The Goslings: A Study of the American Schools

by Upton Sinclair

The faculty spent several hours working out a schedule of classes, and the school ran for three weeks, when news came that a prominent athlete, desired for the basket-ball team, was to be admitted to school. He was employed in the mornings at outside work, so it was necessary to arrange three afternoon classes for this young athlete. As this conflicted with the schedule of the school, Mr. Pierce suggested that the boy should spend his entire day in school, in order to secure the fifteen hours per week of class work. The superintendent’s reply was that this could not be required, because the lad’s father was president of the school board; the old schedule must be destroyed and a new one arranged. Immediately after this had been done, the boy changed his mind and decided he would not come to school. The athletic coach spent a month persuading him, then he concluded to come to school for the entire day. When Mr. Pierce had occasion to admonish this young man for truancy, he retorted: “Ah, what the hell difference does it make? I’ve been guaranteed graduation a year from June.” Says Mr. Pierce:

In many cases the athlete runs the school. I heard of one who told a school superintendent to “go to hell” and was given one day’s suspension. I have known of others to engage in physical combat with instructors, with no ill results to their scholastic position. They are privileged characters. They obey only those rules which they desire. Being assured of a coterie of hero-worshipers in the community, they live in no terror of penalties or punishments. It would be as much as a principal’s or teacher’s place is worth if he or she dared to prevent a boy from taking part in an important game. This is no exaggeration. It is a fact. To put it mildly, a teacher in many a small West Virginia high school who attempted honestly to enforce the rules laid down by the State High School Athletic Association would be blacklisted. He would suffer indignities. Littleton High School was of this sort, and the villagers of Littleton wanted teams that could win.

I have shown in “The Goose-step” how the coaches and the athletic alumni run the colleges, and here in this high school of the oil country we find the same phenomenon. Mr. Pierce’s year in Littleton was one long struggle, because he would not permit mid-week basket-ball games, which drew a large part of the students from their work. The coach of the basket-ball team was a junior high school teacher, and he advised Mr. Pierce that “It ain’t the way we do them things in this section.” He proceeded to give instructions to the girls’ basket-ball team:

Girls, you’ll be up against a stiff team tonight. Go in and foul for all you’re worth. Remember if you are fouled by the referee, and the opponents make a goal it counts one point. If the opposing team is given room to shoot from the open floor, every basket they make counts two.

The team proceeded to follow this advice. The referee was one of their own students, and because of foul play Mr. Pierce went down on the floor and stopped the game and ordered the referee from the floor. The crowd was raving, and for several days the town debated whether or not the principal should be dismissed from the high school. There was a meeting in honor of the coach, and his admirers presented him with a fountain pen, and he made them a speech:

Fellows, maybe it ain’t right, but I’ve got to tell you what was told me by a man that saw you play. He said “Christ, but you’ve a hell of a good team,” and I agree with him. You fellows have been there with the goods.

This oil town was extremely religious. Mr. Pierce provided some of his students with copies of the “Survey,” but the paper was thrown out of the homes by two parents, who were afraid it would interfere with the children’s religion. Mr. Pierce taught at the Methodist Sunday school, but at his boarding house he ventured to question the existence of a future life, and so the word spread that he was an “atheist,” and he found on his school blackboard the announcement: “Reverend Pierce will lecture on ‘No Heaven, No Hell.’” A gentleman was appointed to spy upon his Sunday school class, to discover what he was teaching. A preacher devoted two-thirds of his sermon to the glories of basket-ball, and closed with an earnest prayer for victory in the approaching game. Dancing and card playing were barred. The town’s idea of diversion was to tie one end of a rope to a switch engine and the other end to somebody’s front porch.

A part of Mr. Pierce’s story was published in an article in the “Survey,” entitled “A Village School,” April 23, 1921. Mr. Pierce was then teaching in Clarksburg, West Virginia, and the superintendent of Littleton wrote to him, threatening to “beat him up.” The superintendent sent this threat through the mail, and thereby laid himself liable to several years’ imprisonment; but Mr. Pierce, being, like myself, an amiable muckraker, forebore to press the point. Besides, he had new troubles in Clarksburg; the high school team won a debate favoring government control of railroads, and this so frightened the principal that “he spent ten minutes notifying the entire assembly that debates do not mean anything, and the decision was not to be taken seriously.” Mr. Pierce continues:

Upon another occasion, he advised me not to discuss the coal strike in my class, or at least to show no sympathy for organized labor, because he asserted that ninety per cent of my students were children of coal miners who belonged to unions, and they would be inclined to be aroused too much. Upon another occasion, he entered my class casually, when I was discussing some of the advantages of government control of railroads, and he told the class that the movement for government control was Bolshevistic. I was using, at that time, New York state as an example, in trying to show what saving could be made, if, for example, the Erie Railroad was used for passenger service and the Lackawanna for freight. Of course, I had to defend myself from the accusation of Bolshevism, but as we were personally friendly (in fact, I was a roomer at his house), he did not carry the case up at all.

That indicates at least one way for a liberal to keep his job in a high school!