"Teachers, during the war period, have been undergoing unprecedented, exhausting struggle in the classroom. And in their ranks have been casualties that add up to a dangerous teacher shortage. According to the National Education Association, 'the economic status of teachers has been pushed back 20 years since Pearl Harbor'... The combination of overwork, underpay and the thanklessness of teaching has created an army of deserters from the profession."
- from Amazon:
More on the hard lot of teachers during the war can be read here.
The kids who are discussed in this article would be called "LD" today - you don't want to know how they were referred to in the early Twenties. Back then there were no Federally-funded commissions thronging with sympathetic PhD candidates to ramble on about "convergence issues", "processing concerns", "the-classroom-learning-environment" and the "Learning Disabled". There were only frustrated kids, frustrated teachers and broken-hearted parents. This 1937 news article reports on the pioneering teachers at Seward Park High School in New York City and the earliest attempts to address the needs of students who suffered from language processing disorders, dyscalculia, dyslexia, dysgraphia and America's favorite - good ol' ADHD. "A religion-in-the-schools trial, held last week in the Champaign, Illinois Circuit Court, will probably make history. The plaintiff was Mrs. Vashti McCollum, 32, pert, wide-eyed wife of a University of Illinois professor, demanding that the Champaign School Board discontinue a five-year program of religious instruction in school buildings, on the ground that the constitutional separation of church and state is jeopardized."
Click here to read about Darwin in the schools. "The census-takers of 1920 to the people of America:
"Can you read and write?"
Five million men and women of America responded:
"We cannot!" "Ten million Americans can't read and write, thousands of teachers are underpaid and, try as they may, our poorer states cannot afford to do anything about it. Every Congress since 1919 has refused to improve the situation... The truth seems to be that schools are no longer America's sweetheart. When there is money to be divided in a state, roads come first, public health second and schools third."
Click here to read about an American woman who grew heartily sick of the socialists who loitered on every street corner during the Great Depression...
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