Worker Education Quotes

Bookstores should be located not only on campuses or on main drags, but at the assembly plant's gates, also.

We decided … to put an end to illiteracy, and each of the factory representatives made lists of all illiterates at his own factory, found premises for schools, brought pressure to bear on the factory management and raised funds. A superintendent from amongst the workers was appointed to each school for illiterates, and he saw to it that everything necessary was provided - blackboards, chalk, ABC books; others were appointed to ensure that instruction was given correctly and to hear what the workers had to say about the schools. We gave instructions to the superintendents and heard their reports.

To one who believes that really good industrial conditions are the hope for a machine civilization, nothing is more heartening than to watch conference methods and education replacing police methods.

In the past we couldn't talk to non-union workers. Now we can at least talk to non-union workers so we'll be mobilizing them and educating them not for just six or eight months before an election, but we'll be doing it year-round.

A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over. And I maintain that if a person can put a few common sense facts into a song and dress them up in a cloak of humor, he will succeed in reaching a great number of workers who are too unintelligent or too indifferent to read.

Attention, must be devoted principally to raising the workers to the level of revolutionaries; it is not our task to descend to the level of the 'working masses'.

… when so many people seem to be beset by fears of socialism and communism, it seems particularly important that the workers of our country should have an opportunity to study the labor movement and the economic problem of the day. Only through understanding can they be expected to look at questions in a comprehensive way. Our great difficulty in the past has always been that individual groups only see their own point of view and could not understand the situation as a whole.… Those who are interested in the future development of this country must be interested in the education of the workers.

If we are to remain preeminent in transforming knowledge into economic value, America's system of higher education must remain the world's leader in generating scientific and technological breakthrough, and in meeting the challenge to educate workers.

All the time our union was progressing very nicely. There were lectures to make us understand what trades unionism is and our real position in the labor movement.