The Teacher Wars (45 page)

1
“jigger carrier”:
Kate Rousmaniere,
Citizen Teacher: The Life and Leadership of Margaret Haley
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 4.

2
Michael Haley believed in the promise:
Described in Ibid., 7.

3
“I don't know Susan B. Anthony”:
Margaret A. Haley,
Battleground: The Autobiography of Margaret A. Haley
, ed. Robert L. Reid (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1982), 13.

4
“dear friend”:
The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony
, vol. 6,
An Awful Hush, 1895–1906
, 239.

5
$35 per month:
Haley,
Battleground
, 20–21.

6
Francis Wayland Parker:
Larry Cuban,
How Teachers Taught: Constancy and Change in American Classrooms, 1890–1990
(New York: Teachers College Press, 1993), 39–41.

7
$40 per month:
Haley,
Battleground
, 22n.

8
830,000 residents:
Andrew Wender Cohen,
The Racketeer's Progress: Chicago and the Struggle for the Modern American Economy, 1900–1940
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 19.

9
“warrants” promising future pay:
John McManis,
Ella Flagg Young and a Half Century of the Chicago Public Schools
(Chicago: A. C. McClurg and Co., 1916), 62–63.

10
“fads and frills” and Tribune editorials:
Quoted in Herrick,
The Chicago Schools: A Social and Political History
(Beverly Hills, Sage Publications, 1971), 73–74.

11
freeze a planned $50 annual raise
and
his wife's maid:
Haley,
Battleground
, 35.

12
“The Federation should have a broader outlook”:
Herrick,
The Chicago Schools
, 98.

13
“lady labor slugger”:
This nickname for Margaret Haley was coined by Chicago mayor William “Big Bill” Thompson, a Republican.

14
“school ma'ams as lobbyists”:
Herrick,
The Chicago Schools
, 103.

15
“Does Unionism Make Girls Masculine?”
Frank G. Carpenter, “Women Taking Part in Labor Movement,”
Atlanta Constitution
, May 15, 1904.

16
“you had to fight hard”:
Haley,
Battleground
, 3–4.

17
half the market value:
Hannah Belle Clark,
The Public Schools of Chicago: A Sociological Study
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1897), 58–60.

18
$200 million in rent:
George S. Counts,
School and Society in Chicago
(New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1928), 97.

19
“property … loses its moral value”:
“Minutes of Mass Meeting of the Teachers Federation at Central Music Hall, October 29, 1900,” 27, MH/CTF archives.

20
“heroic efforts to stem the tide of plutocracy”
and
“You make me think of Moses”:
Eliza A. Starr and Lucy Fitch Perkins to Margaret Haley, published in “Souvenir Programme” for CTF fund-raiser, January 18, 1901. MH/CTF archives.

21
“the plucky little woman”:
Wisconsin Teachers Association Meeting Program, December 1903, MH/CTF archives.

22
“just one human being”:
William Hard, “Margaret Haley, Rebel,”
The Times Magazine
, January 1907: 231–37.

23
Harriet Taylor Upton, a leader
and
Haley happily did so:
Harriet Taylor Upton to Margaret Haley, October 19, 1904. MH/CTF archives.

24
crusading attorney Clarence Darrow:
Hard, “Margaret Haley, Rebel,” 234.

25
his campaign to centralize and professionalize:
Marjorie Murphy,
Blackboard Unions: The AFT and the NEA: 1900–1980
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 7–10.

26
On Halloween, she booted a formerly truant student:
“Teacher Refuses to Quit,”
Chicago Daily Tribune
, November 1, 1902. This incident opens the indispensible Murphy,
Blackboard Unions: The AFT and the NEA
, 7–10.

27
Andrew Jackson students walked out:
Reported in “Board Suspends Woman Teacher,”
Chicago Daily Tribune
, November 7, 1902; and “School Rioters May End Strike,”
Chicago Daily Tribune
, November 9, 1902. Also described in Murphy,
Blackboard Unions
.

28
his client had been targeted in retaliation:
“Calls Teacher a Victim of Plot,”
Chicago Daily Tribune
, November 12, 1902.

29
“the dismal burlesque”:
“Like Parents, Like Children,”
Chicago Daily Tribune
, November 11, 1902.

30
“Employment means work”:
“Enforce the Decision,”
Chicago Daily Tribune
, November 14, 1902.

31
Liberal magazines like
Harper's Weekly
and
The Nation
: Cohen,
The Racketeer's Progress
, 136.

32
“sedition, revolt”:
“Teachers of Sedition,”
Chicago Daily Tribune
, June 8, 1905.

33
“teachers are not born”:
David Swing Wicker, “The School-Teacher Unionized,”
Educational Review
, November 1905: 371.

34
“the cardinal principle of unionism”:
“The Point of View: A Radical Departure in Unionism,”
Scribner's Magazine
, June 1903: 763–64.

35
Helen Todd conducted an informal survey:
Helen M. Todd, “Why Children Work,”
McClure's
, vol. XL, 1913: 68–80.

36
thirty thousand turn-of-the-century Chicago children:
Herrick,
The Chicago Schools
, 86.

37
were so rooted in their ethnic ghettoes:
Jacob A. Riis,
How the Other Half Lives
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1890), 183.

38
“our chief defense against the tenement”:
Jacob A. Riis,
The Children of the Poor
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1902 edition), 127.

39
counseling poorly behaved students:
Herrick,
The Chicago Schools
, 66.

40
“a constant danger”:
Jane Addams,
Twenty Years at Hull-House
(New York: Macmillan Company, 1910), 332.

41
“Gentle Jane”:
Haley,
Battleground
, 103.

42
to keep teachers' evaluation reports secret:
Herrick,
The Chicago Schools
, 105–6.

43
she found city aldermen were protecting them:
Ibid., 49.

44
discouraged her teachers from assigning homework:
McManis,
Ella Flagg Young and a Half Century of the Chicago Public Schools
, 67.

45
she established school baths, and she lowered as many class sizes:
Ibid., 92.

46
“melting pot”:
Ibid., 60.

47
“How to Teach Parents”:
Ella Flagg Young, “How to Teach Parents to Discriminate Between Good and Bad Teaching,” in
Journal of Proceedings and Addresses of the National Educational Association
(Salem, MA: The Association, 1887), 245–48.

48
Young was “endowed with the keenest intellect”:
Haley,
Battleground
, 23.

49
teachers' book club:
McManis,
Ella Flagg Young and a Half Century of the Chicago Public Schools
, 64.

50
including John Dewey and the Harvard philosopher William James:
Ibid., 84.

51
“an interplay of thought”:
Ella Flagg Young,
Isolation in the School
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1900), 17.

52
“automatons”:
Ibid., 46.

53
“medieval”:
John Dewey,
The School and Society
and
The Child and the Curriculum
(Minneola, NY: Dover Publications, 2001), 18–19.

54
“When you think of the thousands”:
Robert B. Westbrook,
John Dewey and American Democracy
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 95.

55
“new education”:
Dewey's preferred term for “progressive education.” Described in Dewey,
The School and Society
and
The Child and the Curriculum
, 24.

56
“direct the child's activities”:
Ibid., 25.

57
Lab School project:
Ibid., 14–15.

58
Dewey worried that turn-of-the-century urban children:
Jay Martin,
The Education of John Dewey: A Biography
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 14.

59
she did experience some significant successes:
John McManis,
Ella Flagg Young and a Half Century of the Chicago Public Schools
.

60
the “Loeb Rule”:
Herrick,
The Chicago Schools
, 122–23.

61
“to eliminate men of brain and heart”:
“Minutes of Chicago Federation
of Labor meeting at the Auditorium, September 8, 1915,” MH/CTF archives.

62
“the Interests, the special interests”:
Ibid.

63
After a long legal and political battle:
Herrick,
The Chicago Schools
, 135.

64
founded the American Federation of Teachers:
Murphy,
Blackboard Unions
, 83–87.

65
they lobbied the state legislature:
Herrick,
The Chicago Schools
, 131–34.

66
The first American teachers to win tenure:
For a good short history of teacher tenure see Hess,
The Same Thing Over and Over Again
, 153–57.

67
In New York, the new three-year probationary period:
Diane Ravitch,
The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805–1973
(New York: Basic Books, 1974), 118.

68
“I believe that every child”:
McManis,
Ella Flagg Young and a Half Century of the Chicago Public Schools
, 210–11.

69
Frederick Winslow Taylor:
Herbert M. Kliebard,
The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893–1958
(New York: Routledge, 1995), 78–83.

70
intricate tables for judging teachers' output:
Joseph S. Taylor, “Measurement of Educational Efficiency,”
Educational Review
44 (1912): 348–67.

71
A study by education researcher William Lancelot:
William Lancelot et al.,
The Measurement of Teaching Efficiency
(New York: Macmillan Company, 1935).

72
According to peer reviewer Helen M. Walker:
Ibid., xiii.

73
numeric ratings in largely subjective categories:
Taylor, “Measurement of Educational Efficiency.”

74
“walking through the rooms”:
William McAndrew,
The Public and Its Schools
(Yonkers, NY: World Book Company, 1917), 49.

75
“If a principal is unable”:
McAndrew's 1923 report to the Chicago school board, quoted in Counts,
School and Society in Chicago
, 80.

76
a 1924 “research bulletin”:
quoted in Ibid., 186.

77
“a training place for cheap labor”:
“Minutes of Chicago Federation of Labor meeting at the Auditorium,” September 8, 1915.

78
“the brand of inferiority”:
Counts,
School and Society in Chicago
, 188.

79
unions were right to push back:
On the history of IQ testing, see Nicholas Lemann,
The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999); Diane Ravitch,
Left Back: A Century of Battles over School Reform
(New York: Touchstone, 2000); and Raymond E. Callahan,
Education and the Cult of Efficiency
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).

80
published a study showing:
Julius Metz, “IQs and the Underprivileged,”
The New York Teacher
1, no. 4 (1936): 60–63. Tamiment.

81
“antagonizing the bulk of the teaching force”:
Herrick,
The Chicago Schools
, 161.

82
Haley teamed up with a shady character:
see Counts,
School and Society in Chicago
.

83
March 30, 1927, ad:
Ibid., 268.

84
Those allegations were false:
Ibid., 269–70.