Socialist Education And U.S. Children Essay ⋆ Education Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Throughout U.S. history, radical organizations and grassroots groups have created cultural and educational institutions of various kinds with the goal of promoting progressive social change. Newspapers, journals, colleges, schools, camps, speaking bureaus, literary societies, debating clubs, theater groups, and so on have been established for this purpose. Although most of the attention has been given to adults, some radical activists have also strived to create alternative activities for children, for example, ones that would expose them to “the socialist perspective” and the reasons for “good rebellion” against entrenched capitalist interests.

Such radical activities continue in different forms today, but the heyday for those who explicitly identified themselves as socialists was 1890–1920, although their efforts continued on a smaller scale for several decades afterward. Schools, after-school programs, camps, and the like were organized by those who aligned themselves more closely with anarchists; communists; immigrant societies (German, Finnish, etc.); and Workmen’s Circle and other labor-affiliated groups.

Perhaps the most explicit form of socialist education for children was the extensive Socialist Sunday School movement that was established primarily by grassroots supporters of the Socialist Party of America from 1900 to 1920. At least 100 of these typically English-speaking schools were organized in 64 cities and towns in 20 states, with the most prominent ones located in New York City (which had 14 schools in 1912); Rochester; Hartford; Newark; Buffalo; Philadelphia; Washington, D.C.; Pittsburgh; Cleveland; Chicago; Milwaukee; and Los Angeles. Schools ranged from a handful of students in one class, as in the case of the Newport, Kentucky, school, to 1,000 students in dozens of classes at the school that met at the Brownsville Labor Lyceum in Brooklyn. The average enrollment was probably less than 100 students. Most schools existed for several years, although there were schools opening and closing in the same year and others that lasted for more than six years.

Socialist education for children was represented in the lesson outlines, stories, poems, and so on published in newspapers such as the New York Call, Milwaukee Leader, and the more specialized Young Socialists’ Magazine, or distributed by the Socialist Party and allied groups; books like John Spargo’s Socialist Readings for Children and Nicholas Klein’s The Socialist Primer; and songs and plays written especially for children, including “Kid Comrade,” “A Rebel I Will Be,” “When the Cry Was Stilled,” “Mister Greed,” and radical versions of old standards such as “Jack and the Beanstalk” and “Cinderella.”

The teaching focused primarily on the nature of working-class life and class conflict; the character of the capitalist system and how it may cause serious social problems (such as poverty, crime, and unhealthy living and working conditions); and basic socialist tenets and the value of cooperative industrial and personal relations. The schools were intended to counteract what founders saw as the overly individualistic, competitive, nationalistic, militaristic, and antilabor themes that seemed to be prevalent in public schools and other aspects of capitalist culture (e.g., the press, mass entertainment, and the church). They were never expected to provide a complete socialist education for youth, only a more formal, systematic one (albeit only a few hours a week) than could be gotten at home, at rallies, and in youth clubs.

The movement basically died out by 1920, when the Socialist Party faced severe government repression and split apart, although a few schools continued during the 1920s and a dozen schools were reorganized in New York City in the 1930s when the Party experienced a brief resurgence. Gone, however, were any prospects for a national movement and the optimistic spirit that had marked the earlier phase of these radical educational experiments.

Bibliography:

Avrich, P. (1980). The modern school movement: Anarchism and education in the United States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Mishler, P. C. (1999). Raising reds: The young pioneers, radical summer camps, and communist political culture in the United States. New York: Columbia University Press.
Teitelbaum, K. (1993). Schooling for “good rebels”: Socialist education for children in the United States, 1900–1920. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

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