have been inspired to seek college training and teacher education had their teachers been more skilled in motivating and counseling their pupils. It has been my personal experience in working with hundreds of teachers that the single most influential factor in motivating a choice of a teaching career was the inspiration of an outstanding former teacher.

The recent efforts of the Congress in its passage of the Hill-Elliott bill to encourage more of this group to train for teaching are laudable and helpful. Yet until the Congress provides funds to help reduce the gap that exists between the salaries the college graduate can get in teaching and those he can get in many other fields, the intent of the Congress in its passage of the Hill-Elliott bill cannot be fully realized. When 1959 graduates see public schoolteachers rushing from the classrooms to part-time jobs in order to support their families, are they any more likely to select teaching than graduates of the past?

The tragic, continuing loss of men from teaching is a constant concern in providing high quality education in our schools. Granted that both men and women are needed in teaching, I believe a more balanced distribution of men and women teachers would improve the interest and application of our students. The presence of more men in the classrooms of elementary schools, as well as secondary schools, would be a constant reminder to students that education is a highly desirable profession. It is disheartening to note from recent surveys of the National Education Association's Research Division that only a little more than one-half of the men now teaching say they would choose teaching if they could start over.

If we are to attract and keep competent teachers, there must be more promise of an income sufficient for the teacher to have an attractive style of living, te continue his studies, and to give full working time to his profession. A dismal fact about teachers' salaries is that this year only one teacher in five makes $5,500 or more. Teaching must not be considered only working in classrooms with boys and girls. Teaching must also include planning and study necessary to provide the best possible learning opportunities for pupils. Teaching cannot be a part-time job if the teacher operates at a high level of competency.

THE NEED FOR MORE CLASSROOMS

Statistics as to the need for more classrooms just to house the increasing pupil population have been widely cited. Although the States and local districts have whittled away at this problem, still an additional 140,500 were needed this fall-65,300 for enrollment increases and 75,200 to replace unsatisfactory rooms now in use. At the present rate of backlog reduction (1.3 percent last year) many pupils who entered inadequate and crowded primary-grade classrooms for half-day sessions last fall will have been graduated from high school and will be enrolled in college before the primary-grade rooms to which they are rightfully entitled are constructed.

Looking at the same problem in another way, these intolerable facts are noted: 1. In the urban school system, over 21,000 elementary school classrooms are overburdened with more than 35 pupils each.

2. Over 6.5 million of our elementary schoolchildren are in classes of over 30 pupils each.

3. Almost 300,000 elementary pupils are on half-day sessions, and the figure seems to be growing, not shrinking.

These conditions are not restricted to low-income areas or to any one section of the country. They cut across urban and rural lines, high- and low-income areas, central city and suburban areas, north and south, east and west. The bulging oversize elementary school classroom is a problem that plagues virtually every major city.

Instruction of high quality does not typically take place in overcrowded classrooms. All that we know about good curriculum and teaching underlines the importance of a full school day in classes small enough in number for the teacher to be able to work with individual pupils as need arises. In the half-day session the teacher is too rushed to do more than hear children recite; there is no time to help each of them with his arithmetic, his reading or his science project.

From my experience and study I have found that in most subjects and grades the teacher simply cannot put to work the most effective techniques of instruction when the number of pupils exceeds 30. In the early years of school little children profit by a great deal of personal attention from their teacher. Skill in reading, writing, and arithmetic comes more quickly as an alert teacher sees

difficulties and helps children overcome them. In later years, too, as boys and girls are beset by all the competing influences of our civilization, they need the frequent personal attention of their teachers.

Faced with large classes and, all too frequently, with out-of-school duties or other employment, many teachers simply do not have the time to plan adequately, gather materials and resources for instruction, or check and review the work and progress of individual pupils. As a matter of fact, the recent Conant report recommends that no English teacher be responsible for more than 100 students. Although experimentation is underway with larger classes for some purposes and with television teaching, we cannot anticipate any fundamental change in the need for personal, teacher-pupil relationships. For every increase in class size that may be effected in a school, there is need elsewhere in that school to reduce size for instruction of various groups for various purposes. As we learn better how to handle deficiences in such areas as speech, reading, and writing, additional corrective instruction is essential. As talented youth are identified at an earlier age, we must be able to give them more specific, individualized, and challenging learning opportunities.

THE NEED FOR A WELL-ROUNDED PROGRAM OF STUDIES

During the past year the attention of both the public and the teaching profession has been focused on problems of secondary education. The criticisms, appraisals, and studies have all confirmed one glaring fact long argued by many educators: A well-rounded program of secondary education can be provided more economically in larger schools.

Although there are many deficiences in our secondary schools, most of them arise from the strenuous effort made to provide a program suited to the abilities and needs of all American youth. Such an exclusively academic program as some critics would make uniform in 1959 for the 90 percent of youth now in school, may have been suitable for the 10 percent in school when the influential Committee of Ten recommended such a program in 1893. However, the trend throughout the past 65 years has been toward differentiating the program to suit the abilities and needs of the total youth population. A fully differentiated program is an expensive one, including a full academic program for some pupils, an equally full prevocational program for others, and adequate courses in English, history, and other social studies, mathematics, science, art, music, and health and physical education for all. When a high school simply cannot provide such a varied program, its pupils may suffer.

Substantial increases in school finances are essential to support a well-rounded elementary and secondary program for all children and youth. If small communities insist on maintaining their small schools, they can add to their programs only by organizing new classes taught by additional teachers. If they move toward consolidation, new buildings must be constructed. The latter far more efficient and ultimately more economical step will be taken more readily, previous experience indicates, if funds from beyond the local district are available to help in building the consolidated school.

THE NEED FOR SPECIAL SERVICES

High quality curiculum and instruction require far more special personnel and facilities in elementary and secondary schools than present financing makes possible. Among the more acute needs are those for libraries and librarians, guidance centers and counselors, and rooms and teachers for children and youth with various exceptional characteristics.

As the store of human knowledge expands, and it is currently expanding at a phenomenal rate, each person can retain only a smaller and smaller proportion of the total body of knowledge. Ever better informed teachers are necessary if a proper selection of essential information is taught and, especially, if our boys and girls are taught how to find the information they need as adults. Clearly, citizens of the future must be better factfinders, rather than just fact-retainers. Indispensable to this learning of how to learn is the school's information center, the library. Here must be stocked not only the appropriate periodicals and volumes of biography, fiction, and general reading materials, but a comprehensive collection of tools for the learner: atlases, encyclopedias, dictionaries, recordings, pictures, card catalogs, indexes, and reference works appropriate to the level and studies of the school. Managing these essential instruments of learning must be well-qualified librarians, fully competent in regard both to

these materials and to their use by children and youth. The library is an integral part of the instructional program, not an adjunct.

Especially at the high school level, increased counseling services are essential. Indeed the Conant report makes this recommendation No. 1, proposing that there should be in the secondary school one full-time counselor (or guidance officer) for every 250 to 300 students. Last year it was estimated that over 15,000 full-time counselors were needed to provide one counselor for each 300 secondary school students. The need for counseling is further underlined by Conant's recommendation No. 2 that it should be the policy of the school to provide an individualized program for every student, such a program to be worked out cooperatively by each student and his parents with the help of the counselor. If our schools are to use to the full advantage of students what is readily learned about them from modern tests, marked increase in counseling services must be made available. Although the Hill-Elliott bill of 1958 provides substantial help in the training of counselors and the provision of certain services, there remains the primary need of sufficient salary in the basic teacher salary schedule to recruit promising young men and women to fill the counseling positions. Furthermore, counselors must have space in which to counsel pupils and file their records, space not now provided in many already overcrowded buildings.

Educational facilities and the number of personnel for teaching exceptional children have increased greatly in recent years. Many State-supported programs have been developed for the education of mentally and physically handicapped children. Much experimentation is currently being conducted in the education of exceptionally gifted children and youth. Thousands of boys and girls at both ends of the scale of normality, however, are inadequately provided for throughout the Nation. To reap the full potential of each individual requires major additional investments in the special facilities required for handling well these pupils. Smaller classes, teachers with special competencies and training, and a great variety of expensive equipment and resources are involved.

THE NEED FOR WELL-EQUIPPED CLASSROOMS

More and more, educators regard the classroom as a "learing laboratory." Great advances in such fields as audiovisual equipment, textbooks, and scientific apparatus, place at the disposal of school districts tremendous aids to learning. But priorities in local financing have too frequently had to go for teachers' salaries and classroom space alone. The Hill-Elliott bill will remedy deficiencies in some fields, but in others there will remain a great need for such essential teaching facilities as tape recording machines, projection equipment, book cabinets, bulletin boards, display cases, record players, radio and television receivers, maps, globes, pictures, and charts.

The actual availability of necessary equipment is only one aspect of the problem, for classrooms must be so constructed as to make possible its use. A recent survey by the National Education Association revealed that only about one-fourth of the Nation's elementary schools classrooms were well adapted for the use of audiovisual materials. Furthermore, teachers' difficulties in using these materials were most frequently due to the lack of adequate adaptable space.

Thousands of classrooms are still equipped with the furniture of another era. Movable seats and desks built in conformity with what is known about their relation to pupils' health and learning, cannot be purchased in school districts where every available dollar must go for salary and maintenance. Special furniture and equipment for science, music, art, drama, industrial arts, vocational education, and homemaking are essential in the secondary schools. Even in the general classrooms, more space and special construction are necessary for such purposes as the following:

(1) Work areas with tables and chairs for small groups where materials can be spread out during the process of development.

(2) Storage cabinets, drawers, and files for pupils' work and teachers' supplies and records.

(3) Alcoves or conference rooms where teachers can meet with individual pupils and with parents.

(4) Classroom libraries or collections of materials.

I

Mr. Chairman, the quality of American education is of national concern. have examined with this committee some of the elements necessary to provide quality education for American children and youth which I believe are basic to

any consideration of the problems now confronting our schools. Everything that happens in school depends on what we desire the schools to accomplish and upon the provision of competent teachers and necessary facilities to achieve our desires. Quality instruction is no accident.

Thank you.

Dr. ALEXANDER. I think we will underline some of the statements in it and not go into the complete testimony.

As I have attempted, in some 35 years of my own teaching career, and as a supervisor and a trainer of teachers, to analyze this business of what makes for good education, there are these things that stand out:

First of all, competent teachers. Of this there is great certainty, I think, on the part of all of us.

Secondly, adequate classrooms, enough classrooms to provide a full schoolday, not a half schoolday, with classes of sufficient size to permit effective teaching.

Thirdly, a well-rounded program of studies. And this, of course, is where we fall very short in many of our small school districts. Adequate special services I have listed fourth, meaning here such things as libraries, guidance services, education of exceptional children, and fifth, equipment, the use of which makes possible for schoolteachers to take advantage of the scientific age.

I have dealt in my statement in some completeness with the problem of the need for competent teachers. I believe that Miss Stout yesterday talked about this in some detail. May I just cut through the testimony to say this. My experience appears conclusive to me that our problem in teaching, in getting enough good teachers, is essentially that we cannot compete on graduation with other occupations and professions. Regardless with how well imbued with the spirit of philanthropy and service our college students may be, the dollar mark casts a rather significant influence on their choice of an occupation.

I have seen, as have you, Senator, many a capable young man or woman who would dearly like to teach find somewhere along toward the completion of high school and maybe the completion of college that he or she is not willing to accept some $1,500 to $2,500 less prospect of annual income by going into teaching than going into the other professions.

Consequently, the shortage of teachers exists, and the shortage of well-trained teachers exists. The training situation is pathetic.

I was reflecting on this recently-and may I pass this along—as to my own family, looking back and looking forward. My father was a country doctor in Tennessee. He began practice in 1900. The year before he went to medical school, he taught. This was after he had finished Bactere Institute back in west Tennessee, which was the equivalent of a high school education. It was perfectly possible for him to get a job teaching school. He had to go to medical school for two years in order to practice medicine.

My son, who graduates from high school next year, could still get a job, I regret to say, teaching in a public school in some localities on the basis of high school graduation. He could get a job in many localities on the basis of 2 years of college, and in almost any locality on the basis of 4 years in college.

Should he decide to go into the practice of medicine, as you well know, under present standards of the medical profession, it would require 10 years for him to get trained for this job.

So our problem is a simple matter of being able to offer enough incentive in the way of salary and salary improvement to attract more people.

I do want to make this particular point, that an incompetent teacher has a wide influence on many people. I think we may overlook this point in some of our discussions of competence and training and qualifications for teachers.

I have estimated-I think this is a very simple computation—that one elementary school teacher in a lifetime of teaching will teach at least 1,000 citizens, maybe considerably more, depending on the class size. In Cheyenne right now there are 25 in a class. This would be 1,000 children that one teacher would teach in a career. A high school teacher would teach 5,000 under existing standards. One incompetent teacher, then, at a high school level, is having a direct influence on 5,000 future American citizens. One hundred incompetent high school teachers, poorly trained, would have an influence on a half million American citizens.

This seems to me to indicate the fact that this problem is not of minor consequence in our country.

I have touched in my testimony on another fact that is alarming to many of us who work with teachers and this is the great, continued difficulty of retaining men in the teaching profession.

At the present time, as the Senator is probably aware, only 13 percent of our elementary school teachers are men. And yet there is every reason to believe that young children would be influenced as well by men in the teaching profession as by women.

Why do they leave? The financial factor, again. Time after time, young men whom I have known in teaching have come to ask, "How could I possibly get enough more money to stay in it? I would like to teach" but they are offered a couple of thousand dollars more in some other job, and they go to the other job.

Without dwelling further on the teacher shortage and the problem of teacher salaries, which is a matter of record, I think, I would like to talk a little bit about the need for more classrooms.

Senator HILL. Doctor, there is no institution, in our part of the country, certainly, that has a finer reputation for training teachers than Peabody. How many students do you have there today?

Dr. ALEXANDER. We have about 1,800 today. We appreciate our reputation. We think Peabody has been able to have a pretty good influence on education in the south.

Senator HILL. You have a very outstanding reputation. You have done very fine work there.

Dr. ALEXANDER. Thank you, sir.

Senator HILL. How large a summer school do you operate?

Dr. ALEXANDER. We will run from 3,000 to 4,000 students in the summer. These students, as you well know, are teachers who come in to supplement their education going to school in the summer, of course always with considerable financial difficulty.

Senator HILL. Thank you, sir.