Article July 10, 1920 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from L. C. Little, Lee J. Levinger

[L. C. Little in Chicago (Ill.) News]

John Jordan is quite right in saying that the way to Americanize America is to send children to the public schools. He omits a rather important detail, though. The public schools must themselves be Americanized first. They must be restored to their old ideal function. They must be institutions of learning, places where children gather to be taught, educated, developed; not places where they are herded to be handled, examined, vaccinated, turned into clinical material.

Public schools have ceased to be public the last few years; they have come to be owned by a school of medicine; they open on its signal; they close at its command. Every child in them is under absolute control of medical officials who probably have no title to be officials, in the first place, if the laws were searched and correctly construed. In the second place, these officials do not belong to the teaching force, and if they have duties anywhere, they are not in the schoolroom.

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