Interview with United States Commissioner of Education Earl James McGrath

INTERVIEW * Comminities planning new schools were urged today to "build from the inside out" as a way to ruarantée a safe and healthrul environment for their children. Dr. Earl J. U. S. Commissioner oi d'iducation, said in an interview that "only by designing the school environment carefully to the mental, enotional and piyysical needs of the child can we expect to provide adequate facilities." Despite the acute need today. for classrooms, the nation's top education official said, we must approach school construction as a long-range proposition lest we erect architectural monuments to the community that will be obsolete before the class of 1958 graduates. "Planhing a good school requires research and analysis into the function its 'classrooms must serve. We must make certain that the combination of physical characteristics in the classroom--the seating, lighting; ventilation, heating colors--make a healthful, stimulating and comfortable environment for our youngsters, " Commissioner McGrath said. "There is increasing evidence of the effect of these physical factors on the well-being and learning capacity of pupils, he explained. "Improper lighting, for exanple, can make the child tense, inattentive or unnanageable. Recently it was revealed that a youngster's learning capacity went down as the classroom temperature went above the comfort point." %By Earl James McGrath, U. S. Commissioner of Education, Federal Security Agency, ton, i). C., May 1952, for release to Newspaper Enterprise Association.