This is, to my mind, the fundamental difficulty, but it is a difficulty that is hard to label as a fault. It is a difficulty that is created by the fact that we have insisted as no other country in the world ever has on education for everybody.

Now, it seems to me that with the increasing importance on people of high competence, well educated, not only in science, but in other fields, we have superimposed on this kind of thing some very special attention to the education of the ablest student and it is to that point that most of my thinking here is directed.

Mrs. GREEN. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. NICHOLSON. Yes.

Mrs. GREEN. Is it not also true that since 1939 we have had this tremendously increasing school enrollment but we actually are spending a smaller percentage of our national income, in fact a smaller percentage of money in the United States on education now than we did in 1939 ?

Mr. WOLFLE. I am not absolutely sure of those figures

Mr. MAYOR. I think that is true.

Mrs. GREEN. That accounts for part of our problems, too.

Mr. ELLIOTT. Thank you very much, Dr. Wolfle.

Mr. WOLFLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ELLIOTT. Our next witness is Mr. Andrew J. Biemiller, legislative director, AFL-CIO.

Mr. Biemiller has furnished us with a copy of his statement.

Mr. Biemiller, let me say that we are happy to have you. I regret that it has been necessary today that we impose a time limitation of 30 minutes per witness, if possible. I know that you appreciate the time has come when that is necessary because of your service here in the Congress over the years.

We appreciate having you with us and hearing what you have to say, and you may proceed in any manner that you see fit.

STATEMENT OF ANDREW J. BIEMILLER, DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF LEGISLATION, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR AND CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONS, ACCOMPANIED BY JOHN COSGROVE, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, AFL-CIO

Mr. BIEMILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I think I can utilize the 30 minutes all right without too much. difficulty.

For the record, my name is Andrew J. Biemiller. I am director of the department of legislation of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, and I appear today on behalf of that organization.

I am accompanied by Mr. John Cosgrove, who is assistant director of the department of education of the AFL-CIO.

Mr. Chairman, I wish to join with all others who are speaking today in the interests of more and better education for American children. The Russian scientific advances, demonstrated by their satellite program, have jolted the whole American people into a realization of how much help is needed to advance our educational system to the point where it can meet adequately all the needs of our civilization.

It is a sound principle of legislation that when we set out to meet a need, we plan to meet the whole need, not only that portion of it which has come most recently to public attention.

The whole country is suddenly aware that we are not doing enough to train the many scientists we need in this and future generations. But the legislation proposed here goes much farther than this in recognizing that all our children need good basic education.

Only then can each be fitted to do his part in the world. And only then can we find out who has the necessary talent and ability to go into advanced work in science, mathematics, and every field for which our country has need.

The frightening fact confronts us that, in the face of our tremendous need for more and better education for all, and educational opportunity for the gifted students in particular, circumstances are combining to make education worse, not better, in the next few years, if the trend is not reversed.

Our population is increasing with explosive rapidity. With every community stretching its resources to keep up, production of babies continues to outstrip production of schools at an alarming rate.

School after school, newly built to serve a new neighborhood, opens to double sessions because they built new homes faster than they could build schools.

Many more, like the one my daughter attends, has 4 kindergarten sections and 2 sixth-grade sections. The third newly opened addition in 5 years will not be able to take care of those kindergarteners when they are in the sixth grade.

Existing classroom capacity today falls short of our needs by scores of thousands of units. This critical shortage means that classes are meeting in corridors and cafeterias, in auditoriums and gymnasiums, in rented store buildings, and in many places even less suitable. When it is realized that this classroom shortage is only part of the total picture, which includes a disastrous shortage of qualified teachers, the gravity of the problem becomes manifest. This situation means a grossly inadequate public school system.

Those of us in the free trade union movement are appalled by the failure of the President to advance solutions for, or to even mention, the classroom shortage. Last year, the administration advanced an inadequate program for only $1.3 billion for a 4-year period; but at least it was a program.

As you know, it failed of passage.

This year, however, the President advances no program of any description to solve the general classroom shortage. This shocking neglect must be remedied by the Congress, and it must be remedied

now.

The administration apparently assumes that a program of aid to university graduate and undergraduate students will produce the physical, social and political scientists, and the linguists and teachers, and the scholars so necessary to our Nation's survival without provision for primary and secondary education adequate to the demand of the present or of the future.

We cannot accept such a contradictory assumption.

Instead, the AFL-CIO believes that we must have a program for all levels of education. The needed assistance at the college level, which

I will discuss later, can only have meaning to the degree that we give our grade and high-school pupils more and better education.

A first prerequisite toward improving these schools, we suggest, is a prompt and substantial program of Federal aid for school construction.

In addition, a Federal school-construction program, begun immediately, can be a powerful tool in stemming the downward trend of our economy. I refer to the minimum estimate of 5 million unemployed and the millions more on short weeks or part-time work.

The serious recession gripping the United States at this crucial juncture will only be cured if there is a prompt set-up in our purchasing power. One of the most direct and most humane ways to increase this purchasing power is to expand job opportunities. Mrs. GREEN. Mr. Chairman, may I ask a question?

Mr. ELLIOTT. The lady from Oregon.

Mrs. GREEN. I notice my statement says:

The serious recession "griping" the United States.

Mr. BIEMILLER. Obviously it should be "gripping." I regret the error on the part of one of my stenographers, but at the same time it may have some meaning.

Mr. GWINN. I assume that the griping or the gripping is on the part of the Democratic Party.

Mr. BIEMILLER. I would assume, if I may say so, that the griping or gripping is the difficulty of the entire American people and of both political parties.

Mr. METCALF. I think, Mr. Biemiller, that griping is a much more appropriate word for Montana, where we have over 15 percent unemployed at this time. The congressional mail that I am getting consists of a lot of griping about this economic depression.

Mr. BIEMILLER. You have the unfortunate distinction, Mr. Metcalf, of having the highest percentage of unemployment in the Nation at the time.

Mr. METCALF. That is a very dubious honor.

Mr. BIEMILLER. Very dubious.

Mrs. GREEN. Oregon and Montana seem to be, Mr. Biemiller, competing for the first position.

Also in my State-it is not just Democrats who are unemployed. It is both Democrats and Republicans.

Mr. BIEMILLER. Yes.

That the recession demands prompt governmental action is apparent. Approximately 25 percent of our national manufacturing capacity stands idle, with the steel and auto industries operating at less than 60 percent of capacity and with 50 percent of our machine-tool potential unused.

Inventories of consumer goods are building up. The people simply do not have the money to buy the products of our everincreasing ability to produce. A broad program of school construction and the production of materials that would precede such building, would be an important step in overcoming the recession which is attacking our national economic stability.

Housing our schoolchildren is more important than building new post offices or remodeling old ones and, being a much bigger task, will have a more substantial effect on the economy. For this additional

reason there should be enacted a substantial program of Federal financial aid for school construction.

Although Federal aid for school construction can be an important tool in the battle against recession, the need of the children themselves is the paramount consideration.

Estimates of the United States Office of Education show a demand for 44,000 new classrooms by September 1958, 6 months from now, just for the higher enrollments we will have by then. In the next 5 years there will be a need for about 220,000 classrooms to accommodate higher enrollment alone.

Today over 33.5 million children are in the schools and the enrollments increase every year.

In addition, we need from 14,000 to 20,000 new classrooms each year, according to the Office of Education, simply to replace those which become obsolete, outmoded, or downright dangerous.

The very conservative estimate of the Office of Education is that we needed, back in September 1957, 140,000 classroom units which did not exist. The President has suggested that school construction can be deferred. We cannot agree that it can be deferred any longer. Let us do something about it, and let us do it now.

Our overcrowded schools, with their large classes and the frequent necessity of half-day sessions, cannot give the quality or quantity of education our children need for today's world. And yet never was education so desperately needed in so many fields.

Fifty years ago the village school taught children what they needed to live in the village. But today our village is the world, and it is rapidly expanding beyond that, to include unimaginable segments of the universe. To be citizens of the universe takes a tremendously broader education than anything we have needed before.

Beginning with the basic fundamentals of reading, writing, and arithmetic, we must help today's children to learn more about the physical world, through science, and the politicial world, through the social sciences, so that their knowledge can assure the survival of our civilization. And we must extend this basic knowledge to all our children, and the opportunity for advanced work to all of the most able ones, because that is a fundamental principle of democracy.

While measures must be taken to meet the shortage in classrooms, we are also concerned today with meeting another immediate need, the shortage of scientists and of young men and women in training to be scientists.

Every year thousands of students graduate from high school but lack the financial means to go on to college. Among these thousands, the United States Office of Education estimates that there are from 60,000 to 100,000 in the upper third of their high school classes, may lie the future Einsteins and Oppenheimers and Von Brauns whose talents we will need. But because their parents are poor or their families large, they must leave school and go to work.

The cost of a college education has almost doubled in the past few years. I know whereof I speak, because I have a son entering college in the fall. The war bonds I had put aside 10 years ago for his college education will take him through only 2 years now.

The scholarships granted by the colleges themselves, which used to carry a large percentage of the expenses of the grantees, now meet a very small share of their expenses. And the colleges require a means

test to qualify for scholarships, thus restricting their aid only to the neediest.

The 40,000 scholarships provided by the Elliott bill, H. R. 10381, may make it possible for many able students to go forward and prepare themselves for the leadership we need in every vital field.

They may also provide an incentive for those students who, knowing they could not afford college, failed to put forth their best efforts in high school or to choose the courses which would lead toward a future in engineering or research in physics.

It is the custom nowadays to blame the schools for offering too many electives and not forcing more serious study upon the able students, but who can blame a boy for choosing auto mechanics or radio repairing instead of solid geometry and trigonometry, if he knows he needs a good job next June, and will have no more time for education?

For such boys, a good chance at a scholarship may give incentive for hard work in hard courses all the way through high school. We need those boys as much as they need the Government to help them go to college.

We would oppose any proposal to restrict scholarship aid to those having superior preparation and capacity in science, mathematics, or modern foreign language.

Vitally important as these fields are, we feel that a democracy cannot afford to concentrate on them to the exclusion of the social sciences, the professions, and the broad field of communication.

Historians and economists, lawyers and social workers, producers and writers, are all needed in a society like ours, even though totalitarian countries may think they can do very well without them. The pure scientist must always fall back on the social scientist to tell him where he is going. Speaking the language of another country will not enable us to communicate with it effectively if we do not also understand and appreciate its culture.

Even in the narrowest interest of science, we need to stress the development of the inquiring mind, lest we degenerate into mere technicians.

The bill before you wisely recognizes that many students now have limited opportunity to advance in science in high school, because the schools lack good teachers and good equipment.

Those teachers who need to increase their own preparation through summer school and extension courses would be helped by special grants for this purpose.

As they improve their preparation, they usually add to their salary, which helps hold them in teaching. Better laboratory equipment will make their job easier and their teaching better. Fellowships for advanced study beyond the limited work done in summer or evening courses give added incentives to the best teachers.

All these provisions wisely help to hold the science and math teacher in the teaching profession, and to draw into it, we hope, young people who are well qualified to teach.

We must face honestly the problem which every board of education is aware of today in the field of science and math. The young college graduate who has specialized in history, economics, English, or German, turns naturally to teaching in order to work in his chosen field.