spend our money on cars, and cosmetics-on comic books and alcohol, rather than on public education. We are getting in education just what we have paid for.

We feel that funds must be expended to improve the teaching profession so that teachers' salaries are placed on a competitive economic basis with other professions. This is how we can get and keep more good teachers. We need funds also to build classrooms. Once we get enough good teachers and enough classrooms we can have smaller classes. Then the specific talents and potentials of each student can be identified, encouraged, and developed and we will no longer have a third of our brainpower to waste.

This morning I heard on the radio that Mr. Khrushchev had gotten into another one of his ramblings and had publicly announced in Russia that America would never catch up with Russia in science because we are just not training enough scientists.

This is not the story, Mr. Chairman, that funds alone will do the complete job. This is not so. There is continuing need in education, as in any field, for soul searching and constant revisions of methods, personnel selection and training and a host of other problems. This education recognizes and this education will continue to recognize. However, we feel it is very close to irresponsible to assume that because education is not perfect, no funds should be made available to improve it.

Our continued neglect of education has created a tragic situation which not only are we paying for now, but generations after us will pay for even more. Unfortunately, even assuming that you make all the funds available that are presently needed, the education system will not improve overnight. Education does not lend itself to crash programs. It will take time-long time to improve our education system and we as a Nation will suffer for some time to come because of the tragic shortsightedness of previous Congresses.

Of all the bills before your committee, Mr. Chairman, we like the Hill-Elliott bill best. We would hope, however, that it would not be trimmed down in any of its provisions. Every cent it provides is needed.

The Murray-Metcalf bill would in many ways come nearer to undergirding our whole educational structure and meet the long range needs of education. If this committee, in its wisdom, believes that bill has a chance of passing, and if you report it out, we will work for it.

We believe the Hill-Elliott bill is less vulnerable to the controversial social questions which have defeated previous school bills. It helps education in many of its specific weak spots, it meets most of the short range needs, and it will help on some of the long range ones.

There is one glaring omission in the Hill-Elliott bill, however. It does nothing to help overcome the shortage of classrooms. Lack of classroom speace is closely tied in with our waste of top brainpower. How can a teacher discover a superior child, much less encourage the development of that child's talents if she has from 40 to 50 pupils in her class or if she sees the student only on a half-day session?

Our committee worked hard last year for the Kelley bill. I believe the statement favoring it, to which our chairman, George J. Hecht got the signatures of almost a hundred leading businessmen, was strong evidence that much of business recognized the need for action in this field.

I need not remind you that had the Kelley bill passed, we would have new schoolhouses into which children could move next fall; and what's more, we would have right now thousands of carpenters, and masons, and electricians, and plumbers on the rolls of the employed rather than the unemployed.

Now, apparently, we are going to spend millions to repair harbors, dredge rivers, and build roads. Instead of building urgently needed classrooms, we are apparently going to build unneeded luxuries of mausoleum-type post offices.

Of course we need roads and we would welcome a modern post office if it would speed up our mail delivery-but we respectfully urge that the production of educated manpower for our Nation's future is far more important than these other categories of expenditures. Let's build school buildings because we need them and also because such building will bolster the economy.

So, in closing, we would like you to report out the Hill-Elliott bill in its entirety, plus an amendment which would help to build schools in districts where they are badly needed.

We welcome Mr. Frelinghuysen's statement that he is proposing to submit a new bill which will in some way deal with the school-construction problem. We recognize political realities here in Congress in getting a large appropriation through for school construction, so we do welcome Mr. Frelinghuysen's statement as to his plan. We hope and believe the people of this country will respond to that kind of leadership.

I am grateful for the opportunity of presenting the views of the American Parents' Committee to this committee.

Mr. ELLIOTT. Thank you very much, Mr. Fisher, for your testimony. I appreciate the fact that your great organization is supporting the bill, which, along with others as you have mentioned, I introduced. The gentleman from South Dakota.

Mr. McGOVERN. I want to add my word of the chairman, Mr. Fisher. Thank you for your excellent statement today. I might say to you, for your own interest, that 13 members of the House Education and Labor Committee sent an urgent statement to the White House about 4 or 5 days ago, suggesting that the post office building program be sidelined for the time being so that we could proceed with the building of schoolhouses and classrooms.

There was not any press comment on that or any recognition in the press, but I thought you would be interested in knowing that the statement was sent and was released to the press.

Mr. FISHER. May I turn the tables and ask whether there was any reaction from the White House or not?

Mr. McGOVERN. I will yield to the gentleman from New Jersey on that.

Mr. THOMSON. I do not think Sherman has seen it yet.

Mr. NICHOLSON. Do you want to yield a second?

Mr. McGOVERN. Yes; I would be glad to yield.

Mr. NICHOLSON. I think now we have a program of building post offices and Federal buildings for the so-called lease-purchase program will build the post office with my money and rent it to the Postal Department for 20 years and then the Government owns it. It means a very much less appropriation for building of post offices than they have ever had in the history of the country.

Mr. FISHER. If a private group or syndicate in your State or any other State wants to come in and build a school and rent it to the Government so the Government does not have that large capital expenditure, and I think that is what you are referring to, that would be a fine idea. That type of technique is something which the gentlemen of Congress are far more competent to decide than we are. All we are coming in to testify to is that we think school buildings are necessary. The technique, the financing technique is something that you gentlemen can set up. If you think this is a good way of proceeding, we would be very much in favor of it.

Mr. ELLIOTT. The gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. FRELINHUYSEN. First of all I would like to thank Mr. Fisher for his comment on my bill and I would like to point out that a number of Democrats on the committee have spoken in favor of a school construction bill. I hope we are going to get something out of it perhaps in addition to the other specific proposals. I am very well aware of the valuable support of the American Parents Committee in this area.

Yet what still worries me is the fact that friends of this type of legislation sometimes in an effort to sell their case sometimes are too strong. I would like to question the use of the words "our continued neglect of education," as an example of what I mean. I think it is hardly fair to say that the American people have neglected their education or system. It perhaps can be improved and I think it can, but in my opinion it is good. It has contributed in a very major respect to the strength where we now find ourselves, and I also think that it is positively untrue to say as you did that we have not built a system of education suitable of meeting the demands of a new atomic age.

It seems to me that the demands of the age in the years to come may be so enormous; that we have created such a monster that we will not have the technicians and the specialists to run it.

I do think the launching of the second satellite proves that we are capable of meeting the demands of our educational system. I think that perhaps was belittled by the fact that the Soviets were the first to launch it. I do not think that we should overstress our weaknesses in an effort to say we need to improve our system.

Mr. FISHER. I do not think we of the American Parents Committee disagree with that statement at all, sir.

When one is preparing testimony, one wants to make it as short as possible and it may very well be that we have seized on dramatic words to make a point. Of course we have a going educational system. We do not think it is doing enough.

We are mindful of what we think is a tragic result of the Kelley bill last year. That certainly shows we were not neglecting it. The fact is that it lost by only five votes and that indicated that there was movement. I think these things do deal with shades and degrees, and certainly I do not want to argue from the black or white. I think that you believe that we have and we certainly do not intend that. Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Thank you very much.

Mr. ELLIOTT. The gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Thompson. Mr. THOMPSON. I would like to thank you for a very fine statement. I am glad you mentioned Mr. Frelinghuysen's proposition. I think I can assure him that at least 13 of the Democrats will support any

reasonable school construction program written by anybody or suggested by anybody.

I am inclined to agree with my colleague from New Jersey that we are not in as quite a bad shape as some people think. I regret the constant and never-ending emphasis on science and mathematics and the lack of reference to these humanities. I feel very strongly and I know a lot of my colleagues do, that however good our school system is, our tradition has been to educate the whole man, and we want to continue that, but to improve it. So these are all relative terms. Thank you for a fine statement.

Mr. FISHER. Thank you, sir.

Mr. ELLIOTT. The gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. NICHOLSON. No questions.

Mr. ELLIOTT. Thank you, Mr. Fisher.

(Supplementary statement on scholarship bills follows:)

SUPPLEMENTARY STATEMENT ON SCHOLARSHIP BILLS BY JOEL H. FISHER, BOARD MEMBER, AMERICAN PARENTS COMMITTEE, INC.

A broad, well-balanced program of Federal scholarships for gifted students who do not have the financial resources for education beyond the high school is one way to help meet our educational crisis. Its main value would be to stop some of the present waste of human resources. We strongly urge the enactment of scholarship legislation at this session of Congress. We think there is a great need for more scholarships. We think a Federal investment in this enterprise will be rapid many times over, and a balanced scholarship program (by that we mean one which will help students in all academic fields) will help to develop the economic, moral, and cultural aspects of our national life necessary to cope with scientific advances. We should like to briefly elaborate on these three points:

1. GREAT NEED FOR MORE SCHOLARSHIPS

Mr. Hecht, chairman of the American Parents Committee, was able to visit the Soviet Union in 1956. He saw firsthand the situation which was revealed so dramatically this fall when the satellites were launched. Russia is far ahead of us in many kinds of education. They are graduating twice as many scientists' as the United States. They are apparently turning out more doctors, they are graduating higher and higher numbers of their young people each year. Russia is doing this because she had made education the most respected field of endeavor. She is doing it because she is willing to spend money on education. Mr. Hecht reported that in Russia teachers are much respected, that writers and professors are the ones who are driving the big black cars. When he visited the University of Moscow he was told that 98 percent of the students there were on scholarships awarded through competitive examination. Since then Marshal Bulganin has announced that all tuition fees have been abolished in higher education.2

We would not for one moment suggest that we imitate Russia's dictatorial method of tailoring the output of brain power to meet each specific need. It would be tragic if this country did anything to prevent or discourage its boys and girls from developing freely their natural aptitudes and talents. We might well imitate Russia, however, in the percentage of our national income we are willing to invest in education. Surely we can't be very proud of the fact that we spend almost as much on alcohol as we do on all public education, and spend considerably more on recreation. We might well emulate Russia in the respect, status, and financial rewards we bestow upon those who follow intellectual pursuits.

No doubt you have been told by other witnesses that when school opened last fall we were short 135,000 teachers.3 The newspapers are full of facts about our shortage of scientists and engineers. The National Institutes of

SOURCES OF STATEMENTS IN SCHOLARSHIP TESTIMONY

1 Education in the U. S. S. R., published by U. S. Office of Education.

2 Bulganin's speech to 20th Communist Party Congress, February 1956. U. S. Office of Education.

Health have said time and time again that the bottleneck in their progress in medical research is the shortage of trained personnel. We are short of nurses, home economists, dentists, and other trained workers. Why, we ask you, in the face of all this need for brain power, do we sit idly by and watch the supply being washed away like top soil from a hill?

Only about half of the upper two-fifths of each high school graduating class go on to college, according to the study made by Dael Wolfe for the Commission on Human Resources and Advanced Training." He cites evidence to indicate that half the remainder do not continue their education because they do not have the money to pay the higher and higher costs.

The costs of attending college as released by the Office of Education show that $1,000 a year was the minimum and that was for students living at home. For those away from home it averaged $1,500 for students in public institutions and $2,000 for those in private colleges and universities. Multiply the cost of 4 years of education at those rates by 2, or 3, or 4 children in 1 family, and it is easy to see why half of our most talented graduates go to work in gas stations or as clerks in department stores or some other job which needs no special education or training. If we remember that over 44 percent of the families in this country have an income of less than $3,000 a year it is easy to understand why only 18 percent of our college students come from those families. Yet we maintain that the brains and talents of a child are not determined by the amount of money his father earns. If that were true we would have had no Lincoln, no Mozart, and no Michael Angelo.

7

We have prided ourselves for many generations that we provide equal opportunity for rich and poor alike, but current facts on higher education contradict that belief. There are many who will say, "If a boy or girl wants to go to college, let them work their way through just like I did." Our answer to that remark is that they are doing it—but college costs have risen so much that that is no longer the solution. Students in 1953 were financing one-fourth of their total college budgets. Two-thirds of the men and one-half the women were working. In the University of Connecticut, I am told 91 percent of them are working and at Stanford University 50 percent.12 That does not eliminate the need for scholarships. There are not enough jobs to go around. Besides, if a competent student spends too much of his time at so much an hour to buy his meals, he has less time to acquire the knowledge his country needs from him.

10

11

Even though scholarships are increasing they total only $65 million a year." According to the President's Commission on Higher Education this sum includes loans, gifts, benefits, and campus employment." Even then it is only enough to meet 13.2 percent of the budgets of college students." Incidentally, another set of figures released by the Office of Education show that almost half the large cash scholarships are going to students from families in the higher income brackets. The amount of today's scholarships is only about one-tenth of that required to provide a $750 average scholarship for 4 years to some 200,000 of the ablest, neediest high school graduates who do not now go on to college.1

16

17

In the light of all the facts we have just discussed, we fail to see how anyone can refuse to admit that there is a need for a Federal scholarship program. It is the future of the entire United States which is at stake: It is the welfare of the whole Nation that concerns us. The Federal government collects threefourths of the country's taxes, it should help educate the country's children.

SOURCES OF SATEMENTS IN SCHOLARSHIP TESTIMONY-Continued

Hearings before Subcommittee on Appropriations, U. S. Senate, 1956 and 1957.

5 America's Resources of Specialized Talent, Harper Bros., 1954.

• Cost of Attending College, Bulletin No. 9, U. S. Office of Education, 1957.

U. S. Census, Family, 1953 (latest figures available).

8 Same as 6.

Same as 6.

10 Same as 6.

11 Speech by William Benton, National Women's Democratic Club, October 7, 1957. 12 Same as 6.

13 Release, U. S. Office of Education, September 27, 1957.

14 Second report, President's Commission on Higher Education.

15 Same as 6.

16 Same as 6.

17 Same as 14.