Letters

Dominates Child Training

TO THE EDITOR:

It was with considerable surprise that I read the article by Professor Harold O. Rugg in defense of his philosophies and text books on Social Science in the January issue and particularly because the article was sponsored by the editors.

Prof. Rugg's doctrine, advocating as he does a new "Social Order" through education, is opposed by millions of Americans. It has become such a bitterly controversial subject that I do not consider our magazine a place for Prof. Rugg to air his philosophies and for the editors to seek support for his theories. There are undoubtedly thousands of our alumni who have not had occasion or the opportunity to study his books and who may from his article and from your editorial feel that he is the victim of a grave injustice whereas after analysing his theories and teachings would be bitterly opposed to them.

To one familiar with the subject, Professor Rugg's defense of his courses is pitifully weak and highly unbecoming. He avoids the real issues and bases his entire defense on illtempered attacks on the motives and qualifications of his critics, whom he says, "lie outright," are "witch-hunters," "patrioteers," and otherwise undersirable persons. All of which is a none too brilliant attempt to becloud the issue.

As the case against Professor Rugg's courses and doctrines is made from his own writings, one can readily understand his predicament. But this emotional outburst should in no way confuse citizens who are sincerely and honestly endeavoring to evaluate the kind of influence he seeks to exercise over the youth of our nation.

The actual charges against Professor Rugg's system of indoctrination in public schools, as set forth by students of his text books, are these:

1. That there is a certain key group of educators styling themselves "Frontier Thinkers" who advocate a "new social order" for the United States, based on the collectivist form of society.

2. That the plan and purpose of this group as clearly set forth in a book called "Conclusions and Recommendations," published by the American Historical Association, is to bring about the "new social order" through education.

3. That Professor Harold Rugg, as one of this group, undertook to implement the general program in our educational systems.

4. That in explanation of this purpose Professor Rugg wrote a book called "The Great Technology" in which he describes in great detail the philosophy of this socialistic scheme, and the methods whereby the schools of our country will be used to bring it about.

5. That this "new society" is revealed by Rugg and others to be one based on production for use and not for sale or private profit; on bureaucratic governmental control and operation of natural resources and industry; the elimination of competition; and various other tenets of socialism which would in effect destroy our traditional system of private enterprise, and many of our cherished social and political concepts.

6. That the plan of the Frontier Thinkers is first to convert the teachers who are then to "sell" the girls and boys in school, who, in turn, are expected to become active workers to "sell" the community on the virtues of this collectivist form of society.

7. That the machinery of this un-American scheme actually exists in many classrooms in social science courses, notably those of Professor Rugg, which are widely used in our public schools.

8. Finally, that a subversive program has been progressing for years under the direction of radical teachers, stemming largely from Teacher's College, Columbia University, and has been a most potent influence in shattering the faith of young Americans in the fundamental soundness of our American way of life.

We see proof on all sides, notably in the alarming growth of subversive students' groups such as the American Youth Congress, The American Students Union, The League for Industrial Democracy, and various other Communist or Socialist organizations.

Now, it is obvious that such an alien form of society could be erected in America only after the structure of many of our present institutions have been demolished. Therefore, it would seem that a part of the plan is to undermine faith in our present way of life, so that the collectivist form of government can be slipped into place.

The Rugg Social Science system itself is the acme of perfection in propaganda machinery. It is divided into three parts:

1. Pupil's Work Books of directed study in which there are questions for the child to answer.

2. Textbooks of "selected" materials which the child must read in order to formulate answers to the questions.

3. Teacher's Guides and Keys in which the teacher is given the required answers to the questions asked in the first place; and also various tips and instructions on how to interpret the historical facts and selected materials in the textbooks.

These Teacher's Guides are not for home use, consequently parents do not generally see them.

By posing questions in the work book Professor Rugg directs the child's thoughts into the channel he desires; by writing the textbooks and using selected materials he again directs and limits the child's opportunity ofconclusion; and by giving the required answers in the Teacher's Guide he not only continues to direct the thought but makes sure that he controls the conclusions reached by both the pupils and the teachers.

And what are the conclusions he wishes the child to reach? Read Professor Rugg's "The Great Technology" in full which explains them fully. And read his textbooks which guide the child's thinking.

Thus, in their most impressionable years, the citizenship training of our children is dominated by the philosophies of this single educator. And note that Professor Rugg has courses for every grade from the third to the ninth. Here is a system with a capital "S." It is the most complete and artful program of indoctrination in the history of our public schools.

We readily concede that Professor Rugg or anyone else has the right to believe in collectivism or any other 'ism he desires, and to speak and write as he sees fit. But this right accrues to him not under a license of "academic freedom," but under the broad charter of freedom to every American citizen. Consequently, he should present his philosophies before public audiences and not in public school classrooms before adolescent minds.

This is not a controversy, or should not be, of personalities. Insofar as we parents are concerned, it is a serious and vital issue dealing with the fundamental citizenship training of our children. Yet in Professor Rugg's entire article he avoids the issue of not quoting a single excerpt that has been cited against him.

In high dudgeon he denies everything. It will be observed, however, that he sticks to generalities and is very careful not to quote the evidence upon which the criticism of his books is based. Naturally we cannot be impressed by general denials and affirmations of faith, made when his courses are under attack from coast to coast. In any event, we are not especially concerned with what Professor Rugg may or may not think in 1941, but we are vitally concerned with what his courses have been teaching our children for many years, and are still teaching them.

Most of us have a deep and abiding faith in what is generally termed our American way of life, including the system of private enterprise which has given our people the highest standard of living in the history of mankind. We believe that our cherished liberties under the Bill of Rights could not survive under a socialistic "new social order," regardless of its particular type, as has been proved in Germany, Italy, Russia and wherever this age-old fallacy has been tried. And we are equally convinced that our form of government could not survive a generation of school children educated to destroy it.

Although the scheme is extremely subtle and difficult for the average person to understand, the plan andpurpone is unmistakeable to anyone who has the time and the willingness to examine the record. And as a Dartmouth alumnus, I personally think your editors went far afield when they officially supported Dr. Rugg's position and opposed citizens who are fighting subversive courses and activities in our schools and colleges. Surely the editors could not have seen the masses of evidence at hand. Surely they could not have read "Conclusions and Recommendations," "The Great Technology," "Democracy and The School Curriculum" and numerous other publications which give the key and pattern of this whole revolutionary educational scheme, an important part of which is the Harold Rugg Social Science system.

The issue really is a very simple one: Do we or do we not wish to teach the younger generation belief in the alien ideologies of Marxian socialism?

New York City.

Work To Be Done

To THE EDITOR:

In our endless struggle toward the beginnings of an era of human kindness on earth there are occasions when the enemy shows himself in such blind, bleak poverty of thought and spirit that politeness is a luxury in the answer.

Such an occasion is the appalling letter, in your February issue, signed Roscoe Peacock, concerning the work and affiliations of Harold Ordway Rugg 'OB. Yet it does us at least the service of bringing up, with justification, a question of choice which in these days must be faced more boldly than ever before: the need for taking a stand on one side or the other of a vague dividing line between the miserly and the generous outlook, between a regard for the welfare of some men and a regard for the welfare of mankind. Because these are intangibles, the division has to be vague. That is all the more reason why those who take an interest in the fate of our society should be frank and emphatic about all the implications of their choice.

No one who has read his letter can doubt where Mr. Peacock proudly stands. Professor Rugg has always been forthright in making known his own opposite choice. Thus it is unfortunate that ammunition should have been made available to such a person as Mr. Peacock, for his inference that the ALUMNI MAGAZINE article deliberately suppressed the details of Professor Rugg's association with others who—however tactlessly or unwisely in the particular method—are working as best they know how for the welfare of all men.

I have long held, and this is a telling instance of the reason, that we do more damage than good to the cause of liberality when we evade, at any point, any part of its implications. Those of us who are not Communists of either the party-line or "fellow-Traveler" persuasion, those of us who think Stalinism more infamous than Hitlerism because it has corrupted a kindlier ideal, nevertheless must know that despite individuals in power, the large choice remains the same. It is a choice still between measures aimed at the good of humanity and measures intended to defend or increase the perquisites of groups, factions, hierarchies, classes.

Professor Rugg, I repeat, has never left us any doubt of his own choice on this, the real issue. Long ago he faced the fact that those who care at all, those who wish to break free from the midway vagueness of mere good intentions, will find themselves in nasty company at either extreme. If he has seen his own ideal associated by others with the shoddy power politics of John L. Lewis, rather than with the shoddy power politics of Tom Girdler, he has at least had the satisfaction of knowing that the dynamic purpose which for a while was impersonated by Lewis had for its object the decent minimum welfare of millions of underdogs rather than Girdler's noble aim of increased power and opulence for a few thousands of the already powerful and well-to-do. If Mr. Rugg finds himself on the same side of the fence with a convict named Earl Browder, he can at least feel glad that the fence separates him from a convict named Richard Whitney.

So much for the serviceable part of Mr. Peacock's letter. For the rest, it expresses a point of view which it is also well to have called to the attention of those who are engaged in the business of education. I suspect that many of us—at least in the too safe and serene atmosphere of this fortunate town—can hardly credit the continued existence of such pinched and case-hardened views of what constitutes human welfare. Mr. Peacock grows blissful and garrulous over a "political and economic set-up which has given us by far the highest standard of living of any nation in the world" because in one particular locality it can herd hundreds of men to the factory gates in their own cars. Is it by any scant chance possible that he has tried to discover, before permitting himself to indulge in such mechanistic raptures, how many of these men were out of work and on the relief rolls during how much of the past decade, because his admired system had wrecked itself so thoroughly by greed and incompetence when left to itself throughout two or three complacent administrations? Has he balanced in his mind this current, so happy picture in his own locality against the starve-acre share cropping over vast areas of what is also America? Is his joy in our possession of enough cars to give everyone a simultaneous ride based at all upon a memory of the miserable tens of thousands who use their old jalopies to scour the roads for a few hours' work, now and then, with even a hope of better days forgotten in the primal fight barely to stay alive?

Yet it is not the ignoring of such parts of the evidence, by Mr. Peacock, that I find so forbidding as his placid implication that we are superior to other peoples because so many of us can drive to work (when we can get it) in a steel and plastic gadget. Is this the final measure o£ the worth of democracy, the last nobility of human progress? Have Mr. Peacock's fortunate laboring men any books in their homes? Are there flowers in their gardens? Have they ever heard Shakespeare greatly spoken by living actors, or Ecclesiastes greatly read by a man dedicated to a God in whom they believe? Do their children eat green vegetables and fruit? Is medical and dental care even approaching adequacy? How many of them suffer from syphilis or tuberculosis or other easily preventable ills? Does Mr. Peacock care?

It happens that I believe in the same general system—individualism and private initiativethat Mr. Peacock evidently subscribes to. But there is such a heartbreaking amount of work to be done, in so many places and ways, to justify that system at all in its present sorry condition of corruption that it is exasperating to have to clear away such published rubbish as his letter when there is really important work to claim the little time we have on earth in which to serve our fellows.

Hanover, N. H.

Elsbree & Rugg

To THE EDITOR:

Every time I get a bill for class dues from the highly efficient treasurer of the class of 1910, I assure myself that this is a luxury I

can't afford. After all, I'm only an ex-Dartmouth freshman who spent but one year at Hanover and afterward graduated from another institution. Two sets of class dues and alumni funds are tough on one budget. And then along comes the Dartmouth ALUMNI MAGAZINE, and the pesky 1910 treasurer gets ray check for another year.

Your magazine is far and away the best alumni publication I have ever seen. This in itself is reason enough for me to write you a letter of congratulation, but I feel particularly impelled to do so after reading such articles as those of Professor Elsbree and Mr. Rugg in the December and January issues. In publishing these articles you have performed a real public service that ought to reach far beyond the circle of Dartmouth alumni.

I do not doubt that many degrees of disagreement have been expressed with Professor Elsbree's thesis. My own experience convinces me that he is absolutely right—indeed I have been saying much the same things myself for several years. Your own editorial criticism is, I think, a bit beside the paint. One does not have to be a blind partisan of the present administration and all its policies—l trust I am far from that—to be profoundly disturbed by the violently emotional reactions and the abusive and obscene references to President Roosevelt that have characterized such a large proportion of our economically favored groups in the last few years. When college reunions become occasions for bitter political diatribes, when a man refuses to shake the hand of a classmate who had been his close friend, merely because the latter had defended President Roosevelt, when even assassination is advocated, it seems clear that we have to deal with something much more sinister than strong political partisanship.

If any justification were needed for Professor Elsbree's contention, it is furnished by Mr. Rugg's article. I do not agree with all of Mr. Rugg's ideas, particularly some of his pedagogical theories, but the attacks to which he has been subjected do not spring from differences of opinion: they are rooted in the same kind of emotionalism and intolerance that Professor Elsbree describes.

Again I congratulate you on the Dartmouth ALUMNI MAGAZINE. My only regret is that the circulation of such a significant and timely article as Professor Elsbree's should be limited to the readers of one college alumni magazine. It ought to be read by millions of Americans, and especially by all college men and women. If the Reader's Digest doesn't reprint it, it will be missing a good bet.

Anyway, I'm sending my check for another year's class dues!

(Dartmouth ex-1910; Yale 1911S)

Dept. of Geography,Univ. of So. Cal.,Los Angeles, Cal.

Weather 6-1212

To THE EDITOR:

On Station W.M.C.A., Friday, January 31, Stanley Miner '22 once a member of Palaeopitus and baseball D man, spoke about a system he has inaugurated in the N. Y. Telephone Company whereby one calls "Weather 6-1212" and a recorded voice answers exactly the weather report up to the minute, cost 5c. On the day of a recent snowstorm 44,000 calls were sent in—figure up the profit.

Stanley is too modest to send you this photo, but knowing his love of Dartmouth (he is also a member of the Selective Committee for interviewing prospective freshmen from this discouple trict) I knew you would be glad to get this news and photo.

The radio talk was impromptu and unrehearsed and I was amused to hear Grouch say, "What are you shaking for, Stan, is this the first time you ever stood before a mike?" And Stan, who was actually making his initial appearance on the air replied, "Of course not, I'm not a bit nervous. That's the way I always talk!"

Incidentally, the ALUMNI MAGAZINE is doing a swell job. Of the dozens of magazines that come to my office, it always gets read to the exclusion of the others.

Ridgewood, N. J.

Spin or Spiral

To THE EDITOR:

We four were greatly interested by the information vouchsafed in the January issue of the DARTMOUTH ALUMNI MAGAZINE by Everett Wood '38, describing the first sensations he and his Dartmouth cronies experienced in the elimination flight training in the U. S. Naval Aviation Program. Much of it is similar to what we went through seven months ago. We have finished our training and are now waiting for February 7 to show up so we can get our wings and commissions in the U. S. Army Air Corps.

There was one point in Flying Cadet Wood's description, however, which has us all puzzled. He describes a spin thus: "When the instructor hits the right altitude he brings the stick back (nose-up) until the controls get heavy and the plane is ready to stall. Then, quick as a flash, stick forward, kick one rudder pedal—and 'ski-heil.' The plane points down, the wings spin around and around and around, and, frankly, until we've done this a of times, we haven't the least idea whether we're coming or going."

Our guess is that friend Wood hadn't done it a couple of times when he wrote that, because he was either flying upside down and going into an inverted spin, or else Navy planes are rigged quite differently from anything in the Army or anywhere else. Actually he was going into a tight spiral out of a partial stall. A plane won't spin if you push the stick forward. What he meant to say was this: Pull the nose up until the plane actually does stall, then immediately move the stick all the way back and apply full rudder.

We were much relieved to find that his method of recovering from a spin was more practical. After all, the important thing is coming back to tell about it.

It is regrettable that Boyle, Kelly, Brekke and Wood had to take second choice and join the Navy where they come out with such mistaken ideas as the above. However, we wish them the best of luck and no wet landings.

Maxwell FieldMontgomery, Alabama

Broad, Truths

To THE EDITOR:

Protestantism has undergone some radical changes in the United States in the last decade. Young people going through our colleges today are rarely cognizant of the theological hairsplitting which led to the formation of the more than three hundred denominations which still exist in this country.

Intelligent men, who not too long ago were driven from the church by petty wrangling over interpretive minutia, are now beginning to realize that the broad truths for which the Christian Church as a whole has stood, are necessary to the world if we are to overcome the chaos of war and internal disorders. Dartmouth College went through a wave of reaction against organized religion following the World War. Men like Professor Mecklin were sickened by the Scopes trial in Tennessee, which forbade the teaching of evolution in that state, and which was sponsored by men with an extreme fundamentalist approach to the Bible and religion. Religion received a heavy indictment from the majority of the faculty, because it apparently had not been able to catch up with the truths advocated by science.

Today all our liberal colleges are rapidly becoming aware of the fact that scientific truths are not enough unless moral laws are understood, so that our science could be used for constructive rather than destructive purposes. Many of our states have begun to realize this, and Religious Education is being introduced more and more into our secondary school curricula. My own community in Maine has courses of Religious Education in the public schools, and also has a Community Sunday School which is attended by over five-sixths of the children available according to the public school enrollment. Religious Education receives the same consideration as other courses in the school curriculum. As a consequence juvenile delinquency is almost negligible in our area.

At no time in the world's history has there been more need for an understanding of the Christian principles of living in order to help solve problems such as unemployment, disputes between Labor and Capital, care for the aged, international disputes, etc. Dartmouth would do well to bring her Religious Education Department up to a strength comparable to that of any other department in the college. If there is any hope for the future, and I earnestly believe that there is, it will be bound up with the application of intelligent minds in our younger generation to the world's problems from a Christian point of view.

Northeast Harbor, Me.

Hanover Holiday

To THE EDITOR:

That settles it! If John Mecklin is to be on the Hanover Holiday program, then missing that event is out of the question. I've always wanted to observe again that keen mind and clear tongue in action, and I'm grateful to the planners of the Holiday for the opportunity to realize that ambition.

With Professor Mecklin and the others of that fine group of lecturers on the schedule. I'd better send in early reservations. Manythanks for the splendid outline of this year's program by Professor Hill in the February issue.

Evanston, Ill.

John Cotton Dana '78

To THE EDITOR:

John Cotton Dana was a member of the class of 1878 not 1874 as stated on page 18 of the February number.

Winchester, Massachusetts[The editors regret the error in class numerals used in our last issue for the distinguishedalumnus, the late John Cotton Dana, Newarklibrarian—Ed.]

Congratulations

To THE EDITOR:

I want to congratulate you and the ALUMNI MAGAZINE for running Dr. Rugg's article on textbook censorship. This should do much to counterbalance the oft-heard accusations that Dartmouth, along with many other colleges, is abandoning her liberal tradition. I'm glad to see it.

New York City.

STANLEY P. MINER '22 (RIGHT) DISTRICT TRAFFIC SUPERINTENDENT OF N. Y. TEL. CO., WESTERN INFORMATION, BEING INTERVIEWED OVER WMCA BY 808 CARTER (JIM GROUCH) RE THE WEATHER BUREAU.