Plastic Minds

In Germany, Italy, Russia, schools are ruthlessly used by dictators to preach their own doctrines. The result is so effective that many an unconvinced parent dare not speak his opinions in his own home for fear that an overconvinced child may denounce him to the authorities. Last week a Purdue University professor, painstaking, blond Dr. Herman H. Remmers, gave a spectacular scientific demonstration of how effective propaganda might be made in U. S. schools.

In Princeton University's Public Opinion Quarterly, Psychologist Remmers reported on studies of the effects of propaganda on students in small high schools. First the students were asked to record their opinions on public questions, then given a dose of propaganda, then retested.

After hearing three lessons, lasting less than 15 minutes, on the advantages of conservation, students swung sharply in favor of Government control of farming. After a five-minute paper on murder, a group swung in favor of capital punishment. After reading a speech by Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins advocating social insurance, the students favored it much more strongly than before.

More complicated were reactions to discussion of labor unions. Groups, most of whom favored unions, heard a paper disparaging unions. Result was a marked shift to a less favorable attitude toward unions, but the lesson also split the groups sharply into two camps. This outcome Professor Remmers attributed to the explosiveness of the subject.

Some of Dr. Remmers more significant discoveries:

P: Propaganda had as big an effect on children of high as of low I. Q.

P: Tests made two months after the administration of propaganda showed that some of it had worn off.

P: Tests made six months afterwards showed, however, that much of its effect was unimpaired. A method of "incidental learning" proved, however, to be more effective than propaganda. Pupils in Catholic parochial schools, who had a system of self-government, proved to be more stern toward violators of the law than those who did not.

Said Professor Remmers of his findings: "Their implications in a democratic form of society are too obvious to need elaboration."

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