Word: stoddard
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...five years as superintendent of the Los Angeles school system, Alexander Stoddard has been fighting a losing battle. Each fall he finds himself with 10-20,000 new students-and without enough teachers to take care of them. A few months ago Stoddard worked out a plan, submitted it to the Ford Foundation and promptly got a promise of a $335,000 grant...
...Stoddard's plan: Los Angeles was to set up special examinations to select each year 90 qualified men and women with B.A. degrees who might make good teachers. Their training would consist of courses during two summers plus a year's practice teaching (which would mean more time spent on teaching, less on courses than is usual under California's regular teacher-training program). At first, a majority of the Los Angeles Board of Education thought the idea fine...
...Hearst Herald & Express the plan seemed a part of a plot: Stoddard, it said, "is trying to put over a new type of teacher training which might .wreck the academic . . . future of a lot of our kiddies." As for the Ford Foundation, it too was suspect: its former president, Paul Hoffman, had caused no end of trouble backing a UNESCO teaching program. "Pink Socialism." cried the paper. "Hoffman is out of the Ford Foundation, but his spirit is still there...
...weeks passed, the Herald & Express went right on hammering this theme. Then came the news that Stoddard had called on his colleague, Superintendent Will Crawford of San Diego, to administer the plan. "Crawford," cried the Herald & Express, "was the center of a storm in San Diego over the UNESCO-teaching there." That seemed evidence enough that Stoddard is trying "to swing UNESCO and 'One World' back into the Los Angeles school system...
Some members of the L.A. board began to switch sides. Finally, last week, just before the plan was to go into effect, Stoddard withdrew his plan, and with considerable relief, the board voted to drop the whole idea. Mused the Los Angeles Mirror: "They shout 'shortage of teachers' and then turn down a ... grant . . . which would have added 90 teachers a year to the Los Angeles public school staff . . . Some 100 other American cities have accepted Ford Foundation grants without being contaminated...