Socialist Sunday Schools

SOCIALIST SUNDAY SCHOOLS. Sunday schools for working-class children were established by American radicals before the twentieth century, notably by German and Finnish immigrant groups. However, the more extensive Socialist Sunday school movement was organized primarily by grass-roots supporters of the Socialist Party of America during the 1900–1920 period. These children’s schools were English-speaking, eschewed any ethnic identification, and sought to foster an understanding of and allegiance to working-class interests and basic socialist tenets among the next generation of laborers.

At least one hundred Socialist Sunday schools (sometimes referred to by other names, such as the Children’s Socialist Lyceum in Los Angeles) were organized in sixty-four cities and towns in twenty states. Prominent ones were located in New York City (which had fourteen schools in 1912), Rochester, Hartford, Newark, Buffalo (two in 1918), Philadelphia (two in 1912), Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh (two in 1916), Cleveland (three in 1912), Chicago (eight in 1919), Milwaukee (three in 1915), and Los Angeles. Schools varied from a handful of students in one class, as in the case of the Newport, Kentucky, school, to a thousand students in dozens of classes at the school that met at the Brownsville Labor Lyceum in Brooklyn. The average enrollment was probably less than a hundred students. Most schools existed for several years, although there were schools opening and closing in the same year and others that lasted for more than a half-dozen years (e.g., the East Side Socialist School in Manhattan, Williamsburg and Brownsville schools in Brooklyn, Rochester Socialist Sunday School, and International Socialist Sunday School in Milwaukee). The two-hour morning school sessions consisted of age-divided classes and general assembly times (with announcements, recitations, songs, and remarks by visitors).

Socialist Sunday school teaching focused primarily on the nature of working-class life and class conflict, the character of the capitalist system and how it results in serious social problems (such as poverty, crime, and unhealthy living and working conditions), and the value of cooperative industrial and personal relations. The schools were intended to counteract the overly individualistic, competitive, nationalistic, militaristic, and anti-working class themes that seemed to be prevalent in public schools and other aspects of capitalist culture (e.g., the press, mass entertainment, and the church). They were never expected to provide a complete socialist education for youth, only a more formal, systematic one (albeit only two hours a week) than could be gotten at home, at rallies, in youth clubs, and so forth. While some staff members (many of whom had no formal pedagogical training) tended to rely too heavily on the adaptation of adult-oriented reading materials for lessons, the Socialist Sunday school movement as a whole did include a variety of teaching methods and materials, including lecture outlines, question-and-answer discussion formats, socialist and nonsocialist children’s readers and magazines, games, role-playing activities, field trips, guest speakers, songs, plays, and pageants.

The first Socialist Sunday schools were initiated soon after the organization of the Socialist Party in 1901. For example, the San Jose school was established by members of the local Socialist women’s club in 1902, and schools in Chicago, Boston, and Omaha were organized in 1903. A slow but continuous expansion occurred during the first two decades of the century, with a national organization, intercity conferences, and more supportive party initiatives in general taking place by 1918. All of these efforts came to an abrupt halt, however, when the Socialist Party split apart in 1919–1920. A few schools continued in existence during the 1920s, and about a dozen schools were reorganized in New York City in the 1930s when the party experienced a resurgence. But gone were any prospects for a national movement and the optimistic spirit that had marked the earlier phase of these radical educational experiments. By the end of 1936, when the party experienced another serious split in its ranks, there were no Socialist Sunday schools left in existence in the United States.

Buhle, Mari Jo. Women and American Socialism, 1870–1920. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981.

Debs, Eugene V. “Socialist Sunday School,” Socialist News [Cleveland], vol. 1, no. 4 (September 4, 1915), p. 3, Marxist.org. https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1915/0904-debs-socialistsundayschool.pdf

Mickenberg, Julia L., and Philip Nel, Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children's Literature. New York: New York University Press, 2008.

Teitelbaum, Kenneth. “Outside the Selective Tradition: Socialist Curriculum for Children in the United States, 1900–1920.” In The Formation of School Subjects: The Struggle for Creating an American Institution, edited by Thomas F. Popkewitz. Philadelphia: Falmer Press, 1987.

Teitelbaum, Kenneth. “Contestation and Curriculum: The Efforts of American Socialists, 1900–1920.” In The Curriculum: Problems, Politics, and Possibilities, edited by Landon E. Beyer and Michael W. Apple. New York: State University of New York Press, 1988.

Teitelbaum, Kenneth. Schooling for “Good Rebels”: Socialism, American Education, and the Search for Radical Curriculum. New York: Teachers College Press, 1995.