"To Earn a Living"

When a year ago last April blue-eyed handshaking William Harding Johnson rolled up in his shiny new official Cadillac to take his new office as Chicago's Superintendent of Schools, in the eyes of good government agitators there were two strikes against him. He was Board of Education President James B. McCahey's man, and between McCahey and Chicago's Mayor Edward Joseph Kelly there was too close a partnership to suit watchdogs of Chicago's schools. Board Member Mrs. William S. Hefferan had quoted ten civic leaders: "The precipitous appointment of Dr. Johnson is opposed to leading educational opinion."

Unruffled, Superintendent Johnson had his office redecorated in the modern manner (cost to Chicago taxpayers: $5,000), subscribed to a clipping service and immediately plunged into a strenuous campaign to try to make a monkey of leading educational opinion. He issued a series of decrees changing the curriculum, setting up separate vocational and academic "tracks" in the high schools, eliminating mathematics from the list of required high-school subjects, directing that pupils do their homework not at home but in the classroom. When infantile paralysis delayed opening of the schools this fall, he staged an education-by-radio stunt. Last week Superintendent Johnson came out with the most spectacular and revolutionary decree he has yet handed down.

The curriculum of Chicago's 37 high schools will be reorganized over a five-year period, he said, so that eventually 80% of the courses they offer will be vocational instead of 80% academic. This means that only a small proportion of Chicago's 130,000 high-school pupils will still be studying exclusively college preparatory subjects. Dr. Johnson declared the schools will try to give students "what they want," but he estimated 80 to 90% will want some vocational training. These will continue to get instruction in a few basic academic subjects, such as English. To make possible this revolutionary shift in the curriculum, Dr. Johnson announced these contemplated steps: 1) Next to all high schools will be built factories and workshops for industrial training. 2) New technical schools and trade schools will be built. 3) The technical high-school course will be three instead of four years. 4) Trade schools will have a 12-month school year. 5) As they retire, resign or die, one-half of Chicago's 4,338 academic high-school teachers will be replaced by vocational teachers. 6) Only temporary (noncompetitive) appointments will be made where academic teachers are needed. Day after Superintendent Johnson's extraordinary announcement, the Board of Education began to carry out his unique plan by establishing qualifications for vocational teachers, appointing supervisors of teacher training and vocational education, directing that the 12-month year for trade schools begin next February.

Reason for his sweeping program, unprecedented in the U. S., is that only 6% of Chicago high-school students go to college, explained Dr. Johnson. The rest are ''now being turned out with nothing that fits them to earn a living." But the crowning argument of the superintendent of Chicago's schools, which have seen payless paydays and closed schoolhouses, are still in the financial doldrums, was this: The Federal Government, under the Smith-Hughes act, will pay half the cost of vocational instruction, a boon not enjoyed by academic education.

Had it not been handed down as a ukase by an educator with two strikes against him, Superintendent Johnson's plan might have won kudos, for educators are well aware that vocational education is the neglected child of U. S. schooling. But Dr. Johnson's critics leaped upon his plan with both feet. The Chicago Teachers Union charged: "The proposal smacks more of communism or fascism than of Americanism. ... It is the old Prussian system which shunted the children of common people into vocational schools from which no further advance was possible." University of Chicago's, noted Professor Charles Hubbard Judd snapped: "This has an odor of striking familiarity. . . . The whole scheme smacks of spoils politics." And Dr. John A. Lapp, who wrote the Smith-Hughes act, declared it was not true the U. S. would pay half the cost of an expanded vocational program, pointed out the Federal allotment to Chicago was currently limited to $120,000. to which the State adds $120,000. "Only the wizardry of an Einstein," said he, "can explain how $240,000 can grow into a revolution of the entire Chicago school system. In fact, the whole announcement looks like the day dream of a paid publicity man. . . ."

Superintendent Johnson retorted he would go ahead with his plan "regardless of misinterpretations by noncitizens of Chicago and small local pressure groups." But the storm over the proposed reorganization of Chicago's schools was suddenly stilled this week when, after a year's illness, Dr. Johnson's 41-year-old wife died.

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