Title: Elementary Community Civics
Author: R.O. Hughes
Date: 1922, 1931
Publisher: Allyn & Bacon
ISBN: none
Length: 449 pages plus 25-page appendix/index and 81-page
state-specific supplement sections
Quote: “It is no less important for the pupil to learn that
his life must be lived in close association with his fellow men and to
profit by the experience of human beings in regard to these relations.”
Hughes' introduction goes on to state that “the great
majority of school children never get beyond the grammar grades,” so “we must
be sure that those below high school age have a chance to think and study about
their social relationships.”
Allyn & Bacon was a “progressive” publisher...and this
thick little book, although it contains some solid facts and some historically
interesting documents, is basically a junior high school level catechism manual
for the Prog religion. Does your community take advantage of this or that
“benefit” of bigger government, the seventh grade student is asked, and how
would you go about extending (then active) Prohibition to cover
cigarettes?
It's always interesting for booksellers to consider the past
lives of secondhand books. Though the copy of Elementary Community Civics in
my hand came to me via the same source as a copy of Burch's Problems of American Democracy, the books were not used by the same student, or at the
same school. Probably at some point they were bought by the same collector, or
researcher...not because they're a particularly well matched pair (the cloth
bindings never were the same color, and Elementary Community Civics has
led a harder life), and so, possibly, because the purchaser was comparing the
material in the junior high school and high school textbooks.
They are the trunk and limb of the same tree. Hughes writes
in a much more engaging style, with discussion questions in between sections,
lots of then-new black-and-white photos, and more concrete language, for
younger children. Nevertheless, here are the same infamous ideas in
kid-friendly guise:
“During the war women undertook numerous activities which
they had never before tried.” [False.] “Here you see them engaged in some of
the processes connected with ship building.” [All but one of the laborers in
the photograph are sitting down, apparently working with small pieces of
hardware.] “Do you think it is wise for them to continue permanently in
employment of this kind?”
“Since some boys and girls do not realize the need of going
to school, and some parents are ignorant or careless, the states have laws
requiring pupils to attend school....No matter how good our laws about schools
may be...the schools will be far less helpful than they ought to be, if we do
not have teachers who can conduct them properly. One of the most serious
problems...has been that...The salaries paid have been so low that no person
with brains enough to earn fair pay would accept a position in a country
school.”
“There are three grades in the class of the feeble minded:
the idiot...the imbecile...and the moron, who may advance to the mental age of
twelve years...They can do certain kinds of work, and, under proper supervision,
can be of a little use...these people need to be separated from others.”
“The fact that colored people made up a considerable part of
the population was another handicap” (page 33 of the Virginia-specific
supplement).
Yes, children, the Progressives were racists, sexists,
elitists, “ableists,” and just generally quintessential snobs. The early
twentieth century was a snobbish period in these United States. Nevertheless.
Ick.
The Virginia-specific supplement may be especially
interesting to local lurkers. Allyn & Bacon craftily marketed this book to
the smaller, poorer schools Hughes so deplored by printing state-specific
versions that played up to those very schools. Copies of Elementary
Community Civics were printed separately from, but bound together with,
quick reviews of facts about the history, geography, and government for each
state where the book was sold. Hughes wrote from Pennsylvania but he didn't
mind adding 81 pages about Virginia, or wherever.
It is possible that never before, and never since, has a list
of “the important cities” of Virginia consisted of: Richmond, Newport News,
Portsmouth, Hampton, Suffolk, Fort Monroe, Yorktown, Williamsburg, Petersburg,
Hopewell, Fredericksburg, Alexandria (in the 1920s “important as a railroad and
steamship center”), Danville, Lynchburg, Charlottesville, Winchester, Staunton
(“birthplace of President Wilson”), Luray, Harrisburg, Hot Springs, Roanoke,
Bristol, Norton, Appalachia, Big Stone Gap, Tazewell, Marion, and
Wytheville—with “the important cities” appearing within an inch of that list of
coal towns.
Norton, Big Stone Gap, and Wytheville are cities, as
defined in Virginia law, with populations above five thousand; Big Stone Gap
has a claim to fame as Virginia's westernmost city. Appalachia and Tazewell are
towns. This web site here imposes an arbitrary moratorium on traditional
pre-game jokes about the population of Marion, on the grounds that those jokes
appeal to the inner middle school brats, or “morons,” of people in Gate City,
and we don't want Hughes' ghost thinking that we “need to be separated from
others.” (Marion is both an actual town, in Hughes' time the home of celebrity author and newspaper publisher Sherwood Anderson, and the location of a state-tax-funded mental hospital.) Let's just say that it is still a bit of a novelty for students in the
Point of Virginia to hear anyone's list of our state's “important cities”
mention even one place where they've been. We learn not to expect any
town or city west of Roanoke to appear on the mental maps even of fellow
Virginians. Seven of them, in a row...more “important” than Manassas, Virginia
Beach, even money-loaded Fairfax?
Not only that, but a high school in Bristol was chosen as an
illustration of a sleek new “modern” school! Hughes must have calculated that
this focus on the Point would sell copies in a region with a low Prog
population. The ploy worked; the copy I have was used in Wise.
What may really interest the local lurkers is that the
original user of my copy signed himself “Little Al Smith formally known as
Gilbert Alfred Smith.” Whether that person was noticeably related to our late
Coach Gilbert Smith, I have no idea. I don't remember Coach Smith, who also taught sixth grade
social studies, looking or acting like one of the group of
teachers who were students in the 1920s, but I do remember his particular
interest in making sure we all knew the difference between statements of fact
and statements of opinion. Coach Smith wanted his students to be able to read a
book like Elementary Community Civics and recognize that it contains a
high percentage of opinions in places where students are entitled to expect
facts.
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