The Goose-step: A Study of American Education

by Upton Sinclair

First and foremost, the question of tenure; which is exactly the same thing as the claim of the worker to security in his job. The college professor must not forfeit his standing except for cause, and upon due and reasonable notice. He must have the right which every criminal possesses, of knowing what are the charges against him, and of having a hearing in which he is confronted by his accusers, and given the right to cross-question them, and to answer their charges and prove them false if he can. The decision in his case must rest, not with his masters and exploiters, but with his fellow-workers; in other words, the ancient right embodied in Magna Carta, to be tried by a jury of his peers. These rights are elemental; there can be no freedom, no dignity or self-respect for any man who does not possess them. They are possessed by scholars in all other civilized countries; it is only in our sweet land of liberty that scholars are slaves. Says James McKeen Cattell:

That a professor’s salary should depend on the favor of a president, or that he should be dismissed without a hearing by a president with the consent of an absentee board of trustees, is a state of affairs not conceivable in an English or a German university.

The reason for this anomaly is that the American college has not been organized on the principles of American government, but on those of American business; the college is not a state, but a factory. I have compared Columbia and Minnesota to department-stores and Clark and Johns Hopkins to Ford factories; and in so doing I was not merely calling names, but making a diagnosis. They are organized upon that basis, and run upon that basis, and the problem of changing them is simply one of the problems of Americanization. The college must become a democratic republic, run by its citizens and workers.

That brings us to the second demand of the college professor; not merely must he have security in his job, he must have collective control of that job, he must say how the college shall be conducted, and what higher education shall be. That means that he must take from the trustees, and from their hired man, the president, the greater part of their present functions.

I say democracy in education, and you have a vision of a great university turned into a debating society, all the time which should be spent in “getting things done” being devoted to squabbling and bickering among various factions and cliques of the faculty. That will happen sometimes, inevitably; it is one of the incidentals of all beginnings of democracy to function. But we have been trying out democracy in this country for three centuries, and we do not have to begin all over again with the blunders of our childhood. We know today what a constitution is; we understand the differences among the three functions of government, the legislative, the executive, and the judicial; we understand how an executive can be democratically chosen, and given authority for a reasonable period of time, and loyally obeyed for that time. We understand how it is possible to have a thorough and free democratic discussion of policy, and to decide by majority vote, and then to carry out the will of the majority. If we do not know how to do these things, the students will teach us, for they are accustomed every year to organize a football team, and to thresh out its policies, and elect a captain, and then do what he says. On the football field they do not stop to argue about signals; they play the game.

The question of a constitution for universities is one of detail; you will find a very thorough exposition of it in Professor Cattell’s book, “University Control.” Professor J. E. Kirkpatrick of the University of Michigan has worked out practical suggestions. Also the matter is being frequently discussed in “School and Society,” and in the bulletins of the professors’ association. We have not the space in this book for anything but a brief statement. It is a problem of reconciling the rights of many different groups, which perform many different functions. The largest single group upon the board of a college should obviously be the faculty, who know most about the institution, and have its interests most at heart. The alumni should be represented, for their interest is real, and their services will became more valuable as colleges become democratic, and as the spirit of class is broken in our society. Likewise the students are entitled to representation, especially the upper classes, which have come to know the institution. If the purpose of the college is to train men to live and serve in a democracy, then manifestly there should be democracy in their training; they should be given encouragement to discuss their own needs and purposes, to arrive at collective agreements, and to make their will effective.[effective.]

So long as we have a system of private ownership of natural resources, we shall of course have to have trustees who represent money interests. But we should endeavor to pare down the powers of this special privilege group as much as possible; and especially all faculty members should set their face against the idea of any interference with teaching, or with the opinions or outside activities of the faculty, by monied men who represent ownership and not service in the institution.

You have followed me from college to college, listing the grand dukes and the interlocking directors, and you have thought perhaps that I condemn these men because they are rich, and consider that people who have money are ipso facto unfit to have anything to do with education. All I can answer is that I number among my friends some rich people, who are ardently striving to abolish special privilege from the world; and if any rich man wants to come into a college and work for faculty control and academic freedom, for the right of service and true scholarship to guide our education, I will bid that man welcome, and will promise to make no complaint because he happens to be president of six national banks, director of eight railroads, ten steel companies and a dozen pickle factories and sausage mills. The world for which I am working is a world of freedom and fair play; my kingdom of heaven is open to all, and any man may do his part to make it real on earth. All that I insist is that the rich man shall renounce his class and his class interests; he shall turn traitor to that predatory group which now controls our country and its thinking.

I do not expect many of the interlocking trustees to accept this invitation. I do expect, however, that developments in our public affairs will force a constantly increasing number of college professors to realize the intolerable nature of their present position, and to take up the work of educating their colleagues and the general public. These men will come to realize the broad nature of their task; how the roots of our academic problem go down into the very deeps of our political and economic life. The need of the college professor is one with the need of the citizen and the worker; and so, when you agitate for academic democracy and freedom of teaching, you are educating the community and taking your part in that class struggle which is the dominant fact of our time.

You will find that the struggle calls for its heroes and its martyrs, in universities as in factories and mines. To college professors who read this book—and especially the young ones—I say: what is life without a little adventure? You will not starve; no educated man need starve in America, if he keeps command of his inner forces, and uses but a small quantity of that shrewdness with which his enemies are so well provided. And surely it is not too much to ask that among the two hundred thousand instructors in American colleges there should arise just a few who are capable of combining intelligence and self-sacrifice!