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“The Queen of the Lobby”: Mary Hunt, Scientific Temperance, and the Dilemma of Democratic Education in America, 1879–1906

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Jonathan Zimmerman
Jonathan Zimmerman*
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University
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Extract

Pennsylvania's statehouse, the journalist surmised, had “never witnessed such a sight.” Neither had he. Gazing across the galleries, he was astounded to find them packed—with women. Women! Women crowding the benches, women standing in doorways, and women “clustered in bunches of color in the narrow little aisles”—all awaiting news of Pennsylvania's “scientific temperance” bill, which faced a final vote that afternoon. The bill would require all state public schools to provide instruction in “the nature and effects of alcoholic drinks and other narcotics.” Additionally, all new teachers would be required to pass an examination in the subject, which would have to be taught “as thoroughly as other required branches”—and schools that failed to comply with the legislation risked the loss of state education funds.

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Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , Spring 1992 , pp. 1 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by the History of Education Society 

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References

1 Amendment Herald (Pittsburgh), Apr. 1885, frame 110, roll 14, Temperance and Prohibition Papers, Ohio Historical Society (joint Ohio Historical Society–Michigan Historical Collections), Scientific Temperance Federation Series (hereafter STF Series).Google Scholar

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33 Ferguson, , “Temperance Teaching in Connecticut,” 1036; Argus (Albany), 1 Aug. 1895, frame 213, roll 10, STF Series. In arguing that “the educational profession as a whole was sympathetic” to Scientific Temperance, STI's most recent historians conflate “old” Progressive educators (like Harris) who supported STI and “new” child-study Progressives who skewered it. Tyack, et al., Law and the Shaping of Public Education, 158.Google Scholar

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35 “On Duty,” “The Watch-tower,” Union Signal, 6 Feb. 1890.Google Scholar

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37 As Tyack, David and Hansot, Elisabeth have noted, small-town superintendents during this era often “acquired new ideas about education in their training and in their professional associations” and “became carriers of an adopted cosmopolitanism.” Tyack, and Hansot, , Managers of Virtue, 178.Google Scholar

38 Clipping, , Hartford Post, 18 May 1893, frame 426, roll 8, STF Series; Goodwyn, Lawrence, “Organizing Democracy: The Limits of Theory and Practice,” Democracy 1 (Ian. 1981): 48; Tallmann, Mary E. to MHH, 6 Feb. 1902, frame 65, roll 12, and E. O. Orr to MHH, [1902?], frame 383, roll 12, STF Series.Google Scholar

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49 Tyack, et al., Law and the Shaping of Public Education, ch. 6.Google Scholar

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54 Indeed, “teachers' control” may be less democratic, because teachers receive less public scrutiny—and less public pressure—than high-profile, mayoral- or board-appointed superintendents experience.Google Scholar

55 In a column first published the day after Bryan's death, Mencken savaged Bryan's anti-evolution supporters as “gaping primates,” “a simian rabble,” “yokels,” “rustic ignoramuses,” “the anthropoid rabble,” “yahoos,” and a “forlorn mob of imbeciles.” Mencken, H. L., “In Memoriam: W. J. B.” in The Vintage Mencken, ed. Cooke, Alistair (New York, 1955), 163–67. See also Lippmann, Walter, American Inquisitors: A Commentary on Dayton and Chicago (New York, 1928).Google Scholar

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58 By “intellectually unfit,” 1 mean only that most advocates of anti-evolution did not possess the educational background or credentials of the “modernists” who opposed them. I do not, however, share Butler's fear of their influence—nor do 1 think the matter is relevant in evaluating whether anti-evolution was “repressive.” Google Scholar

59 According to the theory developed here, even the hilarious bill proposed in one state legislature to change the value of pi from 3.1416 to 3.000 (“because the Bible described Solomon's vase as three times as far around as across”) would not necessarily qualify as “repressive.” We would deem it repressive only if it squelched deliberation—if, for instance, students were not allowed to question the legislature's act. Nelkin, , Creation Controversy, 31.Google Scholar

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61 See Szasz, Ferenc Morton, The Divided Mind of Protestant America, 1880–1930 (University, Ala., 1982).Google Scholar

62 Immigrant parents often worried that STI would alienate them from their offspring. See, for example, Hunt, Mary H., “Practical Working of the Ainsworth School Physiology Law in New York State,” School Physiology Journal (Oct. 1896), 21. Teachers, meanwhile, complained about the “overdrawn” statements in textbooks and the young age at which students were introduced to the subject. Male teachers seemed more likely than female instructors to resist STI. See, for example, teacher surveys at frame 381, roll 11, frame 398, roll 12, frame 410, roll 12, and frame 508, roll 12, STF Series.Google Scholar

63 Gutmann, , “Democratic Education in Difficult Times,” 17; idem, Democratic Education, 103–4, 76, 42–44.Google Scholar

64 Kenneth Strike has suggested that popular demands upon school curricula should be rejected if they are “motivated by … the desire to restrict familiarity or inquiry.” Yet both the STI experience and more recent curricular controversies suggest that this “intentionalist” standard is far too strict, excluding censorious impulses that—in practice—often enhance critical inquiry. Strike, Kenneth, “A Field Guide of Censors: Toward a Concept of Censorship in Public Schools,” Teachers College Review 87 (Winter 1985): 246; Boyd, , “The Changing Politics of Curricular Policy-Making,” 604.Google Scholar

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67 Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart, 303, 335 ; Barber, , Strong Democracy, 235, 224. For critiques of Bellah et al., see Reynolds, Charles H. and Norman, Ralph V., eds., Community in America: The Challenge of Habits of the Heart (Berkeley, Calif, 1988).Google Scholar

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