A Camel's Nose Under the School Tent; R. Freeman

[240 ] [in European countries, including Russia] at 16 have ac quired an education that compares with that of an Amer ican college graduate of 20 or 22 years." The Educational Testing Service at Princeton found that 71 per cent of a group of prospective teachers of elementary arithmetic have a long-standing hatred of the subject. They drop it in high school as soon as allowed, avoid it in college, and return to teach another genera tion to detest it. In the past five years, engineering degrees fell to less than half in the United States while the Soviet Union was doubling its output of engineers. Many see this crisis as due only to a lack of funds. And they feel that this can be cured by federal aid. Five Fallacies The case for more finances for the public schools is commonly based on five beliefs: 1. The schools are being discriminated against in the allocation of public funds. The fact is that education has for many years been the largest item of public expenditure in the United States, next to national defense. Comprising about one-third of all state and local government expenditures, it is gaining on the other public services. Between 1900 and 1955 public school enrollment doubled, but school costs in price-adjusted dollars increased more than twelve times.

The plain fact is that school funds have consistently risen [241 ] faster than enrollment and are continuing to do so. The schools are not being discriminated against. 2. The schoolsare now 1 0 eceivinga smallershare of the national income than they used to. The fact is that expenditures for public education in 1955 were 3.8 per cent of the national income-4.6 per cent, if we leave out war-connected expenditures-as compared with 1.5 per cent in 1900. The United States spends not only more money but also a larger share of the national income on education than any other country of record, according to the World Survey of Education by the United Nations. 3. The shortages of teachers and classrooms are get ting worse and the schools are falling behind. The fact is that the number of teachers in the public schools has consistently risen faster than the number of pupils. The teacher-pupil ratio has risen: 1 : 36.7 in 1900 1 : 30.1 in 1930 1 : 26.9 in 1955 Much of the teacher shortage is due to inefficient use of the available teachers. We have tended to limit rather than extend the services of good teachers, in contrast to the other professions. Despite the declining financial re wards of a college education as compared with the man ual trades over recent decades, teaching has been doing better than other professions in attracting candidates; and last year only 1.2 per cent of teachers in public schools left to accept other employment.

[242 ] As to classrooms, there are many serious shortages all over the nation, but they can and will be met if we will avoid waiting for Santa Claus or Uncle Sam to provide them. 4. The schools are being rnafUlged efficiently and are giving the most education for every dollar-but they are not getting enough dollars. Since we are investing more money in education than in any other public undertaking except national defense, we should seek the cause of unfavorable results in how the money is being spent rather than in the amount we are spending. Dr. Clarence H. Faust, president of the Fund for the Advancement of Education, recently said that, as compared to the need for buildings and teachers and money for expenses, our school system "needs even more to Bnd ways of making better and more e:ffective use of its resources for the major purposes of education." Many communities are not willing to tax themselves more heavily for what today's schools are giving their children, yet nonpublic schools--despite their tuition charges-have been expanding three times faster than public school en rollment.

5. The states and communities lack the fiscal capacity to take care of the school needs. Federal aid is necessary to provide adequate sch.ool support. The fact is that there is no federal aid except that taken from within the borders of the 48 states. The Edu cation Committee of the President's Commission on Inter governmental Relations found no state economically un[243 ] able to support an adequate school system, and concluded that ~'federal aid is not necessary either for current operat ing expenses for public schools or for capital expenditures for new school facilities." At the White House Conference on Education, the advance factual report of the Com mittee of Four on school finance and federal aid was altered before it was laid before the participants, with some of the questions changed in such a manner as to make it difficult to vote against federal aid. Yet the 1,800 Conference participants found that "no state represented has a demonstrated financial incapacity to build the schools it will need during the next five years." Though the citizens of even the low income states are not anxious to receive federal school aid, the Governor of prosperous New York pronounced in favor of federal aid.

It appears that the sponsors of federal aid have far more in mind than the $400-million-a-year initial program proposed. Their real purpose is to get a foot in the door, to get the principle of federal responsibility for the schools established, and then prove in subsequent years that the amounts were far too small. Beardsley Ruml has already proposed that the federal government contribute $3~~ billion or more a year to the schools. Regulation Accompanies Subsidy It would be naive to assume that the federal govern ment would spend several billion dollars a year for any purpose and have nothing to say on how the money is to be spent. Sooner or later federal administrators would [244 ] suggest that schools conform to their ideas of how they should be organized and administered. This is what· has happened in all other major federal grantin-aid pro grams, as the amounts increased. History teaches that political power inevitably follows the power over the purse.

Judicial opinion has already been expressed on this point, as a matter of fact. The United States Supreme Court, in 1942, proclaimed: It is hardly lack of due process for the government to regu late that which it subsidizes.1 A Fateful Step Federal aid in even small amounts, then, is but the first and fateful step in the nationalization of the public schools. And the dominant philosophy among these school administrators is just the opposite of improvement in educational standards and a restoration of leamingin the schools. Instead, it is less emphasis on teaching the basic skills and more hours devoted to the social graces. E. Smythe Gambrell, as president of the American Bar Association, last year declared his belief that federal aid to the public schools could ultimately bring the destruc tion of freedom in this country; that it would be nothing short of a national calamity for the public schools to become dependent upon federal aid.

President Eisenhower, while the head of Columbia 1 United States Supreme Court. Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111, p. 131, October 1942. [245 ] University, once said about the proposal for federal aid for schools: "Unless we are careful, even the great and necessary educational processes in our country will be come yet another vehicle by which the believers in pa ternalism, if not outright socialism, will gain still addi tional power for the central government .... Very frankly, I Brmly believe that the army of persons who urge greater and greater centralization of authority and greater and greater dependence upon the federal Treasury are really more dangerous to our form of government than any exter nal threat that can possibly be arrayed against us. I realize that many of the people urging such practices attempt to surround their particular proposal with fancied safe guards to protect the future freedom of the individual.

My own conviction is that the very fact that they feel the need to surround their proposal with legal safeguards is in itself a cogent argument for the defeat of .. the pro posal." Again, in 1956, President Eisenhower warned of "the growth of a swollen bureaucratic monster government in Washington, in whose shadow our state and local gov ernments will ultimately wither and die." So while we hasten to attempt to cure the educational plight we are now in, we must not in our concern about a competitive race with Russia take steps making tragic prophecy of Abraham Lincoln's warning that "if this country is ever destroyed, it will be from within." What we must guard against is perhaps not so much the Soviets as our own tendency to yield to expediency instead of facing up to problems. [246 ] HIGH SCHOOL ECONOMICS tg 5~oma6 J. S~ellg ~ STUDENT answers to questions concerning business prac tices, government controls, labor relations, and other aspects of human affairs ought to indicate what they have been taught about economics. Here are the results of a recent poll of 1,443 students in 13 high schools in a typical industrial community: 56% said owners get too much compared with employees.