Pedagogs & Demagogs

Last week it was a woman's turn to be president of the National Education Association. One candidate, Caroline Woodruff of Vermont, arrived in Denver for the N. E. A. convention with a carload of maple syrup. Another candidate's followers rolled into Denver on a noisy "Annie Carlton Woodward Special" from Massachusetts. Annie Carlton Woodward's demagogic platform: "Elect a Classroom Teacher." Candidates Woodruff, Woodward and Agnes Samuelson of Iowa settled down to a week of strategic breakfasts, luncheons, teas.

When pedagogs are at peace the annual convention of the National Education Association often turns into a good-natured set-to between classroom teachers and their "superiors," principals and superintendents. But currently pedagogs are deeply troubled. Last year's N. E. A. convention dropped the stock squabble to unite on one proposition: the Federal Government should subsidize needy schools. Last week that issue was still near the top of the 12,000 teacherish minds at Denver. Keynoted Professor Jesse Homer Newlon of Teachers College, Columbia:

"Instead of 1,000,000, we need not less than 2,000,000 teachers in the U. S. today. Instead of a budget of less than $2,000,000,000 ... a budget of not less than $4,000,000,000 is required now. . . . The national Government should immediately issue one-half the total cost of public elementary, secondary and higher education."

Such harmonious grumbling was not to last. Smart, left-wing Columbia professors were on hand to steer the convention head-on into a hotter issue: Academic Freedom. Keynoter Newlon and his colleagues made delegates feel that the abstract cause of Academic Freedom was their own concrete cause against arbitrary superintendents, corrupt school boards. Professor John Kelley Norton tickled fancies with a proposal that the nation's teachers unite with parents and workingmen of goodwill to hold the national balance of political power. In that Coughlinesque idea the scary Denver Post professed to see the birth of "the Pedagogic Party . . . through which Columbia University of New York aspires to control and run the whole United States."

Excited by the newborn alliance between classroom teachers and liberal professors, hotheads tried twice to wrest control of NEA's $800,000 permanent fund from NEA's tight-fisted Trustees, vest it in the Assembly of Delegates. "It's a matter of fair play," New York's small, grey-haired, pink-dressed Johanna Lindlof shrilled into a microphone. The Assembly, unimpressed, twice voted to keep its hands out of its own pocket. Mourned Johanna Lindlof: "The classroom teachers are just puppets and the double-crossing superintendents pull the strings."

Cooling off, the "insurgents" returned to the issue of Academic Freedom, framed a careful resolution. They proposed that NEA set up a committee of five--three of them classroom teachers. The committee would investigate dismissals of capable teachers, might even go to court to aid them; would fight such legislation as teachers' oath bills;* would cooperate with the Progressive Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers (A. F. of L. affiliate), the Civil Liberties Union, other "reputable" liberal organizations. On the last day of the convention the insurgents got their resolution on the floor. The Assembly passed it, thus establishing this policy: "The National Education Association believes that administrators and schools should have full opportunity to present differing points of view on all controversial questions in order to aid students to adjust themselves to their environment, and to changing social conditions."

Having boldly taken that hurdle, the teachers:

P: Elected as president for one year neither Vermont's syrupy Woodruff nor Massachusetts' demagogic Woodward but a Westerner and a Superintendent, Iowa's Agnes Samuelson. A broad-beamed daughter of Swedish immigrants, Agnes Samuelson began her career 29 years ago by teaching in a rural school, while looking after six younger brothers and sisters. Spunky, capable, she wheedled a third term as Iowa's Republican State Superintendent of Public Instruction without a whimper from a Democratic State Administration.

P: Adjourned pondering the advice of Tennessee's Commissioner of Education Walter Dewey Cocking: "Go to your neighborhood or country store and buy a stick of licorice. Then sit down on a cracker box and talk about the things kids like. When a group gathers around the stove in the community store, they've established the true and original forum. Kids get a valuable part of their education from such gatherings. A successful teacher will take part in them."

* In the wake of Michigan, Georgia and Arizona, Massachusetts last fortnight passed a bill requiring every teacher and professor to swear allegiance to Federal and State Constitutions (TIME, April 15), thus brought to 19 the number of Red-scared states having teachers' oath laws.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.