Statement to the Press By Commissioner Of Education Earl McGrath

STATEMENT* I have just returned from a three-week swing around Europe with Federal Security Administrator Oscar R. Ewing, of whose Agency the Office of Education is a part. Sinco leaving the United States early this month, we have visited Ingland, Ireland, Scotland, Sweden and Germany. Mr. Ewing and other members of his party are continuing to Switserland, Italy and Israel before coming home, but it was necessary for me to return to Washington from Frankfurt. During this trip, Mr. Ewing and I were especially interested in learning of the educational opportunities in the countries we visited. We met with the Ministers of Education and their immediate staffs in London, Dublin, Edinburgh and Stockholm; and I visited elementary schools, teacher training schools, and institutions of higher education. I was particularly impressed by the extent of educational opportunity in several of the countries we visited, especially Scotland and Sweden. We in America, who take pride in our addiction to democratic education that should be as universal as possible, tend to assume that in Europe education is a monopoly of the upper classes. In point of fact, this is not the case; and in a number of ways we can learn much from the European experience. In Scotland, for example, able but poor students can receive financial assistance to continue their education as early as the first high school years, and such assistance includes payment to the parents in *By Earl J. McGrath, U. S. Commissioner of Education, Federal Security Agency, Washington, D. C. concerning educational aspects of trip to Europe, December 6-12, released to Press, December 23, 1949.