Читать книгу The Goslings: A Study of the American Schools - Upton Sinclair - Страница 15

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What becomes of the children under this regime of the Black Hand? I have talked with scores of teachers, and their testimony is unanimous, that the children’s minds are on anything in the world but study. I choose the great “L. A. High,” because that is where the children of the rich attend. One parent, a woman of refinement and sense, has tried to keep the tastes of her daughter simple and wholesome, but she tells me it is impossible, because home influence counts for nothing against the overwhelming collective power of the mass. The child comes home thrilled with excitement, telling of what the other girls have; and she must have what they have, or her happiness is ruined. It is all money; their ideal is the spending of money, their standard is what things cost. I know a lad, who tells me gravely that a fellow can’t have anything to do with girls these days; they have no interest in you but for the money you spend on them, and unless you are rich you cannot “go the pace.” About this school you will see the automobiles parked for blocks; and, of course, the youngsters who drive these cars are the social leaders, they run the school affairs, and they get the girls.

The schools are given up to athletic excitements and “assemblies”; “Aud Calls,” the students term them—that is, calls to the auditorium. They come to practice cheering; they follow the cheer leader, who tells them: “That wasn’t loud enough. Now give one for the team.” The young people come out from these affairs trembling with excitement, and they have no mind for their studies the rest of that day. Out in the halls are students waving balloons which they have bought in the bookstore; on athletic occasions, you see, it looks so lovely if everybody in the bleachers is waving toy balloons with the school colors. They will just get settled in class with their toy balloons, when there comes a call for “fire drill.” Or if such diversions are lacking, the pretty young things take out their vanity boxes and proceed to powder their noses and smear red paint on their lips, while the poor unhappy teachers are trying to put something into their silly heads. I have walked through the corridors of a high school and counted a dozen of the young things performing these toilet operations while chatting with their beaux.

How can the teachers combat such forces? There is only one way, and that is by making the studies interesting, by taking up live topics, which awaken the initiative of the students, and reveal to them the delights of thinking. Several teachers have tried to do this, and the stories of what happened to them are amusing; but unfortunately I cannot tell the stories, because each would identify a teacher, and no teacher dares take that risk! I can tell about a girl who wanted to write a thesis on “The Social Motive in American Literature.” Here was a real subject—but the principal of the school forbade it.

Also I can tell how, during the war, seven high schools took part in a debate: “Resolved, that the nations of the world should adopt the program of the League to Enforce Peace.” You can look back now and see that it was our going into the war blindfolded, our utter failure to know anything about the issues of the peace, that made the great tragedy of Europe. Do not get this League to Enforce Peace confused with pacifist organizations like the Peoples’ Council; this was a perfectly respectable organization, with ex-President Taft as president! But Mr. Jack Bean, a member of the school board, rushed to the “Times” with the charge that the high schools of Los Angeles were carrying on propaganda for immediate peace! The “Times” took it up, and for three days published scare articles accusing two students, Lee Payne and Mildred Ogden, of being pro-German. Young Payne assures me that their only mention of Germany in the entire debate was to quote President Taft’s statement that if the program of the League to Enforce Peace had been in action in 1914, Germany would not have dared to begin the war. But the solemn asses on the board passed a resolution, solemnly forbidding the debating of peace; and the “Times” solemnly printed their resolution under the caption: “Win the War!”

How far the Black Hand is willing to go in this program of cutting out the brains of the school children you may judge by the fact that in 1921 Assemblyman Greene introduced, and the Better America Federation tried to jam through the state legislature, an act providing for the expulsion from the schools of “any teacher who shall disparage to a pupil in the school where said teacher is employed, any provision of the Constitution of the United States of America, or who shall orally make to such pupil any argument or give to such pupil any written or printed argument in favor of making any change in any provision of said Constitution.” And this, you understand, in face of the fact that the Constitution itself provides for its amendment, and has been quite legally and constitutionally amended no less than nineteen times in our history! Think of a school teacher being forbidden by law to discuss with a pupil the desirability of an amendment prohibiting child labor!

A still more curious incident occurs while I am finishing this book. There is in Los Angeles an organization called the Young Workers’ League, an educational society of the Communists; they held a debate on the subject of Communism versus Capitalism, and not being able to get anybody to defend capitalism, they appointed their own speakers, who naturally didn’t do it very ardently. Three lads, one of them a high school student, the other two just graduated, attended the meeting and found themselves dissatisfied with this defense; they rose up and said they could do better, and the result was the planning of a debate. The Young Workers’ League hired a hall, and the three students spent a good part of their summer vacation preparing for the contest. Two or three days before it came off, the Young Workers’ League distributed announcement cards in the high schools, erroneously referring to the students as “three representatives of a high school debating society.” Immediately thereafter the one high school student was informed by Principal Dunn of the Polytechnic High School that he must not take part in the affair. Mr. Dunn did not take this action on his own initiative, he explained, but under instructions from Mrs. Dorsey, who had investigated the matter.

On the afternoon of the day set for the debate, the secretary of the Young Workers’ League appealed to me. Being interested in the cause of free speech, I went to see Mr. Robert Odell, attorney and president of the school board. After hearing my account of the matter, Mr. Odell said that the only objection he could think of was that the debate might not be fair, the audience might be packed against the students. My answer was that I would agree to act as chairman, and see that there was no interruption of the speakers. Mr. Odell agreed to ask Mrs. Dorsey to see me immediately.

It was then four o’clock in the afternoon, and I called on the superintendent, and listened while she explained to me at great length that the schools could not under any circumstances permit students to represent them in public debates unless the students had been selected by the schools. In reply I assured Mrs. Dorsey that I agreed with her absolutely; but if that was all the school authorities wanted, why not require the high school student to state to the audience that he spoke as an individual, and without authorization from his school? I offered as chairman of the debate to make this announcement with the utmost explicitness.

I pointed out to Mrs. Dorsey the singular position in which her schools would be placed by the preventing of this discussion. A large audience would be sent from the hall convinced that the authorities were afraid to let their students face the arguments of the Communists. The students would have to meet Communists in political life, so why not let them practice while in school? Mrs. Dorsey gave me her answer, and I understood it to be that if I would make the announcement as promised, the school authorities would not concern themselves with the debate in any way. I then got the three students together and gave them this information. They reported themselves as anxious to debate, and greatly disappointed at the outcome; but they were not willing even to come upon the platform without first having talked again with their school and college superiors. They would not go into details; but evidently something had been said to them which had taught them caution. Said one of them, significantly: “You know, Mr. Sinclair, the schools can get along without us very easily if they want to.”

Then I tried to arrange for the affair to come off two weeks later, and wrote to the school authorities. What happened between the authorities and the students I do not know; one of the latter, in a letter to me, apologized because he could not “go to the heart of it.” He added: “This much I can tell you—that the determining factor in this case is the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association.” That the lads were wise in keeping out of the debate was shown by the fact that I received from Mrs. Dorsey a special delivery letter, repudiating the understanding of the matter which I had got from her. Said Mrs. Dorsey: “You pressed for assurance that the boys would not be punished by school authorities if they took part in the debate. This assurance I declined to give, stating again that the schools were not a party to the debate and must not, therefore, be involved in any program of arrangements therewith.” So there you have the lady!

At the hour that I was chasing about Los Angeles, interviewing school authorities and trying to save this debate, two enormous bruisers were pummeling each other into insensibility at the Polo Grounds in New York City. One was the champion bruiser of North America, and the other was the champion bruiser of South America, and the two Americas held their breath, awaiting the outcome. That was entirely respectable; that did not threaten the capitalist system, so no one stopped the pummeling, and no one stopped the school children of Los Angeles from reading the newspaper bulletins about the great event. But here were three serious students who were not interested in bruisers; three self-supporting boys had put in all their spare time during vacation, preparing to defend the faith of the schools; and the school superintendent of the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association steps in and frightens these boys into silence, and disappoints an audience of a thousand working people who have assembled for an intellectual treat. Such is “culture” under the Black Hand!