Word: stoddard
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School Superintendent Alexander Jerry Stoddard of Los Angeles is a genial, ruddy-faced man with the patience of Penelope and the optimism of Dr. Pangloss. Last week, as he stepped down as the head of one of the nation's largest school systems, he could claim a record of sorts. Few U.S. superintendents have sailed through quite so many tempests-or managed to weather them quite so well...
...graduate of Nebraska State Teachers College in Peru. Stoddard started teaching to support himself through law school. But after a few months on the job, "I came home and told my wife that teaching was my field, and I've been in it ever since." By 1948, armed with a master's from Columbia Teachers College and a doctorate from the Rhode Island College of Education, he had held a succession of superintendencies-Bronxville, Schenectady, Providence. Denver, Philadelphia. But even that was not enough to prepare him fully for his experiences...
Plenty of Trouble. One of the first troubles Stoddard had to face was a scandal involving the selection of the school system's telephone operators. In 1950 a grand jury began investigating charges that the operators' examinations were "rigged" to discriminate against Jews and Negroes. Though this investigation was eventually dropped, the board was soon faced with even graver charges involving its awarding of school contracts. The result: four of its members were either defeated in elections or removed from office...
With that storm passed. Stoddard found himself headed into another. This time the cause of the ruckus was a teacher's manual about UNESCO that Stoddard had hoped to use in the schools. Some citizens, how ever, led by Hearst's Herald & Express, had other ideas. UNESCO, the critics charged, tended to subvert nationalism in favor of one world, and this in turn was closely akin to Communist international ism. The local American Legion joined the attack, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars passed a resolution condemning "this planned corruption of the American children's minds." Eventually...
...Ford Foundation grant for a special teacher-training program to alleviate L.A.'s perennial shortage, the Herald & Express erupted once again. The whole idea, the paper grumbled, seemed to be some sort of plot. Had not the foundation's former President Paul Hoffman favored UNESCO? Was Stoddard thus merely using the grant "to swing UNESCO . . . back" into the schools again? "Pink Socialism." cried the paper-and Stoddard was forced to drop the grant...