Education: Semimonthly Tolerance

Whether character (or virtue) can be taught is an old, old subject of debate among pedagogues and theologians. Modern educators agree that virtue (which they describe as good habits and attitudes) can be taught, but they argue over how. Most of them believe that desirable attitudes such as kindness, cooperativeness, tolerance can be developed in men & women only by daily, indirect training from birth.

Last week, fearing that intolerance is spreading over the world so rapidly that little time is left to head it off, New York City’s Board of Education decided to try a short cut, ordered tolerant Superintendent Harold George Campbell to begin teaching tolerance at once. To the principals of the city’s 1,000 schools, Superintendent Campbell promptly sent an order to teach tolerance to the city’s 1,250,000 school children twice each month. Principals are to hold school assemblies describing the contributions of all races and nationalities to the U. S. “in a way such as to develop esteem, respect, good will and tolerance among students and teachers.”