Statement by Commissioner of Education Earl McGrath, The Secondary School - Today and Tomorrow

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THE SECONDARY SCHOOL--TODAY AND TOMORROW* Education is the primary means for achieving the American goal of equality of opportunity. It is in our schools that the individual talents and capabilities of all young people can be discovered and nurtured. Since education serves to perpetuate democratic ideals, a democracy cannot afford not to provide equality of educational opportunity for its youth. Among the paramount responsibilities of every citisen is the duty to help plan education for the young people of our Nation. As educators, we are charged with the major task of turning those school plans into realities, of putting our professed democratic goals into concrete practice. Our responsibility is to tailor educational programs to fit the social, economic and political needs of living in this complex modern society. In secondary education-=the specific area with which we are concerned here tonight--it is for us to draw on well over a half-century's experience and chart an imaginative, yet practical course for the years ahead. The. job we. face in 1950 offers an unprecedented test of our democratic beliefs and our professional competence, because for the first time in world history, a nation has set itself the task of providing education for all of its young people. No country has ever before attempted to achieve such a goal. In the United States, however, we are. pledged to the ideal of elementary and secondary education for all. In my judgment, it is both feasible and desirable to have in school by the year 1960 ninety per cent or more of all youth of high school age. As a point of departure for consideration of several critical problems in the field of secondary education, let us assume that this American goal has By Earl James MoGrath, U.8.Commissioner of Education, Federal Security Agency, Washington, D. C., delivered by Buell G. Gallagher at the 22nd Annual Alabama State Education Conference, University, Alabama, Wednesday, June 21, 1950.