Illinois School Board Journal - September/October 2007: Article 5

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Illinois School Board Journal
September/October 2007

'Cardinal points' still debated today
by Linda Dawson

Linda Dawson is director of editorial services for IASB and Journal editor.

In the March/April issue of The Illinois School Board Journal, we noted the beginning of the 75th volume of the magazine with the promise that we would share more historic information from those early Journal years.

Much of the first issue of The Illinois School Board Bulletin, the Journal precursor, was taken up with information from the 1934 convention proceedings. A listing of the officers included:

Leo W. Chulock of Maywood, president
Laura D. Smith of Highland Park, vice-president
A.D. McLarty of Springfield, secretary
W.D. Walters of Centralia, treasurer

Other board members, from all around the state and representing some districts that don't exist anymore, served on either the Legislative Committee or the Membership Committee.

Major stories in the first issue highlighted Quincy's Senior High School, which opened to students in 1933, and a lawsuit that the Association had filed against the state treasurer and state auditor, seeking payment of $2,733,231.57 — money that was deemed due to "101 downstate Illinois counties."

In looking at these early articles as well as programs from early state conferences in preparation for the 75th anniversary of the Joint Annual Conference in November, IASB staff has come across interesting writings that eerily echo some of the same issues that schools face in 2007.

The back of the program/invitation to the 1935 conference listed "Cardinal points in a platform of educational reconstruction," which read as follows:

A. The financial basis. The reconstruction of public education involves:

A stable, varied and flexible tax system for the adequate support of all desirable governmental activities, including the schools, providing for a just sharing of the cost of public services by all members of the community.
Boards of education responsive to the will of the whole people and free to adopt the wisest policies for the productive spending of all school money.
Local school units large enough to make the services of competent educational leadership financially possible.
State funds for education sufficient to permit the statewide maintenance of an acceptable minimum school program on a reasonable local tax rate.
The right for any school district to offer its children an education superior to the state minimum standards.
Federal financial assistance to the states in such amounts as may be necessary to supplement state and local efforts and thus to protect the nation's interest in a universally educated citizenship.

B. The educational program. The reconstruction of public education involves:

Extension of appropriate educational services to the adult members of the community.
Higher standards for admittance to the teaching profession, accompanied by standards of compensation sufficient to guarantee the highest type of personnel in the schools.
A resolute discarding of dead wood in the curriculum of the public schools accompanied by continuous efforts to relate the things children learn to the social needs of the day.
An immediate discontinuance of futile attempts to treat the education of children as a mass problem. Recognition and re-cognition of the individual child.
An intelligent public support of the school program not merely in financial matters, but with reference to the educational program as well.

These "cardinal points" were taken from an address by William G. Carr, director of the research division, National Education Association, at the biennial convention of the American Association of University Women in Los Angeles, California, on June 25, 1935.

As a board member, don't you wonder if the school board members of 1935 could have envisioned that many of these "cardinal points" — especially those involving finance and teacher quality — would still be the subject of debate more than 70 years later?

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