Whenever in the name of democracy the serpent of Communism or Bolshevism or Anarchy, feared alike in the countries from which you come, shall rear its head to strike its poisoned fangs into the charter of our liberties, it will be crushed under the heel of a true democracy, just as we kill without fear or hesitation, the common, ordinary garden variety which plays at our feet and then go on about our business.
Of course no public address is delivered nowadays without pious statements that we dearly love peace; you remember how dearly the Kaiser loved peace—but let his foes beware! Said past-President Charl O. Williams: “It has been thought by some that this meeting is wholly in the interest of peace. It is not so.” And the eloquent lady from Tennessee explained the other purpose—if another war for liberty should be called, “please God, we shall not send a soldier who cannot write his name!” As a piece of pacifist fervor, that almost equals the utterance of Cal Coolidge, as quoted on the front page of the Los Angeles “Times” feature section, October 7, 1923: “The only hope for peace lies in the perfection of the arts of war!”
At this same San Francisco convention, a young high school teacher from Santa Barbara brought in a proposition for the establishment of an international university, to teach world problems from the international point of view. They put a committee in charge of this fine project, and I predict that when the university appears before the next convention, it will be a university to teach capitalist nationalism. At the N. E. A. gathering, which was going on across the bay, Mrs. Fannie Fern Andrews of Boston, a social worker and tireless advocate of international understanding, was chairman of a committee which brought in an excellent report, recommending the teaching of history and civics from the international point of view. The American Legion agents were on hand to see that this report was postponed; also the National Security League, whose representative was orating against “Bolshevism.” The gang-leader selected to postpone Mrs. Andrews was the president of the Department of Superintendence, Commissioner Payson Smith of Massachusetts. His motion was carried with a roar, and a crowd of superintendents in the rear of the room yelled out: “Hurrah for Payson Smith!”
A study of this convention oratory reveals two prominent features: first, the fulsome flattery which these great educators pour out upon one another in public; the devout school-marms and enthralled visitors are told that they are listening to the eloquence of the gods. Second, the prominence given in all the discussions to the material side of education, to administrative routine and “red tape.” This, of course, comes from Columbia University, whose standard-bearers occupy the prominent places on the program, put there by George D. Strayer, professor of Educational Administration at Columbia University. Get this title clear; it means that he teaches, not education, but the business of conducting education factories. In other words, education has become a Big Business in itself—a chain system of mills for the grinding out of standardized minds. That is the thing they deal with at these N. E. A. conventions; and if you could imagine the soul of a child being present, you would picture it as a midge rolled over by a ten-ton truck.
The central bureau of the Department of Superintendence is trying out many great schemes. For example, no longer are janitors for schools to be employed individually, there is now to be a contract janitor system, and one great capitalist firm is to take care of all the schools in a city. Before long we shall find the N. E. A. recognizing a new section, and its annual conventions will be listening to the specialists of the “Department of Janitorial Contracting.”
In other parts of the country the “four-term year” is being tried out; the children of the poor are to be rushed through, and delivered to their Big Business masters in six years instead of eight. Also, an enterprising superintendent from Oklahoma has taken up the problem of what to do with the teacher during the period that used to be the teacher’s vacation—a dangerous interlude, when she might read unauthorized books, such as “The Goslings.” The teacher is now to spend one summer term attending a university under proper supervision; the next summer she is to be sent to acquire culture by travel under supervision; the third summer she is to teach in the summer schools of the city; and during the fourth she is to be permitted to have recreation—if she has succeeded in passing the requirements of the previous three summers.
CHAPTER LVII
SCHOOLS FOR STRIKE-BREAKERS
We have seen the National Education Association assembling in Boston, and welcomed by the Chamber of Commerce. We have seen them assembling in Oakland, and welcomed by the same organization. Wherever they go, they are welcomed with open arms by Big Business, and the school-marms hasten to this bear’s embrace. It is no exaggeration to say that from the earliest days of the public school system its worst enemy has been organized commercialism. I understand that there are individual business men of vision, who believe in and work for the schools; but the organizations, the class groups of the exploiters did all they could to block the establishment of public schools, realizing that to educate the lower classes was to prepare the overthrow of wage-slavery.
What Big Business wants of children is their labor. Twenty years ago Margaret Haley was lobbying at the state capital of Illinois for a bill to abolish child labor, and she talked with the head of the Levis family, which owns enormous glass works at Alton. It was provided in the bill that children shouldn’t work in these factories earlier than fourteen. Said Mr. Levis: “If you keep the children in school till then, they aren’t of any use to us when they come.” This he said before the legislature; and afterwards Miss Haley went up to him asking: “Just what is it in the public schools which hurts the children?” The answer was: “All this literature stuff, and history and music. In the schools where they don’t have such things the children are willing to go to work.” Before the legislature Mr. Levis threatened that if this bill were passed the glass works in Alton would move to some other state. The work of the children was carrying bottles a short distance, and they couldn’t get men to do it—not at their price. The bill was passed—and immediately the manufacturers decided that the work could be done by machines.
Having realized that the schools are here to stay, Big Business now seeks to turn them to its own ends. Modern educators, with their manual training want to use handwork to develop the brains of the child, while the manufacturers want to develop the hands only. The educators want to keep the unity of the system, understanding that where hand and brain are separated both degenerate. The business interests want schools in which their workers may be trained; they are willing to pay generously, in order to get cheap skilled labor which they may use in strike-breaking. They want two separate school systems, with separate boards, buildings, funds and corps of teachers. They want no co-ordination between the two systems—the plan being that when they have got them separate, they can feed the vocational schools and starve the cultural schools. The organized teachers of Chicago have understood this plan from the beginning, and they have explained it to the organized workers, who have beaten it.