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

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First of all, graft: it means that the handling of twelve million dollars a year is in the hands of people who have no conception of any other ideal in life but that of money-making. They would, of course, deny this indignantly; while denying it, they will be teaching the children in the economics classes that pecuniary self-seeking is the only principle upon which a civilization can be built. They will be glorifying greed by high-sounding phrases, such as “individualism,” “laissez-faire,” “freedom of contract”; they will be ridiculing any other ideal as “utopian,” the product of “theorists” and “dreamers.”

Here are more than nine hundred school buildings, and the system has never had a real building expert. The best architects in the city do not trouble to bid upon school buildings; they know that these contracts go to those who, in the phrase of Jerry Muma, “believe in reciprocity.” The whole business system of the schools is antiquated and tied up in red tape, all of which is sacred because it represents somebody’s privilege. The 1921 board ordered a business survey of the schools, employing the financial expert of the State Board of Control; a minute and detailed report on the school system was made—and was turned down and suppressed by the gang.