Textbooks Under Fire

by VIRGIL M. ROGERS

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No CLAIRVOYANCE is required to see why the question of textbooks in America’s schools has become a burning issue today. In this accelerated age, living as we do with the precarious sense of suspended time bombs, it is not surprising that many people experience a panic-stricken urge to hurry the educational process along by pinning the student’s thoughts down to those which are “acceptable” and “safe.” This age is constantly confronted with the power of the word. Even the least analytical among us feels in some way that the battles of the future will be fought in the minds of men; the really winning weapons will be words, and behind and dictating the words, ideas.

There has come about, therefore, in place of the almost reverential faith which earlier Americans had in education, a new sense of education’s power, for evil as well as for good. People have come to feel — and rightly — that it would be well to take a long look at what “they” are teaching our children “before it is too late.

Obviously the teacher and the textbook are the two main factors in a child’s formal education. As such they are bound to come under special scrutiny; indeed in recent attacks upon the schools they have been referred to as the two “main targets.” One result has been the advocacy of special loyalty oaths for teachers, particularly in California. In the case of textbooks, one result to be observed is the springing up of local textbook reviewing committees, along with the adoption, on the state level, of measures to deal with certain types of undesirability, notably and almost exclusively subversion. Appointment of a Commission on Subversive Textbooks by the New York State Board of Regents, announced December 31, 1951, is an example. Adopted under section 704 of the Education Law, the Regents’ resolutions provided machinery for the examining of any textbooks alleged to contain subversive matter in the event any person made written complaint “specifying such matter or statements in detail.” Upon the national scene have been launched such publications as the lately suspended Educational Reviewer, put out through the Committee on Education of the Conference of American Small Business Organizations (CASBO) and described by the House of Representatives’ Select Committee on Lobbying Activities as “an ingenious contribution to the encyclopedia of pressure tactics.” Obviously biased and inflammatory, the Reviewer purported to serve as a guide in textbook judgment and selection.

In some ways the textbook makes an even more satisfactory target than the teacher. It is the clay pigeon that cannot fly even after the publisher and the author who set it up have moved on to the chronicling of changes which have taken place since the manuscript went to press. One question which students must be taught faithfully to ask concerning any book of “factual material is “What is the copyright date? ” They must of course know enough social history to be able to interpret the date’s significance. For though many people feel that it is the book which influences the attitudes of the age, certainly an equally good case, if not a better one, can be made lor the opposite view that it is the age which most influences the textbook.

For a number of reasons I have come to focus this discussion chiefly upon public school texts used during the grades through high school, The bulk of my own professional experience has been as a public school superintendent. Further than that, however, these public school texts will lie, opened or unopened, on the living-room tables of the majority of American homes; they will be examined by many parents; most important of all, their pages will be pored over by at least 80 per cent of the nation’s children.

The college or the private school texts enjoy no such opportunity for scrutiny though some of them have come in for sporadic criticism. In general they are so far removed from the home that comparatively few parents are aware of what they are. Besides, the college students who use the books are more nearly adult and therefore presumed to be less vulnerable to subversion.

For it is subversion, however defined, which is the great contemporary fear. Therefore it is subversion which has occupied the most space in recent sparring over textbooks. It. logically follows that the most concentrated attention would be given to books in the social science field, even more narrowly to those dealing with Russia, with our own country, and with our country’s position in international affairs. Certain charges have been made, words quoted and misquoted, fears aroused.

This has been going on specifically since the late 1940s. It is fair, I think, to say that a convenient landmark was the appearance on July 15, 1940, of Vol. 1, No. 1, of the Educational Reviewer, Usually unsolicited, the Reviewer was widely circulated. The first number contained a “review” of Magruder’s American Government, replete not only with misquotation and quotations out of context but even with some which had been baldly manufactured. When Fulton Lewis, Jr., used the “review” to fill a broadcast, fear jolted people into attack upon Magruder’s in cities as far apart as Portland (Oregon), New Haven, Houston, and Indianapolis.

It is not my purpose to detail the history of recent attacks upon textbooks in America or to provide systematic refutation of charges leveled against them, though some measure of both approaches is bound to appear in the discussion. These valuable and necessary works have already been done by a number of competent agencies, notably the Parent-Teacher Association, the National Education Association (perhaps most especially by means of its Commission for the Defense of Democracy Through Education), and the American Textbook Publishers Institute. Such wellknown newspaper “education editors” as Fred M. Hechinger and Benjamin Fine have written out of their thoughtful interest, as have such novelists as Robert Shaplen and John Hersey.

That so much has already been written is good to know. For, having watched events from the perspective of national committees and having had also to deal with them on a day-to-day basis in the community where I was employed as superintendent of schools, I have come to the conclusion that communication is the crying need in all our attempts to solve problems. That of course includes listening, which parents are sometimes surprised to find a teacher listing as something to be taught.

It includes also definition. This means no mere recitation of a book-given definition, but the forcing of the individual mind to hew out its own honest phrasing for those large concepts which with such loose case we call Truth, Democracy, Justice, Freedom, the American Way. And Subversion. Then we can all rightly use the familiar names because we shall not be using them loosely.

The purpose of this article is not indoctrination, nor even defense of what is commonly called “the educator’s point of view.” (Incidentally “educators” differ as widely in their points of view as do lawyers, housewives, or ministers. The purpose of this article is communication.

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IHE bulk of America’s educators were shocked that the hoary and venerable Magruder’s, which had so weathered the competition as to have run into some thirty-odd editions, could have become overnight the object of attack. It had been so widely used for so long that it must have been generally available for the checking of quotations before anyone joined the hue and cry against it!

Indeed, to the educator perhaps the most heartbreaking aspect of these experiences has been the glaring evidence that we have been ineffectual in the past. Many of these trigger-happy critics were the products of our schools. We thought we had done a better job in teaching that a devotion to scholarly truth demands weighing and checking before the rush into action. To face the fact that people trained in our own schools should see no difference between Magruder’s definition of democracy as quoted by the Reviewer and as actually appearing in the book was to know bitter disillusion. Magruder, said the Reviewer, defined democracy as “that form of government in which the sovereign power is in the hands of the people collectively.”At this point Magruder had a comma and this addition: “and is expressed by them either directly or indirectly through elected representatives.” (Italics mine.)

Personal shocks were experienced too by many teachers and school administrators in their individual communities. How many parallels there were, large and small, to my own amazed encounter with the obviously laid trap — as though an enemy were to be snared — no one can even guess. Conversations with fellow superintendents have convinced me that my experience was fairly representative.

The hour was about 10.30 P.M. A Parent-Teacher Council meeting had just closed. Surely the day’s work could reasonably be thought finished. I was called into a “committee meeting” to which I found a prominent professional man had invited also a newspaper editor, certain school board members, and a small group of citizens. Only the school people seemed unaware of what was to happen.

I was presented with several books alleged to be in use in one of the junior high schools. Their gay jackets indicated how recently they had come from the publishers. The “committee’s” air of expectancy told me that most people present had already examined the books.

They were not familiar to me. I was on the spot. A leaf-through revealed that they were mostly about Russia and dated back to the period when Russia was our ally. A subsequent check turned up the fact that they had been the gift of a highly respected organization in the county, presented with the purpose of promoting understanding of the Russian people.

Had the local press been irresponsibly hunting red headlines or had the board of education been less stable, the sequel to that late evening “committee meeting” would doubtless have been diflerent. The fact that nothing particular happened — except that a “complete confidence” vote was adopted by the school board at its regular meeting a week later — did not decrease my shocked sense of the significance of the encounter as revealing one frightening aspect of the tenor of the times.

It was in no way disturbing that the books should have been questioned. The shock came with the evidence of the careful forging ol the steel to build 1 he trap, the evidence that someone should have thought a trap necessary. Time had been consumed in making surreptitious trips to the junior high library, procuring copies of the books lrom publishers, circulating these about town until the trap could at last be sprung at the “committee meeting.” All this when nothing was necessary except a simple call upon the superintendent of schools.

Typical of complaints about various books, each complaint embodying a point in someone’s definition of what constitutes the subversive, arc the following, quoted at random: —

“That history says wars don’t settle anything. They oughtn’t to teach our children anything against building up our military strength.”

“That book is communistic. It advocates medical aid and hot lunch programs.”

“Are they so hard up for illustrations that they have to put in pictures of strikers on a picket line? There’s enough ol that in the papers without getting it in school.”

“One of the questions at the end of this chapter is, ‘Can you think of any disadvantages to the capitalistic system? ‘ They ought to be showing our kids the advantages.”

“It says here that TVA has reduced flooding and erosion and helped preserve the state’s natural resources. Our kids are likely to get the idea that that sort of thing is desirable.”

“Why do they show those pictures of city slums? That’s what makes communists out of people.

“I object to this unfair attack upon advertising.”

“IIow are we ever going to get rid of the United Nations if the textbooks keep playing it up?

“There’s too much in here about equality of the races.”

Almost all the textbooks which inspired the above objections were attempting merely to chronicle events which had already taken place in our national life or to add still another detail to the picture of our present complexly heterogeneous culture. They were not advocating anything. Rut the person scrutinizing a textbook with a slanted opinion wants any mention of his particular anathema to be aceompanled by denunciation. Conversely the specific denunciation which ho desires would bring a swift protest from some advocate ol the other side.

Should an actual case of subversive text be found, however, the duty ol the finder to report it is clear — first to proper school authorities; then, il no action is taken, to the FBI or to state agencies empowered to deal with such matters. So many are the checks and balances employed in the production of textbooks, though, that, it has been convincingly argued that a truly subversive textbook is a near impossibility. There must be significance in the fact — and I made the most recent check possible before sending this article to press — that not one complaint has been registered to cause New Aorks Regents Commission on Subversive textbooks to come together since that body was appointed three years ago.

Subversion aside, the textbook author and his publisher must feel at times that it is an impossible task to steer a course clear of all the many points on which readers may be offended. Often objections are made to books dealing with sex education. Christian Scientists may easily be unhappy over chapters describing progress in medicine. Quakers may judge that a book puts too much emphasis on the nation’s wars. Patriotic, religious, civic, and fraternal groups often complain that a given writer has not accorded them their real place in history. Businessman and laborer may read from a different viewpoint, as may scientist and artist.

Various sectional provincialisms are also brought to bear upon the judging of texts. Act publishers, being businessmen, have to hope for wide sales all over the country. Maybe the eyes of lexas find that a writer depends too much on the map to show how big Texas really is. Even now any text which refers to the Civil War as anything except the War Between the States will pick up no sales in many a Southern community.

It is true that a person would not be likely to find in use today books which go to such extremes of sectional astigmatism as the History of South C aioUna which — without the least question from my elders!—I studied as a boy. I nfortunately the title page is missing with its notation of date and author. But the time was far enough in the past for the words to strike us now as quaint when they assert that “Lincoln was elected by that party in the North that was most unfriendly and unfair to the South. . . . The people of the South saw that as president he would make matters worse instead of better. . . . President Lincoln had sent the vessels to open the war and there they were at the mouth of the harbor. . . . Lincoln begins the war.” Not until after I had become a man did a reading of Abraham Lincoln’s moving inaugural address enable me emotionally to return to the I nion.

The problems of the textbook writer today have increased several hundredfold over those of the forgotten author of my South Carolina history. In the first place, today’s book is more likely to have writers than a writer. That is true of a particular junior high history on my desk as I write. Two authors are listed on the title page (professors in geographically far apart universities); the Study Skills Development is by a third person and the audio-visual material by a fourth (these two public school people); the annotated reading lists and the index (running to twelve pages, three columns to a page) are by still a fifth person. Yet even this complex lineup gives no real hint of researchers used, stenographic help employed, and conferences necessary between authors and publishers.

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WHEN finally all these separate labors have been merged so that the book can appear under a title on a publisher’s list, many obstacles yet remain between it and its destination, the classroom. Chief among these are questions of who is to choose and adopt and who is to pay the bill. Free textbooks are furnished in some or all grades in thirty states, while the other eighteen states have local option in the matter. Many districts in these permissive states choose, of course, not to assume the responsibility of free textbooks. Whichever plan a board operates under, members are bound to be cautious about book changes. If a board pays the textbook bill directly, they must consider too frequent change extravagant, though it has been estimated that only about 3 per cent of the nation’s annual Public school expenditure during 1052-53 went for texts and all other instructional materials. Even where parents and students pay the bill, change will bring complaints to board members that students can no longer buy and sell their books at second hand.

Most spectacularly, however, the lag between production and actual use results from cumbersome methods of select ion and adoption. This is dist ressing not only to author and publisher but to school people, as well. Much of the delay would seem to be unavoidable, since snap judgments can prove expensive in terms of both money and educational advantage. Often it is thought advisable to give actual classroom tryout to books under consideration before final adoption commitments.

But varying methods used by different states exhibit opportunities for appalling wastes of time and money. Even the ugly specter of political graft has been known to raise its head under the systems of adoption by state commissions and state boards. These groups are usually appointed by the governors of the several states. One can understand how in populous states textbook contracts add up to big business. County commissions and local boards of education, which constitute the legally designated adopting authority in many states, seldom face temptation to graft, because the amounts of money involved are relatively small. They are thus not so likely to be subject to undue pressure tactics from competing publishers who must make every possible effort to get their texts placed on the more profitable state listings.

Examination of adoption practices over a tenyear period shows many states to be liberalizing their procedures. For example, in 1936 exclusive basal adoptions were required in both the elementary grades and the high school in Alabama. These adoptions were made at one sitting and for a sixyear period! Ten years later, adoptions were being staggered, and a new law permitted the board to use its discretion in the adoption of either a. multiple or a single list based on committee recommendat ions.

What would seem to be the best method? Local adoptions are, I believe, much to be preferred over state because they provide little opportunity for politics to enter into choices and because state uniformity stifles local initiative and “freezes” curricula. The occasional mistake which is bound to occur is limited in influence and more easily corrected. My judgment is that the best, we have is that method whereby teachers and administrators working together in committees make careful selection of texts to recommend for adoption. These may well be studied by a PTA text book committee, or committees, in cooperation with school officials. Publishers’ agents are glad to meet with such groups by appointment and can be of great help. Where it is feasible, public hearings may even be held. But the board of education is the legally constituted adoptive authority and its members should be given time and opportunity for a study of the books. In a situation of mutual trust and respect between hoard members and school people such a system works very well, each person being fully aware of his responsibilities and his limitations both legally and professionally. This method usually results in the choice of superior texts.

In general it may be said that any procedure which leads lay groups seriously to examine textbooks and to study related problems has something to recommend it. The practical working out of the textbook reviewing committee is, however, difficult. It requires at times unlimited patience. Often even devoted PTA members discover that the task is much bigger than they had thought, and they fall by the wayside. One great problem is the appalling present-day competition for people’s time in the usual community. Narrowness of experience in the textbook field and unfamiliarity with the psychology of learning arc other drawbacks to the functioning of the lay committee, though a spirit of sincerely open-minded inquiry can do wonders in remedying these. The dogged mistrust with which it is now the fashion to view the “professional”—in contrast to the way his word was accepted as law in a former time, blindly— also may consume valuable time and hamper a committee.

The time element makes a further important point. Once a textbook is adopted, by whatever authority, it must be ordered far enough ahead for the publisher to make it available for the children when schools open in September. It is easy to see how two years may have elapsed during this period of selecting and recommending and adopting. The lag is sometimes so great that a text needs revision even before it gets into the classroom. II the general public could know how many pupils are today using seriously outdated texts, often without the counterbalance which a superior teacher could provide, thev would be overwhelmed with amazement. In systems where subjects are rotated for textbook approval, each subject coming up maybe only once in five years, some books have been known to be in use after twenty years. Science courses in particular can suffer from this sort of lag as their materials stand m need of almost constant revision.

Such revision differs in kind from that which change in national attitudes seems now spectacularly to demand, ‘t et even this attitude-based revision is no new thing among us. The staid A ew England Primer itsell found, by and by, that the letter “K” could no longer appropriately be illustrated with such salute to English royalty as

Perhaps haste lest someone make accusations of Toryism was responsible for the awkwardness of the revision into

But if our texts must be revised not only on the basis of outdated facts but also w ith each shift of allitude toward one or another of our allies or enemies, pity the poor publisher. Pity ourselves, too, for how shall we then be different except in degree from our erstwhile ally who, with a straight face, describes Gandhi as a “conservative secretly aiding “the capitalists,” and who purges away all references to her own great men wlum they fall out of favor, as though they had never lived ?

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ON WHAT points may textbooks legitimately be criticized and judged? Format, binding, typography, type of paper, general physical attractiveness are all important aside from subject matter. Date and edition, index and table of contents should be examined, maps and other illustrations assessed. But subject matter is of prime importance, lias the author sound background in his subject ? A hat is the publisher’s reputation for careful planning and editing of textbooks? Is the cost out of line with that of comparable works in the sairtc field? Is the material well organized and interestingly presented i

The final and overriding criteria, however, must always be suitability of the works for the students who will use them and approximation to the teacher’s purpose in a given course. Does the book give scope to individual differences and will it help a teacher provide lor those in her classroom? Is it in keeping with a schools philosophy? Clearly, for example, such a series as the Christian Social History Series (William H. Sadlier, Inc.), in use in many New York Homan Catholic parochial schools, would be unsuited for a public school classroom. Where as many as twenty-one different religious affiliations have been known to be represented in ;i grade grouping of thirty-two children, such section headings as’ “The Spaniards Brought the True Faith to the New World” and “The Blessed Virgin Appears to an Indian” (from How Our Nation Began, Sadlier, 1054) would be inappropriate; yet, attractively illustrated and mindful of the imaginative appeal of story detail to children, (his series would seem admirably suited to the purposes of the schools in which it is being used.

Not all church-sponsored schools feel that their purpose requires special texts. At friends Seminary in New York City, choice of text is the responsibility solely of the teacher. No particular religious criteria are involved.

It must have become evident to the reader that the term textbook means difierent things to diflerent people. Here as always we must be concerned with definition. Publishers and school officials feel certain that many complaints against textbooks stem from outmoded or imperfect definit ion hence mistaken notions of how the text will be used. To older generations “the text,” “what, it said in the book,” was all in all. Book material often was to be learned unquestioninglv, word by word, and regurgitated m like fashion at testing time.

Educators know that in all too many of today’s classrooms this antiquated use of the textbook still prevails. Yet the modern teacher encourages students to challenge their authors, knowing full well how ill-equipped will be any citizen of the luture who believes everything he sees in print. A teacher may use many “texts chiefly as references so that students may learn to check one against another. She believes that she cannot afford slavishly to rely upon one book to “tell all. Some school systems, indeed, feel that it is desirable to develop much of their own instructional material. Discussion of this practice — which has much to recommend it under certain circumstances—is outside the scope of this article. The reader is referred to the Saturday Review Symposium, April 19, 1952, for a short discussion of this point of view by Superintendent Gilbert S. Willey of Winnetka, Illinois.

Random inquiry about definitions easily bears out this confusion as to what textbooks are for. The high school student (New York State) who considers his text “what we have to learn to pass the Regents” is perilously close to the older view. The teacher who would merely answer obliquely that “some of my best friends are textbooks” is giving a definition to warm a publisher’s heart. For to the author and the publisher, the textbook is perhaps foremost a teacher’s aid, an extra teacher who will help her along. Publishers work conscientiously to provide an increasingly lush supply of aids and suggestions, even detailed manuals on how the books may be used, and trained representatives with whom problems may be discussed. For many a beginning teacher, isolated and without consulting service available, these can be true lifesavers.

Yet all sources of opinion have some measure of importance in the judgment of textbooks. Certainly the child’s view ought not to be ignored. The parent who manages with a fair degree of consistency to be around during homework time is likely 1o pick up some reactions without too much difficulty. Parents’ own views may be colored by what they observe of effects upon their children as much as by actual examination of the book.

“What seems important to us,” writes Mrs. Barbara Sargent Turpin of Hollywood, Florida, in the Saturday Review (April 10, 1952), “is that the materials presented be of such color and quality as to hold the child’s interest and stimulate an eagerness to develop the subject further. . . . Through parent-teacher work I have worked for and with the boys and girls. . . . Their wealth of knowledge and their retention of it astounds me. Surely the schools are providing good textbooks and are putting them to good use or this could not be so.”

As a member of a carefully conceived and faithfully executed parent association study group, Mrs. Turpin concluded, as did some of her associates, that ”the task of choosing textbooks is best left to people in the teaching profession, who understand how those textbooks can be used and the purposes for which they are chosen.” Certainly the well-trained experienced teacher, especially in a system where she has the benefit of democratic committee work in her field and of curriculum consulting service, ought to have reasoned views when it comes to a choice of books. Such a person is likely to feel inadequate, however, to judge a text in another field, knowing so well the professional technicalities involved.

beast knowing of all, perhaps, because normally the farthest removed from the source at which a book is to be used, would be the hard-driven legislator asked by some constituent to pass judgment on a book. Yet even such legislators can sometimes be led to see the hazards of hasty action. Such was the case when the Montgomery Advertiser joined battle “spiritedly” and “ repet itiously” against what it referred to as Alabama’s “book-toasting” Act 888, which followed a Birmingham real-estate group’s attempt to censor a book entitled The Challenge of Democracy. Finally, on March 6, 1954, the Advertiser could announce editorially that “Act 888, the schoolbook labeling law, is now a storm tossed derelict, dismasted and down by the bow,” with the bill’s author admitting that it would be impossible to enforce. Yet originally there had been but one dissenting vote against adoption of the “preposterous bill” to “require that every one of the millions of books used in Alabama’s schools (as well as the official reports of the state superintendent!) be labeled to show whether the author and those in the bibliographies are communists, followers of the communist line, or socialists.” (Italics mine.)

The Advertiser’s intelligent and courageous campaign against what it conceived to be curtailment of basic American liberties is only one of a number of encouraging indications on the educational horizon. Other newspapers have been comparably courageous and helpful, notably in Tennessee. Other encouraging signs have been the clearing of Magruder’s American Government and retaining and restoring it after the initial attacks in Houston, New Haven, Trumbull County, Ohio, and other places. To the educator it is especially heartening to have been joined by lawyers, newspapermen, novelists and poets, manufacturers, Legionnaires, Congressmen, and cartoonists.

Not the least gratifying event has been the disappearance from the scene of the textbook fray, for want of further financial backing, of the Educational Reviewer. Perhaps it would be too optimistic to take the Reviewer’s demise for a convenient landmark to indicate that the tide in textbook attacks has turned, as earlier we took its initial appearance as a mark of the attacks’ beginning. Tempted, I shall remain cautious, and merely point out the fact that the Reviewer has disappeared.

Mr. Roy E. Larsen, president of Time Inc., strikes a heartening note in his foreword to the 62-page Ruml report issued early in December, 1954. This report was made for the National Citizens Commission for the Public Schools after three and a half years’ study on the problems of “Financing Public Schools in the Decade Ahead.” Says (Mr. Larsen, who, as head of the Citizens Commission since its founding in 1949, has been strategically placed to note shifting trends in national attitudes: “... we have seen many gratifying signs of progress in the relationship of citizens to their schools. . . . Criticism of public education is neither as widespread nor as uninformed as it once was.”

If, as Mr. Larsen implies, adult citizenship education has been proceeding apace while adults have been busy examining their children’s education in the classrooms, this trying period of attack and attempted censorship will not have been in vain. Through it, certainly, school people have learned much about public relations and the need for interpretation and communication. Many school administrators are learning not to dash for the nearest exit at the first outcry against a “subversive” textbook; instead they will invite the public in so that the matter may be examined together with due attention to copyright date and checks of quotations. The hope is, of course, that among the group which turns up for the discussion there will be a goodly sampling of stable and relatively unbiased citizens along with the hotheads who are bound 1o appear.

Citizens groups, unaffiliated politically and not afraid to meet their convictions halfway, stand high among the current constructive forces in this country. The dedicated layman is one of America’s greatest contributions to the world. The time that many members of the 1TA are willing to give working for better coordination between the home and the school — fathers increasingly, as well as mothers now — is a never-ceasing wonder to school people who find in the dedication of these groups some of their own best inspiration.

American educators like to believe that at this mid-century point education in our country shows signs of at least reaching toward maturity. We like to think that we are now so sure not only of our destiny as a nation but of our essential characteristics as a people that we can at last cease, not without due reverence, to define education in European terms, and without apology seek an education indigenous to us. Declaration signer benjamin Rush set down this ideal for the new nation’s education in his Thoughts: “Education should be indigenous to the United Slates; not a. copy of any foreign country’s system. Perhaps we are at last making perceptible progress toward fulfilling his dream. Therefore good textbooks written by mature people, in the hands of maturely intelligent teachers, published by businessmen who do not scorn to he educators as well — were never more needed than today.

These will not he texts which tell students what to think by following some party line, even one of anti-Communism. I have heard complaints from students which would lead me to believe that too much and too obvious condemnation of Cominunism can fail its mark. Their teachers, say some students, seem to feel they have to start in the very first day of school underscoring every relerenco to Russia with statements of how undesirable is her system ("Of course in Russia you can t do that!" ) and how desirable ours. “ When it s all so darned obvious!” A teacher might fairly be pardoned for wishing to make her own position clear through the well-known device of repetition, lest she be suspected of “subversion.” Remembering adults who could not he convinced that G. S. Counts’s translation of I Want to Be Like Stalin was not presented with a view toward making Communist converts, I find it understandable if a teacher dealing with immature and often extremely literal minds feels the need of pinning on a label every now and then to make sure no one misses the point. But the thing can be overdone!

To It’ll an American child — the inheritor of Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Walt Whitman, and Abraham Lincoln — what he must think is to deny him his inheritance. Certainly any indigenously American education cannot, above all, do that. Would not such a perversion also show lack of faith that in the free market place of ideas “our way” will be able to hold its own? Are not our children discerning enough to see the discrepancies between history that glorifies our dissenters — the Pilgrim Fathers, Roger Williams, William Penn, the signers of the Declaration of Independence— and immediate attempts at censorship and stifling of inquiry?

The staggering task of the nation’s educators today has become that of educating our children for the making of choices which to be intelligent have to be based upon carefully wrought definitions. No fear need then be entertained that they will not make their unique contributions toward the solving of the nation’s problems. They may even do something about such queer inconsistencies of their elders as the desire to have their children spend spare time reading “the classics” while they themselves coin the term “egghead” to be used as a reproach against the “intellectual.”

Many viewers must have been touched, as I was, at the response given by a Southern high school boy on a telecast last fall. Asked by newsmen why he had not joined the mob to protest the end of segregation in his school, he answered that he had learned in his school that there were better ways of solving problems and he had chosen to wait for them. It is not lightly said that upon this ability to make intelligent choices all that is uniquely the American Way depends.

In the educator’s lug task of preparing the young citizen to make his choices, Americas improved — and improving — text books will be of great help. Recognizing the familiar American impatience to get things accomplished quickly, I would urge the interested citizen to watch for the steady growth signs rather than for the miracle. So numerous and well-marked are these signs that even as he rushes by, he can easily see them if he will.

children. It will be written. The next article in this series will deal with the educational opportunities for gifted by Robert C. Wilson, Associate Professor of Psychology at Reed College and Director of Research for (lifted Child Project of the Portland, Oregon, Public Schools.