The Constitution Anniversary Association, incorporated March, 1923, is another organization engaged in promoting a study of the Constitution in order to familiarize to a greater degree the people of this generation with “those historic days incident to the writing of the Constitution,” that they may “recognize their value” and understand “the danger of our drifting during recent years away from representative government toward direct action; from individual property rights to socialism; from individual responsibility for individual conduct toward class consciousness, class agitation and class legislation,....” A purpose of the Association is “to arouse interest in the men who wrote the Constitution ... to make clear that they were governmentally-minded as Edison and Marconi are electrically-minded; as Emerson and Socrates were philosophically-minded; as Shakespeare and Longfellow were literary-minded; as Mozart and Mendelssohn were musically-minded; and that in the light of all that history and experience could teach, they were making a contribution as important to the science of government as was [sic] the ten digits to the science of mathematics, the scale to music, or the alphabet to language.”[594] A further aim of the organization is “to urge upon educational institutions that in the teaching of History, Civics and Political Science the Constitution be given the place of prominence and importance which it deserves.”[595] The observance of Constitution Week, as the name of the Association attests, is of primary interest to the organization.
Harry F. Atwood, author of Back to the Republic, Safeguarding American Ideals and Keep God in American History, directs the activities of the Constitution Anniversary Association. Since 1918 Mr. Atwood “has spoken in all parts of the country to various types of audiences on the Constitution.”[596] While addressing a Los Angeles gathering under the auspices of the Better America Federation in May, 1922, Mr. Atwood sowed the seed for the National Oratorical Contest on the Constitution. It was at this meeting that Mr. Harry Chandler, of the Los Angeles Times, conceived the idea “of developing interest in the Constitution” by conducting such a contest in the schools of the state. As a result, “the school year of 1922-23 witnessed the preparation of over 8000 orations,” and “the final contest was held in Los Angeles where prizes aggregating $5000 were awarded.”[597] This led to similar contests in other states, supported by “the American Bar Association, the Constitution Anniversary Association and other patriotic organizations.”[598] The contest became nation-wide, the final meeting being held at Washington. In the second contest (1924-1925) over 18,000 schools entered; the awards amounted to $45,600, and 1,500,000 high school students competed. Twenty-eight daily newspapers across the continent conducted this contest.[599]
Mr. Atwood carries his advocacy of a knowledge of the Constitution and of representative government to the people not only through his addresses delivered throughout the country but also by means of his writings. It is his belief that “we have drifted from the republic toward democracy; from statesmanship to demagogism” in “an age of retrogressive tendencies.”[600] He holds that a republic provides the “golden mean” of government, autocracy and democracy offering “undesirable extremes.” To make clear his meaning parallels are drawn between “the realm of nature and of human activity” and the realm of government, attributing to each “two extremes and the golden mean.” For instance, he believes that “what thirst is to the individual, autocracy is to government; what drunkenness is to the individual, democracy is to government; what temperance is to the individual, the republic is to government.”[601]
According to Mr. Atwood “the most defective portion of our thinking and teaching in the schools is that phase of education which pertains to civics, economics and history.”[602] So far as textbooks are concerned, Mr. Atwood was convinced that “there are comparatively few who will contend that there has ever been written a good history of the United States of America.” The same statement holds true for textbooks in civil government, for none makes clear “to the average student the form of government that was established here under the Constitution.”[603] Mr. Atwood was concerned still more with the fact that so few students had read the Constitution,—students who had received from twelve to sixteen years’ education at the expense of the state. “So long as the expense of the public schools and State universities is paid by the government,” Mr. Atwood declared, “one object at least should be to turn out well informed and patriotic citizens, and the best possible way to do that is to give them an understanding of the meaning of the Constitution and a high regard for its wise provisions.” Mr. Atwood is, moreover, sympathetic with those who maintain that “teachers in the public schools should be impressed with the fact that their salaries are paid at public expense.”[604]
The sentiment of the Better America Federation of California regarding the study of the Constitution in the schools is not unlike that of the Constitution Anniversary Association. Mr. Woodworth Clum in “America is Calling,” a pamphlet to the students in high schools and colleges, sets forth the tenets of his organization, in his declaration that he would like to see “every school and college student in America not only learn the Preamble to the Constitution so that they could repeat it verbatim at any time or any place, but ... also have them know its meaning so well that when they repeat it they would recall the entire philosophy of the American government.”[605] Much apprehension was felt by the Better America Federation because of “groups of free thinkers or radicals” agitating for some other form of government under which there would be “no profits ... in business.”[606]
In accord with an interest in education evident in its earliest meetings, the American Federation of Labor has carried on investigations as to the character of teaching and the content of textbooks in the social studies. In 1903, the Executive Council was directed “to secure the introduction of textbooks that will be more in accord with modern thought upon social and political economy, books that will teach the dignity of manual labor, give due importance to the service that the laborer renders to society, and that will not teach the harmful doctrine that the wage-workers should be content with their lot, because of the opportunity that may be afforded a few of their number rising out of their class, instead of teaching that the wage earners should base their hopes upon the elevation of the conditions of the working people.”[607]
In 1919, the Executive Council was instructed “to appoint a committee to investigate the matter of selecting, or of preparing and publishing textbooks appropriate for classes of workers,” because the convention found “one of the chief difficulties in securing appropriate classes for the workers is the dearth of unbiased and suitable textbooks.”[608]
The committee thus appointed reported in 1920 an insufficient and inaccurate teaching of industrial growth and of the trade union movement. The responsibility for this condition was assessed upon the economists of the past “whose teachings still largely dominate in the educational institutions of our time,”—teachings “which have failed to stand the test of experience and of unbiased investigation.” Ideas held faulty were thought, furthermore, to be in no small measure the outgrowth of ideas gained from books failing to “state accurately and interpret correctly economic laws and their application to our modern industrial society.”[609] The Committee therefore recommended the preparation of a textbook by a competent trade unionist under the direction of the executive officers of the American Federation of Labor with a special committee for this purpose, and “the teaching of unemasculated industrial history embracing an accurate account of the organization of the workers and of the results thereof, the teaching of principles underlying industrial activities and relations, and a summary of legislation, state and federal, affecting industry.”[610]
The attention of the convention was focussed in its educational program the following year upon a proposed investigation of textbooks in civics, economics and history. The committee to whom this task was delegated reported in 1922. Their report, published in 1923, pointed out the importance of “instruction in social and economic studies,” because such studies are “vitally concerned with wide-spread understanding of our social and economic institutions and forces.”[611] Yet the American Federation of Labor expressly denied a desire to have their point of view “stressed to the exclusion of all others.” They wanted merely “an emphasis commensurate with its significance.” Nor did they wish “public education to be influenced by partisan bodies of any kind.” For they esteemed “the persons most competent to judge in detail what should be taught and how it should be taught ... those who are themselves engaged in the educational profession.”[612]
Inasmuch as “there are no more important determining factors than the economic fabric to which the majority of citizens contribute the larger share of their creative energy” the Federation considered essential a knowledge of the trade-union movement and “of all other social problems having to do with the welfare of the working people.”[613] The information held important for the worker they felt should be taught in the junior as well as in the senior high school, in order to reach those students who leave school early.[614]