School & Society

The schoolteachers of Oregon, in convention at Portland, sat back in their chairs full of warmth, enthusiasm and expectancy. They had been discussing their moral obligation to society. They had decided that it was incumbent upon them to furnish future citizens with "internal control" now that those declining agencies, the home and the church were no longer effective and now that society was abandoning "external control." The teachers of Oregon were feeling the full unction of their mission--and were now waiting to be addressed by that great champion of public education, the ousted president of the university of the great neighboring state of Washington, Dr. Henry Suzzallo.

In strode a swarthy, heavy-set gentleman of 52, with a scholar's accent and the gestures of a man of action, Dr. Suzzallo. Among the things that he said to the schoolteachers of Oregon, things which surprisingly, they applauded, were the following:

"The school is an institution pre-eminently devised to deal with intellectual things. . . . The average critic of our schools expects them to do things they were never designed to do. He expects them to develop triple-A high moral character, which is primarily the function of the home and the church.

"I love my job as a schoolmaster, but I am not going to take responsibility for the development of those things in youth which are left undeveloped by the breakdown of other institutions. ... It is easy for teachers to worry too much about the moral status of their pupils. Remember, the clay leaves your hands at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. On its way home many fingers get into that clay. Then at home the parents get their hands into it. Next morning you may not recognize it. . . ."

Observers mused over Dr. Suzzallo's "hardboiled" stand. It was curious to recall that Governor Roland H. Hartley of Washington, Dr. Suzzallo's foe in the state's recent politico-educational upset, once styled child welfare work, which is what the Oregon teachers were virtually proposing for themselves, as "this uplift gush. . .altruistic twaddle. . . ."