Statement By Commissioner Of Education Earl McGrath, Is Your Community Planning a New School Building?
Images (7)
Document
| id |
id
73983638
|
|---|---|
| contentType |
contentType
document
|
| source |
source
import
|
Source image fields (6)
Extracted text
OCR Page 1 of 7IS YOUR COMMUNITY PLANNING A NEW SCHOOL BUILDING?
*
The little red schoolhouse has been immortalized in poem and
song. A great many people look back fondly to the days when they
trudged barefooted for a mile down the dusty road to that picturesque
one-room structure.
But times have changed. In the twentieth century, the dusty
road has become a broad, smooth highway. School-bound children now
ride their bikes or wait on the corner for a bright-colored bus. Over-
head, where once*wheeled only the country swallows, a jet plane zooms
by, symbolizing all the complexities of our age. There is no doubt but
that the little red schoolhouse is gradually passing from the scene.
Its disappearance is marking the close of an educational era.
Nostalgic memories of days gone by make it easy to gloss over
the fact that those "one-teacher schools," as the books call them,
were, for the most part, poorly lighted, poorly heated, poorly venti-
lated, unsanitary and ill equipped. So, too, were a distressing number
of the imposing brick structures that replaced them in the twenties and
the early thirties.
Today, democracy demands much more of education than the mere
teaching of the traditional three R's. All citizens, young and old
alike, must acquire an understanding of the democratic system and must
have the knowledge and skills needed to help society grow and prosper.
Teachers have heavy responsibilities to shoulder and can not even begin
to do their job properly in antiquated .buildings
By Earl James McGrath, U. S. Commissioner of Education, Federal
Security Agency, Washington 25, D. C., published in The Book of
Knowledge Annual, 1951 edition, pp. 130-133.
Relations
belongs_to