N. E. A.

The yearly National Education Association convention--public school superintendents, classroom teachers--occurred last week in Seattle. Many speeches were along traditional lines--for high professional ideals, for helpful supervision, for vocational education, better teachers' colleges, better salaries, frank conferences with girl pupils, geography as a basis of international peace; for--as always--dignifying public education by putting a U. S. Secretary of Education in the President's Cabinet as head of a Federal Education Department (instead of the present "Bureau" under the Department of the Interior with advisory powers only).

Other speeches took more or less original lines, to wit:

Future of Nation. In the teachers' trust lies the perpetuity of the U. S. They keep alive George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, et aL, for rising generations. So said President Francis G. Blair of N. E. A.

Politics Menace. Let politics be kept out of public education. For a hideous example of this menace, behold Chicago. So spoke Dr. Henry Suzzallo, lately ousted from the presidency of the University of Washington by politically-vexed Governor Roland H. Hartley (TIME, Oct. 18).

Fatherhood. As girls are schooled for wifehood and motherhood, so let boys be taught home economics and become better husbands, better fathers. So urged Essie L. Elliott, home economist of Los Angeles.

Old Teachers have been the special concern of Olive M. Jones of Manhattan, onetime (1924) N. E. A. president. They should be pensioned, housed, cared for. Miss Jones asked and received authority to accept money given in support of her survey and old-teachers'-home-building activity.

Lindbergh. The name was, of course, on orating lips more often than even that of Washington or Lincoln. Augustus Orloff Thomas* of Maine, head of the world's federated education associations, invoked the Lindbergh "sporting blood," "sporting sense," "sportsmanship"--and also that of France, whom he pictured forgetting War debts when Colonel Lindbergh arrived--as " 'the wooden horse' by means of which we can break into the walled city of human hatreds--of racial and national jealousies."

The delegates sent congratulations to Mrs. Evangeline A. Lindbergh, modest mother, high-school teacher in Detroit.

Fewer Delegates. Some 1,000 voting delegates made the trip to Seattle. Buying their tickets--for the N. E. A. does that, at excursion rates--is a problem that requires thought and appropriations each year. In view of the unwieldy size of the gathering and of a need for more intensive deliberations, Superintendent P. H. Claxton of Tulsa, Okla., proposed that next year's voting delegates be reduced to a band of 500, plus officers; representation to be in ratio with N. E. A. state memberships. The convention pondered his idea.

Elections. Delaware dramatically surrendered her early place in the roll call to Virginia; and Miss Cornelia S. Adair, junior-high-school teacher of Richmond, Va., who was already president of the National League of Classroom Teachers and a vice president of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women,* was put in nomination for the N. E. A. presidency. None was named to oppose her. After the unanimous vote was cast, Miss Adair said: "It surely is mighty nice of you all." All other N. E. A. officers were reelected, Retiring-President Blair becoming a vice president.

*Not to be confused with Augustus Thomas, famed playwright. *Who convene this week at Oakland, Calif.