Statement by Commissioner Of Education Earl McGrath

STATEMENT * If we educators really believe that understanding among peoples is fundamental to the maintenance of peace, then the challenge to American leadership which confronts us in these perilous times should cause us all to think deeply about our professional and civic responsi- bilities. We must not fall into a false sense of security by believing that large scale military preparation alone will gain peace, tranquility, freedom and prosperity for the whole world, or even for us. The quality of the leadership of American education will be determined to a lar re degree by the progress we make in arranging the administrator's professional life in such a way as to provide for the periodic, if not constant, refresiment of his professional knowledge and his intellectual vitality. If the numbér of young men and women attending our institutions of higher education should fall significantly, the result would be disastrous. Our social strúctúre itself, our industry and our free political institutions all depend upon the advanced education of a large and increasing percentage of American youth. The military effort, today more than ever dependent upon invention, science and technology, without highly trained personnel would shortly collapse. *By Earl James McGrath, U. S. Commissioner of Education, Federal Security Agency, Washington, D. C., published in Dictaphone Educational Forwn, October 1951 issue, page 4.