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

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If it is not money and not building space, what is it? To quote the report of the Chicago teachers: “All special work is outlined, standardized, and supervised from some central authority, so that children derive no benefit from the originality and experience of the individual teacher, or from her knowledge of their particular needs. The teachers know the names of but few children in each group, because of the large numbers with which they deal.” Again: “If fatigue and inability to give attention are features of modern life, the children are certainly experiencing life.”

So it appears that this Detroit system is a contrivance to suppress every trace of individuality in school teachers, and make every one of them a phonograph, repeating formulas set before her in print; to prescribe not merely her words but her states of mind, and the “attitudes to be acquired” by her pupils. One teacher read me the specifications, and said: “It’s enough to raise the hair on your head.”

What is the “central authority” which now shapes the minds of all the children of all the wage-slaves of our great metropolis of automobiles? We shall inquire before long, and find that it is the same interlocking directorate we know so well. And here is their master achievement; how well they know it, how proud they are of it, you may learn from their official statement, written by the man who has the job in charge—Mr. Charles L. Spain, deputy superintendent of schools of Detroit. Says this great educator: “During the war the public schools came to be recognized as a powerful agency through which to spread propaganda. It is certain that society will expect more from the schools in this respect than in the past.” And he goes on to explain that the “platoon system” gets the children all ready, and every child in the building can be reached every day! When this new scheme has been set up in all our schools, big and little—and it won’t take them but a few years—it will be possible for Judge Gary or Mr. Morgan to press a button at nine o’clock in the morning, and by twelve o’clock noon every child of our twenty-three million will be ready to go out and kill the “Reds.”