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
Butler, you understand, was head of the department of education at
Columbia; he fixed the policy of this department, making it a machine
for the turning out of “educational experts,” trained to see life as a
battleground of money-ambition, and to run the schools as efficient
factories. Butler edited the “Educational Review,” and the present
editor is a Columbia man, and his puppet. I shall take you with me
before long for a trip over the United States, and show you the Tammany
Hall of education; the league of superintendents, and the politicians of
the National Educational Association, financed by the book companies and
other big grafters, and combining with the chambers of commerce and
professional patriots to drive out liberalism in education as in
politics, and resist every new idea in every department of human thought
and activity. They are backed by the political machines of special
privilege, and protected and glorified by the “Brass Check” press; and
everywhere you find Columbia men the leading advocates of routine, red
tape, and reaction.
I turn over my notes; the people of New York are struggling in the grip
of rapacious landlords, and here comes Samuel McCune Lindsay, Professor
of Social Legislation at Columbia University, with a pamphlet to
demonstrate that there is really no shortage of apartments, but on the
contrary a surplus of thirty thousand. The Lockwood Commission puts the
professor on the stand and draws out the fact that he was paid five
hundred dollars by the Real Estate Board for the writing of this
pamphlet. Samuel Untermyer, counsel of the commission, characterizes
Prof. Lindsay’s figures as “absurd,” and forces the professor to admit
that he made no actual investigation, and has “no practical knowledge.”
I turn to another page. Dr. Albert Shiels is superintendent of the
public schools of Los Angeles in the year 1919, and at the height of the
White Terror in America he publishes in President Butler’s “Educational
Review” an article denouncing the Soviet government. At a mass meeting
in Los Angeles the chairman states that he has made count of the errors
of fact in this article, and they total one hundred and twenty-four.
Louise Bryant, just returned from Russia, is at the meeting, and the
audience votes to send a challenge to Dr. Shiels to debate with her.
Someone in the audience puts up a two hundred dollar Liberty Bond to pay
Dr. Shiels, and the audience contributes over twelve hundred dollars to
give publicity to the debate. Dr. Shiels is invited to appear, and his
answer is: “I believe it is contrary to good public policy to place
Bolshevism and its practices on a par with debatable questions”—an
answer which so delights President Butler that he calls Dr. Shiels to
New York, to become Associate Director of the Institute of Educational
Research of Columbia University!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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