Attacks on Progressive Education
Simonson, Rebecca C.
Attacks on Progressive Education Business Opens Drive to Control School Curriculums By Rebecca C. Simonson President, Teachers Guild, AFL BIG business has 10114* recognized in education a social...
...The forces are well defined both within our schools and colleges, and also on the outside...
...It is possible that Russia might be able to reach the stag* at which a nation could so completely incapacitate the enemy that no retaliation could take place, before the United States...
...Irving Lang-muir, associate director of the General Electric Research Laboratories declared...
...The challenge of these difficult times, however, has coaxed many out of their Ivory towers...
...snd sound economy in these liberated areas will go by the board...
...He appreciates the power of education aad its role in bringing about a happier world...
...Millions of men, women and children will be facing literal starvation...
...They have dealt too long with children...
...The postwar program in education calls for new patterns cut out of new cloth...
...It becomes increasingly difficult to satisfy the needs of our children st school without harmonizing their programs with a program for all society...
...World control or world government must grow by stages, but the sooner the process begins, the more likely it is to succeed...
...He said that he thought educators had gone too far in interpreting democracy...
...Certainly, here in the United States the recovery of our own foreign trade is linked indissolubly with our reconversion to a sound peacetime economy There will be no 50 million jobs 01 even 50 million jobs in this country if there are no available foreign markets for our products...
...It is sn expression of the conservative's whole approach to life and society...
...f.ci Inn I ll.Seger, editor of the Neur \ nlkn 1 ei I ling, has been summoned by Justice Robert Jackson to Nuremberg In testify against the war criminal* on trial there...
...We cannot expect that nations ran quickly relinquish absolute sovereignty...
...Organized labor will have to cooperate with organized teachers...
...Nor from a starving, disease-ridden' people ran we expect anything but the most violent forms of social unrest- Any hqj>e that we may have for the re-establishment of sound govern men...
...In spite of all the huge difficulties we have encountered, the tremendous system of supplies which UNRRA has built up to these many countries is how functioning with efficiency...
...The struggle for our schools and colleges is on...
...But in the matter of educational philosophy there is much disagreement...
...It seems plain, then, that those who believe In.education as a social force will band together in its defense, so that it may function in a dynamic democracy...
...And it is this very concept which is viewed with alarm by those who wish to maintain the status quo...
...The hard-earned knowledge and experience that UNRRA has gained in the actual field of operations li paying concrete dividends in results...
...UNRRA Pays Dividends By HERBERT H LEHMAN Director General, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration Excerpts from a speech to the Italian-American Labor Council...
...The teachers by themselves cannot carry the burden...
...This is not a plot to bring politics into the schools...
...having established him as the source of all evil in our education, it attributes all our shortcomings to his teaching...
...Those who are dedicated to the preservation of our institutions as they are, because they yield for them what they seek in life, will oppose any modification er change, and this makes for the same cleavages in our schools which we find all through our society...
...TlIK coming winter in Europe and the Far East will be the grimmest in modern times unless a flow of relief supplies is maintained and in certain areas increased...
...Educated citizens of a democracy share in responsibility, and this requires vast knowledge and experience...
...Since the present administration in New York City has enunciated many new concepts, there are those who only mutter and grumble their protests for they fear that to speak out loudly would lie bad school politics...
...It is at this point that the liberals outside of the school must assume responsibility...
...There is common interest and agreement on salary adjustment, absence refunds and pension safeguards...
...Europe's recovery may be set back for many years...
...The present errfphasis on social development, conflicts with the old concept of the development of the individual through the old disciplines...
...The Sign Post, a publication of such a group, is constantly attacking John Dewey...
...Quite b|untly, the longer it takes these liberated areas to recover from the effects of wsr, the more it will cost us in plain dollars and cents...
...Not all those who become aware of the need for political and social action are on the side of progress or creative democracy...
...A prosperous United Statts and a prostrate , Europe and Asia are a contradiction in terms...
...These do not make for education...
...Our returned men and women will not tolerate being treated as adolescents...
...There have been -programs suggested that simply mean evening secondary schools...
...In New York City, the vast majority of the teachers have gotten together on simple economic issues...
...Big business, through its powerful organizations, has concentrated for years on our schools, trying to influence the curriculum through books which interpret society for the schools, and by pressing the schools to give to students the kind of training which will equip them to serve business...
...His daily work is therefore determined by his primary objectives, to develop individuals who ran live together in such a nay as lo give maximum happiness to all...
...Upon the- recovery of these deves-ated areas depends to no small extent our own economic future...
...Even though the new concepts have the endorsement of the administration, there is a wide divergence of interpretation and even disapproval in some places...
...I^angmuir added: "World control of all atomic energy seems the only alternative...
...Their purposes and philosophies reflect the freedom of the community in which they function and the extent of their progress may be measured by the community's expressed interest in the schools...
...And you can't trade with people who are not themselves producing goods for exchange...
...The parent whose child is "indulged" often resents the new strength of the child as expressed in the child's awkward assertion of its new power...
...The aristocrats in learning are-striving to maintain their prestige and position...
...The progressive educator fully appreciates the limitations of the present and is aware ol the need for building a better future...
...But let there be no mistake...
...And with famine must inevitably come pestilence—for without strength-giving food we cannot hope to hold in check the scourge of epidemic disease which may sweep the continent like the great plagues ' of the Middle Ages...
...Up to this time there has been no indication that our Board of Education is viewing adult education in any but the most commonplace terms...
...Teachers on every level have been notoriously lacking in worldliness...
...Further evidence of the movement to maintain ihe present on the education level i* expressed by "Education for Freedom, Inc...
...Those who (ear to Itead new educational paths, do so because they fear what may confront them at the end ef the path...
...They are too great a potential power to be ignored by those who are alert to their possibilities...
...A most telling comment was made recently by a speaker of the National Association of Manufacturers at a re-fional conference with the National Kdu cation Association...
...The great need in all of the countries is for food, fuel, clothing, medicines, shelter material, trucks, raw materials, and the means of at least making a beginning to rehabilitate devastated agriculture i"i inuuBiry...
...It calls for vision, imagination, and intelligent direction...
...Our administrators need to know men...
...But the opposition is there and is hardly ever along purely educational lines...
...And jn this they are supported and encouraged by organized wealth which recognizes the important role which the teacher may play at this critical time...
...Education can no longer be sepaiated from our interest in economics, just a* it becomes increasingly difficult to keep economics out of our political thinking...
...The teacher who is jealous of her power and position describes at "indulgent" the teacher who shares responsibility with the child...
...It is an effort to resist change...
...Throughout the elementary and high schools, there is an organized attempt among conservative teachers to maintain the old methods and curriculum...
...In future isKiirs of 77ic Arm Lender...
...Even were we to credit them with higher motives we must'see in their choice of curriculum their appreciation of the past rather than their hope for the future...
...It would be unrealistic to expect them to remain isolated...
...Politically alert liberals will fight for an expanding school system, and liberal citizens will be willing to pay for such a system because it is basic in a free society...
...First it aims to give as little •f its taxes as possible to schools, hut it sometimes yields on this score in Ihe hope of buying control of the schools 'or its own purposes...
...It is the experimental approach to learning which can best prepare us for our roles in a dynamic democracy...
...Both the substance and method must meet the needs of grown-ups...
...Unless they exert their influence in effective organization so that they may give their support to the liberal teacher, the reaction which will set in within our schools will surely defeat every hope of liberalism outside of the schools...
...Russia might be willing to forego any increase in living standards and davote a large percentage of her producing power to a five-year plan for the development of atomic energy and atombombs, while the "SA is devoting energy toward Improving living standards and 'milding obsolete battleships...
...These differences are fundamental...
...It is a plea to vitalize our schools so that they may function oh behalf of democracy...
...They are the where with all...
...ATOMBOMB WAR • An atombomb war might make the earth uninhabitable, Dr...
...These are not merely matters of personal taste...
...All too often, the job of school legislation is left to the teachers, thus exposing them to the charge, by enemies of education, of being selfish pressure groups...
...There are among teachers, just as there are in other groups, those who view with suspicion any deviation from the traditional which tends to curb power and limit discipline...
...Mark Starr was rejected as Adult Education Director in New York City because he was known as a "labor propagandist" to the President of the Board...
...Many are rallying to hold the fort, to maintain present values and positions...
...It must aim to satisfy not only the needs of growing children in a chancing society, but also adults of most unusual and abnormal experience...
...Liberals will have to organize in, order to give their support to liberal teachers...
...They have a stake in our schools...
...Aid, this accounts for the interest taken by organized business in our schools...
...It is no accident that leaders in progressive education are in front line positions in the social and political struggle...
...The worker baa entrusted the schools to the teaching profession, little realizing that the schools cannot exist in a raeuum...
...These war-torn Countries must be carried through their initial period of distress and set on their feet again, if for no other reason than that such action is essential to the recovery of world trade...
...Big business has no qualms about defending the Schools from labor's influence...
...Thus he ran testify that before they launched a war against Ihe world, the Nazis esrried on a war against Ihrir opponents amsng Ihe German pople...
...Any failure to provide relief—any serious interruption in the supplies scheduled to be shipped into the liberated areas —will have consequences of a truly disastrous nature...
...One can appreciate the demands for accuracy and efficiency in such fundamentals as reading, writing and arithmetic, but one must view with alarm' the concentration on these tool subjects...
...Seger will contribute articles on Ihe situation in Germany, and on Ihe trials...
...Heger wa* a Social Demo rralic member of the Reichstag when Hitler seized power and, like many others, was arrested In 193.1 by the Nazis in violation of his legal immunity...
...They are generally rooted in a personal philosophy nhirh abhor ee change...
...Attacks on Progressive Education Business Opens Drive to Control School Curriculums By Rebecca C. Simonson President, Teachers Guild, AFL BIG business has 10114* recognized in education a social power, and big business in ita characteristic go-fatting way has organised its resource* M capture education for its own pur-The common man, unorganized .Up, unaware of his potential power, has ¦snaitted the National Association of g»mjf».-turei* and Chambers of Com-pjsjee to exert their influence on behalf af big business and at the expense of the working man...
...He then pro **eded to define it as free enterprise in the narrowest sense...
Vol. 28 • November 1945 • No. 48
