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VOLUME 2
7*. \
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DUNN, N. C., DECEMBER 1, V 4
NUMBER 22
DO THE SCHOOLS’ PRODUCTS PROPERLY FUNCTION?
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Before the Schools Demand Greatly Increased Appropriations Let Them Not Attempt to “Sell Themselves
to the People Again, ’ But Let Them Convince the People That They are Turning Out Salable, or
\ Properly Functioning, Products.
As indicated in an article in a recent issue of the
State’s Voice, we were particularly impressed with
the fitness of the new State superintendent Of schools
after talking with Rev. W. V. Tarlton, pastor of the
Rich Square Baptist church, who for a number of
years was a .'teacher under Supt. Erwin in Ruther
ford c ounty. We had not met Mr. Erwin at the time,
but had not only the pleasure of meeting him last
Saturday but of*, hearing him address the district as
sociation of teachers In session at Fayetteville.
Mr. Erwin is a pleasant gentleman, an attractive
speaker, and a fine personality from every stand
point- His address, till the very last section, was to
the point and its sentiments heartily approved by
this writer. But Mr. Erwin, whose life has been de
voted to school work, is apparently as yet an ussafe
interpreter of economic conditions.
Fallacious Arguments Hurt
There is plenty of argument for an adequate sup
port of the public school system without lugging in
any fallacious, not. to say false, support for,a. liberal
appropriation by t^e ^h^l icflsmbly. .ife' the *
place,
_ joyed.
iwctrtJe^antflU’;
the second jjlace he attributed that really fictional
prosperity to the .'Site’s' liberal, appropriations to
the schools. He quoted the fallacious.statement that
the State’s wealth increased from a billion, or some
thing like that, to five or six billions dnring the
spending era. In congratulating him upon the tenor
of the adrdess in the main, we could not refrain from
telling him that an increase in prices, or valuations,
of existing wealth was an altogether different thing
from an increase in wealth. We quoted our state
ment so often made while the people of North Caro
lina were under the hallucination that the State was
rich, namely, that ‘there is no more land than when
I was a boy, and that then the land was covered
with timber but now with mortgages; that there
are not as many horses, mules, cattle, hogs, sheep,
goats, as much cotton and corn, as in other days, but
more automobile's, all of which latter would be upon
the junk heap in five years.’ More and better fac
tories, better store buildings and homes, were the two
chief instances of actually increased wealth, includ
ing power plants. Yet very much of the capital in
vested in factories and power plants was owned by
extra-state parties, while too many of the homes were
mortgaged to extra-state interests, as were tens of
thousands of the- farms.
The spending spree for schools, along with that
for roads, automobiles and every other conceivable
object of desire, served only to help bring the people
of the State tor the very verge of economic destruc
tion. Indeed, Mr. Erwin goes further than the
hoodoo-ed spend-thrifts of the era went, who claimed
that the spending, of millions for education would
make the State rich throngh the superior wisdom and
efforts of the product of the schools. He claims that
the very spending of the money was an enriching
process, or did so claim, though it is to he hoped that
he will never do it again* Even the more rational
claims of the spenders seem to show little indication
of fulfillment—the products of the schools since 1920
being far from having set anybody’s river afire with
the spirit of enterprise and achievement—-but, alas,
how booze and gasoline have blazed! But that is
unfair to the exceptional individuals who have al
ready proved most capable in almost every line of
endeavor, though the number of those exceptions
would hardly tally up to the number of penitentiary
und chain-gang birds under the age of thirty.
The Schools Must Furnish Adequate Results.
l’lease let no one assume from what I have just
written or from anything I shall write, now or later,
that I am not gratified wlttf the appointment of Mr.
Erwin, or that I, in any degree, under-value educa
tion. On the contrary, I am convinced there could
scarcely have been a better man chosen for the posi
tion, and I am one of the greatest enthusiasts for
education in the State. Indeed, I have spent forty
two years in educational work—over twenty of them
as a teacher with mighty small pecuniary reward.
In fact, I suspect I have spent more hours in actual
class-room work than has any school official in
North Carolina, and those hours have been spent un
der every kind of condition—from the most unfavor
able to favorable. I have taught practically every
thing from the alphabet through the high school
course, and several college subjects, and can do it
today. Accordingly, it is not a novice or a theorist
that is writing. But be it understood that I am
not a school administrator—I am a teacher, and, if
I do say it who should not, I get results—results in
character, mental alertness and capacity, and in a
disposition to pay one’s way in the world, unless the
twig has already been bent so seriously and has
grown in. its debased form so long that restoration is
in the time I have to give the
st
: -Yes ; I ana ':a~.teUe*ef in /
upon differentiating between a. machine and its out-]
p^t._ I-; ptrefer-an acre of corn that makes its fifty
bushels if ploughed with an ox and an old turn plow
to one that produces fifteen, even though it be culti
vated with the most modern cultivators.
It is the product that counts. And it would just
as well be understood that the people of North Caro
lina are far more concerned in the quality of the
product of the schools than in the school as a sys
tem. That is, the schools are for the children, and
not the children and the State’s appropriations for
the maintenance of a pride-producing school system.
And while the system must be maintained to pro
duce adequate results, it does uot necessarily fol
low that the cost of maintenance and the adequacy of
results are proportionate.
An Inept Illustration.
In our conversation, a very brief one, with Supt.
Erwin, our talk approached the last mentioned point.
“But,” he says, “you must admit that the quality of
the product usually corresponds with its cost; for
instance, a Packard is a better car than a Ford.” “Not
for the Ford’s job,” I quickly replied. And most or
the product of the schools will have to do the work
of Fords.” “You mean you want cheap schools,
then?” asked Mr. Julius Wlarren, secretary of the
N. C. Teachers’ Association.” But Mr. Erwin under
stood better and said: “No he doesn’t.”
But the illustration was not only inept from the
standpoint' indicated, but was in absolutely reverse
gear. Both the school officials were making the cars
analogous to the school equipments and teacher per
sonnel. The cars op the contrary, correspond to the
pupils turned out by the schools. And neither the
quality of the car nor that of the pupil depends in
any measure upon the costliness of the plant of
which they are products, nor upon the size of the
wage of the employees in either the school or the
automobile plant.
The Ford plant is as costly, unit for unit, I doubt
not, as the Packard plant, and Ford is notable for the
liberality of his wage scale. Nor, I am sure, has the
Packard plant any more masterly mechanics than the
Fords themselves and their other master mechanics.
The Ford Plant Equipped to Make Fords.
The difference Is this : The Ford plant is deigned
to make Fords and to make them in mass quantities,
corresponding exactly with the requirements and
necessities of the public school system. On the other
hand the Packard or the Bolls Boyce plant produces
its cars morer on the individual basis, corresponding
in method to that of the more expensive private
schools of this country.
The Sine-Qua-Non the Same.
Yet the essential features of both cars are identi
cal in principle and in aim.- The essential aim of
each manufacturer is to convert the force generated
by the combustion of gasoline into motive power.
The differences that appear in the finished cars are
not due to the. cost of the plant or to the swage of
the workmen, but to the difference \in the concep
tions of the manufacturers as to what they wish to
produce. Ford conceives as the desideratum of his"
. product a car that will take One anywhere and bring
him baek in comfort. The manufacturer of the Rolls
Royce or the Packard, on the other hand, wishes to
create a car for the “Big Ike” to show off in. But
Mr. Ford can make his Lincolns too. But he knows
that this country has no room in it for ten million
Lincolns, while it absolutely needs (and NEEDS in
capital letters) its millions of A Models, adapted as
roadsters, coupes, sedans, ^tc., to the varying needs
and desires of the purchasers—but, all with the sine
qua-non, the ability to convert the power generated
Igr the combustion of gasoline into motive power*
thstt,, prime necessity wltfiopt W&cfr the Packard in
hsel^S th^^wB^^crr&Wf Ford^emphasizes *
tbeTessentials; the manufacturer-of the Rolls Royce
does not neglect the essentials, indeed, refines them,
but nevertheless so magnifies the non-essentials as to
put them beyond the means of the masses and to
unfit them for the rough road service which every
Ford is created to withstand,, so'that it is_ not; an
unimaginable thing to conceive of a puny Ford’s
stopping in its unhindered flight to push or pull the
Packard out of a mud-hole.
North Carolina cannot uaueaie upon a
Packard Basis.
However desirable a Packard education is for the
son of the man who can afford it.oone thing is cer
tain—‘North Carolina, in the first place, does not
need all its children educated upon a Packard basis;
and if it did so need them, it absolutely cannot af
ford to educate upon that model or basis.
This State has one of the most expensive educa
tional plants ever possessed by a State of no greater
per capita wealth. The cost of the plant is beyond
recall. The wage of the personnel must be de
termined with two things in view: the ability of the
State to pay and the salability, or intrinsic worth, of
the product of the plant as operated by the said per
sonnel—the same two principles upon which the Ford
plant is operated.
1UUUO
Mr. Ford is not paying ms employees lruut
existing apart from those accruing to him from the
operation of the plant. He had no billions to start
with from which he could pay wages to mechanics
and superintendents to produce a useless car. So
soon as the personnel of the Ford plant cease to pro
duce a salable car—salable because it wUl do the
work it is designed to do—wages will not only dwin
dle in the Ford plants hut ultimately cease alto
gether. Similarly with the teacher and supervisory
force in North Carolina. Future funds for. the pay
ment of salaries must come from the product of the
schools. If the schools turn out an unsalable prod
uct, one unfitted for the work a-day business of the
world, the sum total possible of collection for school
funds will grow perceptibly less and less. That, di
minution of the school funds will be due to disability
on the part of the next generation to pay—that is,
if it occurs. But the liberality of. the present tax
payers depends upon both their degree of ability to
pay and their inclination to pay.
The Schools Must Convince the People That
Their Product is Valuable.
There has been no lack of purchase of Fords by
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