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 halfday 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 systems, over 21,000 elementary school classrooms are overburdened with more than 35 pupils each. 2. Over 6.5 million of our elementary-school children 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 schoolday 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 deficiencies 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 deficiencies in our secondary schools, most of them arise from the strenuous effort made to provide a program suited to the abil ities 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 on 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 wellrounded 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 curriculum 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 1 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 parent 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 "learning 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. Mr. BAILEY. May I say on behalf of the committee that we appreciate your presence here, Doctor. Your testimony has been quite informative and will be beneficial. I think you realize the problems that face the committee in writing satisfactory legislation, and we appreciate your efforts and cooperation. Mr. ALEXANDER. In turn, let me thank you for the opportunity. Mr. BAILEY. May I wish every possible success to the Peabody Teachers College. Mr. ALEXANDER. Thank you, sir. Mr. BAILEY. The committee will stand in recess until 10 o'clock tomorrow, at which time we will hear Dr. Heller, a specialist from the University of Minnesota. (Whereupon, at 12:10 p.m., the subcommittee recessed until 10 a.m. on Friday, February 6, 1959.) SCHOOL SUPPORT ACT OF 1959 FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1959 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON GENERAL EDUCATION OF THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR, The subcommittee met at 10:15 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 429, House Office Building, Hon. Cleveland M. Bailey (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Representatives Bailey, Thompson, Udall, Brademas, Frelinghuysen, and Kearns. Also present: Fred G. Hussey, clerk, full committee; Melvin W. Sneed, minority clerk; Russell C. Derrickson, investigator, full committee; and Robert E. McCord, clerk, subcommittee. Mr. BAILEY. The subcommittee will be in order. At adjournment on yesterday we made an announcement that our witness for today's hearings of the subcommittee would be Dr. Walter W. Heller, chairman of the Department of Economics at the University of Minnesota. I understand that the doctor is going to dwell largely in the field of economics. I am certain that the subcommittee will be very much pleased to have his views on this particular angle of the problem on which we are attempting to write legislation. Doctor, you may identify yourself further, if necessary, to the reporter, and proceed with your testimony. May I inquire first, would you care to be interrupted as you give your testimony, or would you rather present your material and then be subject to questioning? STATEMENT OF DR. WALTER W. HELLER, CHAIRMAN, DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, ACCOMPANIED BY MRS. JEAN M. FLANIGAN, RESEARCH ASSOCIATE, RESEARCH DIVISION, NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION Mr. HELLER. It is at the committee's pleasure. Mr. BAILEY. We will leave the choice up to you. Mr. HELLER. I would be happy to be interrupted en route. Mr. HELLER. Yes, if you wish to do that, I would be glad to have questions. Mr. BAILEY. You may proceed. Mr. HELLER. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, may I first introduce Mrs. Jean Flanigan of the NEA research division, who assisted in the preparation of this material and who will assist in an |