Nat Kaplan came into politics through the Young People’s Socialist League and helped lead many from that organization to the new Communist movement and its Young Workers (Communist) League. He Secretary of the YCL’s Junior Section, later the Young Pioneers, when this report on their work was written.

‘In the Domain of Children’s Struggles’ by Nat Kaplan from the Daily Worker Saturday Supplement. Vol. 1 No. 359. March 8, 1924.

IT is lucky for us that the Communist children’s movement in America suffered its birth pangs at the time when its legitimate parents, the youth and adult Communist movement had already evolved from out of their isolated conditions and became live fighting bodies engaged in mass activity.

The favorable conditions surrounding the birth has naturally reflected itself in the straddling infant—the Junior Section of the Young Workers League—-in so far as it has retained its identity from the very start as an organization engaged in the class struggle.

Many of the parents of the 3,000 young communists in the Junior Section do not recognize this important feature of the organization and when it is brought to their notice “via the gossip route” many untrue and distorted conceptions of the matter are formed. It is at this point that the parents take advantage of their economic superiority over the child to force it to sabotage this phase of the Junior Groups’ activity. Even Communist parents—members of the Workers Party have been known at times to sabotage the class struggle feature of the children’s movement. This sad factor is not new and can only be rectified thru the establishment of a better understanding and relationship between the adults and the children. This is already being partially accomplished in the Junior Groups.

On the Field of Battle.

The battle field of the children’s struggle centers in the public school. Even as the shop, factories, mines etc., form the center of the class struggle for the adult proletarians, so the public school class room forms the battle field—the center of the class struggle for the proletarian child.

It is here that the child is confronted with the iron heel of the teacher’s dictatorship. Everything is done for the child. The child can do nothing for itself. It would astound a great many parents were they to listen to an ordinary discussion in one of the Junior Groups. “Oh! Our teacher doesn’t let us ask questions!” speaks up one child. “We can only answer the questions which our teacher asks us,” verifies another. And so it goes, a complete subordination of the personal initiative of the child to the so-called superior knowledge of the modem bourgeoisie pedagogs. The child with a strong will, a rebellious spirit—in other words, a child who would make a good class fighter, both now and for the future—has to have that will and spirit broken by the teacher’s dictatorship in the school and by the parental dictatorship at home. It is only natural that the child should rebel against this state of affairs.

Not only is the method of education in vogue in the public school based on the erroneous application of the principle of the “Right of the stronger,” but the education itself—the material utilized as lessons—is nothing but the vile propaganda of American imperialism. History is the glorification of capitalist wars. Reading is the glorification of bourgeoisie ethics; the inoculator of superstitious ideas; the weaver of mysticism around the memories of dead bourgeois heroes, etc., etc. Arithmetic is the glorification of the profit system. The combination of the method and the education proper of the public schools can only serve one purpose and that is: To make servile wage slaves of the workers’ children.

The struggle against this state of affairs for the child also has its forerunner: The struggle against the immediate rotten conditions in the schools, such as, insufficient number of seats, veritable fire trap school buildings, unsanitary conditions, etc., etc. Special care must be taken to link up both features of the struggle in every campaign undertaken within the public schools, or else we will be faced with seeming contradictions. Thus a fight for more schools to curtail a seat shortage must be coupled at all times with the demand of “Down with the Nationalist and Religious propaganda of the public schools.”

How the Battle Is Conducted.

It is marvelous to watch how very naturally the children take to the class struggle activities, and how they can utilize League and Party experience for their own ends. An interesting example of this is portrayed by our Daisytown, Pa., Junior Group. One week the group reported that they had been playing some Communist games, among them one which is called: “Catching the shop nuclei organizer.” Thru the medium of this game the children grasped the entire idea of the nuclei form of organization and the week following the game had already divided their Junior Group into four school nuclei, which today functions right on the field of battle.

As a generalization you can lay out the form that the battle takes as follows: The children having gained a Communist perception in the Junior Groups; having made a study of the true nature of history, etc., will naturally rebel when the teacher presents these subjects in the usual manner. At times a solitary little rebel will get up and: “Oh! teacher, in our Junior Groups we found out that George Washington was a wicked man who bought and sold black and white slaves.” This little rebel will no doubt be defeated and forced to submit to the will of the teacher. At other times the other children will be won over by the solitary little rebel and join him in his fight—or else the existence of a Junior Group School or even class nucleus will serve as the basis for the winning over of ever greater masses of the school children to the fight-on hand. At no time is the child permitted to feel as tho the struggle is the machination of some older comrade. Everything that the children do is done on their own initiative as a group. They formulate their own demands and lay the basis for their own fight The older comrades, the leaders and teachers of the Junior Groups, thru hints and suggestions endeavor to guide the decisions of the children into the proper channels, and they can only do this after they have won the confidence of the children by becoming part of them in their struggle, play and educational work.

A United Front of Parents and Offspring.

The bourgeoisie educational system has long recognized the necessity of winning over the parents for their system. Thus there has come into existence powerful parent-teacher associations whose purpose is to coordinate the home life of the child with the life of the child in the schools. The Junior Section recognized this problem especially at the time when the class struggle features of the Junior Section became intensified and the parents loomed up as an opposition in certain cases.

The solution of the problem is in the words of the Hammond, Ind., Juniors, as follows: “We are for the united front with the grown-up in the battle for all who toil.” In carrying out this principle the Juniors throughout the country are today organizing parent’s conferences, where the Juniors report of their activities and where the life and work of the child in the Group are discussed and acted upon in an advisory capacity. These conferences are made very interesting by the children when they arrange little programs: plays, recitations, child speeches, etc., for their parents. Hence, we see that the Junior Section is getting the parents more and more interested in the activities of the children and is laying the basis for the better relationship between the adults and the children: A principle which can only reach perfection after the conquest of power by the proletariat.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924. National and City (New York and environs) editions exist

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