Men of Labor! Protect Your Fellow-Workers of the Public Schools From Politics! [...] Vote Against No. 27 and the Self-Nominative School Board
[San Francisco: 1930]. Broadside, 42cm x 23cm. Printed in black on newsprint; text in 32 lines surrounding a central graphic depicting "Politics" in the person of a spoiled child begging to be given the school system to destroy, after having broken all his other 'toys' - the State House, the trolley and road systems, etc. Faint old folds; mild toning to paperstock; still complete and Very Good or better.
Broadside, issued without imprint or attribution, relating to the ongoing debate over control of public schools in San Francisco – a debate that played out more broadly in most American urban school systems through much of the Twentieth Century. The issue at stake here is a proposal (Amendment 27 to the San Francisco City Charter) to replace appointed School Board representatives with a new Board directly elected by city residents. Objections raised to the amendment by the anonymous author(s) include assertions that the new system will favor only well-heeled candidates who can afford the cost of campaigning; that the Board will be opened to political manipulation at the expense of teachers and students; and that the work of the Parent-Teacher Association and allied advocacy groups will be marginalized.
The so-called "centralization movement" in American education reform began in earnest during the Progressive Era, influenced by the growth of corporate consolidation, bureaucratization, and the "efficiency movement" in other contemporary spheres of public and private administration. Nominally "progressive" in origin, centralization sought to remove schools from the political sphere and to place decision-making in the hands of appointed experts. This closed and hierarchical system prevailed in many large urban school districts for most of the 20th century, despite frequent attempts, such as this one in San Francisco in 1930, to democratize the process. Despite more or less quadrennial attempts to undo the appointed board system, San Francisco's school board remained centralized through the 1960s. At least one scholar has noted that, in San Francisco at least, the debate over centralization had distinct racial undertones; supporters of the appointed Board were deliberately attempting to protect the schools from the influence of majority-Catholic wards. Writing in the context of a similar 1920 San Francisco vote, Victor L. Schrader notes that the Protestant working class played a key role in swinging the vote towards centralization: "The Protestant working class acted as a swing vote which was both necessary and aided the vote of the middle and upper classes to bring about a victory for [Amendment 37, the 1920 ballot measure]...The Protestant working class acted as a deciding block without whose support the [centralization] measure probably would not have passed" (see Victor L. Schrader. "Ethnicity, Religion and Class: Progressive School Reform in San Francisco [in] History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 20 no. 4, Winter, 1980).
Such background would suggest that the current broadside, pandering to working class distrust of political figures (especially strong in the first years of the Depression) to support what was an essentially undemocratic process, was more than a little bit cynical. This perhaps explains the absence of any imprint or attribution. Rare and local; no copies separately catalogued in OCLC, no others traced in commerce.
REF:
Snauwaert, Dale. "Administration Reform in the Progressive Era: The Chicago Debate" [in] Democracy, Education, and Governance: a Developmental Conception. Albany: SUNY Press, 1993.
Victor L. Schrader. "Ethnicity, Religion and Class: Progressive School Reform in San Francisco [in] History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 20 no. 4 (Winter, 1980).
Price: $150.00