Address by United States Commissioner of Education Earl James McGrath

ADDRESS* On behalf of the United States Government and, more particularly, of the educators of the United States, it is my pleasure and my privilege to wel- come the representatives of the American Republics to this Inter-American - Seminar on Vocational Education. This meeting, sponsored by the Organization of American States, Inter- national Labor Organization, the Government of the United States, and the University of Maryland, is the fourth of such seminars, the first having been held in Caracas in 1948, the second in Rio de Janeiro in 1949, and the third in Montevideo in 1950. It was my good fortune to attend one of these meetings in Montevideo, and I have informed myself concerning the work of the others through the reports issued at their conclusion. They have been uniformly stimulating and profitable experiences for the delegates attending them, and I am confident that this meeting will be also exciting and rewarding to all of you. And as you return to your respective homes I hope and believe that you will take with you not only increased understanding of the issues and prac- tices in vocational education, but also pleasant memories of Washington and of the United States. These international seminars, in my opinion, have three principal pur- poses which the educators of this hemisphere might well keep before them in their daily activities. First, they bring together a vast body of experience relating to whatever subject or problem may be under discussion. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending upon one's point of view, there are no pat answers or ways of doing things in the world of education. Maybe in the millenium there will be, but at present educational practice is characterized by variety. In part this variation of practice grows out of difference in philosophy, in part from the local forces playing upon education, and in part from experi- mentation, that is from deliberate variation in practice in order to obtain differences in results. These differences in the outcomes of educational ex- perimentation frequently lead to general improvement in the content and pro- cedures, in a particular type of education, such as vocational education. Without disregarding differences in philosophy and the necessity to adapt edu- cation to local conditions, it can be said that one of the principal purposes of this seminar, like its predecessors, is to pool the experience of the con- stituent countries in order that all may have the advantages of the experi- ences of each in the field of education. Another purpose of these seminars is to provide a forum for the discus- sion of those educational issues and problems which many or all the partici- pating nations have in common, but for which no satisfactory solution appears yet to have been found. Put another way they provide an opportunity for a uni- fied and cooperative attack on emerging problems which otherwise would neces- sarily have to be dealt with independently. When I was a boy I used to work for a storekeeper who in referring to the need for talking over common problems By Earl James McGrath, U. S. Commissioner of Education, Federal Security Agency, Washington, D. C., at the Inter-Amerioan Seminar on Vocational Education, Pan American Building, Washington, D. C., August 4, 1952, 10:00 a.m., EDT.