Textbooks Brought to Book

Last week, as U. S. educators gathered for their big annual conventions, the educational air was heavy with storm clouds. In Philadelphia, where 4,000 Progressive Educators met, and in Atlantic City, where 12,000 school administrators prepared to meet, delegates felt it coming. Many had already felt squalls in their home towns. Before the week was out, the Big Blow broke.

Textbooks have long been a storm centre in U. S. schools. Biggest row was in 1928-1931, when the Federal Trade Commission found that the public-utility industry had authored many a school text. Then businessmen took a beating. Last week it was the educators' turn.

Increasingly popular in U. S. high schools in the last ten years have been social science texts which purport to give pupils a "realistic" view of the U. S. way of life. New Dealish in tone, they are critical of big business, cry out against unequal distribution of wealth and unequal opportunities in the U. S. Few years ago businessmen, alarmed at what sounded like undermining of the U. S. system of private enterprise, began to protest. They attacked particularly a series of 20 books written by mild-mannered, white-haired Professor Harold Ordway Rugg of Columbia University's Teachers College.

By last fall superpatriots, led by Merwin K. Hart, president of the New York State Economic Council, had ousted Dr. Rugg's books from a number of smalltown schools (TIME, Sept. 9), had got them banished entirely from the Georgia list. At a hearing before the Georgia Board of Education, a State police captain pointed a finger at Professor Rugg, cried: "There sits the ringmaster of the Fifth Columnists in America, financed by the Russian government."

Meanwhile the National Association of Manufacturers decided to make a thorough examination of social science texts. It hired for the job Dr. Ralph West Robey, onetime financial editor of the New York Post, now an assistant professor of banking at Columbia and columnist for Newsweek. Dr. Robey was a member of Franklin Roosevelt's Brain Trust in 1932, of Alfred Landon's in 1936, has been a high Tory since. Black-haired, handsome, he sleeps in a bed about 14 feet long ("The Plantation"), which he likes to show off to visitors.

To make sure that his study was unbiased, Dr. Robey hired as assistants a liberal, a conservative and a Marxist (Vladimir D. Kazakevich, an editor of the Stalinist quarterly Science and Society). They waded through some 600 social science texts (90% of those used in U. S. high schools), excerpting passages to show the authors' views on 1) the U. S. form of government, 2) free business enterprise.

Educators quickly took alarm. Said 14 Harvard facultymen: "In the books will appear many statements to which any reader with special interests will inevitably take exception. We hold that this ought to be the case. . . . Our schools need challenge and . . . the vigor of intellectual controversy." Replied the N. A. M.: "The aim was . . . merely to determine the facts. . . . The public will have a factual basis upon which to judge what, if anything, should be done."

The thunderheads might have passed right over last week's conventions had it not been for one man. He was Teachers College's astute, publicity-wise Professor Clyde R. Miller, director of the three-year-old Institute for Propaganda Analysis, whose avowed chief aim is to teach U. S. schoolchildren to detect propaganda. Mr. Miller was irked by an attack on the Institute in the Saturday Evening Post by Red-baiting Benjamin Stolberg, who called Mr. Miller a leftist and charged that until recently the Institute bulletins followed the Communist party line. Accordingly, as the educators' conventions opened, he issued a report announcing that his bulletins (which have criticized N. A. M. propaganda) were used in 3,000 U. S. schools, reached 1,000,000 pupils. New York Times Reporter Benjamin Fine, a friend of Mr. Miller, wrote a story about this report that appeared on the Times's front page.

To keep his story simmering, next day Reporter Fine went to interview N. A. M.'s Dr. Robey. Dr. Robey accused the Institute of fostering a growing skepticism and ultra-critical attitude on the part of many students and teachers. He added: "Let's teach the pupils something about the principles of democracy or private

Samples of teaching critical of U. S. institutions cited by Professor Ralph West Robey from textbooks used in U. S. high schools:

Tycoons. The third quarter of the 19th Century saw the emergence of a wealth-controlling element in the population that was later to be a serious threat to the full realization of democratic dreams. . . . Cunning, ruthlessness, fanatical love of money, scorn of the mind and spirit and an unqualified contempt for law and ethics in the face of limitless opportunities were beginning to convert simple men into oil kings, money kings, lumber kings, real estate magnates, traction kings and into numerous captains of industry. . . . A free press has never been fully realized. As the nation grew in population and . . . wealth the press became a capitalistic undertaking.--Our Changing Government, by Samuel Steinberg and Lucian Lamm, New York City high-school teachers.

Labor. Our modern, large-scale, highly specialized industry has meant for some persons dull, monotonous conditions of work that "sear the soul of man." . . . Even if these unfortunates were themselves entirely to blame for their conditions (and they are not always to blame) they could hardly help feeling restless and envious.--The Story of Human Progress, by Leon C. Marshall, American University.

Business. Such questionable practices as dishonest and misleading advertising, watering stock, evading taxes, squeezing out competitors, forcing down wages below a decent level, distributing shoddy commodities and bribing or otherwise controlling political officers are frequently viewed as good business methods. . . . The great fortunes of our day have, for the most part, been built . . . on the blood and sweat of those who have been less fortunate. The methods of modern racketeers and gangsters are not as different from those of big business as many might suppose.--Society and Its Problems, by G. S. Dow, State Teachers College, Springfield, Mo.

Constitution. A secret society called the Sons of Liberty was formed [before the Revolution] to oppose the Stamp Act. Most of the members came from the laboring class. . . . At that time, as well as later, we find that the upper classes were cautious and slow to act. . . . The fathers of the Constitution feared "too much democracy." They were afraid of what the mass of people, who did not possess property, would do to the few who did.--America's March Toward Democracy, by Harold O. Rugg.

enterprise before we start to tell them it is all run by a bunch of crooks and is no good." To the delighted reporter, Robey then proceeded to announce his conclusions from his textbook study:

> A "substantial proportion" of the texts were critical of the U. S. form of government and held up to contempt the system of private enterprise.

> Most of them were poorly written lacking in scholarship.

> Many belittled the accomplishments of U. S. democracy and emphasized its defects.

> A few were downright "communistic." Dr. Robey illustrated his conclusions with quotations.

Next day the thunderheads crashed open for fair. In Washington, the Dies Committee announced that it had been investigating the Institute for Propaganda Analysis for nearly two years, found some of its officers (president: Harvard's Professor Kirtley F. Mather) "frankly left-wing." In Manhattan, a committee of eminent educators, headed by Columbia's Professor Wesley C. Mitchell, was formed by the American Committee for Democracy and Intellectual Freedom to examine the text books attacked by Professor Robey. And in Philadelphia at a P. E. A. meeting over which Professor Miller presided, Professor Rugg and his critics unsheathed their swords. Cried Professor Rugg, glaring at the Economic Council's Merwin Hart: "These men are . . . enemies, enemies of our children. Mr. Hart speaks as a representative of business, I as a representative of the American people."

Retorted Mr. Hart: "I reject the socialistic viewpoint contained in the Rugg books. . . . All that I can see in this haze is that some of you want us to merge ourselves into an internationalistic, socialistic type of democracy."

This week the N. A. M. disclaimed Dr. Robey's premature pronouncements, said his views were strictly his own. Meanwhile his full report was at the printer's, complete with further quotations, and homebound educators knew they had not heard the last of it.

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