‘Is The Teacher A Wage Slave?’ by A Teacher from Solidarity. Vol. 7 No. 338. July 1, 1916.

Perhaps of all classes the teacher is the slowest to awaken to the fact that she is a wage-slave.

In the first place, if she has entered upon her work for the love of it, she finds her wings clipped at the start. She becomes part of a big system that is efficient in proportion as it eliminates individuality on the part of the teacher. Like the worker in the factory, she finds her work laid out for her. What she shall teach, how she shall teach it, the time in which it is to be done, are matters over which she has practically no control.

If she strives to find any loop-holes of compromise, she grows battered and weary with the struggle. Girls of original power frequently refuse to bend to the system and throw their interests elsewhere. More frequently economic stress compels them to remain. And the easiest thing is to follow the line of least resistance, to moule themselves to the pattern that is desired.

Then begins the process of turning out the little automatons of our educational system. They are the ones lowest down in this hierarchy of authority. When principals, supervisors, teachers, all alike are bereft of their freedom, there is small chances for initiative or self-expression of any kind on the part of the child. Certain powers have decreed the way in which he shall go, the kind and amount of mental food he must swallow undigested, and the moral precepts that shall make him into a fit citizen under the flag.

Obedience is the all-important word. Obedience of the child to the authority of the teacher (no matter how much at cross purposes with his instinctive desires); obedience. of the teacher to conditions imposed by the principal, no remonstrance to be made however bad those conditions may be; and in turn obedience of the principals to the behests of a public-serving (?) school board. And to what end all this emphasis upon obedience? That from the highest down to the lowest, you may be loyal to your country’s flag; in other words to the ideals of those whose economic power make them the masters of your food and your thought.

Is the teacher whose task it is to bring up the young to lay aside all freedom of thought? Must she wear the muzzle of obedience over her mouth, forbidding, all protest in behalf of her own freedom and the freedom of the growing child?

Until the teacher is economically free, this slavery must continue. She must think as she is told to think; against her finest instincts she must crush young lives; she must in the crowded school-room deal with herds, not with individuals; she must teach in rooms that are too cold, or too hot; with too bright a light or not light enough, with nerve-racking noise dulling the sound of her voice; under forms of base competition that belittle the soul; and ever under the eye of a supervisor who has it in his power to control her salary or wage, be it rather said, upon which her bread and butter depends.

Here is the crux of the whole matter. The source of our bread and butter determines the ways of our thinking. The chains that bind us are the same chains that bind all the rest of the working class, the chains of hunger. Alon we are helpless. Organized as a body with no class divisions among us, who can tell what our power might be.

A TEACHER.

The most widely read of I.W.W. newspapers, Solidarity was published by the Industrial Workers of the World from 1909 until 1917. First produced in New Castle, Pennsylvania, and born during the McKees Rocks strike, Solidarity later moved to Cleveland, Ohio until 1917 then spent its last months in Chicago. With a circulation of around 12,000 and a readership many times that, Solidarity was instrumental in defining the Wobbly world-view at the height of their influence in the working class. It was edited over its life by A.M. Stirton, H.A. Goff, Ben H. Williams, Ralph Chaplin who also provided much of the paper’s color, and others. Like nearly all the left press it fell victim to federal repression in 1917.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/solidarity-iww/1916/v7-w338-jul-01-1916-solidarity.pdf