Judge — September 1936 — page 20: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

| ‘ = Judge Let Teachers Te ACHE year. as the first day of ind ours near, we selves worrying a lithe more about what the kids are being taught. Some ing taught too Mt too little. And a vast majority of us hunch that: they of us fear they are bi much, some that they are being tau: have pretty ire being taught wrong t lhe trouble is that there are so many erent notions of what are the s thing the right) thing to teach. We can't g into that here curriculum is a subject: for expe But one doesn’t have to be an expe ht to express judgment n the larger question of whether teachers are to be allowed to teach vceordi to their own lights or he tongue-tied by Of all the harm that William Ran- olph Hearst has done to this coun- egislators try, almost the worst is his suc ss in getting many states and towns to ¢ teachers or fire them or harass them into taking oaths that no self-respect- ing citizen ought to take. The net result so far of all the hul- Hoo against the teaching of dan- Is is that teachers in general are being driven further and further to the leit. A re- cent survey disclosed what 3000 te; lal gerous ideas in our se ch- ers in junior and senior high schools are thinking. Reporting the survey, George W. Hartman of Penn State says. “The typical American teach er ching re- ipproves of many far-re forms, but his dissent from the status quo is that of a gradualist, rather st." This anc sed on the replies which these 3000. teachers than of a revoluti ther conclusions are b. made to a questionnaire on 106 propo- sitions. Some of the other conclu- sions drawn are as follows: “Fifty-nine per cent are positive in believing that an average family in- come of approximately $4,000 could he obtained if the productive equip- ment of the nation were operating at full capacity.” Such is the continuing influence of the technocrats t believe t t yn oot a federal department Seventy-five per ce © creat of education would be a benetit to The fear of centralized power is more than offset by the prev- t with the petty and me le stupidities of lent disst 1 cal school uthorities. ifty-seven per cent believe that most of the 10,000,000 or more u em ved vill find steady k s in a capital society iplies a general d sienment among t abe cent reject the school has no business trying to improve society.” Here we | an overwhelming, al- most unanimous opinion among teachers against the reactionaries wh urge that scl anythin should never teach t that 2+ 2 = 4, and that America is bounded on the east by the Atlantic ocean exce “Only fiftee per cent believe that teachers have a moral obligation to remain rigorously neutral on all de- issues in class and out.” So r cent of teachers think they ought to take sides and express their own op ts on the serious ques- tions of our times. ave th- it system: read a few of the examples and you'll sec, Our history indoctri- It simply isn’t possible to schools without indoctrinat metic ctrinate the pre nates democracy as against autocracy. Our geography indoctrinates love of country. Literature indoctrinates the Anglo-Saxon idea of romantic love, s against say the Chinese or the Polynesian idea of sex relationship. Even the teachin chemistry has physies and doctrinal slant, and biology runs smack up against the anti-evolutionary dog- ma of the Bible-bibbers. the teaching ¢ If teachers are going to teach at all they're ound to teach more than is in the hooks, to impart some of their 18 own ideas along with the cut-and- facts. If our social system is dri too shaky to stand examination and Ms altogether. criticism, then the only. thing is to close up the s But as 1 tion at permit any educa- name of common sense let's pick the best teachers we can find and turn ‘em loose. Land of Opportunity theut notice LMOST w EX change: las cone coun great yout in our y. Onee this wast meltin pot" into wh tall lands. Immigration to Amer- ica was one of the wonders of modern times. sured the peoples ow the tide has ebhed. More foreigners are leaving our shores than are coming to them. A ul perhaps bit nettled that c it is heeause w we are cancelli zenship o those wl » come for a while, make a fortune ¢ then go back home with it In the average week, five r six names of naturalized citizens are being struck from the rolls, Somet nes there are more. On a recent day the federal court in New York took away the title of American from more than a hundred persons, of whom thirty-four were Italians, thirty-three Greeks, six Irish, five Germans, four Poles and a scattering from many other nations. The sumption is that a naturalized citizen \ » goes back to the old country within five vears of gettin papers here, has therel den his final iven evi- eof fraud, and never really in- tended to become a permanent ¢ tizen, Presumably he came here just to make money. And in most cases he did make money here, and took it home with him. It is well cnough that this should be a land of opportunit It would he well indeed if it could continue to welcome, as it once did, the oppressed and the poor of all the world, opening to them a new horize vistas. But 1 yoand new mosense de- rd comm clares that no one ¢ the whole world. antry can enrich comicbooks.com