Education: Tepees and Propaganda

In the exhibition hall at the National Education Association's convention in Boston last week, a 16-mm. projector ground out over & over an educational film on Patrick Henry's 'historic speech — "Give me liberty or give me death." School teachers swarmed around it, cheered each showing. The N.E.A. convention — the largest and most representative gathering of educators of the U.S. school year — was in a grim mood, a mood in which even the feared word propaganda failed to scare many of the 10,000 delegates.

Propaganda was the convention's prime topic. Many delegates...