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THE GOOSE-STEP
THE
GOOSE-STEP
A Study of American Education
BY
UPTON SINCLAIR
AUTHOR OF
“THE BRASS CHECK,” “THE PROFITS OF RELIGION,”
“THE JUNGLE,” ETC.
[Illustration]
PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA
WHOLESALE DISTRIBUTORS
_THE ECONOMY BOOK SHOP_
33 SOUTH CLARK ST., CHICAGO, ILL.
COPYRIGHT, 1922. 1923
BY
UPTON SINCLAIR
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_All rights reserved_.
---
First edition, February, 1923, 10,000 copies, clothbound.
Second edition, February, 1923, 8,000 copies, paperbound.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTORY ix-x
I. The Little Gosling 1
II. The College Goose 4
III. The University Goose 9
IV. The Goose-steppers 15
V. Interlocking Directorates 18
VI. The University of the House of Morgan 23
VII. The Interlocking President 29
VIII. The Scholar in Politics 34
IX. Nicholas Miraculous 40
X. The Lightning-change Artist 44
XI. The Twilight Zone 49
XII. The Academic Department Store 54
XIII. The Empire of Dullness 58
XIV. The University of Lee-Higginson 62
XV. The Harvard Tradition 67
XVI. Free Speech But— 72
XVII. Interference 77
XVIII. The Laski Lampoon 82
XIX. Raking the Dust-heaps 88
XX. The University of U. G. I. 91
XXI. Stealing a Trust Fund 97
XXII. Professor Billy Sunday 102
XXIII. The Triumph of Death 107
XXIV. The Tiger’s Lair 111
XXV. Peacocks and Slums 115
XXVI. The Bull-dog’s Den 121
XXVII. The University of the Black Hand 126
XXVIII. The Fortress of Medievalism 132
XXIX. The Dean of Imperialism 137
XXX. The Mob of Little Haters 141
XXXI. The Drill Sergeant on the Campus 145
XXXII. The Story of Stanford 152
XXXIII. The Wind of Freedom 157
XXXIV. The Stanford Skeleton 162
XXXV. The University of the Lumber Trust 168
XXXVI. The University of the Chimes 174
XXXVII. The Universities of the Anaconda 179
XXXVIII. The University of the Latter-Day Saints 184
XXXIX. The Mining Camp University 188
XL. The Colleges of the Smelter Trust 192
XLI. A Land Grant College 197
XLII. An Agricultural Melodrama 203
XLIII. The University of Wheat 206
XLIV. The University of the Ore Trust 209
XLV. The Academic Wink 216
XLVI. Introducing a University President 222
XLVII. Introducing a Board of Regents 227
XLVIII. The Price of Liberty 230
XLIX. The People and Their University 235
L. Education F. O. B. Chicago 240
LI. The University of Standard Oil 243
LII. Little Halls for Radicals 249
LIII. The University of Judge Gary 254
LIV. The University of the Grand Duchess 258
LV. The University of Automobiles 263
LVI. The University of the Steel Trust 271
LVII. The University of Heaven 277
LVIII. The Harpooner of Whales 282
LIX. An Academic Tragedy 287
LX. The Geography Line 291
LXI. A Leap into the Limelight 295
LXII. The Process of Fordization 302
LXIII. Intellectual Dry-rot 306
LXIV. The University of Jabbergrab 313
LXV. The Growth of Jabbergrab 319
LXVI. Jabbergrab in Journalism 323
LXVII. The City Colleges 329
LXVIII. The Large Mushrooms 334
LXIX. The Little Toadstools 339
LXX. God and Mammon 345
LXXI. The Orange-outang Hunters 351
LXXII. The Academic Pogrom 356
LXXIII. The Semi-Simian Mob 363
LXXIV. The Rah-rah Boys 370
LXXV. The Social Traitors 377
LXXVI. Prexy 382
LXXVII. Damn the Faculty 390
LXXVIII. Small Souls 395
LXXIX. The World of “Hush” 399
LXXX. The Foundations of Fraud 407
LXXXI. The Bolshevik Hunters 412
LXXXII. The Helen Ghouls 418
LXXXIII. The Shepard’s Crook 424
LXXXIV. Cities of Refuge 428
LXXXV. The Academic Rabbits 436
LXXXVI. Workers’ Education 440
LXXXVII. The Spider and the Fly 445
LXXXVIII. The Workers’ Colleges 450
LXXXIX. The Professors’ Union 454
XC. The Professors’ Strike 459
XCI. Educating the Educators 464
XCII. The League of Youth 470
XCIII. The Open Forum 473
INTRODUCTORY
Six hundred thousand young people are attending colleges and
universities in America. They are the pick of our coming generation;
they are the future of our country. If they are wisely and soundly
taught, America will be great and happy; if they are misguided and
mistaught, no power can save us.
What is the so-called “higher education” of these United States? You
have taken it, for the most part, on faith. It is something which has
come to be; it is big and impressive, and you are impressed. Every year
you pay a hundred million dollars of public funds to help maintain it,
and half that amount in tuition fees for your sons and daughters. You
take it for granted that this money is honestly and wisely used; that
the students are getting the best, the “highest” education the money can
buy.
Suppose I were to tell you that this educational machine has been
stolen? That a bandit crew have got hold of it and have set it to work,
not for your benefit, nor the benefit of your sons and daughters, but
for ends very far from these? That our six hundred thousand young people
are being taught, deliberately and of set purpose, not wisdom but folly,
not justice but greed, not freedom but slavery, not love but hate?
For the past year I have been studying American Education. I have read
on the subject—books, pamphlets, reports, speeches, letters, newspaper
and magazine articles—not less than five or six million words. I have
traveled over America from coast to coast and back again, for the sole
purpose of talking with educators and those interested in education. I
have stopped in twenty-five American cities, and have questioned not
less than a thousand people—school teachers and principals,
superintendents and board members, pupils and parents, college
professors and students and alumni, presidents and chancellors and deans
and regents and trustees and governors and curators and fellows and
overseers and founders and donors and whatever else they call
themselves. This mass of information I have turned over and over in my
mind, sorting it, organizing it—until now, I really know something about
American Education.
I do not intend in this book to expound my ideas on the subject; to
argue with you as to what education might be, or ought to be; to
persuade you to any dogma or point of view. I intend merely to put
before you the facts; to say, this is what American Education now is.
This is what is going on in the college and university world. This is
what is being done to your sons and daughters; and what the sons and
daughters think about it; and what the instructors think about it. Here
is the situation: make up your own mind, whether it suits you, or
whether you want it changed.
THE GOOSE-STEP
_A Study of American Education_
CHAPTER I
THE LITTLE GOSLING
Once upon a time there was a little boy; a little boy unusually eager,
and curious about the world he lived in. He was a nuisance to old
gentlemen who wanted to read their newspaper; but young men liked to
carry him on their shoulders and maul him about in romps, old ladies
liked to make ginger cakes for him, and other boys liked to play
“shinny” with him, and race on roller skates, and “hook” potatoes from
the corner grocery and roast them in forbidden fires on vacant lots. The
little boy lived in a crowded part of the city of New York, in what is
called a “flat”; that is, a group of little boxes, enclosed in a large
box called a “flat-house.” Every morning this little boy’s mother saw to
his scrubbing, with special attention to his ears, both inside and back,
and put a clean white collar on him, and packed his lunch-box with two
sandwiches and a piece of cake and an apple, and started him off to
school.
The school was a vast building—or so it seemed to the little boy. It had
stone staircases with iron railings, and big rooms with rows of little
desks, blackboards, maps of strange countries, and pictures of George
Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Aurora driving her chariot.
Everywhere you went in this school you formed in line and marched; you
talked in chorus, everybody saying the same thing as nearly at the same
instant as could be contrived. The little boy found that a delightful
arrangement, for he liked other boys, and the more of them there were,
the better. He kept step happily, and sat with glee in the assembly
room, and clapped when the others clapped, and laughed when they
laughed, and joined with them in shouting:
Oh, Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean,
The—ee home of the Bra—ave and the Free—ee!
The rest of the day the little boy sat in a crowded classroom, learning
things. The first thing he learned was that you must be quiet—otherwise
the teacher, passing down the aisle, would crack your knuckles with a
ruler. Another thing was that you must raise your hand if you wanted to
speak. Maybe these things were necessary, but the little boy did not
learn why they were necessary; in school all you learned was that things
were so. For example, if you wanted to divide one fraction by another,
you turned the second fraction upside down; it seemed an odd procedure,
but if you asked the reason for it, the teacher would be apt to answer
in a way that caused the other little boys to laugh at you—something
which is very painful.
The teacher would give out a series of problems in “mental
arithmetic”—tricks which you had been taught, and you wrote the answers
on your slate, and then marched in line past the teacher’s desk, and if
you had done it according to rule, you got a check on your slate. You
learned the great purpose of life was these “marks.” If you got good
ones, your teacher smiled at you, your parents praised you at home, you
had a sense of triumph over other little boys who were stupid. You
enjoyed this triumph, because no one ever suggested to you that it was
cruel to laugh at your weaker fellows. In fact, the system appeared to
be designed to bring out your superiority, and to increase the
humiliation of the others.
In this school everything in the world had been conveniently arranged in
packages, which could be stowed away in your mind and made the subject
of a “mark.” Columbus discovered America in 1492; the Declaration of
Independence was signed on July 4, 1776; Switzerland was bounded on the
north by Germany. This business of “boundings” appeared in little
diagrams; Switzerland was yellow and Germany pink, and no one burdened
your mind with the idea that these spots of color represented places
where human beings lived. At this same time the little boy was going to
Sunday school, where he learned something called “the creed,” with a
sentence declaring that “from Thency shall come to judge the quick and
the dead.” The little boy pondered hard, but never made sure whether
“Thency” was the name of a person or a place.
Some thirty-five years have passed, but the little boy still remembers
the personalities of these teachers. There was a middle-aged lady, stout
and amiable, and always dressed in black; then one who was angular and
irritable; then one who had pretty brown eyes and hair, but to the
puzzlement of the little boy had also the beginnings of a mustache. Next
came a young man with a real mustache, and pale, washed-out eyes and
complexion; but he was dreadfully dull. The novelty had worn off the
school by this time, and the boy had got tired of stowing away packages
of facts in his mind. He had become so expert that he was able to do two
years’ work in one, and at the age of twelve was ready for what was
called the City College. But he was judged too young, and had to take
one year in the grammar school all over. The fates took pity on him, and
gave him as teacher for that year a jolly Irish gentleman, so full of
interest in his boys that he did not keep the rules. If you wanted to
ask him questions you asked, and without first raising your hand; you
might even get into an argument with him, as with any boy, and if he
caught you whispering to your neighbor, his method of correcting you was
novel, but highly effective—he would let fly a piece of chalk at your
head, and you would grin, and the class would howl with delight.
In this strange, happy group the little boy went by the nick-name of
“Chappie”; for the school was located on the East side of New York, and
most of the boys were “tough,” and had never before heard the English
language correctly spoken by a boy. “Chappie” owned a collection of one
or two hundred story-books which had been given him by aunts and uncles
and cousins at a succession of Christmases and birthdays. The priceless
treasure, when he left the school, became the foundation of a class
library, to the vast delight of the other boys and of the Irish teacher.
So the boy ended his grammar-school life in a blaze of glory, and went
away thinking the public school system a most admirable affair.