"The Goose Step"

 Study of Education

In America.

In "The Goose-Step," Upton Sinclair has performed another service for the working-class propagandist. In "The Profits of Religion" he revealed the controlling economic forces in the American churches; in "The Brass Check" he vividly portrayed the stranglehold upon society, which the power of money exerts through its press; in "The Goose-Step" he presents a vivid analysis and description of the same forces at work in the realm of higher education.

His main thesis is that "our educational system is an instrument of special privilege." In this conclusion there is nothing new. It is at least obvious that the money-masters who dominate the economic, political, and social life of the modern capitalist State have a direct interest in determining the character of that higher education which exists upon their bounty. "Do you really think," he asks, "that the masters of the money trust, having bought up the last newspaper and the last popular magazine, would overlook your schools and colleges? If so, you are exactly the kind of foolish person they count upon you to be!"

Sinclair spares no pains to substantiate and make clear by specific instances the truth of his general thesis. He spent a full year studying American education; he read exhaustively upon the subject; travelled over the United States from coast to coast, interviewed over a thousand educators, students, parents, and administrators, and, having turned this mass of information over in his mind, he presented a case which is complete in every detail, startling even to those who know what to expect, vivid as a first-hand record. Its only defects are the dreary intellectual atmosphere revealed, and the almost monotonous reiteration of the vested interests controlling these institutions, and the petty suppressions and victimisations of which they are guilty—for neither of which features of the book we can in any way hold the author responsible. He merely describes what he finds.

Despicable Espionage.

The book is a wholesale indictment of American education under capitalist control. From Harvard, the University of Lee Higginson. and Leland Stanford founded by the Railway King, to Oregon, the University of the Lumber Trust. Chicago, the University of Standard Oil, the University of Automobiles, and the Western Colleges of the Smelter Trust, the same method of the interlocking directorates secures the same direct control by vested interests, with the same objects, and the same results as in Columbia, the University of the House of Morgan.

"To avoid misunderstanding." he sums up "let me state that I have not been able to find a single one of the great American Universities which is truly liberal or truly free." Professors and lecturers are carefully watched—in many cases there exist despicable systems of espionage. Those who come under the suspicion of the authorities are sacked, kept down or miserably forced to resign. Sometimes dismissal comes without explanation, like a "bolt from the blue," in others it is preceded by a personal interview, a close examination into religious beliefs and political opinions, a warning, an appeal for submission or a threat. Says Professor Charles Beard, joint author with James Harvey Robinson of text-books on modern European history; which show an appreciation of economic determinism and of modern industrial problems: "The status of a professor in Columbia is lower than that of a manual laborer." Says Harold J. Laski, who was forced to resign from Harvard by bitter personal attacks and who found a haven in the London School of Economics, where less attention was given to his political views: "The results of the American atmosphere are quite clear: (1) Many men deliberately adopt reactionary views to secure promotion; (2) many more never express opinions lest the penalty be exacted; (3) those who do are penalised when the chance of promotion comes." Some resist, like Professor Scott Nearing, who was dismissed from Pennsylvania for alleged blasphemy because he would not suppress his interest in the local abuse of child labor. The majority are broken and remain chained to the machine. They march in time to the "goose step" which is imposed upon them.

Lecturers are not free to express their views; students are not encouraged to think. What should be a stream of enlightenment is poisoned at its source. Anything modern in literature, history or social science is taboo. Sinclair recalls his embarrassment when, on leaving Columbia, he discovered that someone living had written a work of genius. "The students are living in a state of mind precisely as if the last 150 years had never happened to anybody." "Class ignorance, class fear and class repression are written over the modern curricula at Harvard, as at all other American universities." "More money is appropriated, more buildings erected, more students come piling in, but the soul of the place is dead."

Efficient Wage Slavery.

The final product of the system, concludes Sinclair, is dulness. There is obviously no place for truth and a vital interest in modern thought in a capitalist educational institution. This fact is not peculiar to America.

The value of this book is that here a competent investigator has taken what is probably the most complete development of the most direct control of education by the capitalist plutocracy, held it up for detailed examination, as it were, under a microscope, and enabled us to see what such control means.

The same conditions of ultimate capitalist control govern education in Australia. Here it is perhaps less direct and obvious, but the same atmosphere, the same limitations, the same resulting dulness all prevail, since capitalism requires of its educational system, for the most part, only efficiently trained wage-slaves, and its controllers fear the challenge of free discussion and enlightened education.

Daily Standard (Brisbane, Qld.),  January 1924 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article178974539