Quandary in Pasadena

Though he is one of the nation's ablest public schoolmen, red-faced, robust Willard Goslin, 51, has had his share of trouble in the last three or four years. In Minneapolis, as a superintendent of schools with "progressive" leanings, he fought in vain to win a bigger budget, finally quit in frustration over "the neglect and mistreatment of public education ... in Minneapolis" (TIME, May 3, 1948). Last week, as Pasadena's superintendent, Willard Goslin was deep in another row.

The row began only a few months after Goslin took over his $17,500-a-year job in 1948. Most Pasadenans conceded that their schools would need some streamlining, but some oldliners were hardly ready for the type of streamlining Goslin proposed. When he asked for pre-season teacher-training, his board voted it down as frivolous and too expensive. When he suggested that Pasadena set up summer-school camps, citizens howled that the scheme smacked of collectivism. When he backed a 50% boost in the school tax, Pasadena thundered "no" at the polls by a vote of 2 to 1.

Gallivanting? To some Pasadenans, Goslin could do nothing right. His trips to education conferences outside the city (as president of the American Association of School Administrators, he had to take several) were denounced as "gallivanting." His insistence that pupils go to the schools in their district zones infuriated some parents who liked to send their children to whatever schools suited them (i.e., those without Negroes or underprivileged children).

Meanwhile, other anti-Goslinites had been denouncing his reformed curriculum as too progressive. They organized a School Development Council, bought radio time to air their opposition. "There is far too much paint-daubing," cried the Pasadena Independent, "[and] far too little discipline." Many a Pasadena parent agreed: some were sincerely worried about the elimination of report cards in the lower grades (though that was a pre-Goslin innovation) and what seemed a lack of emphasis on the three Rs.

A fortnight ago Pasadena's board of education decided that the controversy had gone far enough. It sent a telegram to Goslin, attending a conference in Manhattan, asking for his resignation.

Riddled? Back in Pasadena to discuss the telegram with his school board last week, Superintendent Goslin was in a philosophic mood: "Whenever the properly elected representatives of the community demand my resignation," he said, "I regard it as mandatory to resign." His attitude suggested that as soon as he had reached a salary settlement with the board, he would resign as requested. But Pasadena was in for a surprise. For the first time, hundreds of citizens who had remained silent began writing and phoning their protests to the board. A group of businessmen and churchmen, led by wealthy Industrialist Philip S. Fogg, formed a Citizens' Action Committee in Goslin's behalf, packed a meeting of the board to demand that Goslin stay.

Meanwhile, anti-Goslinites were flocking to the hearings of the California State Senate Education Committee, which happened to be in town on a statewide investigation of Communism in the schools. Charged Pasadena Osteopath W. Ernest Brower, president of the anti-Goslin School Development Council: Pasadena's schools are riddled with Communism. Brower pointed to the soft-pedaling of classroom competition among students and to the inclusion of sex education in biology and hygiene courses.

Superintendent Goslin also had a chance to address the committee. Said he: "I have never seen a community in America where the school system was better than its people wanted it to be. What the people want not only should govern, it does in fact govern . . . Here in Pasadena we are going through one of those typically American procedures to find out what we believe in and what we want."

At week's end, Willard Goslin had not yet resigned, and Pasadena was still trying to find out what it believed in and what it wanted.

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