As part of 1920s reaction, public schools held patriotic ‘American Education Weeks’ extolling Americanism and the U.S. state religion, Anti-Communism. In response the Young Pioneers held their own ‘Anti-American Education Week.’

‘The Children Fighting “Education” Week’ by Nat Kaplan from The Daily Worker. Vol. 2 No. 267. November 21, 1925.

THE children of the workers in the lands of capitalist rule and imperialist domination are born into a world which spells hard work, undernourishment, disease and death. In our own United States the land of plenty (for the bosses) millions of children go to school hungry and ragged.

Millions more are forced at an early age to enter the factories and mills, the canneries and farms and there to labor for long hours in order that they may help to increase a little the small incomes of the proletarian families. American capitalism is the murderer pay excellence of the proletarian children of this country and of its colonial and semi-colonial possessions.

Public Schools—Hothouses of Reaction.

The public schools are an inseparable part of the bourgeoisie state rule. The primary motive of the institutions of so-called free education is to turn out as large a number of obedient patriotic wage slaves in the shortest possible time, at the smallest possible expense. The teaching of the three “R’s” is but part of the general patriotic, religious, pro-boss propaganda which is dished out under the guise of education.

To save expenses the local politicians on the school boards allow school buildings to go on for years without any repairs thus endangering the lives and health of thousands of children. Thousands of schools throughout the country are veritable fire traps, with wooden steps, no fire escapes and loose chairs in assembly rooms. All the greater economy plans conceivable are adopted to prevent expenditures for the building of new decent school buildings. Tin can portable schools are set up. Platoon, Gary and other machine-like part-time systems are set up in order to save’ money and to turn out wage slaves like a sausage machine turns out sausages.

American Education Week for Whom?

It is but appropriate that the American legion, the well-known band of strikebreakers, the American education association and the bureau of education should unite in the endeavor to still further poison the minds of the workers’ children. For this purpose they have set aside Nov. 16 to the 22nd, as a week of concentrated propaganda to teach the workers’ child to be loyal to “its” country and the bosses’ rule: to be obedient, meek and superstitious; to be thrifty; to be healthy and to conserve the natural resources of this country.

What cheap cynicism for the rich pot-bellied bourgeois gentlemen of these institutions to come before the workers’ children with such words. To tell pennyless children to be thrifty; to tell underfed children to be healthy; to tell propertyless children of propertyless parents to be loyal to “their” country and to conserve “their” natural resources.

American Education Week is not for the workers’ children. It is for the children of the bourgeoisie.

The Struggle of the Young Pioneers.

The workers’ children organized in the Young Pioneers’ League are conducting an Anti-American Education Week campaign during this period. The militant children of the workers will spread the message far and wide of the class solidarity of all the workers’ children in the struggle against the bourgeoisie rule.

Each group of the Young Pioneers will set up a campaign committee to guide the struggle of the children in the specific schools. Studies will be made of the conditions in the various schools and concrete demands based upon these conditions will be formulated and linked up with the general slogans of the campaign. Meetings will be arranged to which will be invited the older brothers, sisters, and parents of the Young Pioneers. Special efforts will be made to concentrate on schools where there are large numbers of Negro children to draw them into the struggle.

Special efforts will be made by the children to spread mass propaganda thruout the schools on the issues of the campaign. The slogans and demands will be distributed in leaflet form, in bulletin form and chalked on the blackboards and side “”walks of the schools. When the teachers spread the pro-boss propaganda during this week the children will question the teachers in a systematic fashion and endeavor to turn the ordinary class room procedure into that of a discussion.

Experience in the American Communist children’s movement proves that the child of the worker can and does make an excellent fighter in the class struggle. The mis-educators of the American legion, the bureau of education and the American education association will be answered by the militant struggle of the workers’ children.

Working Class Parents, Line Up!

The militant parents of the working class must become part of this struggle. A keynote slogan of the Young Pioneers in this campaign is the enrollment of the proletarian parents in the struggles of the children. During this campaign the Young Pioneers will call conferences of the working class parents and draw them into the campaign. These conferences will serve as the basis for the setting up of Proletarian Parents’ Councils of the Public Schools. The parents must help all the actions of the Young Pioneers. They must send letters to the teachers, principals and officials of the board of education protesting against the anti-labor nationalist and religious propaganda which will be dished out wholesale during this week.

The parents’ councils must fight against fire trap schools, against malnutrition and unsanitary conditions, against greater economy plans and against child labor. They must fight for the demand: Free food and clothing for the children, at the expense of the state and under the supervision of the organs of the working class. As a fundamental aim the parents must fight for the control of the schools by the parents’ councils, the students’ councils and the trade unions.

Working class parents! Line up with the children of their struggle. Help to make the Young Pioneers a mass organization of the workers’ children. Help to make The Young Comrade the fighting mass organ of the child laborers and the millions of proletarian children in this country.

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-n267-supplement-nov-21-1925-DW-LOC.pdf