A Fundamental Difficulty in the Way of Improving Boston Schools January 11, 1913

Susan W. Fitzgerald, 1913
“It seems to me that the fundamental difficulty with our schools is the same thing that is the fundamental difficulty with so much of our common life – the fact that democracy is more common in speech than in practice, and that the lesson we have got to learn is not to say that democracy is an overworked word, but to learn that it is an underworked thing.
“It would be better for our schools and for us all if socially the schools were more democratic in Boston today. Of course the schools cannot be the same in all districts, but if we could feel that in each school section the schools really gathered together the whole of young life and taught them to work together and thing together and pull together, we should be well satisfied. I don’t know whether we can look to the happy time when that will be true in all parts of Boston. There is nothing more damaging to our public schools than the growth of the private schools, which always stand for separation.”