Director of Libraries Toni Vahlsing writes about a moment in our national history that was felt at our school. Here’s a snippet from the Headmaster’s Report to the School Committee in 1952 about a teacher embroiled in controversy who had recently been hired.
“As I am sure most of you know, Paul Goulding, who is coming to us in Social Studies, has recently gained a good deal of notoriety through his refusal to sign the Loyalty Oath. If you have been following this publicity, I am sure you have been gratified at the general tone of news reports and editorial columns.”
Pennsylvania and many other states had instituted Loyalty Oaths. It was during a period known as the Red Scare, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when fear about the spread of Communism in the United States was rampant. Some public employees, including public school teachers, who did not sign this oath had been fired.
Upon further research, I found Mr. Goulding’s reasons for not signing the loyalty oath in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol. 101. The publication includes this quote from Mr. Paul W. Goulding, high school teacher at Nazareth, Northampton County: “That the actual words of the Pennsylvania Loyalty Oath are relatively innocuous is a tribute to the resistance by a free people and their representatives against coercive forces that would cast our very thoughts in a mold of conformity, mechanization and violence.
“In spirit, however, the Oath is one of several instruments by which we are being ‘persuaded’ that totalitarian regimentation must be met by totalitarian, 100 percent ‘Americanism.’ In a day when the impulse to conform, to acquiesce, to go along is the instrument used in subjecting men to dictatorial rule throughout the world, nonconformity — with a religious motivation — becomes a means of preserving the dignity of man.
“Although I am neither Communist nor subversive, I must say ‘No’ to the spirit of the Oath.”
It seems AFS was happy to have him join the faculty and teach. Mr. Goulding’s name appears in several Quaker publications later in his life, so he was an active Quaker.
