Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1967. január-június (21. évfolyam, 1-26. szám)
1967-01-19 / 3. szám
12 AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZÓ — HUNGARIAN WORD Thursday, January 19, 1967 LABOR’S ROLE DISTORTED IN SCHOOL TEXTS by C. W. Fowler The teaching of American history at all levels —grade school, high school, college—almost entirely ignores the world of labor that the vast majority of American young people who will work for their living in factory or mill must face at the end of formal education. There are other big slices of American reality that are not taught in the history or social studies textbooks. One of the most obvious of these is the history of the struggles of the Negro people to find their way out of slavery and toward freedom in a white-dominated and mostly hostile social System. “ The réal role played by the native Americans who were here for hundreds of centuries before Columbus, Eric the Red or the Mayflower, is also skipped over, in the first place because the American Indian was massacred when he stood in the way of the white man’s land hunger, and also because almost every available record of the Indian culture*found here three centuries ago has. been either lost or destroyed. • > And finally, the struggle of American .wqmeri fbr their place in political and social life, the right to vote, to run for office, even the elementary right to own property after marriage—that too is almost totally neglected. Women are not considered full citizens in the history books. Glaring Gap r ‘ • The neglect, or deliberate avoidance, of any real treatment of the American working people and their struggles to organize unions for then- own protection is the most glaring of these four gaps in the teaching of the young in the U.S.A. The silence is heavy, almost as if some supercensor had decreed that the knowledge of what unions are for, what they do, and why workers belong to them must be forever hidden from the you,th who are going to need such knowledge most when they emerge from school or college into the world of work. These gaps in the teaching of history and social studies as offered to the youth of America have long been known to people involved in the labor movement. They are by far less well known to the rest of the public that entrusts the preparation of its children for the realities of life to the education system of our day. In a recently issued study report, ‘Labor in Learning,’ Will Scoggins has prepared a detailed survey of such teaching, and textbooks, in Los Angeles County of California, published in 1966 by the University of California, at Los Angeles (UCLA). It is a revealing document, and more than a little frightening to read. "Near Paradise' The author wastes no time in getting down to his thesis—that labor history and labor reality are simply not taught, or are so distorted, as to be grotesque in the world of today. This is what Scoggins has to say in his introduction on two main subjects: “American agriculture, in these pictures (from a high school social studies text) still springs from gently rolling fields of waving wheat. The pasture joining shows a peaceful herd of Jersey cows, placidly munching thick grass while being watched over by loyal, Lassie-like dogs. The farmer himself is seldom in evidence, and if he is, he is certainly not pictured in rows of stoop labor where men working with ant-like precision harvest the crops in the bountiful valleys of California, returning at night to their quarters to count their earning of, say, $7.15 (during the season). “Urban life is presented in neat ranch style homes on quiet, winding streets with immaculately trimmed lawns and a rainbow of flowers along the parkway. A cluster of merry white children are forever joining beautifully coiffured and eternally young mommies to wave goodby to white shirted and smiling daddies driving away in late model automobiles to work in spotless laboratories engaged in the creation of fantastic plastic appliances. “Daddy always returns to join his little family at the dinner table set to gastronomic perfection, complete with two long tapering candles which will highlight his face as he offers spiritual thanks for the material bounty of his native land.” This is the idealized picture as px-esented in full color in high school text books (elementary, too) that, as Scoggins points out, “would seem very near paradise to social and economic facts.” Picture of Strikes However, this pretty picture is soon punctured in almost all of the texts examined by Scoggins. In these books, strikes by industrial workers are given an almost universal treatment of condemnation. Violence, always imputed to the strikers^ is played up, while little or anything is told to the student of the real reason behind economic action by working people. “In virtually every textbook examined,” flfe* report says, “the emphasis on violence during work stoppages is extremely pronounced. . . one famous picture, showing cavalrymen galloping aheacf of a train during the Pullman sti’ike in L894.*,-while strikers along the tracks shake their fists-.and wave clubs in the air, appears in oyer, half - the textbooks examined.” Not a word is said of the real causes of the Pullman strike (or any other, for that matter); nothing about the wretched wages, miserable living conditions, or the violent hatred of the railway bosses for the attempts by Eugene Victor Debs to organize railway workers in one industrial union. Instead, another leading high school text dismisses the Pullman strike in these words: “Trains were ditched, freight cars destroyed, buildings looted and burned. At some points the Federal troops opened fire on the mob to protect their own lives. Debs and his chief associates were arrested for contempt of court.” In general, the textbooks are as one in describing all strike action as causing violence, as damaging to the workers own best interests, and picture the public as the chief sufferer. The picture will be familiar to any member of a labor union who has had to hit the bricks to defend his wages, fight for his union, protect his family’s living standards with the only economic power a worker possesses — the right to withhold his labor power through an organized work stoppage. Some texts, such as one called “The Challenge of Democracy,” used in the Los Angeles schools, take to outright lying, as in this account of the Haymarket incident during the struggle for the eight hour day in Chicago: “One hundred and twenty five people were killed or seriously injured by the explosion of an anarchist’s bomb.” The facts are, as Scoggins points out, that one person was killed and about 50 others knocked off their feet by the bomb. Scoggins does not add a further historic fact — that there was strong suspicion at the time (in the 1880s) that the bomb was set off by a police or employer agent, and in any event did not originate with a union. Labor Political Action The history of political action by working people is either completely ignored in the texts examined in the UCLA report, or distorted and played down in those that do deal with it, however grudgingly. Thus, in the history books, the role of early union members in setting up the tax supported public school system in our country is obliterated yet organized labor was the strongest force demanding equal educational opportunity a century and more ago. The first free public school law in the U.S.A. was enacted in Pennsylvania in 1832, by Thaddeus Stevens and with the backing of the working people of that state. The fact that Thaddeus Stevens was a leading force for the abolition of slavery before the Civil War and for democratic rights for Negroes after it, is nowhere mentioned. The 1830s and 40s were a period of growing union organization in the nation, and labor political activity was at a height which in proportion, it has not surpassed since. In New York in 1829, for example the Workingman’s Party elected one of its candidates to the legislature, and won laws against such practices as imprisoning people for debt, laws regulating health conditions in factories, and also for free public education, equality in taxation, and the like. Yet only one of the texts examined by Scoggins records these facts. Other Unknowns Scoggins finds that many other topics, including the use by employers of court injunctions to break strikes and undermine unions, are equally ignored, or, worse, distorted. The subject is treated in less than one quarter of the texts studied for the report, “but not one gave ap adequate explanation of its (the injunction’s) use and significance.” “It is not surprising,” Scoggins comments, “that a poll taken by Purdue University in 1960 found that 6.1 percent of the high school students polled thought that an injunction was a union weapon employed against business!” Poor Preparation The stone story of ignorance, distortion or worse is found in the treatment of such matters as arbitration, mediation and conciliation, the union shop, closed shop, company unions and the .like. As Scoggins comments, this is pretty poor preparation for the young about to go hunting for jobs. “An understanding of what is meant by open, closed, and union shop is important for the young person about to seek employment, simply because he or she must find that their employment will fall into one of these categories,” the report says. “In short, precise language, much could be done by textbook authors to present an understanding of these terms and what they imply. Little is now available in these books to help the students to avoid misunderstanding them.” Poor preparation for young people about to enter the world of work. Poor preparation also from the standpoint of workers already members of unions. It is a common complaint among union workers that the younger generation shows little interest in what the union has accomplished in past struggles and what it means in the daily issues on the job and the shop. How aften have we heard this complaint? And how often do the older union members find downright hostility to unions among the recently hired — especially among the young people? Who Runs the Sshools? There’s more to this story of ignorance and distortion than simply the authors of textbooks that studiously gloss over the realities of life. School texts are brought by school systems, which are run by school boards, says Scoggins: “Businessmen, being honest and unashamed champions of self-interests, have long realized the importance of getting their point of view registered in the public schools. They have done this by occupying the chairs of the boards of education. The businessman is available to speak in high school classes, and to publish and distribute materials calculated to impress the students with the doctrine that ‘our continued progress depends on a broad understanding of our free competitive system and its benefits to all.” To this aim, business poured $160,000.000 in one year (1963) into teaching the young the right -—free enterprise — way to think. Another statistics is worth pondering: “An estimated 83 percent of all board of education members come from business and professional ranks. The professional are largely doctors and lawyers whose interest seldom departs from that of a businessman. “Only six percent of board of education members belong to unions.” • Szőrszálak eltávolítása sikeresen, nyomtalanul és fájdalommentesen • a legmodernebb felszereléssel : IRENEFREMD ELECTROLYSIS INTÉZETÉBEN 228 East 179th Street, Bronx, N. Y. • Hívja fei este 6 óra után 294-6957 számot, f szombaton egész nap
