An excellent article from Frank Bohn on the problems and possibilities of public education for Socialists. All current comrade educators and those interested in education will find this over 100-year-old article speaks to at least some of their situation.

‘The Socialist Party and the Public Schools’ by Frank Bohn from The International Socialist Review. Vol. 14 No. 10. April, 1914.

THE working class movement in America naturally takes three forms:

1. The development of the labor unions toward solidarity and revolutionary tactics.
2. The conquest and use of political power through the Socialist party.
3. The education of the working class through the development of the public school system.

Of these the last is at least as important as either of the other two. The best answer in three words to the question, What is the matter with Mexico? is No public schools. A farming class which cannot read and write is bound to be ruled by a feudal upper class. Among an illiterate wage-working class a democratic labor movement is, of course, impossible.

In scores of communities the Socialist party is today electing its candidates to positions on the school boards.

As members of municipal and state legislative bodies Socialists are brought constantly into contact with this most important problem. Unfortunately, almost nothing has been done by the Socialist party in the way of helping such officials in the performance of their duties. The problem is worthy of the best thought which can be given to it. This contribution will have failed utterly of its purpose if it does not urge many readers of the INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW to a deeper study of the educational problem.

The Working Class Child at School

Statistics upon this subject, abundant in the many public reports upon the matter, but which we shall refrain from lack of space from quoting here, indicate an appalling situation as regards the education of working class children in the United States. Only about half of the children under sixteen years of age really attend school regularly. Even so, the school rooms are over-crowded and in many cities tens of thousands of children are being given only half-time instruction. The teachers are shamefully underpaid and overworked. With few exceptions the school equipment is totally inadequate.

In private schools the expense of education, per child, is often from five to ten times what it is in the public schools. If the working class child, on leaving school for the factory at the age of fourteen, can write legibly and read a newspaper, he may consider his educational start in life as good as the average. In New York City, where the schools are much above the average of the country, classes of young children sometimes number sixty. Of course that number of pupils makes any real education impossible.

The Greatest of Industries

In the public schools of America there are about 20,000,000 children and 600,000 teachers at work. Today they are in a condition of industrial slavery and intellectual perversion, quite as unbearable as obtains in any of the directly productive industries. Thus in the schools there are three times as many people employed as are engaged in agriculture, fourteen times as many as there are at work on all our railroads, and twenty-five times as many as dig in all our mines. For this colossal army the Socialist party demands industrial democracy and intellectual freedom.

To fight the forces of greed and oppression this army of teachers and the parents of the children must enter the political conflict of the classes. To Socialist teachers, were all other arguments for political action overthrown, the political aspects of the education industry would make class conscious voting necessary upon the part of the working class. In this field the coming economic organization of the teachers must go hand in hand with the political organization of the workers.

More—More—More

The first effort of the Socialist member of the school board must be directed toward securing more money for the schools. What is to be taught and how it is to be done are secondary problems. The first thing essential is to pay the teacher a living wage. That annual wage surely should not be less at present than that of a carpenter or first class machinist. Therefore, if a carpenter or machinist receives $3.50 per day, the lowest paid teachers in the public schools should receive a minimum of one thousand dollars a year. We are not now discussing the condition of teachers under Socialism, but suggesting immediate action for Socialist and other intelligent members of school boards.

A decent wage will permit the employment of first rate instead of third rate brains. The services of those brains, having been engaged, can be retained only by a steady increase of wages during the first five years of their work. Teaching should be a life job, as it is in Europe. At least half the teachers, of course, should be men. But practically all the able-bodied men of average mind soon leave teaching and take up the study of law or medicine or go into business. As for women teachers, they, exactly like shop girls, seek a way out of their drudgery through marriage. Now, a woman who has been married for five years, with a child or two of her own, is undoubtedly much more valuable as a teacher than she was before marriage. Her knowledge of life, especially her sympathetic understanding of childhood, has been greatly developed. If women teachers were permitted to marry and keep their jobs men teachers could marry them and not be driven into some other profession to support their families.

Beside higher wages for teachers, Socialist members of school boards should advocate a large increase of the teaching force. Ex-President Eliot has declared that in the primary grades fifteen scholars are all that a teacher can adequately attend to.

This means that in the average American city the number of primary teachers would have to be at least trebled. The inadequacy of our school buildings in number, size and construction is too well known to need emphasis. Beside every building for school classes there should be constructed another building of equal size for play and organized athletics. The terrible physical deterioration of the working class might be considerably, checked at once if means for the physical development of children during all seasons were supplied. The free playgrounds of cities should be established in conjunction with school buildings and placed under the direction of the school management.

Form of School Government

Revolutionary Socialism demands that the workers be given collective control of their jobs. This principle should obtain in the public schools as well as in other industries. Our public school system is to be one of our departments of Socialist industrial government. It now bids fair to be the first department of industry in which a measure of democracy may be realized.

What sort of a system should the Socialist member of the school board strive to obtain?

Every such Socialist board member should advocate and assist in the immediate organization of the entire teaching force into unions. The teachers of the community will necessarily be organized into locals, according to the nature of their work. The kindergarten teachers. the grammar grade teachers, and the high school teachers should each have their separate local. However large or small the community, the teaching force requires organization not only for its own protection but for an intelligent and progressive administration of the schools. Within five years the political progressives of all varieties will probably accept this principle in part. So in the organization of the new school administration we face not a theory but a condition.

The school board as at present elected and organized represents the tax-payers of the community. Their business is first of all to guard the interests of those whom they are chosen to serve. must keep taxes as low as possible by paying low wages and spending as little as they can for buildings and equipment.

They must also furnish contracts for the political grafters of the machine in power. Further than this their administration of the school system is now seeking -to develop the school “plants” into factories for the production of cheap brains in the wages market. This matter we shall discuss more at length further on.

A Socialist school board will represent the parents of the working class children in the schools. It should be the chief work of such a board to serve as a connecting link between the school teachers and the school children on one hand and the community on the other. The school teachers, having legislated as to what kind of buildings, equipment and playgrounds they need for their work, the school board should secure the funds and provide the said buildings, equipment and playgrounds. With that their work stops. While the board might well be given the veto as regards some features of school management, it should never assume the initiative. The government of the schools themselves, the course of study, in fact. the whole system of school organization and administration, should be under the control of the teacher. For a committee of the school board to interfere with the general conduct of the school is as dangerous to their efficiency as for the board of directors of a railroad to tell a train crew how to run its train. As a matter of fact all the really valuable work of school administration is today performed by the school superintendents and their assistants: Wise school boards already keep their meddlesome hands out of affairs concerning which they can be but inadequately informed. Instead of having an autocratic school superintendent as at present, the Socialist school system would have such superintendents elected by and with the consent of the teachers, to act only in connection with their central committee.

Nor does democracy cease with the all pervasive power of the teacher in school administration: The schools are established not for the teachers but for the children. The development of the free mind begins, of course, the day the child is born. The present is witnessing, for instance, the abolition of the club in the teaching of children. This is a revolution as great in its essence as the abolition of chattel slavery or of trials for heresy in religion. Children in really modern schools are now taught, individually and collectively, to rule themselves. The evolution of this method in teaching will make it in our generation a primal force in the movement of the workers for industrial freedom.

Boys and girls who practice democracy in the schools will not tolerate slavery in the shop.

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v14n10-apr-1914-ISR-riaz-ocr.pdf