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28. The Power of Speech and Education (1893)
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| 157 28 The Power of Speech and Education (1893) Education Societies Working-class men and women created numerous self-education societies in cities around the country during the 1890s. In doing so, they demonstrated the extent to which they had internalized the values of intellectuals who had become, through their involvement in labor organizations, political parties, and the Yiddish press, leaders of the Jewish working class. The following announcements are just two among countless others that appeared on the pages of radical Yiddish newspapers. New Haven Educational Club (1893) The New Haven Educational Club held a banquet specifically for the intelligent public. Comrade Leontieff1 spoke to our group two weeks ago with so much success that we decided to invite him to give another lecture on Sunday, Dec. 17, 3:00 p.m. The gathering and banquet will be only for select attendees who want to learn something. [. . .] We state this clearly to those who will perhaps not be able to understand [Leontieff’s lecture] because we are not making this a mass gathering. We have decided to hold a series of scientific lectures only for intelligent people; thus, it would be useless if it were filled by people who were unable to understand a scientific lecture and who would just sit there and sleep or yawn. We will, from time to time, also call large mass meetings. Source: Di arbeter tsaytung, Nov. 7, 1893, p. 3. Socialist Pamphlet Fund and Workers’ Education Group: An Appeal to All Male and Female Workers of New York City (1893) Our society, the Socialist Pamphlet Fund and Workers’ Education Group, has, in addition to publishing socialist literature in the Yiddish language, also 158 | Life of the Mind taken upon itself the task of educating workers through systematic lectures on various elementary branches of science. Considering that [individual] lectures, however useful they may be, cannot achieve as much as a workers’ education school, where the teachers can thoroughly listen to and question every student, where each class does not have too many students, and where [the students] stand on the same level of development and knowledge, we have proposed as our goal, our ideal, the establishment of such a school for the Jewish population, along the lines of the workers’ schools in Germany and other countries (Sweden, Denmark), which have already brought marvelous results. Since, as of yet, we have not had the means to establish such formal schools, we are doing the same task, but in small groups. We are organizing groups of 10–12 students who want to learn the same subjects, and we are providing them with teachers. The groups are divided into three parts. 1. Elementary groups, where the students can receive in two lessons a week a popular course on natural science and history and be prepared to enter the next level. 2. Specialized groups in which specific elementary branches of science are taught. 3. Self-education groups, which hold discussion meetings along with lectures by their own members and are responsible for giving beginners, who are embarrassed to open their mouths at a large gathering, the possibility of discussion so as to develop in them the power of speech. So far, elementary groups have been established specifically for physics, geography, Darwinism, political economy, and history. [. . .] Source: Di arbeter tsaytung, Dec. 1, 1893, p. 5. Translated by Tony Michels. Notes 1. See document 10, note 1. ...