Classroom 15
Cód:
491_9781785275975
The teacher of Classroom 15, known fondly as Mr. McFetridge, assigned a pen pal project in an effort to take geography lessons outside of the classroom. Imagining a place as far from Oregon as they possibly could, the students wrote letters to nine- and ten-year-old counterparts in the Soviet Union. Janice Boyle, the class secretary, reached out to Oregons Congressional representative, Charles O. Porter, seeking assistance connecting with peers in Russia. Representative Porter forwarded the letter to the Secretary of State Christian Herter and a week later the students received the shocking and disheartening news that their benign request had been needlessly denied. In the wake of McCarthyism, the Eisenhower administration subverted the assignment, fearing Communist propaganda would infect the innocent minds of eager Oregon schoolchildren. The students plight quickly gained national attention with stories running from the Roseburg News-Review to the New York Times. The publicity didnt miss the attention of J. Edgar Hoovers FBI. His agents investigated. They traveled to Roseburg, collected evidence, and took it back to the Bureaus regional headquarters in Portland. The public reaction was swift and unrelenting. The teacher and the Congressman were attacked by outraged Roseburg citizens, the school board, and enraged Americans across the country. Despite the U.S. governments best efforts, the news reached Russia and the front pages of Pravda. School children from the Soviet Union flooded Douglas County with letters to their Roseburg counterparts, most (but not those found by the authors) were confiscated by authorities. As quickly as the Riverside pen pal initiative materialized, it was quashed. Born out of a University of Oregon investigative reporting class exercise based on an erroneous New York Times On This Day in History column, journalism student curiosity evolved into passion. In the same vein as the fourth-grade class from 58 years before, the vorac
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