A campaign of New York City young Communists against religious education in the public schools.

‘New York Juniors Mobilize to Fight Peddling of Mushy Religious Dope in Schools’ by Anna Thompson from The Daily Worker. Vol. 2 No. 50. March 11, 1925.

NEW YORK, March 9. The bosses and their hired servants are constantly on the lookout as to how to improve their instruments of domination over the working masses they rob and oppress. Recently it must have occurred to them that the two wings of the mind-poisoning apparatus—the public school and the church—were too far apart, too uncentralized for effective work. So a discussion arose and one conference after another was held on the question of bringing religion closer to the public school.

Scrapping whatever scruples they may have had at such a gross violation of the well-known “American tradition,” the constitution, and the other holy documents of Americanism and salving without an effort whatever lesions their scientific consciences might have suffered (if they were not too ignorant to possess such a luxury) at the prospect of helping to dish out such an antiquated variety of ancient fable and misinformation for the very truth itself, our 100 per cent Americans and “leaders of thought” have come out strongly in favor of the proposed plans of mobilizing the public schools in the campaign to poison gas the workers’ children with the religious dope.

Introduce Religious Opiates.

As a result religious training is being introduced into’ the New York public schools by leaps and bounds. In some schools, a system has been introduced whereby the children are dismissed from school early on condition that they go to some place (religious school, Talmud Torah, etc.) where some brand of religious dope is dispensed.

The children that refuse to go out and get poisoned are made the objects of petty persecution, and are lectured at and scolded, or otherwise punished. In this way the school authorities are cracking the whip to drive the children into the dope peddling joints. But in other cases, perhaps in the majority of cases, the cumbersomeness of this double apparatus done away with—the religious poison is dispensed right under the roof of the people’s public schools and none other than by the “high-minded patriotic” teacher himself. The Junior office of the Young Workers’ League in New York has stacks of information gathered by our Juniors in the public schools as to how this doping work is carried on by the teachers.

Teachers Obey Bosses.

In one school in Brooklyn, the teacher regularly hands out small pocket bibles every morning and each child reads a verse, and then the teacher comments on it, being sure to bring out something that touches upon “daily life”—that is, that can be used against the workers. Then the children ask questions and finally a written examination is given on the subject.

In another school, the dope-venders “say it with music.” The learning and singing and commenting upon church hymns is the method employed. In still another school one hour every week—formerly it used to be devoted to cooking—is taken up with pious lectures on “the principles of morality and religion.” The children take notes and then have to report.

In a large school in New York the emphasis seems to be on the ceremonial. Each child steps up to the front of the room, reads a piece from the bible, and then kisses the “holy book,’ while the other children sit with their heads bowed reverently. The teacher talks to them fervently about the necessity for every child being religious and of carrying out the ceremonial of his religion.

A Blow at the Workers.

And so on. Fifty more examples could be given. There is no doubt that at last the school authorities have seriously made up their minds that the workers’ children must be pumped full of the religious dope and that the public schools are there to see that it is done.

This is a direct blow at the American working class and at the working class children. The Young Workers League of New York and its Junior Section have heard the challenge and are ready to answer it. A systematic plan of activity has been worked out by the District Junior Committee for the activity of the Junior Section in this campaign. This plan not only takes into account the internal work within the Junior Group itself—such as the enlightenment of our juniors on matter of religion and the training of picked juniors as propagandists and agitators in this campaign—but also the propaganda and agitation and organization work outside. Leaflets —printed and mimeographed—are to be issued for distribution among the school children in the schools, mass meetings, and protest meetings. Parents’ meetings are to be held to mobilize the adult workers in the struggle and to gain their support for the juniors in the school struggle. A call for a united front is to be issued, labor unions and labor fraternal organizations are to be circularized and approached.

Finally, the protest movement thus intensified and crystallized, will be given organizational form, especially in the schools. Thus our Junior Section will have gone a long stretch on the road to awakening and mobilizing the working class children against capitalism.

Juniors Mobilize Children.

We have already begun to put this program into life. Groups of protesting children are already crystallizing around our juniors in the schools. Meetings have already been arranged for and held.

A big protest meeting of this sort will be held this Friday, March 13, at 1701 Pitkin avenue in Brooklyn, at which speakers from the Y.W.L., W.P., and the Foster Junior Group—speakers in Jewish and English—will explain and discuss the whole question.

The following day, March 14, the Brownsville Section Junior Committee is calling together a parents’ meeting and the anti-religion campaign will play a prominent part on the orderning. When our Juniors get real busy the howl of the bosses and their servants, the school authorities, will be heard all the way to Chicago.

Down with the religious poison in the schools!

Down with religion, the tool of the bosses!

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.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1925/1925-ny/v02b-n050-NYE-mar-11-1925-DW-LOC.pdf