The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1931-02-16
By MAX BEDACHr.

By MAX BEDAGH1s
IN no field of propaganda and agitation are our
L capitalist bosses more active than among the
children and the youth of the working masses.
OF course they have the advantage Of control
ling all public avenues of education. They make
the fullest use of the advantage Public educt-
ton is organized on the basis of a capitalist
goose-step system and with a capitalist goose
step aim.
However our capitalist masters are not salts
fled with using the public educational institu-
tons Aside from these, they have created large
and powerful organizations and institutions like
the Boy and Girl Scouts, the Y. M G. A. Y. W.
c. A., ETC., which continue the workers child
a~1 further tie him down on the path Of capt.
ia It goose-step.
Ca-itaIsm knows the Importance and value Of
cont olling the children. Over the playful forms
which the serious problems and functions Of in
Cividual social life take for the child, it is pos
sble to conduct into the child's mind all the
poisonous illusions of capitalism. Instead of
preparing the workers children for the in
evitable struggle of life and especially for the
class struggle capitalism Horatio Algerizes them
It creates conceptions of capitalism in the heads
of the children that have nothing whatever to
do and in fact, are in direct contradiction, to
reality. With poisonous romances, the workers
children are led into the illusion of the justice,
cialy of the individual capitalists Faithful ser
vice of the slave is always rewarded Vilainy
of the capitalist is always punished. The poor
boy always marries the boss daughter. The
problems of the worker are not solved by Strug-
gle, but by unreserved submission, undoubting
piety and undieing hope. AS against this DELHI
crate poisoning the workers parents must con-
meet up their children's lives and their develop
ing conceptions with their class position, their
class problems and the class problems of the
parents. A militant worker who permits his
child to be taken in by the Boy Scouts or Girl
Scouts is deliberately turning his child over to
the enemy. The enemy uses this opportunity to
poison the childs mind against the interest of
its parents and against its owp interest as a
workers child and as future worker. The rev.
dictionary movement must present the worker
parents with organizations in which their chill
dren can be connected up with their lives and
their struggles instead of becoming stranger to
them.
The Young Pioneers of America is the work
ers' children's organization which must fill this
need In the past, it has not always done So
There was too much of a tendency to make out
Of the Young Pioneers a sort of children's
Communist Party. Instead Of being a mass or
ganization OF the workers children, it became
an organization only of a selected few, whose
devotion to the cause maintained their enthusi-
asm even in the face of the fact that none of
the natural desires of the children found any
satisfaction in the activities of the Young Pho
neer movement.
The national leadership Of the Young Pioneers
of America has now decided to fundamentally
change this policy of the past Play and sport
shall no longer be banned from the lives of the
Pioneers Instead they shall be made the bridge
over which class conceptions are conveyed into
Young Pioneers in the future will in a certain
sense compete with the bourgeois chidrens or
CARNATIONS by satisfying the cravings of the
children for play and sport and general knowl-
edge they will follow an exactly contrary policy
from the bourgeois childrens organizations.