Ella Flagg Young

President, National Education Association, 1910

Born in 1845, Ella Flagg Young became an elementary school teacher in Chicago at the age of 17. For the rest of her life she was at the forefront of the struggle to empower the teaching profession towards the goal of educating the whole child and the creation of a democratic society. Young rejected the Board of Education model for the school in which the teacher was in the role of an assembly line worker, merely pasting prescribed bits of information into the heads of the children as they passed through the school house. She became the first woman to head a great metropolitan school system as Chicago’s superintendent of Schools from 1909 to 1915. She saw clearly that teachers needed union organization if they were to be heard, and proved her mettle as a valiant defender of teachers, including their right to organize. As the Chicago Federation of Teachers grew in power under Margaret Haley and Catherin Goggin, Young tried to mediate in the increasing tensions with the Board of Education. But in 1915, after the enactment of the “Loeb Rule” by the Chicago Board of Education, resulting in the discharge of 68 teachers for refusing to withdraw from the Chicago Federation of Teachers, Young resigned from her position as superintendent.

The Loeb Rule

(Named for Jacob Loeb, President of the Chicago Board of Education)

“Membership by teachers in labor unions or in organizations of teachers affiliated with a trade union or a federation or association of trade unions, as well as teachers’ organizations which have officers, business agents, or other representatives who are not members of the teaching force, is inimical to proper discipline, prejudicial to the efficiency of the teaching force, and detrimental to the welfare of the public school system.  Therefore, such membership, affiliation, or representation is hereby prohibited.”