Statement by Commissioner of Education Earl James McGrath to The Morning's News

STATEMENT * There is a serious shortage of teachers in the United States. The shortage grows worse each year. At the same time 60,000 babies are born every day. These children will further swell the enrollments in our schools. In some communities--an the number is increasing-some children have no teachers. In others, fifty or sixty children sit in one crowded classroom. In other towns school children attend half-day sessions. If more young men and women do not enter teaching in the years immediately ahead, many American boys and girls will be denied the basic education which we as a people have always considered their birthright. You may ask what can I do to improve this situation? Encourage your sons and daughters, and other young people in your neighborhood, to consider teaching as a life work. Join with your fellow citizens in seeing that salaries and working conditions in your school system are more attractive. I cannot urge my fellow citizens too strongly to concern themselves about this problem of the teacher shortage. Our schools are the basis of our democratic life. The system is no better than the teachers who day by day along with the home and the church prepare our children for a full life in a free society. * By Earl James McGrath, U. S. Commissioner of Education, Federal Security Agency, Washington, D. C., filmed at 12:30 p.m., January 16, 1952 to be televised on CES program The Morning's News, January 18, 1952.