Address by Commissioner of Education Earl McGrath, Improving the Community: What the Well-Supported School Can Do for its Community
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OCR Page 1 of 14IMPROVING THE COMMUNITY:
WHAT THE WELL-SUPPORTED SCHOOL CAN DO FOR ITS COMMUNITY*
Before coming to grips with the question of "what the well-
supported school can do for its community," let us focus our attention
briefly on the context of today's meeting. For discussions of
community problems and plans for civic betterment can have little or
no meaning, it seems to me, unless we first understand the complex,
ever-changing physical and social world of the mid-twentieth century.
It may sound a bit too obvious and simple to say that the world
of 1950 is not the world of 1940 or even 1945. But the fact remains
that, as citizens and as a Nation, we qui te often think and act today
as though we were living in those distant days. Then Iran was some
far-away country where our sons had uncomfortable duty in World War
II, when all it took to solve our economic problems was e. bit of
collective bargaining in Detroit, and when American achievements in
atomic energy stood unchallenged as a symbol of our national security.
Today, however, we are (or should bei experiencing a rude
awakening. What we may have originally thought was a dream of peace
and prosperity coming true has turned out to be a seemingly endless,
tormented nightmare of frustration, tension and crisis. The American
community in the year 1950 faces the future with the prospect that
for many years its citizens `will be living in a world rent with
*Address by Earl James McGrath, U. S. Commissioner of Education, Federal
Security Agency, before Annual Citizens Conference, Lansing, Michigan,
March 9, 1950
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