Statement by United States Commissioner of Education Earl James McGrath to the New York Times

Statement* There are still many people who are slow to recognize how greatly the world has changed since they themselves went to school, and who judge all education by the yardstick of the "little red schoolhouse." And there are many, of course, who resent the necessity of paying taxes to support what they term "new-fangled ideas" in education. At the same time, it is becoming more and more evident that the opposition to modern education is being stimulated by the more reactionary elements who are against any development in education which broadens its scope to serve more genuinely democratic needs. The appeal to ignorance and prejudice, in all its ugliest manifestation, is being used to discredit this form of modern education, together with the same sort of "smear campaign" that is increasingly being directed, within our body politic, against almost any form of liberal opinion. *By Earl James McGrath, U. S. Commissioner of Education, Federal Security Agency, Washington, D. C., on "Attacks on Modern Education," to New York Times, January 1952.