Building a new social order” could be shot through with pro-Communist purposes was given in the panel discussion in 1933 among the leaders of progressive education. Participants in this panel were. among others. Dr. William H. Kilpatrick. upon whom Dewey’s mantle has fallen; Dr. Jesse H. Newlon of the New Lincoln School. Teachers College; Dr. Harold Rugg. author of the allegedly “collectivist” textbooks; and Dr. Goodwin Watson. psychologist.
Much discussion back and forth on how
The schools could overturn the present social order. Dr. Watson gave the answer. It was. he said. by linking the schools up “with socialist or communist agitators.” And that is precisely what happened to a serious degree. The “agitators” to whom Dr. Watson referred were not soap boxers nor the picket line variety of Communist; they were the infiltrators. ordered that very year by the Open Letter to the Party to penetrate the school system.
Dr. Watson’s thinking was in accord with his record of membership on numerous Communist fronts. including the vice-chairmanship of the committee on the Peekskill riots. which presented a distorted picture of the events. favorable to Howard Fast and Paul Robeson. Communists. (Reference to this panel discussion is made in the article. “Your Child Is Their Target.” by Irene Corbally Kuhn. American Legion Magazine. April. 1952. A photostat of the discussion is in my possession.)
In the beginning-that is. in the early thirties
Dr. Counts who lauded Soviet Russia. although he did it most extensively. but also John Dewey himself. In his The Red Decade. Eugene Lyons could write: “Professor Counts of Columbia produced a eulogy of his largely subjective Russia phone number list and the foremost living American philosopher. John Dewey. hailed the mirage. adding. of Russia: ‘In some respects. it is already a searching spiritual challenge as it is an economic challenge to coordinate and plan.’ The spiritual challenge. presumably. was in the current arrests and liquidations of philosophers. historians. and professors accused of ‘rotten liberalism’ in their thinking.” (Lyons. The Red Decade. 1941. p. 107.)
Both Dewey and Counts were to modify
Counts to criticize sharply Soviet gold medal returns with hearty schedules practices. But their initial infatuation with Soviet Russia. shared by a number of their colleagues. was not lost upon the Communists; they rushed in. under such favorable circumstances. to place themselves in education from which they have not yet been successfully dislodged.
Other assistance came to the Reds. In fax list 1933. the very year in which the Open Letter to the Party counseled such infiltration. a special committee of the Progressive Education Association issued A Call to the Teachers of the Nation. While some of the criticisms of the then current social conditions. contained in this document. were worthy of consideration. its open call for “collectivization.”
