The Goslings: A Study of the American SchoolsSinclair, Upton
History
The Goslings: A Study of the American Schools
Sinclair, Upton
Education -- United States
Along with Judge Bordwell was elected Mr. Washburn, ex-banker, whose one
idea of school administration was to keep down the taxes; Mrs. Waters,
the widow of a bank president; and Colonel Andrew Copp, an officer in
the state militia. Mr. Bettinger, at that time assistant superintendent,
tells me anecdotes which show the attitude of these people toward
education. “We don’t want you to come here with opinions,” said Mrs.
Waters; “we want you to obey orders.” And in almost the same words
Colonel Copp addressed a delegation of teachers who came to him to
complain of inability to get supplies. “Don’t come here with your views
of things,” stormed the Colonel; “what we want you to do is to do what
you’re told.”
In the course of discussion before a board Committee, Mr. Bettinger made
so bold as to give his definition of education: “to aid in the
unfoldment of a human mind.” Colonel Copp was so furious that he was
hardly able to keep still until Mr. Bettinger finished. “Education?” he
cried. “I’ll tell you what education is! Education is getting a lot of
young people into a room, teaching them a lesson out of a book, hearing
them recite it, putting down a mark in figures, and at the end of the
year that’s their record. That’s what education is, and we are going to
have that and nothing else in Los Angeles.”
Judge Bordwell had gone to New York to put the problem of the Los
Angeles schools before the great mogul of plutocratic education,
President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia. He came back with Albert
Shiels, a product of Butler’s educational enameling machine, who was to
make a survey. Shiels was an accountant, not an educator; also, under
the charter of the city, he was ineligible for superintendent, not
having lived a year in the state. But a little thing like a charter
provision would not be allowed to block the will of Judge Bordwell. Dr.
Shiels was made superintendent and started publishing anti-Bolshevik
propaganda in the teachers’ paper, and circularizing the teachers with
such literature. He published in President Butler’s “Educational Review”
an article assailing the Soviet government, which article contained no
less than one hundred and twenty-four misstatements of fact. Challenged
to debate this issue, Dr. Shiels wrote to me: “I believe it is contrary
to good public policy to place Bolshevism and its practices on a par
with debatable questions.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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