as the new college attracts young people who become leaders in the community. Remember that we now select Board of Education members under a 1913 statute. One virtue of this division of appointing power is that it will cause, at least once a year, an examination of possible candidates whose names are suggested from three separate sources. In practical effect it will mean a meeting at least once a year of White House, District, and alumni leadership to discuss the colleges and the performance of the various members of the Board of Higher Education. White House participation should offer the best assurance possible that high-caliber candidates are discussed. The participation of the District government should also be productive of likely candidates. Yet if the District government selected the entire Board the selection process might become dependent upon local popularity or other factors not related to ability and performance. So far as the District judges are concerned, experience has shown that they are out of the mainstream of local affairs and do not have the resources for pressing the right people into service. We believe that many distinguished local citizens would be willing to accept posts on the Board of Higher Education and perform with dedication under the suggested method of selection. In the estimation of the knowledgeable people with whom I have discussed this matter, it is not clear that either the District judges or the Commissioners can attract the right people. White House involvement would add prestige to the job. Certainly the first years of the new Board will be difficult, as the Board seeks to revitalize the District of Columbia Teachers College into a school of education. The nominees to the Board must be persons of the highest capabilities and dedication-persons such as the presidents of large foundations and engineering and research corporations in this area. Among others, I have discussed this matter with Mrs. Gilbert A. Harrison, chairman of the District of Columbia Citizens for Better Public Education's Committee on Selection of Board of Education Members, and with Dr. Arthur A. Hauck, president-emeritus of the University of Maine. Sincerely yours, ROBERT M. WESTON. THE METROPOLITAN WASHINGTON BOARD of Trade, Hon. WAYNE MORSE, Committee for the District of Columbia, DEAR SENATOR MORSE: The Metropolitan Washington Board of Trade has formulated some policy respecting public higher education in the District of Columbia on the basis of our education committee's recommendations. We have concluded that there is a definite need for a publicly supported "community" or "junior" college. This 2-year college should embody both liberal arts and technical-vocational character with emphasis placed upon skills training. The "Skill Survey of the Washington Metropolitan Area 1962–67,” issued by the Department of Labor, has demonstrated that there is currently an unbalanced relationship between the skills required and the skills available in virtually every area of employment in Metropolitan Washington. Projections for the period between 1964 and 1970 reveal a further distension of the present ratio with the District and its envirous becoming an even greater importer of trained personnel from other geographic areas of the Nation. Obviously measures should be taken to reverse this trend and qualify Washington area residents to fill available local jobs. We endorse the proposal for a new Board of Higher Education separate from the present Board of Education to control and establish policies for this community college. We believe that there should be an "extremely modest" tuition charge to students to this community college. We do not think that the institution should be entirely free to students attending it. We believe that nonresidents of the District should be permitted to attend this community college but that they should be charged for tuition in an amount which is directly geared to the cost of providing the education. The Board of Trade believes that those successfully completing the liberal arts program in this community college should be encouraged to continue their college education at local universities and that financial assistance should be provided in some form of "D.C.G.I. law." Very truly yours, WILLIAM H. PRESS. Senator WAYNE MORSE, ARCHITECTURAL BARRIERS PROJECT, Chairman, Subcommittee on Education, District of Columbia Committee, U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C. DEAR SENATOR MORSE: If you and your committee approve a public junior college and a 4-year liberal arts college for the District of Columbia, we hope you will at the same time consider the needs of students and teachers who are confined to wheelchairs. For persons with physical limitations it is especially important that they develop their abilities in other areas to the utmost. For a quadriplegic, employment, or lifetime financial dependence on others, is often determined by whether he has a college degree. At present there is no accessible liberal arts college in the Metropolitan Washington area that a young man in a wheelchair may attend unassisted. (The only accessible junior college in the area is the recently opened one in Rockville.) This results in an economic loss for the District. Most quadriplegics, paraplegics, or their families cannot afford the cost of an attendant to push a would-be student up and down the stairs in local universities, nor can they afford room, board, and transportation to accessible out-of-town universities, even though tuition be paid by vocational rehabilitation. If paid, this tuition is a cost to the District. The income of persons without a college degree is substantially less than that of a college graduate, so the District gets less in taxes than it otherwise might from the paraplegics who are denied a college education due to architectural barriers-it has to support most quadriplegics. Factual data on the numbers of paraplegics and of spina bifida births is available in England. Extrapolating from that, there are about 4,200 persons with paraplegic or quadriplegia in the Metropolitan Washington area and about 140 born with spina bifida annually. Due to automobile, diving and battlefield injuries the number of paraplegics and quadriplegics is increasing rapidly, the majority being youths in their teens or early twenties. Their best hope for a good future is a college education and degree, especially for those who have a family to support. We hope that if colleges are to be built in Washington you will include a stipulation that they be accessible to and usable by persons in wheel chairs. Sincerely yours, JANET W. FAY, Chairman. Senator WAYNE MORSE, U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C. WASHINGTON, D.C., March 13, 1966. DEAR SENATOR MORSE: The District of Columbia Association of School Librarians wishes to assure you of its enthusiastic support of your efforts to establish both a 2-year community college and a college of arts and sciences in the District of Columbia. We have long regretted the denial of public higher education to the able students we have known in the city's schools. We urge that our students have the same opportunities as young people living in the 50 States. Yours truly, CAROLINE L. SHUGARS, President, D.C. Association of School Librarians. 60-755-66- -23 Hon. WAYNE MORSE, WASHINGTON, D.C., March 13, 1966. Chairman, Senate District of Columbia Subcommittee on Education, District of Columbia Library Association fully endorses proposal for a 2-year public junior college in District of Columbia as most practical means of meeting present grave higher educational shortcomings. Expansion to 4-year institution should depend on congressional response to current proposal. J. S. ELLENBERGER, Chairman, District of Columbia Library Association Legislative Committee. Senator WAYNE L. MORSE, TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, DEAR SENATOR MORSE: I attended the hearing on March 15 and was impressed with your handling of the meeting. You showed a deep awareness of the importance of education and a real skill in using the resources to help provide what is needed in the District. Such help is certainly needed. The District of Columbia is an anomaly we cannot afford. In today's world where an increasing number of people hear and see so much of what we do (and do not do), we should be certain that Washington is our capital. Whether under home rule or any other plan, we must make it an outstanding demonstration of our democracy. Your emphasis on the individual, on what happens to each citizen, is fundamental. I enclose a report that may be of interest to you in connection with the work of the committee. This report supports the ideas brought out in the testimony of Dr. John Holden. In addition to providing for the youth graduating from the high schools, the program must also assure continuing help to adults of all ages and at all levels. When civic information as well as vocational skills are often outof-date in a decade or less, continuing education must become a reality as well as a slogan. A community college can provide indispensable resources for this. Dr. Holden's stress on having several centers of operation for the community college is excellent. You raised the question about the desirability of having a single system. I believe this should be the pattern. What is needed is a program of higher education and there should not be competition among parts of the program. The problem is to find leadership that will insure uniform development of all parts. I think the reason for separate colleges is the fear on the part of the community college group that they will not receive the necessary attention from the 5-year college group. I think this can be solved and that there should be a single system. I use the term "5-year" college deliberately. It is clear, and was brought out in the testimony, that the program must provide for at least a year beyond the bachelor's degree. This will be true not only in education but in other areas. To use the term "4-year" college might be misleading. There will be need to face the necessity for sufficient funds to insure an adequate 5-year program as a minimum. You and I are products of the University of Wisconsin at a time when the LaFollette-Van Hise spirit made it a great institution. The concept of service to the State was basic and the university was imaginative in finding what this meant. I remember farmers coming to Madison during the winters for the short-course programs. The university wasn't stopped by "standards;" it was concerned with making its resources available to the people. This is the kind of concept that is needed for the District. Best wishes to you and your colleagues in pushing forward on this matter. If I can be of help, please feel free to call on me. After 40 years at Columbia, I am in Washington on a terminal sabbatical. Sincerely, RALPH B. SPENCE. CONTINUOUS LEARNING THROUGH THE EDUCATIVE COMMUNITY (Paul L. Essert and Ralph B. Spence) The purpose of this paper is to identify a concept of the educative community and to discuss some implications for our current educational programs. In the first part of the paper we analyze the elements of the educative community and some of its resources and needs. In the second part we discuss the implications for program planning and research in family education, schools, colleges, and universities and other educational organizations. We conclude with suggestions for the contributions which professional educational institutions might make. Our basic concepts can be summed up as follows: (a) Today's corporate technological society requires that continuous education become an actuality for all. It has long been an ideal in America, practiced in some areas of life but ignored in others. (b) The development of the attitudes and skills required for continuous learning needs attention at all levels in the educational span from the preschool to the senior adult. (c) The achievement of an adequate continuous education requires the achievement of a truly educative community. We suggest classifying the educational resources of the community under three heads: (a) the family educational system, (b) sequential unit system (schools, colleges, and universities primarily), and (c) the complementary-functional system. (d) The actuality of continuous education permits and requires changes not only in our school and higher education programs for children and youth, but in all organized and systematic educational programs. The definition of these changes should be one of the top priorities in professional education. (e) Additional research focused on (a) the nature of maturity, (b) the requirements of the effective community, and (c) the technology of education (the process of achieving maximum interrelation between (a) and (b) is required). These have implications for professional educational institutions and for other centers of research. THE MEANING OF THE EDUCATIVE COMMUNITY There are three major systems of education in the community that are collectively concerned with the deliberate education of all its members: (1) the family educational system, (2) the sequential-unit system, and (3) the complementaryfunctional system. When each of these three systems is operating with full recognition of the nature and function of the others and when they collectively provide the opportunities for anyone to learn whatever he needs to learn, whenever he needs to learn it, the community has reached a stage of excellence in using its total resources for the deliverate education of all its members. This is what we mean by the educative community. The major point of the paper rests upon the assumption that today's world requires that communities take steps to achieve this goal: to use all possible resources, to strengthen the individual parts of the program and to learn to relate the contribution of each to carefully formulated goals. The family is a major educational institution in any culture; in some, the only one. There is a wide variation from family to family in the way in which its members are educationally provided for. Some families abdicate their educational responsibilities, but the great bulk work at it, most consciously with the immature. It is frequently assumed that the education provided by the family is only for the immature but there are important services for all age groups. One of the concerns today in many societies, for example, is to find ways of replacing the educational functions the family previously provided for the aged. One of our beliefs is that in societies in which change becomes more rapid the family will need to be helped to become more directly educational in its impact on all its members. In a society in which major changes are spread over several generations, the family could be casual and spasmodic in what it did for children without endangering the society and the adults could get along with almost no educative provisions. Today the rapidity of change and growing heterogeneity of the neighborhood greatly increase the importance of the education provided in the family. The educating of the adult members so they in turn may soundly educate the children makes the full circle in the educative community. For example, it can be documented from various studies that the higher the level of education attained by the adults of a community, the better the quality of education in the schools. The sequential-unit system is that part of the total educational activities which is characterized by gradual steps, graded units or levels leading toward higher or more complex levels, usually measured in terms of grades or units completed. In general this system is inclusive of the elementary and secondary schools, colleges, and universities including graduate programs, and an increasing number of miscellaneous schools. This is what generally comes to mind when "education" is mentioned and it is obviously a vital component. It needs to be still further strengthened and to be much better integrated with the other two systems to make its fullest contribution to the total community needs. The complementary-functional system is primarily focused upon providing systematic learning to meet a particular operational problem of life, not learned or inadequately learned in the family or the sequential-unit system. It is complementary therefore, in two respects: (1) it supplies that learning which is required to meet a deficiency of learning in other systems; and (2) it adds to or enhances the maturing potential of the learner in ways the other two systems cannot do. This educational system predominates in the planning and operation of organized educational programs in three types of social organizations: (1) Organizational purpose programs, sometimes called "inservice" education, designed for improving the knowledge and competency of an organization's personnel, such as programs in industry, the Armed Forces, hospitals, civil service, and short-term leadership education in churches, synagogues, schools.. (2) Community service programs, offered by various organizations to anyone in the community who is interested, for the advancement of the public welfare, such as Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, 4-H clubs, public school adult programs, gen-eral university extension and cooperative extension services. (3) Membership education programs, designed by organizations to spread and nourish a particular belief, doctrine, or attitude. It is exemplified by educational programs for the rank and file of labor unions, religious education programs of churches and synagogues, programs of cooperative societies, and various other civic, economic, and cultural groups. While some might question the inclusion of these as educational organizations, there is no doubt of the highly organized, professionally planned, and systematic effort to affect behavior through learning programs. Furthermore, the modern community is dependent upon these organizations for effective interchange and communication of ideas. The interrelationship of the three systems These systems are not entirely discrete. The family system tends to be a sort of pivotal center for all of them, since it is here that the motivations and nourishment of progress of the learner through the sequential-unit system is: generated, evaluated, and at least partially financed. Furthermore, it is often out of the needs of the family and the special concerns and varying interest of different members of the family at all age levels that the programs of the complementary-functional system arise. Elements of the complementary-functional system available to children and youth can be found incorporated into the pro- grams of the sequential-unit system, such as the extracurricular activities programs of schools and colleges. Most of the remedial aspects of the complementary-functional system at the adult level, such as evening elementary schools,. evening high schools and evening colleges are adaptations of the sequential-unit system to the complementary-functional system. Indeed the very fact that these systems have aspects in common and are not entirely discrete is an encouraging factor in approaching the goal of the educative community of balanced and interrelated use of all of its educational resources. MAKING CONTINUOUS LEARNING A REALITY The major characteristic of the educative community is the concept of continuous learning. We believe that continuous learning involves an attitude, a general method and selective specialized skills. The attitude is probably a cluster of attitudes but its core is the belief that one can almost always learn something more about the tasks in which he is engaged and that one must constantly weigh the merits of continuing to do a task as one has been doing it against the efforts to acquire additional learning to do it better. In the world of change the balance shifts more and more toward the side of additional learning. The general method involves the identification and use of resources, the adaptation to new situations, ways of sharing with others, and continuous evaluation. The specialized skills are the adaptations to the particular areas in which one has chosen to concentrate. |