I do not wish to deprecate the importance of high moral standards, of good character, of kindliness, of humanness, of ability to get along well with fellow citizens-there are innumerable virtues I should like to see inculcated in American youth. But the one thing which I believe will be of the greatest importance for the future of our Nation and of the free world, the one indispensable thing, is to bring all our children to markedly higher intellectual levels. Most of the problems they will have to cope with as individuals and as citizens of this great democracy will involve use of their minds. Whitehead wrote half a century ago that

In the modern complex social organism, the adventure of life cannot be disjoined from intellectual adventure.

EDUCATION ESSENTIAL IN A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY

To pull their weight as democratic citizens with rights, but also with civic responsibilities, our young people must be brought intellectually to a point where they can understand complex national issues, evaluate the various positions taken on these issues by individuals and organizations and judge whether their positions are based on sincere conviction or on naked self-interest; they must learn the difficult art of collectively choosing the best course of action that is feasible and do this for many diverse national issues. In all this the mind is the most important factor.

In fact, civilization has reached the point where the frontier now lies in the mind itself. Americans must conquer knowledge as formerly they conquered the wilderness. Bacon's saying "The mind is the man' is now literally true for each man and for all mankind. Our future depends squarely on how well we succeed in developing the minds of our young men and women. We must not, we cannot permit anything to stand in the way.

I think we must be realistic and face the fact that most people do not like very much to work with their minds; this is something we must try to teach children at school; we must get them into the habit of using their minds whenever a problem requires application of reason and logic. It is this very practical necessity that makes me insist on the importance of establishing national scholastic standards, for academic excellence does not just happen.

It must be actively promoted and nothing will do this better than setting children standards and rewarding them-with class promotion, good marks, diplomas, et cetera-if they work hard and thus succeed in meeting the standards.

LESSONS FROM ENGLISH EDUCATION

You know the Greeks in classical times were convinced they were superior to every other nation. Herodotus is said to have been the first Greek who had the temerity to suggest they might learn something from another people. He wrote his history from that point of view. I imagine this made him a "controversial person." I do feel that there are things we can learn from English education. I would include the following:

(1) Elimination of "ability to pay" from public education; retention

(2) Highly qualified teachers to whom much freedom is given in their work and whose influence on all aspects of education is great, notably in setting scholastic standards through national examinations. Total absence of nonteaching school principals and administrators.

(3) The use of Government grants as a means of raising national standards in education, by making acceptance of standards and of inspection to check on standards a condition for awarding grants.

(4) National examinations leading to national diplomas, designed to permit great variety in selection of test subjects, yet clear-cut indication on the diploma of the type of examination taken and passed. Cooperation of all interested parties in setting up the examinations and great care in evaluating them.

These are the principal features of English education by means of which they maintain high standards while permitting decentralized management of public education. I take it these are also our own objectives. One or more of the above measures may prove acceptable

to us.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR A NATIONAL STANDARDS COMMITTEE

I suggest that Congress set up a National Standards Committeesmall committee composed of men of national stature and eminencetrustworthy, intelligent, scholarly and devoted to the idea of an Amer ican education second to none. The committee would have two tasks:

The first would be purely informational; it would act as an edu cational watchtower announcing danger when it was it approaching. The members would keep under continuous scrutiny, and periodically report on the state of American education. Does it meet the needs of our times? Is it competitive with education in countries at similar levels of culture and technology with whom we compete economically. politically, or militarily? How do American children compare in academic knowledge with children in Europe or Russia, say at age 12, or 16, or 18; taking, of course, into consideration different ability levels?

The committee's second task would be to formulate a national scho lastic standard on the basis of its findings; a standard which would make us internationally competitive and would also respond to our specific domestic needs.

The committee would do this by means of examinations set at dif ferent ability levels. No one would have to take them, but those who passed would receive national accreditation. The committee would in no way interfere with established institutions now granting diplomas or degrees. It would simply set up a higher standard, offer it to anyone who wished to meet it, and certify those who had successfully done so.

NOT A RADICAL DEPARTURE FROM PRESENT PRACTICE

Neither the committee's informational nor its standard setting func tion would represent a radical departure from established practice. Many Federal agencies collect and distribute information. We need a disinterested agency to tell us the unvarnished truth about the

vent complacency and illusions of superiority and thus save us from the kind of painful shocks that Sputnik and other evidences of Russian scientific proficiency have given us in the past few years. There is precedent, too, for the committee's setting of permissive national standards. We have something very like it in the 1961 amendment to the 1956 Water Pollution Act.

This amendment authorizes the Federal Government-if so requested by a State to research and develop new methods of pollution control and to award grants-in-aid to localities and States wishing to use these federally established methods. In principle, you have here a national standard very much like the scholastic standard of the proposed committee, in that it is not imposed but merely offered as a service on a take it or leave it basis.

Water pollution and mediocre education have this in common: they are problems that cannot be solved by local and State authorities alone. but require some assistance from the Federal Government. Population growth threatens us with a severe water shortage unless we devise better means to preserve the quality of our water resources so that they may be used over and over again.

Pollution abatement has therefore become a national problem and we accept a new kind of Federal aid. I believe improvement of the quality of American education is at least as pressing as the need for an assured supply of clean water. "Education," says the Ford Foundation report for 1959, "is now the indispensable medium for survival and progress." Education is so basic to the quality of our national life that by steering it in the right direction we can change America's future; we can make it secure. To steer it right, I believe we need a new kind of Federal aid-the kind of aid that the proposed National Standards Committee would offer.

LOCAL RESPONSIBILITIES

There are, of course, many things that can be done at the local and State level. For instance, local communities or State governments have the power to increase the amount of classroom instruction per school year. We have the shortest school day and school year among leading nations. They have the power to eliminate from school curricula everything that can be learned elsewhere. We are the only Western nation where precious school hours are wasted teaching children how to make fudge, twirl batons, drive cars, budget income, handle the telephone, catch fish, and similar trivia that any reasonably normal persons picks up on his own or learns at home.

TEACHER CERTIFICATION

Most important of all, State authorities could alter teacher certification requirements, setting them academically high enough so that our teachers would in time become professional persons, highly competent both in knowledge of subject matter and in teaching skill-as European teachers generally are.

I would suggest that examinations are a better means for determining a prospective teacher's professional qualifications than the mere

EDUCATION LEGISLATION-1963

of the bar examination which is additional to the student's meeting the requirements of his law school. I may add that this is common prac tice abroad though in some countries, as in Britain, the university gives the final qualifying examination.

Raising the intellectual and educational qualities of our teachers is the single most important step that must be taken to improve edu cation. Next in importance is abandonment of the present practice of putting nonteaching administrators in charge of schools. Here the local communities have very real power. They can see to it that their school board will engage the services of no one as administrator who is not also an experienced teacher. I would suggest that as schools gradually replace the older teachers with better qualified new ones. the latter be given more freedom in planning their programs. To obtain and hold a good professional person you must treat him as a professional; this means giving him maximum freedom in the practice of his profession.

These are important measures and under our Constitution they are outside the jurisdiction of Congress. But Congress, by setting up a National Standards Committee, could aid local and State authorities in putting these measures through. The committee world offer students and teachers the chance to prove themselves by passing national examinations; it would set them a goal to strive for and a reward if they achieved the goal. Moreover the mere existence of a standard-though permissive only-would counteract the strong pressures toward mediocrity that are present in our school system. Finally, the existence of a national standard would act as a geographie equalizer, a result devoutly to be hoped for. We have greater ge graphic inequalities than any other country I know of; the educa tional opportunities of our children vary to a greater extent as between the educationally least and most advanced parts of the coun try than is the case in Europe. And this despite the fact that school systems abroad are run by nations enjoying a greater measure sovereignty and independence than do our 50 States.

REFORM REQUIRES A NATIONAL SCHOLASTIC STANDARD

of

At one time or another most countries have found that their educational systems were in need of improvement. I know of none that has been able to put through a speedy and thorough reform without making use of some sort of national scholastic standard. Indeed we are the only advanced Nation lacking such a standard. The word "standard" conjures up in the minds of a directive issued by some bureaucrat in Washington to which every many Americans school in every town and hamlet is then compelled to conform-a connotation virtually synonymous with regimentation or Federal

I use it in the

tyranny. But I use the word in a different sense. sense that comes first to mind: a specific requirement or level of e cellence deemed worthy of esteem or reward. Not a law, enforcible in the courts; falling below standard does not put one in jail. Nor a conventional rule imposed by society; failure to meet the standard does not get one socially ostracized. No one has to live up to the

hard it becomes the yardstick by which the worth of these acts or accomplishments is determined.

NEED FOR A MEANINGFUL OBJECTIVE

I do not share the pride our educationists take in the fact that we are the only leading Nation with a school system that does not challenge its children to meet a national scholastic standard in order to receive academic rewards. I do not agree with them that children must not be "judged"; that each child has a right to "equal education and equal status" and to a diploma-merely for attending school a given number of years.

I see nothing "democratic" in automatic promotion and unmerited diplomas. If a child is promoted before he has mastered a prescribed grade course, he will only seem to move up the educational ladder. In reality he will be standing still on the same rung; this is merely camouflaged by educational labels that are as false as when sugar syrup is marked "honey" on the glass jar. When diplomas are awarded for mere attendance, they soon lose all value.

A child who obtains a high school diploma when he cannot yet read and write with ease and dexterity, has not really received a secondary education. True, he has been kept at school more years and his school has a different name but he has not mastered more than an elementary program. He hasn't even mastered that well. As for the high school diploma he carries away this has necessarily shrunk in value so that in many cases it represents no more today than did grammar school graduation half a century ago.

Even as we have made "higher" education available to more children by eliminating fees, so have we taken away with one hand what we have given with the other. By not requiring so-called higher education and its diplomas to meet a fixed national standard, we have brought them down to what Dr. Robert B. Davis, of Syracuse University, so aptly terms "creeping lowest denominatorism.”

In the absence of a standard, our diplomas and degrees have inevitably suffered the fate of paper money that is not backed by gold bullion. As indicators of a student's educational accomplishment, the degrees "aren't worth a continental." You have to look up the institution that issued them and the course for which they were granted in order to evaluate their academic worth.

I confess I cannot understand the violent opposition of educationists to the idea that academic rewards ought to be earned. Everything else in life has to be earned, certainly after one reaches adulthood.

ACCOMPLISHMENT NOT EXPERIMENT

Nor am I impressed by their complaint that if there were national examinations schools could no longer plan their own curriculums, that they could no longer freely experiment. I feel, frankly, that our children have been far too much subjected to experiments by people who make their living "researching" this, that, and the other thing.

There are specific tasks a school must perform, specific kinds of knowledge and intellectual skill they must try to transmit to their