Statement by Commissioner of Education Earl McGrath, Elementary Education Moves Ahead
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OCR Page 1 of 17ELEMENTARY EDUCATION MOVES AHEAD*
We often hear it said that the rid-twentieth century is the most
oritical period in the history of American education. Yot all periods in
our national life have presented serious educational problems. The decades
of the thirties and the forties of the last century, for example, when we
were attempting to establish free public education, called for courage and
self-sacrifice on the part of our teachers and school administrators. And
their response to the challenge was magnificent. Again in the seventies and
eighties, when the Amerioan school system was extended upward through the
high school, crucial issues had to be decided. Educator did not fail the
country then, either.
In terms of their present sise and complexity, however, the school
problems of the period preceding World War I were relatively easy. Now
education is big business. Today there are over thirty-two million children
and young people in our educational institutions. The 1950 value of the
educational plants of the Nation runs to nearly fourteen billion dollars.
There are more than one million teachers of all types. The annual expenditure
for education is in excess of seven billion dollars.
But size and numbers and billions of dollars do not reveal the real
character of today's educational problems. Schools are different from their
earlier prototypes. Compared to the curriculum of today, the curriculum
of a century ago, from the elementary school through the university, was
strikingly simple. The relationships of the school to other institutions,
like industrial and business agencies, the home, social service organizations,
*By Earl James McGrath, U.S. Commissioner of Education, Federal Security Agency,
Washington, D. C., delivered by Buoll G. Gallagher at the 22nd Annual Alabama
State Education Conference, University, Alabama, Tuesday, June 20, 1950.
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