Reconsidering Schools and the American Welfare State

Recalling her experience as an exchange teacher in Birmingham, England, in 1938–39, in the midst of the Great Depression, Oregon teacher Mary Kelly, wrote: When I witnessed the first‘leaving’day … in one of the Birmingham schools and learned that as soon as the majority of the English children were fourteen they were through with regular schooling forever, I almost shed tears. “Do you mean that those girls will never go to high school?” I asked. “Yes it is true.” ”Will they have jobs or will they be idle?” “The Education Department will place most of them in positions in homes, shops or factories ….” There were no graduation exercises, no lovely new dresses, no parents or relatives invited. I thought of my high‐school graduation, which possibly would never have been if education was not free, because the means were limited. Still another graduation after going through college on nothing a year permitted me to take up teaching ….To me, at that moment, there was nothing more precious than democracy and I mean the American way.¹