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

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Chicago got a new mayor, who, by political subtlety too intricate to detail, got rid of the old school board, and of Dr. Robertson as president. The last word of the great medical educator was a letter to the new board, explaining the wonderful legacy he was leaving them, in the form of a commission to study the school housing question; and so, when I came back to Chicago in December, 1923, to read the proofs of this book, I found yet another act of the melodrama on, and the business representative of the Chicago Teachers’ Federation in the midst of another whirlwind! This commission and its Big Business masters had set out to foist upon the people of Chicago the wonderful new “platoon system” of schools, as it is now working full blast in Detroit, the very latest wrinkle in Ford factory standardization applied to the minds of children.

Needless to say, in a city where $10 is not safe anywhere, the schools are hideously overcrowded. There is a new building program, amounting to thirty million dollars, and this hurts the plutocracy even to think about. So one day, after a school board session, the kept press of Chicago exploded all over the front page with the news that the school board had discussed a wonderful plan to save all that money, and put half a million children on half time, and hire eleven thousand new teachers, and get double service out of the schools by running them nine hours a day, six days a week, twelve months a year on the “platoon system” as it exists in Detroit.