Superintendents in St. Louis

Fortnight ago officers of the Department of Superintendence of the National Education Association approached Manager James E. Darst of St. Louis' Municipal Auditorium, suggested that he sell only soft drinks at the bar during the annual school superintendents' convention. Instead Manager Darst added two extra bartenders. Last week the convention ended and Manager Darst could preen himself on his acumen. The 8,000 superintendents had consumed more liquor at his bar than did the American Legion last autumn.

As in 1935 the convention started off unofficially on a Sunday afternoon with a rousing pep meeting staged by a coterie of Left-wing professors, most of whose leaders are from Teachers College, Columbia. Organized this year as the John Dewey Society, these Left-wing professors succeeded in packing the banquet hall of the Hotel Jefferson with 1,500 sympathetic superintendents. Earnest Professor George Sylvester Counts sniped at four notable targets: 1) William Randolph Hearst: "A foe of freedom of assembly, speech and press"; 2) Alfred E. Smith: "Once a friend of Education and the common man, he has sold out to privilege"; 3) Past Commander Frank Belgrano of the American Legion: ''He betrayed the idealism and patriotism of the rank & file of American Legion members"; 4) Father Coughlin: "He employs his sacred office to spread confusion, misunderstanding and falsehood."

Sniper Counts sat down, the superintendents cheered and Hearst editors gloated over an old photograph showing Dr. Counts with a scraggly black beard which he affected for a time after returning from study in Russia.

Thus stimulated, the superintendents opened their convention. Most of Monday's session was spent picking holes in the Federal Government's experiments in education. National Youth Administration was damned because pedagogs have little say in its management. Finally the superintendents adopted a resolution to ask Congress to appropriate $300,000,000 a year, distribute it among the states on the basis of need, with no restrictions except that it be used for education.

By Tuesday the convention was ready to pick heroes and villains. No. 1 hero was Massachusetts' longtime (1917-35) Commissioner of Education Payson Smith, no friend of his State's widely abominated teachers' oath law, who was booted out of his job last autumn with the approval of Governor James Michael Curley. With but three dissenting votes, the cheering, clapping convention voted to condemn Villain Curley. Condemned also was the Federal statute forbidding teachers in District of Columbia schools to ''teach or advocate Communism."

That night the superintendents listened to a debate on the New Deal among Democratic Senator Alben W. Barkley Republican Henry J. Allen (both in dinner jackets) and Socialist Norman Thomas (in business suit), rendered a decisive verdict by applause to Socialist Thomas.

Wednesday was quiet. In proof that they were feeling educationally progressive as well as politically liberal, the delegates elected as their president Superintendent Archie Loyd Threlkeld of Denver. Dr Threlkeld's was the first public school system in the U. S. to adopt progressive methods of education on a city-wide scale. Thursday was the last day and the delegates found a new villain in Governor Landon of Kansas. While the convention drew the line at officially baiting the leading Republican candidate for President, many of the delegates got together to send him a telegram:

"It is commonly reported in this great gathering of many groups of American educators that you have helped balance your budget in Kansas by reducing funds for education and human relief. . . ."

As the superintendents closed their convention and turned homeward, many of them troubled by the prospect of explaining .their new-found liberalism to stern school boards, they treasured a little jingle composed during the convention by old William Andrew McAndrew :

My board is bored

And so am I.

I'd like to kiss

My board goodbye.

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