The Daily Worker

What's Doing in the Workers Schools of the U.S.
Gleanings from the sessions on the courses they wish to take in the School

Connecticut had a district training school recently and came to the conclusion that a training school cannot be run successfully when it is composed of students from both the Party and mass organizations.

Minneapolis found the material sent from the center too advanced for their training schools. They used the British textbook to good advantage.

California is running a one-month school for agricultural workers and is planning training schools for the railroad, oil, and other concentration industries. They are instituting a system of making phonograph records of lessons on Fundamentals of Communism, The Role of Fascism and War, What the Party Is, Political Economy, etc. to be sent out to sections where they cannot send speakers and teachers.

Virginia finds it impossible to consider having a District School because of the illegal conditions. Their opinion is that circuit schools should be established instead.

North Dakota will have an Agricultural Workers School to take the place of the Workers' Schools as they are called in the industrial centers.

Boston has a class for shop chairmen in the Furniture Workers' Union, taking up problems of trade union tactics.

Pittsburgh has been using "Why Communism" extensively as a text book in the various classes formed there.

The New York District proposes that Party teachers be sent out to the other districts in the summer. They also suggested that the most developed comrades from the teachers' fraction should be sent out as instructors to new districts, these comrades to be instructed as to the element of workers they are to teach and the methods of approach.

Among the motions made by the School Commission were the following:

That a circuit school for teachers for concentration industries during May and June be organized.

That during the fall two schools be organized in the South and in the West. That three full-time national training schools be arranged each year to last 15 weeks each.

That a fund of $10,000 be raised to carry on the work of national training schools, etc.

Miscellaneous Notes

The Harlem Workers' School, 200 West 135th St., New York, began its Spring Term last night (Monday, April 16th). This is the third term of the school's existence. They have secured Jerry Arnold to teach the course in Labor Journalism and Sidney Spencer to teach Problems of the Youth Movement. Students who wish to register for the Spring Term of the Harlem Workers School may still do so this week before the first

The Los Angeles Workers' School which opened on March 5th, moved to new quarters in the Los Angeles Cultural Center at 230 South Spring Street on March 14th, and on Monday, March 16th, it added 17 new courses to its curriculum. These courses are: Fundamentals of Communism, by Tashjian; Race and Colonial Problems, by Loren Miller; The Fascist State, by Reitman; History of the Russian Revolution, by Victor; Public Speaking, by Muller; Russian, by Fritzler; Spanish, by Goldbaum; English, by Smith; Research, by Kalish; Revolutionary Children's Movement by Stromberg; Revolutionary Youth Movement, by Louis Miller; Emancipation of Women, by Prenter, Bonner. Dr. Nadina Kavinoky (specialist in social medicine and women's hygiene) and Goldstein; Workers' Health, by Drs. Nahum Kavinoky, Toozan, Tashjian and Rosanoff (famous as a mental hygienist); Workers Literature, by Quin; Workers' Art by Schultz, Privall and Hantman; Play Writing for Workers, by M. Ashe, and a course in Workers Self-Defense.

They offer special rates to unemployed, and one student will be accepted without charge for every four members sent by an organization.

The North Side Branch of the Chicago Workers' School, recently organized by several sympathetic workers of the neighborhood, is a very active class in Principles of Communism. They have sold $11.81 worth of literature in the class, collected $30.10 for the Anti-Fascist League, obtained five Daily Worker subscriptions, two for Soviet Russia Today, and one for Soviet Travel.

How a School Committee Functioned

The new Workers School Committee, elected at the Boston Student Conference held recently, had its first meeting last week and divided the work of preparing for a big fall term next year. They elected a Library and Literature Committee (with the central task of building a library now and spreading literature when school begins again next fall); a Contact Committee (which is to go into unions and mass organizations, start educational work, organize a speakers bureau, supply instructors wherever needed, develop new cadres that way, etc.); a Sustaining Fund and Financial Committee; a Forum Committee, and a Publicity Committee.

The latest registration figures for the Spring Term of the New York Workers School stands close to eighteen hundred students, taking more than 2,100 courses. This is a total of nearly six thousand students for the year so far.

(This column appears every Tuesday. Students, workers, and teachers are invited to send communications for this column to A. Markoff, 35 East 12th Street, Room 301, New York City).