Tepees and Propaganda

In the exhibition hall at the National Education Association's convention in Boston last week, a 16-mm. projector ground out over & over an educational film on Patrick Henry's 'historic speech -- "Give me liberty or give me death." School teachers swarmed around it, cheered each showing. The N.E.A. convention -- the largest and most representative gathering of educators of the U.S. school year -- was in a grim mood, a mood in which even the feared word propaganda failed to scare many of the 10,000 delegates.

Propaganda was the convention's prime topic. Many delegates believed the time had come for the schools to take more positive steps to arouse the nation's youth to democracy's peril. At a seminar on "Education for a Strong, America" Dr. Arvid J. Burke, research director of the New York State Teachers Association, cried :

"We must create a hatred for the totalitarian way of life."

Added a Texas school superintendent, Dr. W. B. Irvin: "The totalitarian nations have made a weapon of propaganda. It is up to us to use it, too, and not be afraid of it."

But a woman schoolteacher demurred : "I don't like the word. . . . Can't we teach them these things through their everyday school lessons? Let us make the children realize, as they make their little tepees, the value of freedom."

Cried another woman teacher: "I couldn't plead for hatred of the totalitarians. We must teach our pupils to love."

Retorted Burke: "You can't defend democracy by love."

Thus ran the debate through a hot, humid week. Sweltering in shirt sleeves, the delegates listened to 600 speakers on a single theme: how to defend U.S. liberties through education.

Biggest crowd turned out for Harvard's cool, analytical President James Bryant Conant. Said he:

"You are members of a vast civilian army which defends the bulwarks of our democracy. . . . With ideas alone ... a democracy must cope by peaceful means. . . . We must maintain the right of all views to be presented openly. . . . But in the strength of the Nazi State we face another element--the support of far-ranging mechanized arms. . . .

"To the minds of some of us, the peril is so great that the United States has no alternative but to enter the war against the Nazi power. ... To me, Communism and Naziism are equally detestable. . . . But only one of them threatens us overwhelmingly at this moment. . . . Communism has never been the same kind of danger to the United States that Naziism has become since the fall of France. This is simply because the communistic ideology has never been combined with a military force which could threaten this hemisphere. . . . The major concern of the United States must be to secure the military overthrow of the Nazi power. . . .

"I feel sure that no British Government which could possibly come to power will make peace with Hitler. . . . But unless we can assure the safe arrival on British shores of every scrap of ammunition and fighting gear we can produce, England might ... be overrun and conquered. . . .

"There are those who say that we can be of more aid to Britain by staying out. . . . This is a specious argument. . . . Can we as a people with our freedom threatened let another nation do all the fighting for us? Ladies and gentlemen, I feel that sooner or later the United States as a nation of idealists will answer a thundering No!"

Said Harvard's Professor Ralph Barton Perry: "It is your responsibility in this grave hour to see to it that American boys and girls ... are ... incorrigibly democratic. . . . The problem for a democracy is how to be total without being totalitarian."

U.S. Education Commissioner John W. Studebaker: "We shall in 1942 probably require more than 5,000,000 additional new [defense] workers. . . . Where will America get [them]? . . . [By] recruiting and training . . . many more women for defense jobs. . . . Another source of manpower which must increasingly be used is the Negro worker. . . . First things must come first . . . the first job this nation has to do is to put a period to the peril which arises 'from ruthless men of force who care nothing for civil liberties and who mock at all appeals to humanity.' "

Not all the speakers kept their eyes on the ball in play. Said Columbia University's Dr. Haven Emerson: "It must be evident that tolerance of alcohol, which invariably dulls the mind and slows the body, weakens the conscience and makes men vulnerable to disease, is [now] at least unpatriotic and under some circumstances actually treasonable."

American Legion Commander Milo J. Warner: "We [admonish] . . . textbook authors not to regard it as their province to use the schoolroom as a sounding board whereon the glories of the collectivist society shall be preached. ..."

N.E.A. President Donald DuShane: "Our schools are not sufficiently financed, developed or protected to insure the future of our democracy. . . . Over 18,000,000 adults . . . cannot read a newspaper understandingly or write a simple letter. . . . In one-half of our 48 States the average rural teacher receives less than $600 per year. . . . The movement to reduce . . . school services and support because of the prospect of higher federal taxes has already begun. . . . There is a marked increase in unjust and destructive criticism of teachers, textbooks. ... In this period of national crisis it is as important to support and improve our schools as it is to support and develop our Army and Navy."

At week's end the convention created a new national commission proposed by President DuShane, gave it $20,000 to defend the schools. Some of its purposes: to investigate attacks on schools, textbooks and teachers, probe education's enemies, investigate and expose subversive teachers. The convention also:

> Urged teachers to promote national unity and inter-American friendship.

> Called on teachers to "cooperate fully in the national defense program to protect our Republic by thought, word and deed."

> Opposed employment in a school or college of a member of any subversive organization.

>Elected as president (without opposition) plump, middle-aged Mrs. Myrtle Hooper Dahl, a Minneapolis fourth-grade teacher. Mrs. Dahl's platform: U.S. children should be taught to 1) hate tyranny, 2) love the U.S.

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