This insistence upon conformity among teachers bounded on all sides their freedom of speech. It was readily and unquestioningly accepted by the great majority. It sprang from the belief that the teacher as an employee of the government should always agree with the government. The advocate of repression and control held that the public school should never be a haven where personal opinions could leaven the book-lore which was prescribed by authority. Others agreed with Zechariah Chafee that there was not only an individual but a social interest in free speech, that between that individual interest and the social interest, the former should always give way, that freedom of speech meant liberty, not license; but that freedom of speech in itself was a social interest, and that one of the purposes for the existence of society was the discovery and spread of truth, a purpose which could be accomplished only by permitting teachers to think for themselves.[410]
FOOTNOTES:
[344] Personal letters to the author under the date of December, 1923, and January, 1924. All states but Ohio and Illinois responded to the inquiry of the author. The Superintendent of Public Instruction in Washington (Mrs. Josephine C. Preston) refused to furnish information for that state.
[345] Revolutionary Radicalism, Vol. I, p. 1118.
[346] At the suggestion of the Teachers’ Council, an advisory committee to sift charges was appointed who reported cases to the Commissioner of Education should they need his attention. The investigations of this committee aroused much criticism, especially from the Teachers’ Union, whose members were frequently the principals in the trials conducted. The advisory committee was composed of Condé Pallen, editor of the Catholic Encyclopedia, Olivia Leventritt, a former member of the Board of Education, Hugh Frayne, New York representative of the American Federation of Labor, Archibald Stevenson, counsel of the Lusk Committee, and Finley J. Shepard as chairman. The New York Times, May 17, 1922; ibid., May 25, 1922; ibid., June 4, 1922.
[347] Instances of local friction tending to obscure the issues alleged to be involved frequently entered into the evidence presented in some of the trials. This was true in the trials of Schmalhausen, Schneer, and Mufson (see [pages 116-120]), where opposition to the so-called Whalen resolution for longer school hours was alleged by the defense to be a cause for their dismissal.
[348] The pledge of the Board of Education. Other pledges, including that of Mayor John Puroy Mitchell, also were presented for signing. See Toward the New Education: The Case Against Autocracy in Our Public Schools (The Teachers’ Union of the City of New York), p. 23.
[349] Ibid. The Teachers’ Union charged that the loyalty pledges were introduced for political purposes into a controversy between the Board of Education and the teaching staff. The Teachers’ Union wrote President Wilson asking him to frame a pledge which teachers could sign “without violating their consciences.” The New York Times, December 2, 1917.
[350] See [page 122] for a further discussion of the loyalty of Mr. Thomas.
[351] The New York Times, May 18, 1918.