Speech By Commissioner Of Education Earl McGrath, Can We Meet the Need For Educational Leadership?

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CAN WE MEET THE NEED FOR EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP?* Educational leadership is not a new subject of discussion in our profession. Much has been written and spoken on this topic. He who chooses to speak about educational leadership runs the danger of being trite or uninteresting. Yet I was persuaded to say something on this subject for two reasons. First, because I believe the kind of leadership needed today is somewhat different from that required in our earlier history, and, second, because I believe the proposals I have to make about the kinds of leaders we need and the type of education they ought to have are somewhat novel. In talking about the type of educational leadership needed today we must of course admit that all periods in our national life have presented serious educational problems. The decades of the thirties and the forties of the last century, for example, when. we were attempting to establish free public education called for courageous end self-sacrificing leadership. Such men *as Horace Mann, Calvin Stowe, end James G. Carter responded. Again in the seventies and eighties when the school system was extended upward through the high school, crucial issues had to be decided. But in terms of their present size and complexity the schools were then relatively simple. Now education is big business. Today there are over 32 million children and young people in our educational institutions. The value of the educational plants of the Nation runs to nearly 11 billion dollars. There are more than one tillion teachers of all types. The Speech by Earl James McGrath, U. S. Commissioner of Education, Federal Security Agency, Washington, D. C., at fall meeting of the Minnesota Council of School Executives, Minneapolis, Minnesota, November 5, 1949.