to be derived from NEA memberships. [2] We insi,! gated the plan of using the NEA Journy | as a classroom text in the hands of the seniors in the normal schools and educa. tion departments of our universities, J. D. Williams of Alabama repor that he enjoyed the hearty support of the officers of the state association, the State Committee on Cooperation with the NEA, and the state superintenden | of schools. He says: The state association held district c) ings over the state during October, No vember, and December. We saw to it that | at least one member of the committee tp | cooperate with the NEA was present at each of these and that he was given a place on the program to make his appeal. This | was usually followed up by a few remarks | by the state director, the state superinten. dent, or the secretary of the AEA. H. V. Cooper, state director for Mis Sissippi, secured the cooperation of the| state secretary and leaders in the larger school systems. He writes: We have been running a series of articles | in the state association magazine. In addi- tion, we have picked out the larger schools in our state and made a direct persona appeal to the superintendents of thes schools, setting out our membership gol for the year. ' | ' M. P. Moe of Montana reports that coinclusive” member: | ship plan by which a teacher joins state | and national associations at the same | time helped secure his state’s increase. | In Maryland, state and county super intendents cooperated with Superinten- | dent Pruitt, state director, who writes: | Mr. Cook gave me an opportunity to present the matter to the county superit- tendents at their meeting on April 20, 1936. Following that, I sent a letter to each of the superintendents requesting that they | present the matter to their teachers at theit | opening teachers’ meetings in August and September. John W. Thalman of Illinois utilized the delegates to the Portland convention | and secured the cooperation of State Superintendent John W. Wieland and | Superintendent Johnson of Chicago. He adds: If there was any one thing that put the matter across in our state it was teamwork. Enthusiastic leadership, effective team- work, and a definite enrolment plan— these three are essential for growing membership records—T. D. Martin. THE JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION J sche No’ Ou and siOr mo pri in | : EDUCATION and Our NATIONAL LIFE RNA | F the | uc. Pome F rt of | ) the with dent | aa No | that | ee to nt at | ' place | This rarks | nten- Mis E the | arger ) ticles addi- hools sonal these goal that nber- state | same | | aper- nten- | rites: ty to erin- 1936. h of they | their and lized ition State and ago. t the york. eqm- an— ving IN. TION tion urges that American Educa- tion Week be observed in the schools. The theme for the celebration, November 7-13, 1937, ‘Education and Our National Life,’ is of vital interest and significance not only to the profes- sion but to the future of American de- mocracy itself.” This statement com- prises an indorsement of AEW included in the resolutions adopted by the NEA at the Detroit convention, July 1, 1937. American Education Week 1937 will mark the sixteenth annual observance of this occasion which is sponsored jointly by the National Education Association, the American Legion, and the United States Office of Education. This great national celebration of public education had its beginnings after the World War, which had thrown into sharp relief cer- tain fundamental weaknesses in Ameri- can life and education. Since the first observance in 1921 this movement has gained steadily in scope, effectiveness, and recognition. In the 1936 observance nearly 7,000,000 citizens visited their schools. Scores of millions were reached thru the press, radio, mo- tion picture, and other avenues. American Education Week is ob- served thruout the nation as something more than an occasion when schools seek the limelight. It has the deeper pur- pose of re-emphasizing each year the vital relationship of education to democ- racy. There is nothing more important to the American people than the safe- guarding of their future as a free demo- cratic people. And there is no agency whose work is more fundamental in this task than the public school. It is most fitting, therefore, that American Education Week should be set aside each year as a time for rededication of the schools to the service of democracy. This purpose is especially appropriate this year since American Education Week is to serve as the culmination of the Horace Mann Centennial. The theme for 1937 is “Education and Our National Life.” Daily topics are: T« NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIA- VOLUME 26, NUMBER 6; Sun., Nov. 7—Can We Educate for Peace? Mon., Nov. 8—Buying Educational Service Tues., Nov. g—Horace Mann Centennial Wed., Nov. 1o—Our American Youth Problem Thurs., Nov. 11—The Schools and the Constitution Fri., Nov. 12—School Open House Day Sat., Nov. 13—Lifelong Learning Most effective results of American Education Week are achieved by early planning and provision of materials for committees, teachers, pupils, and lay friends. As usual the National Educa- tion Association has prepared valuable materials to assist schools in the observ- ance of this occasion. INDIVIDUAL ITEMS Handbookh—64_ pages, size 5%4x7% inches. Contains general suggestions, daily activities, and brief accounts of AEW observances in scores of schools and com- munities. Price: 20¢ per single copy. Sourcebook—32 pages, size 4 x 9 inches. A new feature of the American Education Week publications. Contains two main sections—one devoted to basic source ma- terial on education in the United States and the other to a collection of facts, ideas, and quotations on the daily topics for the Week. Useful for writers, speakers, and program planners. Price: 1o¢ a copy. Poster—11¥, x 17 inches in three colors. This poster is the work of Robert Sippel, 18-year-old student of the Connelley Trade School, Pittsburgh, Pa. Price: 40¢ per pack- age of 10; sold only in multiples of 10. Leaflet-—Four pages built around the general theme. Expresses sentiments of great national leaders, illustrated by thumb-nail sketches. In two colors on white stock. Price: 30¢ per package of 100; sold only in multiples of 100. Sticker—1¥, x2 inches with attractive lettering and illustration on white gummed stock. Printed in red and blue ink. For report cards, letters, menus, etc. Price: 25¢ per package of 100; sold only in multiples of roo. Highschool Manual — 32 pages, size 54x7% inches. General suggestions, daily activities, sources of material, and brief accounts of how a few highschools observed AEW in 1936. Illustrated with cartoons on the various AEW topics drawn SEPTEMBER 1937 This cartoon—an entry in the AEW nation- wide cartoon project—is the work of Eugene Foss, a student at Mission Highschool, San Francisco. Mats of this and other cartoons are available from the NEA at 10¢ each. by students. Price: 15¢ per single copy. Elementary-school Manual—Same size and general plan as highschool manual. Contains a play for Horace Mann Day. Price: 15¢ per single copy. Rural-school Manual—Same size and plan as highschool manual. Contains a play for rural schools and a section of basic materials on the relation of rural educa- tion to our national life. Price: 15¢ a copy. The following discounts are allowed on all quantity orders for the above items: 2-9 copies, 10 percent; 10-99 copies, 25 percent; 100 or more copies, 33% percent. On the poster, leaflet, and sticker each package is considered as 1 copy, 2 pack- ages as 2 copies, etc. SPECIAL PACKETS Special packets are available for the kindergarten-primary school, elementary school, highschool, rural school, teachers college, and Horace Mann Centennial. Each packet contains a Handbook, Sourcebook, a special Manual, a three- color poster, 30 leaflets, 40 two-color stickers, and other materials. Three of the Manuals are listed separately above. Manuals for the kindergarten-primary and teachers college packets are mime- ographed and will be available only in the packets. Packets are 50¢ each. ACT EARLY Begin now to plan your AEW pro- gram. Early action brings better results at less effort. Make American Education Week count in your community. [ 195 | PON COMPLETION of the first year | and a half of its existence, the Educational Policies Commission has taken some steps toward the clari- fication of matters of great importance to American education, and also toward publicizing its announcements in such a way as to make them effective in local school situations. During this period the Commission has approved three re- ports as well as a brief resolution re- garding the necessity for a broad educa- tional program in the Civilian Conser- vation Corps camps. The following par- agraphs describe the completed reports. The Unique Function of Education in American Democracy—This state- ment of policy was prepared by the Commission in collaboration with the historian, Charles A. Beard. The re- port contains an interpretation of the nature and obligations of education in terms of the historical background of public schools in America. The views of the great founders of the American Republic, the influence of the humani- tarian statesmen who guided social de- velopment during the last century, and the shifting of the goal of education from training for leadership to the modern ideal of full development for every individual are traced in detail. Out of the wealth of material contained in this report, two general conclusions are of especial interest. The report favors a high degree of administrative freedom to education at all levels. The control of school policy and school budgets by temporary politi- cal officers is questioned. A second conclusion of the report re- lates to educational liberty. School au- thorities, the report points out, do not object to democratic control. They do object to inquisitions by temporary poli- ticians, to having teaching positions turned into the spoils of office, to lay interference in the technical aspects of the professional educational service, and to the disarrangement of carefully pre- pared curriculums for petty and_par- tisan reasons. As a unique form of pub- lic service, having inherent obligations which differ from and transcend all other services, education insists upon measures of law and safeguards of the spirit designed to insure an autonomy {| 196 | EDUCATIONAL POLICIES Commission in which it can best discharge these obligations. A National Organization for Educa- tion—This report, prepared at the re- quest of the Department of Superin- tendence (now the American Associa- tion of School Administrators) offers a plan for developing a national organiza- tion for education which in its objec- tives, activities, and structure shall rep- resent the full scope of public education in this country. The report deals with seven basic issues in the establishment of such a program. It treats these issues in the light of experience and in the light of returns from a questionnaire distributed to 2100 exofficio consultants and 2000 unselected classroom teachers. The most important declaration of the report is that the proper purpose of a national professional organization in education is the maintenance and im- provement of educational service. This purpose does not rule out activities in the field of teacher welfare, for the im- portance of the teacher in the work of the school is such that increases in the attractiveness of the teaching profession by virtue of such inducements will, within reasonable limits at least, increase the quality of the educational service. With this broad statement of purposes as a starting point, the report goes on to a= a= Mrs. Mary R. Beard, author and his- torian, who addressed the Detroit con- vention on the subject, “Society's Interest in Human Values.” discuss the degree to which memberghj in professional organization should be voluntary, the type of socio-econom activities which are appropriate for sugh| organizations, and the way in whith such organizations may protect thep members against infringement of the civic and professional rights of teachers The report also discusses such lems of structure as the relationship of the branches of educational service to the total organization; the relationship of local, state, and national groups; and the question of afhliation with lay groups | Research Memorandum on Educp tion in the Depression—This report, pre pared by the Commission with the ag | sistance of Dr. Jesse B. Sears, Professor of Education, Stanford University, % one of a series of fifteen projected mont | graphs sponsored by the Social Scienge | Research Council. Each monograph | outlines a research program for study | ing the effects of the depression on some phase of society. The effects of the bust ness cycle on schools and other educe tional agencies are so penetrating that the study reported here seemed a neces sary step in carrying out the Commis sion’s program of appraisal and plan ning. A working bibliography of some 1500 titles was collected during the prepare tionof this report and has been published ‘ by the Educational Policies Commission | as a further incentive to the promotion | of research in the effects of the depres sion on education. | During the past summer, an effort was made to implement the Commis sion’s work thru summer schools and schoolmen’s institutes. Approximately twenty-five universities sponsored 4 one- or two-day which brought together faculty, students, con- sultants, and Commission members for consideration of the work completed and in prospect. It is anticipated that this type of institute will be held at a number of other universities in connec tion with educational institutes during the coming school year. It is planned that this type of implementation shall be a continuing effort to make effective the recommendations of, the Commis sion thru utilizing the assistance of the whole profession. conference THE JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION para | a shed | From 38th Annual Report of Superintendent of Schools, City of Neu York | ssion | tion | if pres ' | The Vital Part of Language in All Subjects ffort | mis- ANGUAGE plays a double role in the “Very well,” responded the parent, and curriculum. First, it acts asacom- “read the problem.” The lad said the ately mon carrier for all the various words. d a | subjects taught. Second, it performs its “Read your problem,” insisted the hich | own special part as one of the major father. Again there was a thoughtless con- | courses. saying of the words. ; for In a basic sense, every lesson is a lan- “What picture do you get as you read eted | guage lesson. To win mastery of any that example?” that | subject means to acquire skill to read its “Picture?” echoed the boy. at 4 | symbols intelligently and to use them “Yes; you are required to lay a carpet inec- | effectively in expressing what is learned. of a certain pattern on a floor of given ring | Each subject has its own special terms dimensions. The problem is, ‘Shall the ined | and signs; but with these are inter- strips be laid crosswise or lengthwise shall | woven words taken from the common with the room to be most economically tive | tongue. It follows that—no matter what laid according to the pattern?’ Do you mis- the study—training in language is an get that picture in mind as you read?” The boy thought a moment, then said, “Oh, now I see how to solve it.” The main difficulty in mathematics the | intrinsic part. An eighth-grade boy asked his father for help with an arithmetic problem. TON VOLUME 26, NUMBER 6; SEPTEMBER 1937 LANGUAGE— a living force in education HowarpbR. Driccs There’s Asia on the avenue And Europe in the street; And Africa goes plodding by Beneath my window seat. This is the Promised Land of dreams Where worlds and nations meet; Ah, do not say romance is gone— Behold the city street. comes not from lack of skill to manipu- late figures and symbols, but rather from inability to read the problems. Reading skill is a prime essential in the mastery of any subject. This means far more than mere facility in recognizing or pronouncing words. The learner must be trained to think while he reads. Every teacher has a part to play in train- ing the pupil to read thoughtfully. Another phase of every teacher’s work —no matter what the subject taught— is vocabulary building. It chanced not long ago that nearly 70 percent of the pupils in a certain school failed to pass the eighth-grade examination in arith- metic, given by the state board of educa- tion. These boys and girls were mainly from homes where a foreign tongue was spoken. They had worked earnestly with a conscientious teacher in prepa- ration for the test. “T cannot understand why you did so [ 197 | poorly in that examination,” the teacher said sadly when she brought the report to her pupils. “Well, Miss Smith,” responded one of the boys defensively, “if you had given the questions, 1 know we could have passed the test. It was the hard words that tripped most of us.” “This suggestion,” said that teacher, “set me to thinking and acting. I se- lected a number of the more difficult words in the examination and had the pupils write definitions for these terms. To my astonishment they seemed to have little or no comprehension of these essential words. For instance, I found about twenty different definitions for the word invoice. The general import was that invoice meant ‘a low voice,’ ‘a voice inside of you.’ It was a revelation to me as to where I had failed. I make it my business now to teach my pupils the language of arithmetic, and to teach it well. It is a necessary part of the prep- aration for passing examinations.” A major responsibility of teachers of each and every subject is to give their pupils an adequate command of the lan- guage of that subject. Words are best learned in their setting. Terms like /on- gitude, latitude, hemisphere, equator belong with geography lessons; while molecules, atoms, specific gravity, spec- trum are linked with science. To be able to use the vocabulary of any study with ease and accuracy is to have gained something of a mastery of the subject. The language training, however, must go further than mere word teach- ing. Involved in it is practical sentence building. In the solving of problems, in relating the facts of history, or in deal- ing with experiments in science, the pupil needs to speak clearly and accu- rately. One of the main causes for the shal- low thinking too characteristic of these days may be found in the failure of teachers to hold pupils to accuracy in sentence building. The following exam- ples, taken verbatim and at random from examination papers written by highschool students of a leading city, reveal the need for training pupils to say clearly one thing at a time and to say it well: “When we bought Louisiana from France, the question of slavery comes up. But it was not allowed above 36° 30’ north of it.” [ 198 | Deep wisdom 1s found in the forms of our language. No word touches the springs of our being more deeply than the word “mother.” It is highly significant that the folk speech has coined the phrases “mother earth” and “mother tongue.” Here is a great trinity and just as we teach the child to love and appreciate his mother, we should teach him to un- derstand and value “mother earth” and to cherish the purity and beauty of the “mother tongue.” In this issue THE JOURNAL presents an article on “mother earth” (see page 173) and this feature on the “mother tongue.” —J. E. M. “When the cotton gin was invented many slaves could do much more work in a day fifty times more work a day than before. This little invention led to greater ideas which came to be our large factories where cotton is cleaned and baled and everything done right in the building.” “Two ways in which gods revealed themselves to mortals were first by making things happen that acted on the peoples superstition one of these examples is the archery contest, because when the last archer was ready to shoot the cord hold- ing the dove had been shot away and he had no target to shoot at so he shot at the dove flying in the air and when he fired his arrows caught fire so they thought the gods had caused this so they gave him the prize.” Here is an answer from a science paper that shows straight-line thinking expressed thru fairly wellbuilt sen- tences: “There are many ways in which seeds may be dispersed. There are small wings by which the wind blows them from place to place. Some are carried away by animals, as the sticktights. These plants have “ten work. Unles. adapted themselves so as to stick on y anything that touches them. Some see4| are carried away by water and even }y| man. Each plant has its own means of seed dispersal.” The usual comment from teachen | is this: “If the pupil has the though| clearly in mind, he can express jt’ Granted. But how does one know when | the pupil has the thought clearly jg| mind? What has the teacher except the ¢ expression of thought to determin} whether the pupil understands what he | is talking about? Further, what bette way is there of helping a pupil to cla. | ify his thinking than by holding himt)! T° clear expression of his thought? Traip. | ing the boy or girl to say clearly one | thing at a time, which in essence is} To giving him a working knowledge gf | tic the sentence, is one of the surest means} ¥" of cultivating clarity of thought. tv Another basic need in every lesson—| iM no matter what the subject—is disting! enunciation. The time thrown away be} cause of failure on the part of both) * teacher and pupils to speak distinctly} is an unnecessary economic waste in | teaching. Such waste might easily be} prevented and lessons enhanced by an} © uplift in the spoken language of schools. | “ Cooperative effort is demanded also to effect neatness and accuracy in writ } ! ‘achers of all subjects | & insist on legible -nmanship and or | ‘ derly arrangement of sentences, para ' graphs, or figures, the habit of neatness | s and exactness is not likely to be fixed. | | Care in written forms makes for care | | in thinking. | To recapitulate, there are at least five | important phases of language training | in which all teachers have a common | responsibility. These are first, training the pupil to think while he reads; sec ond, giving him command of words essential to the subject being taught; | third, cultivating skill to build sentences | that say clearly one thing at a time; | fourth, promoting distinct and resonant speech; fifth, implanting habits of neat- ness and accuracy in written work. Every lesson affords opportunity for | motivated practice in these essentials; and no lesson is ever most successfully taught unless some good training i one or more of these~ fundamentals comes as a byproduct from the work. Herein is to be found the vital general role that language plays in education. THE JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION son— stinct | vy be. | both inctly te in ly be ry an 100s, | also writ- Djects d or- para- tines fixed. care t five ining \mon ining ; Sec vords ight; ences ‘ime; ynant | neat- | vork. + for tials; fully g in ntals vork. | neral on. TION Il LANGUAGE GROW TH— a living process ancuaGE can hardly be taught. Skill of speech, like physical skill, comes only thru wellordered activities. To learn to play a game, one must par- ticipate in it; to learn to speak or to write effectively, one must be given mo- tivated practice in speaking and writ- ing. Drills and exercises, like gymnas- tics, may help at times in fixing right habits in tongue or fingers; basic rules applied to life situations will also help in making the progress more secure. After all is said and done, however, training for language skills, like that of training for physical skills, is a “learn todo by doing” process. Nature points the way to success. At the very beginning of conscious life lan- guage development begins. The child’s speech grows from the infant’s first cry to his baby words and to his childhood sentences. Sounds, words, sentences, all the elements of his constantly develop- ing language, become intrinsic with his being, taking on and radiating his per- sonality. If the teacher is to exercise any helpful influence in accelerating or guiding this natural language growth, itmust be thru “entering into partner- ship with nature.” This natural method in language training leans toward neither hamper- ing formalism nor uncontroled “expres- sionism.” Its advocates aim at fuency with accuracy. Boys and girls have something to say worth saying. Young karners have an innate right to discuss problems that are vital to their individ- ual and social wellbeing; it is their priv- ilege also to share with one another the interesting experiences life brings. The teacher’s part is first to set up real life situations that call for purposeful lan- guage expression; and second to help each pupil bring out his best. This liv- VOLUME 26, NUMBER 6; ing approach to the language teaching problem involves discovery, develop- ment, drill. As to discovering what the pupil al- ready has, or can get, worth saying, the formalistic or reproductive process usu- ally fails. There must be something more than mechanical and makebelieve exercises to bring forth genuine selfex- pression. If language lessons are to be alive, the pupils must be induced to put something of their real life into them. Further, it is only when the pupil speaks or writes for the purposes of life that his real language needs are revealed. Some instances out of actual classroom experiences will serve to show con- cretely the basic difference between the formalized and the vitalized approach to the real world of young learners. A group of second-grade pupils was being given a “picture study” language lesson. The teacher held before them that wellknown picture entitled “Can't You Talk?” After permitting the boys and girls to look for a moment at the baby gazing up at the big, kindly-faced dog, she began to ask them such ques- tions as these: “What time of the year is it?” “Summer,” answered the children. “Why do you think so?” “Cause the little girl is barefooted,” came another reply. “Very well. Will someone give us a name for the dog.” “Rover,” suggested one child. “Why not Fido?” asked one boy. “Nero,” said another. SEPTEMBER 1937 The photograph of “Can’t You Talk?” (from painting by Holmes; copyright, 1916, by Eugene A. Perry) is reproduced here by permission of the Perry Pictures Company, Malden, Massachusetts. “Now let’s have a name for the baby.” So the matter-of-fact procedure went on until the teacher turned to the super- visor and asked, “Is that the way you wish me to give this lesson?” “Would you like to have me answer your question with the help of the boys and girls?” The teacher nodded assent, and the supervisor, holding the picture again before the class, said, “Now look very closely and see whether you can find a story in this interesting picture.” Then after a moment, “What do you see at the bottom of it?” “Oh, it says, “Can’t you talk?’” re- plied one. “Who says that?” “Why, the baby, of course.” “And what does the big dog say?” “Oh, he don’t say nuthin’ ” one of the boys replied. “Dogs can’t talk.” “Don’t you think so?” persisted the supervisor. “Well, the other day I was going up to a big farm house, ana a great dog, bounding toward me, said ‘Bow! wow! bow!’ What do you think he was saying?” “You go ’way!” suggested one. “Yes, I think that was exactly what he said, and I might have gone, too, if his master had not made him stop talk- ing. Of course, he was using only dog language, but he made me understand just what he meant. Now tell me some- thing about the way that some dog or cat or other creature has ever talked to you.” The result of this stimulation was | 199 an outpouring of language expression straight from life. Another instance comes from a fifth grade. The teacher there was having an “oral language lesson” with the super- intendent and a professor of English watching the process. Evidently the boys and girls had been “coached” for the occasion. A story called “The Four Leaf Clover” had been read to them. One after another the pupils were asked to tell this story. A little boy, so it developed, had fared forth to find this symbol of good luck. One of the leaves of the clover was called Be Honest; a second was Be Faithful; a third, Be Happy. When the lad making the quest had found each of these magic leaves, he was sure to find the fourth leaf, Be Successful. Tony told the story; then Mary; then Rosa- lee; then Myer; and after these came others of the class. The language, plainly half memorized, was free of se- rious errors. Finally the superintendent asked his guest whether he would not like to say something to the class. Responding to the invitation, the visitor began, “I’ve been very much interested in your story, boys and girls. That leaf, Be Honest, es- pecially attracted my attention. Perhaps it was because of an experience I had in a bank recently. I went to this particu- lar bank one day to buy a draft, and be- cause I needed some spending money, I made out the check for a certain amount more than the draft called for. One of the tellers had the draft made out for me and asked me to take it to another official for his signature. I took the paper, had it signed, and was leav- ing the bank when the teller called me back. “Haven’t you forgotten some- thing?’ he asked. Then he passed to me the rest of the money due for my check. As you boys and girls were telling of that leaf, Be Honest, | was wondering whether you have some real stories in your own lives in which someone has had an opportunity to act honestly or dishonestly.” Immediately the hands began to wave. One girl, given her chance, told how her mother had mislaid a purse on a counter in a department store. “And an honest clerk found it and brought it back to mother,” concluded the pupil. Another related an instance involving some boys who had “swiped a hen out [ 200 | of a crate of chickens” and run home with it. A third told of someone’s find- ing a handbag dropped by a lady who was crossing the street. Her name and address happened to be in the bag. Sev- eral days afterward, this bag was deliv- ered to the owner by a postman. Finally one lad rose to say rather ex- citedly, “Once me and my brudder was standin’ on de street and we seen tree boys sneak up to de back of de drug store. Dere was a can wid some ice cream bricks standing’ on de inside, and one of de boys grabbed helf a dozen of dese. De odder two got two apiece, and den dey all scooted down de alley. But de cop he seen ’em, and he chased ’em till dey scooted up anudder alley. He caught de two what got de two apiece but de one what got helf a dozen he got away wid it.” Not many moments before, this same boy in memorized language had been telling the story of the four-leaf clover. Which was the better composition? The second one, most of us agree. Tho it was filled with errors and sprinkled with slang, it was really alive; “while there’s life there’s hope.” Another instance comes from a class which was being led by the teacher to tell and to write imaginary journeys. This type of exercise used sparingly may prove fruitful, provided it is not book- bound, which manifestly was the case here. As each pupil rose to take the rest of the class on a journey with him, it was plain that a certain set of geograph- ical readers had been the chief source of information. The oral work was of a reproductive cast, the sentences gener- ally clear, but the result wooden. It was lacking altogether in those individual touches that give to any expression its vitality. A visitor, who with the principal, was observing the work, was asked to par- ticipate in the lesson. “We have cer- tainly gone traveling in our imagination today,” he began. “I’ve been wondering all the while you have been making these imaginary journeys, just what real trips you boys and girls have ever taken. Tell me, first of all, how many of you were born in this city.” Only five or six hands out of a class of thirty-five pupils came up. “Where were the rest of you born?” and As the various answers began to come, the visitor sketched the map of our country on the board. Twelve stays! and one foreign land were representej in the answers. “Why, there’s real g raphy enough in your own lives to i a good-sized book,” the visitor com, mented. “Now, I wish you would think for a moment. Recall, if you can, some thing of unusual interest you have x} tually seen elsewhere or some unusy experience you have had on some trip you have taken.” Again there was an outpouring of real life. One boy in “bib overalls” ros to tell of his visit to a coal mine on the Canadian border. In his interest, the lad went to the board and sketched figures to show the process of coal mining mor plainly. One of the girls told of the hot springs at Thermopolis, Wyoming, | which she said was a gift of Chief Wa shakie of the Shoshone Indians to the people of this country. After this a de. icate little girl gave a poetic description of the socalled badlands of the Dakotas at sunset. Painted lands, she made them, A boy whose father had an orange or- chard in Southern California described orange growing there. “You boys and girls might easily cre | ate a travel bock of your own,” mented the visitor. com- “IT am indebted to you for enriching my life today.” With these words of approval he left them. | About a year later he received a gift from this same class—an_ illustrated booklet called Our Own Trail. Every pupil had contributed one sketch telling | of some interesting scene or experience , linked with a real trip. These are but a few of the hundreds of instances which might be cited to | show the wealth of experience within | the lives of boys and girls everywhere thruout our land. Their contacts with nature in all her various aspects; their sports; their hobbies; their intimate | knowledge of the real work of the | world; their adventures; their friend | ships; their school life; their home folk; their books; their plays; their jokes; | their heroes and heroines; their ambi tions and “air castles”—all offer riches untold for the sharing of life thru pro | ductive language. What is most needed to bring forth | these riches is an alert and “tactful teacher. Besides this we should have a | definite but flexible plan of action that | leads both teacher and pupils along the | lines of basic interests of youth. | THE JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION d - States sented Stop. to fil Com. Ill ~ COMPOSITION SKILLS think | SOme. Ve ac. § 1Usual | trip ng of ” TOse mn the | he lad | igures | More 1€ hot ming, | E Wa. 0 the a del- iption ik otas them. 2e OF ribed y cre- com- ed to With hem. \ gift rated avery lling lence dreds | >d to | ithin vhere with their mate | the iend- folk; kes; mbi- iches pro- forth | ctful | ve a that r the TION cultivated thru N ORAL LANGUAGE lesson was in prog- A ress when the principal of a cer- tain consolidated school entered a seventh-grade room. One boy was talking rather incoherently to his rest- less classmates. After listening a few moments, the principal broke into the recitation with “What are you talking about, my boy?” “Bout raisin’ poultry,” came the reply. “Don’t these boys and girls know about raising poultry?” “Guess they do.” “Then why are you wasting their time and yours?” “Well,” returned the lad defensively, “the teacher wanted us to tell something about how homes are supplied with food, and I took raisin’ poultry *cause that’s how my father makes a livin’.” ‘Tve never had much success with chickens. I’m wondering why.” “Oh, I can tell you how we make them pay.” “That’s just what I'd like to know.” “Well, the first thing is to get the right eggs. They should be fresh and fertile and of the best stock. Next thing is to get a good hatch.” “How do you do that?” “We use incubators.” “I think it is better to have hens do the hatching,” another boy spoke up. There was lively discussion in which several took part. The argument seemed to be weighted in favor of the incuba- tors. “What is the next step after the hatch- ing?” asked the principal. “Taking care of the young chicks. They must be kept warm and clean and given food that will start them out right.” “Is that all there is to the process?” “Course not. They have to be fed until they are big enough to sell or to lay eggs. Chickens have to be kept clean and given the right kind of food and watched pretty closely. Another thing is the marketing. A fellow has to keep VOLUME 26, NUMBER 6; living methods his eye on that to get the best prices. If you take care of all these things, poultry raising can be made to pay.” “You have sketched an interesting composition while you have been tell- ing me about these things. What do you think would be a good title for it?” ““Making Poultry Pay,’ I guess,” re- turned the boy. “Yes, that sets up a good target to shoot at,” the principal agreed. “Now recall the main points you just made. The first was—” “Select the right eggs.” “The second—” “Get a good hatch.” “The third—” “Take care of the young chicks.” “The fourth—” “Feed and watch them till they are grown.” “The fifth—” “Keep an eye on the market.” “That’s what I call thinking thru your subject,” the principal commented. “If you boys and girls really wish people to listen to you, don’t just talk. Find some worthwhile thing to say. Then say it clearly, one point at a time. Hunt- ing for a good title will often help you to find the center for your talk. Trying to jot down the main points will help you think it thru.” Such a process begins where the learner lives; it leads him out and trains him in wellcentered, straight-line think- ing and expression. It adds concreteness to the term “composition” which de- notes placing parts together to’make a whole. The process involves the build- ing of wellchosen words into unified sentences; sentences into unified para- graphs; paragraphs into wellconstructed stories, letters, essays, or speeches. It aims at overcoming the most costly of language faults—time-wasting talk. This constructive training in well- ordered speech begins, so far as the teacher is concerned, in the kindergar- ten or primary grades. Boys and girls at this time are usually talkative little SEPTEMBER 1937 — datt the ene tere of Thy wwerrda “hal art Ate at same Bows, & tenerrcln les AL bh a tos a ~Lyage venching Lowe ham. ZB : fr t & Light aun Pine A abet th con ae at beings. Most of them flit from thought to thought like bees and butterflies among the flowers. Their language, mir- roring companionship, _ is likely to be filled with child expressions and errors; but it is spontaneous, pur- poseful, alive. The true teacher, treasuring these basic qualities of all effective speech, preschool guides the pupils forward along natural lines in their language development. She leads boys and girls to talk freely about subjects alive to them, and tact- fully helps them to keep within reason- able bounds. If the class has been stimu- lated to talk about pets, and Polly begins to tell about her birthday party, it is the teacher’s part to guide the young rambler back to the subject at hand, with the suggestion that birthday parties may be enjoyed later. Such natural guid- ance toward more unified expression is a first step in the cultivation of language skill. A second step is taken when pupils are given their first lessons in written ex- pression. There is no set rule as to when written composition shall be introduced. In common practice it is deferred till the third grade, and introduced there only in its easier forms and in connec- tion with oral work. The vital point is not when the first lessons shall be given, but how. Written composition, like oral, should be developed along natural lines. Such artificial procedures as those that insist on “one sentence stories” for the first grade, two for the second grade, and so [ 201 | forward should be avoided. Boys and girls simply do not so limit themselves when they talk naturally. Our laudable efforts at cultivating in them a “sentence sense” must be aimed at promoting something more funda- mental than mere use of capitals and periods. Such a sense truly comes when children are trained both in speaking and writing to develop their thoughts in natural, unified sequence. Pupils of a third grade made up the class for a certain demonstration. It was in the springtime. A robin, chirruping in a blossoming tree just beyond the open window, gave the cue for a little schoolroom drama to begin. Stimulated by an opening question, the boys and girls began to talk freely about birds they knew and liked. The teacher, after hearing a few of their interesting ob- servations, told an unusual bird story of his own. The children listened with rapt at- tention. Then there was a waving of hands. Nearly everyone had some ex- perience to relate about birds and bird nests. Lively oral expressions, held tact- fully to some semblance of orderly speech, resulted. “You boys and girls have a great many interesting stories to tell about our feathered friends,” commented the teacher. “I know other boys and girls living in other cities I have visited who would be happy if they could have some of the good fun we have had today. I wonder whether there is not some way we might share our stories with them.” “We might write them some letters,” suggested a bright-eyed boy. “That is one good way,” responded the teacher. “Can you think of any other?” No other suggestion was forth- coming. “Each one of you might write a bird story. Then a little book of these best stories might be made and sent to some boys and girls of another town.” “Yes, but we don’t know how to write stories,” said a boy. “But you can learn, I’m sure. Wouldn’t you like to try?” There was general assent. “Which story shall we all try to write first?” “The one you told us about the hum- ming bird,” suggested one child. “Very well. Will one of you recall the story for us?” The hands began to wave. [ 202 | One pupil, given an opportunity, said, “Well, once you were hauling wood, and you went to cut down a tree and you stopped and there in some bushes you saw a humming bird and it would not fly even if it was scared and you told it not to be scared and then you left it to hatch its eggs.” “Yes, those are the main facts, but is that the way you would like to have my story told?” asked the teacher. “No,” protested a pupil, “he left out some of it.” “He used too many ands,” said an- other, echoing a common criticism of doubtful worth. “T wonder just how the story shoud be told,” said the teacher. “Tt ought to be said the way it hap- pened,” ventured one of the girls. “That is a helpful suggestion. Now tell me. Does a story happen all at once, or does one thing happen after an- other?” “One thing after another,” said several pupils. “What was the first thing that hap- pened in my story?” “You went to the canyon to get some wood,” said one boy. “Yes, that was how the story began. Now shall I write a beginning on the board?” In a moment this sentence ap- peared: At one time I was hauling wood from a canyon out West. “What was the next thing that happened?” “You raised your ax to cut away some brush by a tree,” suggested a pupil. “Was that all?” “No; you stopped.” “Very well. Shall I write the second thing that happened? I raised my ax to cut away some brush by a tree, but I stopped. What was it that caused me to stop?” “You seen a humming bird in the bushes,” spoke up a boy. “Yes, I saw a humming bird there on its nest; but I’m wondering just how I shall write about it. Suppose I begin with the word there. Will someone tell the rest?” “There on her nest sat a mother hum- ming bird,” suggested one of the girls. “That helps me,” said the teacher, as he added the sentence to the others. “How did the little bird feel about hav- ing me near her?” “She was scared,” said one. “How did she show she was fright. | ened?” “She shivered?” “When does one shiver?” the teacher| asked. “When it is cold,’ was a reply. | “Can't you find a better word to ug here?” “Oh, I know, trembling.” | “Good. Now what shall I write I the board?” “She was trembling with fright.” “Should I not say something more | Did the little mother fly away?” “No; she would not leave her nest” | “Shall I add this to my story? She | was trembling with fright, but she would | not fly away. What happened next? | “You talked to her so she wouldnt | be scared of you,” said a boy. Thus the incident was developed step | by step. Finally the completed com posite story appeared: A BRAVE LITTLE MOTHER At one time I was hauling wood from a canyon out West. I raised my ax to cut away some brush by a tree, but I stopped. | There on her nest sat a mother humming bird. She was trembling with fright, but she would not fly away. “Do not be afraid; I will not harm you,” I said. Then I went away, leaving the brave little mother to take care of her babies. The effort was centered on_ saying | clearly one thing at a time. Emphasis was kept on the natural development of | the story. Opportunity was taken to | help the pupils find the best words; but this, together with the correction of errors and the explanation of punctux tion, was kept subordinate to the main | purpose of the lesson, the training of pupils to say clearly one thing at a time. The natural next step following this composite work is the writing of im dividual compositions by the boys and | girls themselves. Within the experiences they have related during their informal oral expression will be found leads that may be developed into interesting | stories. Some of the brighter children will need only a few suggestions to set them writing; others will need individ ual help at their seats. One thing, how- ever, that should mark their expression is sincerity. The teacher’s effort should be ever aimed at helping pupils to ex press their own best thoughts and expe | riences clearly and well. THE JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION | from to cut »p ped. ming t, but fraid; went ler to aying yhasis ent of nto + but n of \ctua- main ig of time. r this ff in- > and ences yrmal ; that sting Idren ‘0 set livid- how- ssion ould O €X- expe- TION ' IV How LIVING LESSONS in GRAMMAR can help HE THIRD major step in the develop- ment of composition skill is taken thru living lessons in grammar. There comes a time in every pupil's life when mere speech practice and even guidance in practical composition must be reinforced by constructive, practical studies in the science of language. All talk about “throwing grammar out of the window” needs critical examina- tion. Such condemnation of this worthy subject comes from a lack of under- standing of the living relationships of grammar and language. What we need isnot less grammar but better grammar. The following demonstration was conducted before a teachers institute. The class, a group of eighth-grade boys and girls, had been set at ease with a few casual questions as to their school and the studies they were pursuing. Fi- nally their discussion was turned to the subject of grammar. One of the pupils said that they had been having some difficulty with sentences. “What is a sentence?” asked the in- structor. “A sentence is a group of words ex- Pressing a complete thought,” replied one student. “Whose thought is expressed by a sentence ?” VOLUME 26, NUMBER 6; The pupils hesitated a moment, then one suggested, “The thought of the per- son who is speaking.” “That is correct. Now look about the room or out of the window and be ready to express some thought that comes to you.” “The flag is flying,” said one boy. “The leaves are beginning to fall,” said another. A third said, “There are many teach- ers in this room.” “What did these boys use to express their thoughts?” “Each one used a sentence.” “How was each thought expressed?” “It was expressed completely.” “Give in a sentence a definition of the term sentence.” “A sentence is a group of words ‘ex- pressing a complete thought.” “How many complete thoughts can a sentence express?” “One,” promptly responded a pupil. “I think a compound sentence ex- presses more than one thought,” ob- jected another. ~ “Oh, there are different kinds of sen- tences, are there?” asked the teacher. “Yes; there are simple and compound and complex,” the ‘pupil replied. “What is a simple sentence?” SEPTEMBER 1937 “It is a sentence that expresses only one thought.” “Give an example.” “The sun is shining brightly.” “Why is that a simple sentence?” “Tt just one complete thought,” was the response. expresses “Give an example of a compound sen- tence,” directed the instructor. “Mary went to the seashore and John went to the woods.” “Why is that a compound sentence?” “It expresses two complete thoughts,” came the reply. “How many agree?” asked the in- structor. Every hand was raised. “What is the first complete thought in the com- pound sentence just given?” he ques- tioned. “Mary went to the seashore.” “What second complete thought is expressed ?” “John went to the woods.” “How would you define a compound sentence ?” “It is a sentence that expresses two complete thoughts,” ventured a pupil. “A compound sentence can have more than two complete thoughts in it,” spoke up another. “Illustrate what you mean,” said the instructor. “Tony ate candy; Polly ate cake; and I ate ice cream.” “Yes,” agreed another pupil, “We can put as many thoughts as we want to into a sentence.” “Do you mean that it might, like Tennyson’s brook, run on forever?” “No, not exactly that; but—” re- turned the pupil as the class laughed. “Well, I confess that I am getting a bit puzzled over these definitions you are giving,” continued the instructor. “Tell me again what you said a sen- tence is.” “A sentence is a group of words ex- pressing a complete thought,” came the chorus. “How many thoughts are meant by a complete thought?” “One,” was the prompt response. “Where did you get that definition?” “Out of our grammar textbook.” “Who taught it to you?” There was a little hesitancy, some ex- [ 203 | changing of glances about the class be- fore a pupil said, “Our teacher.” “Is the definition you gave of the sen- tence correct?” “It is for the simple sentence,” one, replied “but not for compound sentences.” “You think, then, that we may put more than one complete thought into the compound sentence. How many of the rest of you agree?” Again there was unanimous approval. “Let us study the problem a little further. What kind of day is today?” “It is a changeful day,” pupil. “What kind of sentence did you use in, your answer?” pursued the teacher. “A simple came the prompt reply. “Why a simple sentence?” “It expresses one complete thought,” was the response, and all the class agreed. “Why is it a changeful day?” tinued the instructor. “This morning the sun was shining,” said one student. “What did you use in answer to my question ?” “Another simple sentence.” “How many complete thoughts did this pupil express?” “One,” responded the class. “Whose thought was expressed?” “His own.” “You are all agreed that he did make a sentence,” persisted the instructor, “and that he expressed completely the thought he had in mind?” There was a pause. Finally evidence of new light on an old subject began to come. Several hands were raised. The instructor held the leaders a little longer to let the others think further on the problem. “What was the first question I asked about the day?” he continued. “What kind of day is it?” “How was the question answered?” By this time half the class were trying to get recognition. One member was given an opportunity. “The first question was answered all right,” the pupil began, “but the second answer wasn’t finished. The second question you asked was, ‘Why is it a changeful day?’ and the answer told about what had happened in the morn- ing, not about the rest of the day.” “Suggest how the question might have been completely answered.” replied a ” sentence, con- [ 204 | “This morning the sun was shining; now it is raining.” “What kind of sentence is used in this answer?” “A compound sentence,” came the re- sponse. “How many complete thoughts does this sentence express?” “Two,” was the quick reply of some shallow thinkers, but others began to protest. The former were given an op- portunity to work out the problem fur- ther. “How much of fis thought did the pupil express when he said, “This morn- ing the sun was shining?” “Only half of it,” was the answer. “When did he express all of the thought he had in mind?” “He expressed it when he made the compound sentence.” “Then how many complete thoughts does his compound sentence express?” “It expresses only one thought,” responded the class. “How many questions were answered completely by the compound sentence just given?” “Only one question.” “You are right. It also is basically true that each sentence which tells something is an answer to some question that might arise in the mind of hearer or reader. Some questions may be com- pletely answered by simple sentences; but certain others require, as you have seen, a compound sentence to answer the question completely. “For further illustration, observe the questions and answers that follow: Where is Robert? Robert is in the field husking corn. Where is Henry? Henry is in the orchard picking apples. Where are Robert and Henry? Robert is in the field husking corn, and Henry is in the orchard picking apples. A compound sentence is needed to give a complete answer to this last question. Yet even tho the sentence is compound, only one complete thought is expressed. The com- pound sentence is made up of two or more principal, or independent, clauses. These are so closely related that they can be brought together to express the more comprehensive thought. Thus con- structed the compound sentence will be unified. complete “One main reason why people do not see the essential unify in the compound sentence,” continued the teacher, “is that THE JOURNAL OF they fail to get the meaning of the! word compound clearly in mind. This| word, like composition, implies bring. | ing parts together to make a whok Possibly you have learned thru your kg | sons in science that water is a compound | of hydrogen and oxygen; that comme, salt is a compound of the clements 9 dium and chlorin. Yet water is one thing; so is salt. Think also of such as cake. Doubtless you have made aq or observed someone else do so, It was | done by bringing together flour, sugar, butter, eggs, milk, and other ingredi- ents, then mixing and baking them. The result was one thing—cake. “In an analogous way the parts of the compound sentence are composed, Clauses related in thought are brought together properly. The result is not see eral sentences in one, but one sentence constructed of several parts, each of which helps to express the whole thought clearly and completely. Will you give again the definition you fre gave of a sentence?” “A sentence is a group of words a. pressing a complete thought,” responded the class. “To which kind of sentence, simple, compound, or complex, does this def nition apply?” “It applies to every kind of senteneg,’ ‘responded a pupil. His classmates a quiesced in this decision. “When is a structed ?” sentence wellcon- “When it expresses completely one thought and only one,” was the reply. | “c : . | What one thing have you gained from this lesson?” came a final question. “Well, I’ve learned what the word compound means,” said a pupil. “I think I know more about how to | said another. “I guess the teacher was right when she taught us that definition,” a third ventured. say one thing at a time,” “I’ve found out that we can have some good fun with grammar,” added. “It isn’t such a dry old subject, after all.” “There is another helpful thing that will come from this lesson,” said the instructor. “If you will practice building sentences that do say clearly one thing at a time, you will have far less diff- culty in passing your examinations. Further than this, skill to build unified sentences will help you all thru life.” THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION a fourth | ac con | one | eply. ined | tion. vord v to ther. shen hird ome urth ject, that the ding hing difh- ions. ified e. TION The precious clay for the potters HAT do we mean by “teacher personality”? We oversimplify when we say it is merely one thing such as health, reserve strength, or “it.” On the other hand, we have a conglomeration of ideas when we merely list scores of teacher traits with- out defining or using them. In this article, positive teacher personality is defined as that type which is conducive to desirable pupil changes or pupil growth. Positive teacher personality re- sults in effective teaching. The following is an attempt to sum- marize teacher personality in ten major basic qualities or traits. Decided weak- hess in one or more of these qualities accounts for most teacher failures. The Possession to a high degree of most of these ten qualities characterizes the mas- ter teacher. VOLUME 26, NUMBER 6; RSONALITY From “AU the Children: 38th An- nual Report of the Superintendent of Schools, City of New York” The basic factors of teacher person- ality are: First impression, poise and selfcontrol, teaching voice, optimism, surplus vitality, sincerity, social qual- ities, initiative and diligence, decisive- ness, and teaching power. First impression—Some people im- press one favorably at the first meeting. Others fail to do so. The importance to the teacher of this first impression, par- ticularly upon employing officials and upon the children whom she is to teach, cannot be overestimated. This quality includes personal appearance and man- ners. The following suggestions may aid the teacher in bringing about a more pleasing first impression: [1] Have a periodic health examina- tion. Use common sense in practicing the rules of health. [2] Check up on your teaching man- SEPTEMBER 1937 zy can be NATHAN G. MEYER nerisms. Do you play with your tie, bite your fingernails, repeat a pet phrase? [3] Make as desirable an appearance as possible. Careful grooming is indicative of a well-rounded personality. Give your skin, hair, teeth, and eyes the proper care. [4] Avoid overemphasizing “I” in your teaching vocabulary. Do not volunteer too much information about your previous ac- complishments. [5] Remember that a smile, which is the result of a cheerful disposition, is a de- sirable teacher asset. Poise and selfcontrol—The person with poise appears to be at ease in any situation. Selfcontrol may be defined as the ability to reserve judgment, to con- trol the emotions, and to remain calm in spite of provocation. Poise and self- control may be improved if you will: [1] Refuse to be offended by what is said to or about you. [2] Avoid being too outspoken and blunt. Keep the goodwill of your pupils, fellow teachers, and supervisors. [3] Pause a moment before introducing a new lesson. This may help pupils de- velop the habit of getting quiet quickly and will give you a chance to recall your plan of teaching activities. [4] Learn all you can about pupils’ in- terests so that these may be freely used to make every activity more fascinating to them. This is better than constantly threat- ening pupils with punishment. [5] Since the physical has some effect upon the mental, assume a good standing and sitting posture. Teaching voice—The clearness, pitch, and quality of the teacher’s voice are potent factors in successful teaching. [See page 207.] A teacher wishing to im- prove her voice may check herself on the following points: [ 205 | [1] Do not overemphasize or ignore the consonants. [2] Breathe thru the nose; then speak on the outgoing breath. [3] A phonograph record of your speak- ing voice may reveal some of your voice defects. Ask a friend to listen in the rear of your class to find out if every word is audible when you teach. Remedial voice training may be helpful. [4] Just as the good actor can make the impact of his words stop at ten feet, fifty feet, or a hundred feet, so also can the teacher with practice. Intone the vowels and clip the consonants. [5] Give careful attention to pronuncia- tion and enunciation. Concentrate on what you are saying. [6] Aim to keep the voice pitched low. Optimism—Cheerfulness, humor, free- dom from selfpity, professional attitude are phases of optimism. A teacher eager to cultivate optimism should live these suggestions: [1] Accept teaching as a challenge and an adventure in developing useful citizens. [2] Count each day as a new opportu- nity to succeed. Profit by your mistakes. Be open-minded. Use the best of the old and the new. [3] Avoid selfpity. “My board of educa- tion does not support me.” “If my prede- cessors had done better teaching, I wouldn’t need to work so hard.” Remember a leader finds a way or makes one. [4] Keep a scrapbook of appropriate wit and humor which you may use to re- move the mental cobwebs of yourself and your pupils. [5] Express sincere gladness whenever you see pupil success or fellow teacher achievement. Surplus vitality—A teacher wishing to increase his enthusiasm, vitality, mental pep, should try the following counsel: [1] Develop at least one new teaching unit a year. [2] Enrich old teaching units by new ideas. Avoid getting into a rut. [3] Share your ideas with fellow teach- ers. They may, in turn, suggest new ideas to you. [4] Make contacts with successful peo- ple in many fields of work. These contacts help to increase your interests. [5] Have at least one hobby. [6] Profit in health by what science has to offer. Remember that health, mental and physical, is the basis for vitality. Avoid constant overwork and overeating. Sincerity—A teacher wanting to habit- uate sincerity—fairness, freedom from 206 | false pretense and bluffing, and the ab- sence of hypocrisy—may do so by ob- serving these suggestions: [1] Keep your promises. [2] Do not pretend that you know everything, but know sufficient to keep the confidence of pupils, patrons, and super- visors. [3] Try to be punctual and accurate in making records and reports. [4] Frankly admit mistakes but do not repeat them. [5] Treat pupils as friends, not as “little brats.” Social qualities—This may be under- stood as meaning the ability to meet people well, to be at ease and put others at ease, to rise to the occasion, to be a good follower, to choose associates ju- diciously, to be discreet in social contacts. A teacher may develop these qualities by forming the following habits: [1] Take good suggestions with grati- tude. [2] Be so agreeable to others that no one can justly be disagreeable to you. [3] Practice complimenting meritorious pupils, parents, and others. [4] Choose an inner circle of friends who will frankly tell you your faults as well as your merits. [5] Cultivate the art of conversation by conversing with people who have mastered this art. [6] Use tact or humor in relieving tense situations. Practice seeing the humorous side of happenings. Initiative and diligence—The teacher should have the ability to enrich the ex- perience of children with novel and va- ried activities and materials. She may develop initiative and diligence by using the following helps: [1] Have pupils do work intrinsically interesting to them. See that work started is completed successfully. [2] Choose and use precocious pupil leaders as assistant teachers. [3] Make all methods and subjectmatter your own, thus enhancing their personal value. Be yourself. [4] Make your classroom - attractive. Your classroom is an index to your teacher personality. [5] Practice perseverance with the re- tarded or slow pupil. Adapt subjectmatter to the intelligence level you are teaching. Dectsiveness—Have you the ability to make a fair decision promptly and stick to it? A teacher may enhance this THE JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION quality by acting in accordance with the following suggestions: | : [1] Anticipate what pupils will do wig your assignments. é [2] Use a simple daily planbook yj definite activities planned in advance each class. [3] In judging contests, think care before you announce your decision. the rules before you decide a contest. [4] Be sure that you have mastered the teaching unit you wish to teach, so tha answers to pupils’ questions can be given | with a finality that breeds confidence. | [5] Use common sense in dealing with y pupil problem cases. Make scientific case t studies. ‘ Teaching power—This is the ability | troub to inspire in others a consciousness of | Fils the fact that one can teach, that he pos | md: sesses teaching skills and technics, and | WiC that he has mastered much more than | W he actually teaches. A teacher may in- | Sim crease his ability to inspire pupils to | tt study and to enjoy doing so by putting prod these suggestions into practice: y Pup [1] Constantly think you can succeed pa as a teacher and practice your best ideas as gleaned by observation and wide reading. 7 [2] By a selfrating plan, a supervisor's “a criticism, or otherwise, discover your We teacher personality weaknesses. Plan reme- het dial activities. Work your plan. - [3] Rate yourself periodically on various } lt phases of teaching as a means of selfim- | pro provement. | of [4] Remain humble but have enough 1 hay selfconfidence so that you may readily sell | jig your ability as a teacher. att [5] If you have not mastered the con- | oy tent or enrichment materials of the subject bor you are teaching, make every effort to do ‘i so by summer school, extension courses, | . or correspondence. Aim to be an expert in 4 something worthwhile. Travel has helped |“ many a teacher to increase in interests and 1% in teaching power. s [6] Charles A. Beard recently said, “For the training of minds, a trained mind is jo required. For the dissemination of knowl }y edge, a mastery of knowledge. The union }4 of the trained mind and knowledge makes |, scholarship.” Real scholarship inspires pu- i pils to work and to enjoy doing so. There is a place for this qualitative approach to cultivating teacher person- |) ality as well as for the usual quantita |} tive approach, that is, measuring teacher |}, personality in semester hours, points, or |f degrees. A degree may be an asset in |; getting a position, but it does not guar- antee success in holding that position. eed S as ing. sor's jour me- ious fim- ugh sell con- yect » do rses, t in and ‘For d is owl- nion akes pu- tive son- tita- sher , oF t in uar- ION tears from his first day in his new rer fran Bossy returned in school. When asked what was the | rouble he complained of two things. First, the clock was in the wrong place, and second, he didn’t like the teacher’s | voice. We all realize that an attractive voice | jsimportant to a teacher. But does the ‘teacher realize that his or her voice is producing an unhappy effect on the | pupils? Teachers guilty of speech of- fenses sometimes are unaware of their shortcomings. We grow accustomed to our voices early in life, just as soon as westart to talk, and we get to like them. Wenever hear our voices as others hear them. Until we have some record of our wn voices as we do of our written wterances, we will not materially im- prove in our vocalization. It would be jtvalue to every teacher if he would | have a phonographic recording made of | his voice. Such a recording may be made -atno great expense at any broadcasting sation. Tho it may not be practicable fr every teacher to make such a re- wording, there are certain matters which might be called to his attention. An ob- | vance of some of the fundamentals of | peaking to be mentioned in this article spossible and should be beneficial. lis highly desirable from the teacher’s wn standpoint that he develop an greeable voice in the classroom. Stu- nts are more at ease and can concen- tate better on their work when their ittvous systems are not disturbed by pleasant voices. The relationship between voice and Msture is so close that the two cannot % separated. Posture has been defined Sthe “body’s resistance to the pull of favity” and also as “the best possible “commodation of the body to the task t hand.” WLUME 26, NUMBER 6; TEACHER'S VOICE Posture is important, for: First, posture is an expres- sion of mental state. “It is pos- sible by assuming an erect pos- ture, by giving an appearance and expression of joyfulness, cheer, and optimism, to replace a depressing mood with the opposite emotional state. “Second, good posture has an economic value; it speaks of the spirit within the body. Third, it has a social value.” Fourth, it has a direct relationship to voice. “A frequent cause of poor vocal production is poor posture. A relaxed, drooping position of the trunk and head allows the larynx to sink and results in poor tones. The basis for good sound production is an erect posture with the abdomen well-supported by muscular contraction and the chest carried high. A strained position is not desired, but rather one of erectness and balance.” | Quotations from J. F. Williams’ Personal Hygiene Applied | We are now ready to consider the voice itself. “The voice,” says Charles Henry Woolbert, “is the common car- rier of the most delicate of thought commodities. Not only does the voice deceive, but it often subjects its owner to unnecessary ostracism from the world’s best delights. Great souls have been locked in by obstructing voices. If the body is well-balanced and under fine control, there is every reason to expect health of vocal apparatus and control of voice. A man who lacks deli- cacy and subtlety in speech lacks the most subtle of all discriminations. He is in a degree a defective as a carrier of ideas and as a distinguisher of fact and truth.” Voice is made from breath which is turned into sound as it passes thru the larynx or voice-box. Hence a study of the elements of speech begins with a study of breathing. Breathing is per- SEPTEMBER 1937 From “AU the Children: 38th Annual Report of the Superintendent of Schools, City of New York’’ Albert Kilburn Ridout formed in reality not by the lungs, but chiefly by the diaphragm, a muscle be- low the lungs that pulls the lungs open or shut, thus causing the inhaling or exhaling of air. Breathing, therefore, de- pendent as it is upon the free action of the diaphragm, has a direct relation to posture. Full, open tones travel farthest and carry best. Full breath gives support to the tones. Fill the lungs at each oppor- tunity. Breathe often and deeply. Like children’s balloons, the lungs are most effective when fully inflated. Two simple exercises for testing con- trol of the breath are as follows: Take a deep breath and allow the air to escape slowly thru the lips while whistling softly. Try the same thing but make no noise as the air passes thru the lips. Take a full, tho comfortable, breath as described above, then slowly and steadily count aloud one, two, three, four, etc., so that all the sounds are firm and of equal force and clearness. Make the sounds at regular intervals. As you proceed you will notice a gradual relaxation of the dia- phragm, the steadiness and evenness of which determines the character of the sounds. Do not attempt to count too many numbers at first. Stop as soon as the sounds lack firmness and precision. The breathing having been consid- ered, we are next concerned with the vocal cords. One must remember that these cords of themselves make no sound, They are as the strings of an Aeolian harp over which air merely passes causing vibrations which make the tone. Much fatigue of the throat has been occasioned by people who attempt to use the vocal cords muscularly for tone production. Good tone depends upon the open passages in the bony structure of the head. The tongue, the teeth, the lips all have an important part to play in good speech. The consonants are de- pendent upon the use of the tongue and teeth. Vowels and consonants alike are dependent upon the lips. We have seen that the speech mechanism is an intri- cate one. Good speech is dependent upon the proper functioning of many bodily parts. The relationship of voice to gen- eral health will be mentioned later. We may consider now some common speech defects and consider what rem- edies might be applied. Mumbling—This common fault is characterized by speaking thickly and obscurely. There is no sharpness or definiteness of vocal sounds. It is usually caused by speaking with the lips close together or with the teeth closed. The remedy is found in opening the mouth wider when speaking. Liberation of the jaw, allowing greater freedom for speaking, will give relief. The follow- ing exercise, designed for liberation of the jaw, will be of assistance in overcom- ing the mumbling habit: Stand in a comfortable position. Drop the jaw as far as it will go. Close the eyes. Shake the head vigorously from side to side rapidly. Keep repeating this exercise until the jaw is liberated. When the jaw is properly loosened the teeth may be heard to rattle. This exercise may cause the head to ache but this discomfort is only of a temporary nature. Nasality—Nasality, or talking thru the nose, is caused by stoppage of the nasal passages. Clear the passages for remedy. The underlying cause may be physical, such as infected tonsils, ade- noids, or catarrh. In such a case a reli- able physician should be consulted. Or- dinarily, nasality can be eliminated by the following exercise, if repeated fre- quently: Take a deep breath and hum m-m-m- m-m-m, placing the tone high in the head. The vibration should be felt in the frontal arch, up near the eyes. [ 208 | High pitch—This is a common fault of many women speakers and teachers. It is often caused by trying to make a weak voice carry far. The speaker real- izes that a high tone carries better than a low one and resorts to a high pitch to carry her meaning. This places too great a strain upon the throat. The same objective—that of greater projection of tone—can be accomplished by giving greater breath spport to the tone. The teacher who habitually resorts to the use of a high pitch is referred to the portion of this article that deals with correct breathing. Hoarseness—This defect is usually physical. It may be due to fatigue, ill- ness, or atmospheric conditions. Often it is due to the improper use of the voice. In cases where hoarseness be- comes chronic it is advisable to consult medical aid. Much after-school hoarse- ness, however, may be traced to im- proper speech habits, particularly faulty breathing. Inarticulation, slurring of vowels and consonants, and dropping of final con- sonants are indicative of slovenliness in mental attitude. Barring actual physical defects such as malformation of the mouth or lips these can always be cor- rected. Practice these exercises: Enunciate distinctly the following initial consonants with the tip of the tongue and the edge of the lips. The exercise must be given in rhythm, the tempo of which should be slightly increased as each com- bination of sounds is repeated in quick succession: A trio from the Hawaiian delegation, whose music and dancing have become a popular feature of NEA conventions. be bi bo! 1 be bi bo! be bi bo! be bi bo! dé di do! de di do! de di do! de di do! fe fi fo! fe fi fo! fe fi fo! fe fi | le li lo! le li lo! le li lo! le yj lo! mé mi mo! me mimo! me mimo! me Mi Mo) | l ne nt no! ne ni no! ne ni no! ne ni nol P te ti to! te ti to! te ti to! te ti tol) Enunciate the initial syllables: | Lars be man _ Neve because maneuver schoc begin manhandle | new before manage activ below manipulate , new de ten | brn decide tender te description tenet ties | Pp designate tendon 5 destroy tendril hap lutic Enunciate the final letters: T abundant absurd | amo elegant tyrant | cons angel evidence | to 2 give I’ve prol carrying hurrying + atta Enunciate the ing and the and in the| wen following: | Irac hav And gleaming and streaming and steam- | Soh ing and beaming, And rushing and flushing and brushing | and gushing, And flapping and rapping and clapping 1 too ) wit and slapping, gro And curling and whirling and purling | cat and twirling, tic Retreating and meeting and beating and | of sheeting, nif Delaying and straying and playing and | oy spraying. [Southey | | the Nothing has been said about mono- | e tones. Speaking on one tone, with no | = variation, indicates lack of interest and | always results in that on the part of the audience. Vary the tone with each new tio idea. ia In conclusion, we might consider fn briefly the hygiene of the voice. The} 4 voice responds to general bodily states | 4, Weakness and muscular flabbiness ca | jt not support a good voice. The voit | jj takes on the quality of the body in gem | y eral as regards its health. A person if | poor health will suffer from fatigue 0 the voice. } D re Take the same care of the voice aso | a fine musical instrument and it will | give you little trouble. and will be4| o thing of beauty, and, therefore, a jf forever. THE JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION | | bi bo! di do! fi fo li Io) Qi Mio! Qi ag) ti | Highschool Discussion Groups faces a more interesting and chal- lenging future than ever before. Larger numbers are participating. Pics EDUCATION today in America | Never before were so many children in ghool, and adult education is reaching new heights. The increased educational ativity, itself the result in part of | new social and economic developments, n the team- shing | — ping irling z and x and 10no- h no | and f the new sider The tates. cal voice gen | yn if re of as of | will be 4 | 1 joy TION brings new responsibilities as well as op- portunities. New problems and difficul- ties have brought an increased emphasis upon the need of understanding what is happening; a renewed desire to find so- lutions and to discover better ways. There is need for clear thinking among educators, but there has been onsiderable confusion, owing largely toa lack of concentration on definite problems. There has been a tendency to attack difficulties sporadically or half- heartedly and to be satisfied with a fractional realization of purposes. We have not been skilled in following-thru. Solutions, when they have come, have too often been worked out by a few, with the many passively accepting them. The real challenge to our professional growth, the active opportunity for edu- ational progress, lies in a general par- ticipation in the creation and control of our educational programs. A few sig- tificant problems need selection for a cooperative attack. The background of these problems calls for analysis, for sudy, in order that basic understanding may be established. Then follow neces- | Sty interpretations, varied, contradic- tory, and exhaustive. Analysis, understanding, interpreta- _ ‘on rest upon adequate discussions, not by a few, but by many small, active groups. Discussion will not bring con- dusive interpretations, satisfactory un- derstandings, or desirable actions unless itis persistent, controled, planned, con- tinuously held to a specific problem, until cooperative agreements have been teached. Some device which will permit the Participation of larger numbers in the formulation of educational policies, the | olution of problems, and the direction f educational movements is obviously ieded. After extensive study and in- estigation, the Committee on Planning, FRANCIS L. BACON Department of Secondary-School Prin- cipals, NEA, recommends the establish- ment or support of the small study or discussion group. It is far from a new idea in education, but during the past few years there has been a unique de- velopment in the method, especially in the secondary education field. Many study or discussion groups have been started thruout the country and have proved particularly effective as agen- cies for professional growth, as means of achieving cooperative effort in the solution of problems, in school improve- ment, in acquainting the public with fundamental matters of educational pol- icy, and in bringing the program of sec- ondary schools closer to the needs and realities of modern life. The discussion group, the Committee believes, could become a significant means of extending the service and usefulness of professional organizations and in making the par- ticipation of all members a reality. Plans formulated by the Committee call for a coordinated program for dis- cussion groups thruout the country. Thru the interest of the Rockefeller Foundation, funds have been made available to finance the coordinated pro- gram for a two-year period. An office has been established in Washington, D. C., at the NEA headquarters with a fulltime director in charge. This central office will work in cooperation with state coordinators for the encouragement of discussion groups and the development of discussion technics. Discussion out- lines and other materials will be fur- nished to groups without cost. As a guide in the organization, technics of discussion, use of materials, and general procedures, the Committee is preparing a small book entitled, Talking it Thru: A Manual for Discussion Groups. This volume will be issued early in the school year by the National Home Library Foundation. The reports of the Committee on Orientation on the “Issues” and “Func- tions” of secondary education, supple- mented by other material dealing with timely topics in secondary education, will furnish the basic material for discus- YOLUME 26, NUMBER 6; SEPTEMBER 1937 sion next year. These reports, designed to lay the foundation for a program of secondary education adapted to present needs and to acquaint both the profes- sion and the public with the essentials of such a program, are receiving wide study and already have given evidence of much influence on secondary-school leaders. Among the values of the re- ports are: [1] The principles set forth represent the groundwork for the neces- sary program. [2] They form a basis for fundamental thinking by the profession. [3] They present an abundance of prob- lems to challenge research workers to profitable endeavor. [4] They serve to stimulate and direct experimentation of the soundest kind. [5] They furnish criteria for the evaluation of the pro- gram of the secondary school. [6] They give direction to the formation of new programs of organization, of adminis- tration, and of curriculum reconstruc- tion. [7] They make possible the prepa- ration of a program of articulation. It is hoped that groups of teachers and administrators connected with second- ary schools will come together at the call of the state coordinator, that they will meet thereafter at fixed times, and that they will develop methods of dis- cussion which will result in an airing of views and finally in decisions on specific problems—decisions arrived at thru the democratic method of free and open discussion. After several months the members of the group will have a thoro knowledge and understanding of new movements in education for the country as a whole and a better grasp of local problems. It is to be expected that these discussions will clarify ideas and make possible progressive changes in educational procedures. When the groups make studies or arrive at gen- erally approved results, reports will be made to the Committee. The project of promoting a coordi- nated program for discussion groups thruout the country is no Utopian dream. The success already achieved confirms the belief that the program will come to serve an important purpose not only for the secondary schools but for education in general——From an address before the Detroit convention, NEA. [ 209 | NOTES and Announcements A Ww Witn FouRNa, AvTHoRs— The address of Henry A. WaALLace [164], Secretary of Agriculture in Presi- dent Roosevelt’s cabinet, was one of the strongest delivered at Detroit. With the Detroit meeting, Orvitte C. Pratr [165] concluded a successful year as President of the National Education As- sociation. Mr. Pratt is superintendent of schools at Spokane, Washington. ° A name wellknown to JourNat readers is that of J. W. SrupepaKer [170], U. S. Commissioner of Education. . Educators interested in the vital problem of federal support for schools will wish to read the complete address of Brooks FLetcuer [171], Congressman from Ohio, in the 1937 Volume of Proceedings, NEA. Hatrorp E, Luccock [172], clergyman and author, is professor of homiletics at the Yale University Divinity School. ° Rich Land, Poor Land, A Study of Waste in the Natural Resources of Amer- ica, by Stuart Cuase | 173], is one of the most important books of our time. ° FLoyp W. Reeves [176], professor of education at the University of Chicago, is chairman of the Advisory Committee on Education, Washington, D. C. J. B. EpMonson [178] is dean, School of Education, University of Michigan, and a member of the Educational Policies Com- mission. ° Epmunp E. Day [179] has been president of Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, since the first of July 1937. ° Haven Emerson, M. D. [181], is pro- fessor of public health at Columbia Uni- versity. | 210 | Detroit convention are business THE DEPARTMENT OF BUSINESS EDUCATION Included in this photo of the luncheon at the education leaders from all sections of the United States. Chairman of the Tennessee Valley Au- thority, ArtHur E. Morcan [184], for- merly held the position first made famous by Horace Mann—the presidency of An- tioch College. ° Donatp DuSuane [ 187], superintendent of schools, Columbus, Indiana, is chairman of the NEA Committee on Tenure. ° Newton Epwarps [188] is professor of education at the University of Chicago, author of The Courts and the Public Schools, and editor of the Elementary Schoo! Journal. ° Caro.ine S. WooprurF [191], the new President of the National Education As- sociation, has participated actively in the work of the Association for many years. She is a Life Member of the NEA, a con- sultant on the Educational Policies Com- Pupils of Central Highschool, Aber- deen, S. Dak., who attained an all “A” scholastic rank for at least one six-weeks period last year, were guests at the annual luncheon sponsored by the Aberdeen Kiwanis club. mission, and past-president of the De, partment of Administrative Women Education. The first woman president the Vermont State Teachers Associat and last year president of the New En Teacher Training Association, Dr. Wood ruff is principal of the State Teachers Gd. lege at Castleton, Vermont. Wiiarp E. Givens [192] is executive secretary of the National Education Asso ciation. ° T. D. Martin [194] heads the member. ship division, NEA headquarters. | Howarp R. Drices [197], professor ot English Education at New York Univer sity, is one of the founders of the Oregon Trail Memorial [Cont. on page A-102| Students of Spnn Street School, At lanta, go to Te minal Station 40 information ont locomotive, in OF to build a miniat railroad as part Of community lif project. THE JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION