He was just there as a protest against the school
without play.
We asked the Board of Education to make their school playgrounds
the neighborhood recreation centres. So they would not need to
worry over how big they should be, but just make them as big as
they could, whether on the roof or on the ground. They listened,
but found difficulties in "the property." Odd, isn't it, this
disposition of the world to forever make of the means the end, to
glorify the establishment! It was the same story when I asked them
to open the schools at night and let in the boys to have their
clubs there. The saloon was bidding for them, and bidding high, but
the School Board hesitated because a window might be broken or a
janitor want extra pay for cleaning up. Before a reluctant consent
was given I had to make a kind of promise that I would not appear
before the Board again to argue for throwing the doors wider still.
But it isn't going to keep me from putting in the heaviest licks I
can, in the campaign that is coming, for turning the schools over
to the people bodily, and making of them the neighborhood centre
in all things that make for good, including trades-union meetings
and political discussions.
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