Читать книгу The Goslings: A Study of the American Schools онлайн

137 страница из 161

ssss1. Upon submitting proofs of the above to Miss Hughan, I received from her a statement as to her present position. Because she modified the pledge which she signed for the “Luskers,” reserving her rights to freedom of conscience and political action, she was denied a certificate of loyalty by this committee, and although the Lusk laws are now repealed, Miss Hughan has for six years been denied the rank and salary to which she is entitled under the school regulations. She writes: “My present and past principals have urged my appointment. I have letters from the officials responsible, making it clear that my radical beliefs were the sole ground for my non-appointment during the six years. They still refuse, however, to replace my name on the eligible lists; and I am now fulfilling the duties of head of department in the Textile High School, without enjoying the rank and additional five hundred dollars salary that should belong to the position.”

I had something even more definite than that, in answer to Dr. Tildsley’s statement that it does a teacher no harm to be known as a Socialist. It happened that I had been in the New York Public Library, collecting evidence from the files of the “Times,” and I had copied in my note-book an account from that newspaper (April 27, 1919) of a meeting of the Public Education Association addressed by Superintendent Tildsley. According to his friends of the “Times,” this great authority was reported as saying “that in his opinion there was no place for the Marxian Socialist in the New York school system, that there were quite a number of such Socialists in the system at present, that they should be dismissed”—and so on, a long summary of the speech, the substance being that such teachers should be excluded from the system in future.