First: It has been far more interested in killing the young than in educating them. We are able to put this preference into figures—which is how the plutocracy likes a thing put. Its interest in war has been ninety-three times as great as its interest in education and science put together. According to an analysis of federal appropriations by the chief of the United States Bureau of Standards, the appropriation of the government for the year 1920, which was a year of peace, was as follows: Past wars, 68%; future wars, 25%; civil departments, 3%; public works, 3%; education and science, 1%. Disregarding small fractions, out of a total of $5,685,000,000 appropriation, the share of wars, past or future, was $5,279,000,000, and education and science combined got only $57,000,000.
That represents federal appropriations. Still more illuminating is a study of the total expenditure of the American people for education, as contrasted with expenditure for other purposes. The “Survey” for July 16, 1921, presents a table: “The Schools’ Share in the Nation’s Wealth.” According to this, it appears that the American people spent in 1920, upon joy-rides, races and pleasure resorts, $3,000,000,000 and upon all departments of education in the entire country $1,000,000,000. The American people spent upon sundaes, sodas and drinking fountain delights, including ice cream, a total of $600,000,000, and upon higher education $137,000,000. The American people spent upon face lotions and cosmetics $750,000,000, and upon the public elementary schools $762,000,000. They spent upon chewing gum $50,000,000, and upon schools to train their teachers $20,000,000. They spent upon candy alone as much as they spent upon all departments of education, and upon cigars, cigarettes, and tobacco more than twice the amount.
We are a self-satisfied people, and we propose to make our foreign population like ourselves; but we really ought to hesitate, because the 1920 census shows that in illiteracy we are behind nearly all the civilized nations—Australia, England, Scotland, Wales, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, and Germany. We boast of six per cent illiteracy, while Denmark has only two-tenths of one per cent, Switzerland and New Zealand three-tenths of one per cent, England and Wales one and eight-tenths per cent; the German Empire, which we went to war to destroy, had only three-hundredths of one per cent, which is two hundred times better than the United States!
The war brought us some definite information about our education. The Army test of illiteracy was based on the ability to read as well as children in the second grade, and 25% of our would-be soldiers “flunked” this test. We cannot get away by attributing our illiteracy to the Negroes, because Camp Devens in Massachusetts showed 22%; nor can we attribute it to the foreigners, because there were seven hundred thousand native-born illiterates in the first draft. The chief of the Americanization Bureau estimates that there are three and a half million native-born adults who cannot read any language.
Also it is worth while to glance at the physical condition of our people. More than one-third of the country’s best manhood between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-one was disqualified because of physical defects; and another large percentage was later rejected for the same reason. One-fourth of all college boys were rejected—it would appear that shouting at football games does not constitute the whole of physical training. A report of the committee on health problems of the National Council of Education estimates that three-fourths of our twenty-five million school children are suffering from physical defects; the professor of physical education at Columbia University tells us that 25% of our school children are underfed, while from 50 to 75% have defective teeth. You would think that our plutocracy would be concerned about these matters, even on purely business grounds. Taking the state of Massachusetts, one million workers lose an average of nine days a year from sickness, which means in wage losses and medical bills $40,000,000, and $35,000,000 a year additional expenses to the state.
We spend on our school children less than fifty dollars per child per year, which does not seem a munificent sum. Let us see what we spend per teacher. The United States Bureau of Education has provided up-to-date figures, in a study of rural school salaries for the year 1923, covering one-half the counties in the United States. The number of “one-teacher schools” reported was 97,758, and the average salary was $729. Sixty dollars and seventy-five cents per month will keep a teacher alive, but it won’t keep her a teacher. According to a bulletin of the National Education Association, there are approximately 600,000 public school teachers, and one-fourth of them serve in the schools two years or less, and half of them serve less than five years; in other words, teaching is a temporary job, by which the teacher earns pin money until she can get a husband or something better. Naturally these teachers do not trouble to acquire fitness for their work; one-sixth of them are under twenty years of age, and half of them have no professional preparation whatever. Ten per cent have no education beyond the eighth grade, while half have no more than four years beyond the eighth grade; in other words, the teachers know as much as the pupils will know at the end of the school work—and no more!
These figures include the city schools, whose teachers have considerably more training. Let us see what reward they get for this extra training. The National Chamber of Commerce, in its survey of school salaries covering 359 cities, shows that in 1919-’20 more than half the male elementary teachers were receiving less than $1262 a year; their salaries had increased 33% in six years, while the cost of living increased 104%. So naturally the men teachers are leaving the public schools; from 1880 to 1915 the percentage of men teachers fell from 42.8% to 9.6%; and this was before the increase in the cost of living! Said the “Bankers’ Magazine,” discussing this question (January, 1919; the Bankers’ Publishing Co., New York): “We pay the day laborer more than the teacher because he is worth more—because he produces a service of greater value to society—just as the corporation manager is paid more than the preacher.”
Who is to blame for illiteracy in America? Is it the fault of the children and of the parents, or is it the fault of the propertied classes, who will not furnish schools for the poor? Upon the opening of the public schools, September, 1923, it appears that in New York, the richest city in the world, 150,000 children can receive only part time instruction, while 200,000 will be taught in double sessions; of the high school pupils more than two-thirds will have to be content with less than normal instruction. Los Angeles is even worse, with 16% of its pupils unseated; Chicago follows with 12%. In the year 1921, with one-sixth of its population in the public schools, the propertied classes of the country saw fit to tax but one cent and a half in every hundred dollars of their income, to provide housing for the school children.[children.] The National Chamber of Commerce reports that 37% of city school buildings are fire-traps, and only 5% are considered fire-proof.
There is a strong movement under way for federal expenditures upon education. Educators recite that our government spent $600,000 for a book about horses; we spend $30,000,000 annually on the prevention of diseases in hogs and cattle, and the destroying of insects which injure crops; so surely we ought to spend something on the child! But this money will have to be spent through our present political machines; and consider the figures of ex-Congressman John Baer, who made a study of federal educational expenditures, and showed that out of more than thirty million dollars appropriated for educational purposes, our chief educational agency, the Bureau of Education, expended less than one per cent in actual administration of education. “Federal educational activities are now directed through more than eighty different offices, divisions, bureaus, commissions, and other agencies of the government.”
Such is “red tape” in Washington; and if you follow the strands of this tape, you find it extending to all the seven hundred thousand school rooms of the country. We have seen our “great educators” keeping the teachers in submission by loading them with routine work, reports, questionnaires, examinations and re-examinations. The most universal complaint of the school teachers, from Los Angeles to Boston, and from Minnesota to Mississippi, has to do with this administrative and routine labor, taking up their time and destroying their eyesight and their nerves. This of course is the very essence of machine education, the running of schools by business men on the quantity production basis. It occurred to the National Council of Teachers of English to make a survey of conditions in their profession, and they found that the average teacher had four hours of “theme” reading to do every day, while the average high school teacher had five hours. Many reported that they skipped and skimmed through every paper, others destroyed the great bulk of them unread and gave credit without reading. In high schools the teachers of English were required to take care of 125 pupils per teacher! Needless to say, the survey reports that teachers of English are overworked[overworked], underpaid, underequipped and underestimated.