Safe & Secure

Public Schools, Inc., spends about $2,000,000,000 a year and the men who run that big business are the nation's school superintendents. Last week some 10,000 of them and their associates piled into New Orleans for the 67th annual convention of the Department of Superintendence of the National Education Association. Wired Mayor R. S. Maestri to N.E.A. officials: "New Orleans entirely safe and secure from all threats of the Mississippi Valley." Echoed U. S. Army Engineer Col. William F. Tompkins: "You may all rest assured that disaster will not creep upon us unawares."

Last week the schools' businessmen felt safe & secure for another reason. For the first time since Depression, the pall was beginning to lift from 1937 school budgets. New York City's had been stepped up $5,500,000 to $142,000,000, the Illinois Legislature had protected Chicago school salaries with a $45,000,000 pegged levy bill. Missouri was opening 20 shining new schools built with PWA funds. Almost everywhere schools were on the upgrade. Responding to this cheery mood, New Orleans drilled its school children for a bright "Dixieland" pageant of the Civil War and Reconstruction. The delegates had their first convention breakfast in shady City Park, and Mrs. Adele Stewart, head of the Home Economics department of the New Orleans Schools, stayed up late the night before preparing pralines and crayfish, goodnaturedly scratched matches over the Park lawn to "voodoo" rain.

Exhibitors. Superintendents were on the lookout for the latest in books, school furniture, equipment. To New Orleans, 200 members of the N.E.A.'s Exhibitors Association had shipped $500,000 worth of samples for their inspection in the City Auditorium. There superintendents eyed streamlined seats and desks made in one piece, swimming pool equipment, brass plates for schoolroom doors, cinema projectors, public address systems, ready engraved diplomas, floor polishers, modeling clay, band instruments, library tables whose legs were guaranteed not to wobble, pencil sharpeners that made no noise. For his school cafeteria the superintendent could buy a motor-driven ice shaver; for his theatre, spotlights and scenery; for his gymnasium, a set of lockers opened and closed by a teacher's master key.

Trickiest equipment on exhibition was a mechanical test scorer developed by International Business Machines Corp. It works only on tests which call for a choice between answers. A master sheet with the correct answers punched out is placed under the pupil's test, and an electrical current passes through the punch hole, registering correct if it is conducted through a corresponding pencil mark. The machine will score about 15 tests a minute, can be set to weight questions differently and to compute percentages. Last week's demonstrators used TIME's Current Affairs Test (TIME, Feb. 22). IBM developed its machine at the request of the Educational Records Bureau, has set no price as yet.

Superintendents. Although exhibitors may help pay the bills, superintendents value their convention as one time in the year when they are free to speak up without cocking a cautious eye at their school boards. Atlanta's Superintendent Willis A. Sutton complained: "The problem of continuing a progressive program, and at the same time being able to continue in office, constitutes one of the gravest dangers to a Superintendent of Schools. The displacement of men in high positions at the strategic centres of our country has been the shame of education in the past decade." Superintendent Sutton had to mention no names, for fox-bearded William Andrew McAndrew, who was ridden out of his Chicago superintendency on farcical charges by Mayor William Hale ("America First") Thompson (TIME, Oct. 21, 1935), was much in evidence. Twinkling at the Outstanding Service Award he received from the Exhibitors Association, Mr. McAndrew repulsed photographers by crying: "I belong to the loyal order of Little Blades of Grass who never have their pictures taken!" Onetime Superintendent McAndrew is now on the editorial board of School & Society.

As the delegates prepared to go into session, they heard shocking news. From the pinks of Columbia University's Teachers College, word went out that their Grand Old Man, grey, kindly Professor William Heard Kilpatrick, was being "forced" out at Teachers College's compulsory retirement age, 65. Professor Kilpatrick, in whose classes many an N.E.A. superintendent once sat, insisted that he was still "well and strong" enough to teach, that the rule had been set aside in the past for "conservative" faculty members. When stocky, conservative Dean William F. Russell of Teachers College turned up in the convention to deliver a tongue-lashing to radical educators in general, a crackling storm broke.

Explained Dean Russell: "I am a firm believer in retirement at the age of 65 and I intend to retire at that age or earlier."

"It is strange," croaked Columbia's venerable Philosopher John Dewey, "that those who say that justices should not be retired at 70 say that teachers should retire at 65."

Dean Russell was overwhelmed by 9,000 petitions to keep Professor Kilpatrick on. A similar petition came from Executive Secretary Frederick Redefer of the Progressive Education Association, convening in St. Louis. When Kilpatrickites threatened to bring the matter to the floor of the convention, Dean Russell relented, announced that Teachers College would arrange a lectureship for Professor Kilpatrick next year.

Teachers College delegates usually father the big-sounding resolutions that N.E.A. usually passes but last week's biggest-sounding resolution came from an unexpected source. The American Legion, which last year soothed N.E.A. by withdrawing its support of the hated teachers' oath legislation of 27 States, appeared in the person of Oklahoma's eloquent Senator Josh Lee, who demanded a "draft of all money and materials of war as well as men." Stealing Teachers College thunder, the Legion Schoolmasters hustled a resolution to that effect past the Resolutions Committee directly to the floor. Having passed it with only four dissenting votes, the superintendents began audibly to wonder whether they had voted for conscription as well as against profiteering, decided they had not. Before going home full of ideas and orders for equipment, the superintendents also:

P: Approved a constitution officially changing the name of the Department of Superintendence to the American Association of School Administrators, providing for the election of officers by mail.

P: Unanimously nominated and elected lanky Harvardman Charles B. Glenn, Superintendent of Schools in Birmingham, Ala., as president for 1937-38. Mr. Glenn's platform: "I'm not one of those who feels he has got to save the world. Our main purpose is to elevate the profession."

P:Turned down a proposal by Teachers College's Professor George D. Strayer to limit membership to Ph.D.'s

P: Were invited by a girl dressed in Spanish costume, carrying poppies and blue ribbons, to convene next year in San Francisco.

P: Called upon Congress to pass the pending Harrison-Black-Fletcher bill which would appropriate $100,000,000 to the States for school purposes.

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