We have followed closely the business and politics of the N. E. A. conventions; let us now consider them in their educational and social aspects. They are imposing assemblages, and of course loom colossal to the cities in which they occur. To have thirty or forty thousand visitors spend a week in the city inspires the local merchants with a deep respect for culture, and the local boosters get busy to show the school-marms a good time. The N. E. A. politicians naturally make this a condition in the placing of the convention; they want to have the delegates occupied with scenery and entertainments, so as to distract their minds from political controversies. This wisdom has come down to us from the Roman Empire; then it was bread and circuses, now it is boat-rides, auto-rides, luncheons, and telephone calls.
I have before me a page from the “Chicago Schools Journal” for June, 1922, giving the official announcement of the Boston Chamber of Commerce regarding the convention of that year. There are thirty-five affiliated societies to hold meetings, and halls have been engaged for all. The leading business men have organized a committee to prepare receptions, the head of it being a former secretary of the Chamber of Commerce. Excursions have been planned upon a vast scale; the railroads are co-operating, likewise the hotels and tourist bureaus; we note the interesting detail that “One of the book companies has compiled an exhaustive literary history of Greater Boston and will publish it in compliment to the convention. A copy of this history will be given to every teacher who registers.”
Also we note that two hundred guests are coming from Memphis, Tennessee, in honor of President Charl O. Williams, who is on a year’s leave of absence to enable her to uplift the educational associations of each of the states, as well as sectional meetings—price one hundred dollars per lift. Other notables are coming, General Pershing, Vice-president Coolidge, Secretary of State Hughes; President Harding has promised to attend if possible. Most significant of all, there will be “a patriotic demonstration of mammoth proportions, managed by the commander-in-chief of the American Legion.”
It was at the 1921 convention at Des Moines that our N. E. A. turned its political conscience over to the keeping of our Fascisti. In the official “Journal” for November of that year I find a report of the special committee on this subject. The chairman of it is Superintendent Gwinn—the gentleman we saw moving from New Orleans to San Francisco to take the place of the Superintendent of Trombones. This program provides that all teachers must be American citizens; it provides for flag worship, and for the American Legion to furnish speakers for patriotic exercises in the schools. At the very time that this resolution was published in the official “Journal,” the American Legion was displaying its fitness to educate our children by conducting a three-days’ drunken orgy in Kansas City, in the course of which they stripped young girls naked on the street and wrecked the lobby of the Baltimore Hotel. As I write, they are further displaying their passionate affection for democracy by inviting Mussolini to come and address their San Francisco convention!
Such is the educational department of capitalist imperialism; there is nothing too murderous and blood-thirsty for them, and no degree of reaction from which they will shrink. If Premier Mussolini should bring his castor-oil squad to the next N. E. A. convention, there would be only the change of language and the absence of black shirts to let him know that he had crossed the ocean. Our leading reactionaries would be there to greet him, headed by United States Commissioner of Education John J. Tigert, who before the Des Moines convention discussed the subject of Socialism, and pointed out the vote for Debs as proving that 900,000 Americans were advocating the abolition of all law, all constitutions, and all forms of government! Addressing the school teachers of San Diego, he sounded a warning against the increasing tendency of the public schools to delve into sociology and economics, which subjects were perilously close to “radicalism.” Said Commissioner Tigert:
There is altogether too much preaching of these damnable doctrines of Bolshevism, Anarchy, Communism and Socialism, in this country today. If I had it in my power I would not only imprison, but would expatriate all advocates of these dangerous, un-American doctrines. I would even execute every one of them—and do it joyfully.
Mr. Tigert is a great favorite at conventions of all sorts; he got his appointment at the hands of President Harding because of his charm as a teller of humorous anecdotes. He is able to keep sober enough to tell them—something which his predecessor in office was unable to do. At the 1919 convention of the N. E. A., held in Milwaukee, this gentleman was apparently lured into celebrating the last “wet” night in the history of the United States. An eye-witness writes me:
He clung desperately to the desk in front of him, and babbled incoherently for two hours and a half. People clapped and clapped in the monotonous fashion they have when they want a speaker to quit, but he still went on. I don’t know where the efficient President Strayer was, but nobody stopped him. You ask if it is true that he was carried off the stage; he may have been for I got tired and left.
I shall be called a vile gossip for publishing things like this. All I can answer is that I think it is of the utmost importance for the American people to know what kind of men the Black Hand puts in charge of the vast and increasing educational work of our government. At the present time the chiefs of the N. E. A. are concentrating all their energies upon the so-called Shepard-Towner bill, providing for a Federal department of education, with a cabinet member at its head, and an appropriation of a hundred million dollars. When they get it, there will be one more boot-legging politician in Washington, and one more source of reactionary propaganda for the kept press to broadcast.
At the same Des Moines convention at which Commissioner Tigert spread himself, the chiefs of the N. E. A. showed their intellectual caliber by putting through two resolutions, the first urging disarmament, and the second urging military training in the schools! The business men got up a luncheon for the teachers and themselves, and invited Governor Allen of Kansas, who at that time saw a glorious vision of himself becoming president of the United States on the platform of putting all strikers into jail. Under his supervision the big business vigilantes had been mobbing and tarring and feathering the organizers of the Nonpartisan League throughout Kansas. Governor Allen delighted the lunchers by his wit, of which I give a sample: “The I. W. W.—I beg pardon, the Nonpartisan League—come in, and we deal with them.” The lunchers laughed so merrily that the Governor repeated this wit several times: “The I. W. W.—I beg pardon, the Nonpartisan League!” At an evening meeting John Gay, representative of the miners, showed again and again how Governor Allen had lied in his statements concerning the Kansas miners’ strike. He was booed by the audience, under the supervision of the chairman, Fred M. Hunter, superintendent of schools of Oakland and president of the N. E. A.
More recently someone had the bright idea of gathering educators from all over the world and forming a world federation of educators, to be run by the N. E. A. gang. The call went out to all nations to send their school representatives to San Francisco, at the same time as the Oakland convention of 1923. The delegates came* *—nine-tenths of them “Bolsheviks,” in the N. E. A. sense of that dreadful word; that is, people dissatisfied with narrow and futile nationalism, and groping towards international solidarity. They found themselves assembled in a hall decorated with enormous American flags, and little dinky flags of all the other nations; also they found themselves being ushered about by lads in uniform—members of our high school and college military organizations! The address of welcome was delivered by our gracious lady-superintendent from Shelby County, Tennessee, field-secretary and past President Charl O. Williams; and these world-wise and war-weary educators, who had traveled all the way from China and Czecho-Slovakia to hear her golden words, were told that we have wonderful scenery in the Grand Canyon and the Yosemite; also that:
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.