The Goose-step: A Study of American EducationSinclair, Upton
History
The Goose-step: A Study of American Education
Sinclair, Upton
Education -- United States; Universities and colleges -- United States
Becoming aware of the Black Hand and its power in the institution,
independent-minded men seek other occupations; the sycophants and the
sluggards remain, and as a result, the quality of the teaching goes
down. Every year the boys and girls pour in from the cities and ranches
of California, and they are commanded to study dull subjects under dull
instructors, and they prefer football and flirtation. In Berkeley there
are twelve thousand, and in the Southern branch in Los Angeles four or
five thousand more. Immorality is more common than scholarship; the
conditions have become a scandal throughout the state, and our
imperialist president finds himself with a peck of trouble on his hands,
a board of quarreling regents who cannot agree what is to be done. There
is a flaw, apparently, in Colonel Barrows’ doctrine of the strong man;
the strong man does not always rule—especially when he is a stupid man!
So our “soldier president” has just asked to be excused from his job,
and allowed to become once more a humble Professor of Political
Ignorance.
P. S.—After this book has been put into type an interesting development
occurs at Berkeley. The editors of an independent student publication,
the “Laughing Horse,” asked my permission to quote extracts from these
chapters, and they printed six or eight pages in their issue of
November, 1922. The publication created great excitement at the
university, and a senior student by the name of Butler went to a
magistrate and swore out a warrant for the arrest of Roy Chanslor, the
“Laughing Horse” editor, upon the charge of publishing obscene matter.
The pretext was another article in the magazine, a letter from D. H.
Lawrence, the English novelist, reviewing and strongly condemning as
immoral a novel by Ben Hecht. But the real reason was obviously the
passages from “The Goose-step.” The “Daily Californian,” the student
paper, gave the thing away, denouncing “the printing of disgusting
articles by Upton Sinclair and other perverted ‘knockers.’ To jolt the
university they hurled and blatted the most unprecedented compilations
of lies that has (sic) yet found expression in these parts. At first the
students rose in righteous wrath to ‘tar and feather’ the perpetrators
of such foul, insane blusterings.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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