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adequate school program. In addition, the State should help finance both current operations and capital outlays for buildings when the locality clearly lacks enough resources to provide them. Many States are now doing this.

Some States have severely restricted the taxing and borrowing powers of their subdivisions. Many of these restrictions, and some of the limits the States have imposed on their own taxing and borrowing powers, will, if not modified, deprive school systems of the increased capital outlays and operating revenues required during the next decade. The States should modify these constitutional

and statutory limitations that impede effective State and local action.

The proper course for State and local governments is quite clear. Good schools are essential to the national welfare: the most important resource of the United States is not its soil, minerals, climate, or extent of territory, but its citizens.

STATES HAVE CAPACITY TO MEET EDUCATIONAL NEEDS

The States do have the capacity to meet their educational requirements. This is a proven fact. Every State in the Union, and probably every school district in the United States is in better financial condition than is our Federal Government. Federal aid to the schools of America would either increase deficit spending or Federal taxation and speed the inflationary trend. With financial aid would eventually come Federal control. Any degree of Federal control over education would be disastrous to our tradition of local authority and State responsibility. If adequate educational opportunities were possible only through a program of Federal financial assistance, the decision would be clear. But it does not follow that Federal aid is the way to get good schools. Under any moderate program of aid, the amount going to individual States would not be large enough to count effectively. And Federal aid in an amount sufficient to mitigate the problem significantly would result in such undermining of State and local responsibility as to endanger seriously the kind of educational system that has served America so well.

Our lawmakers in Washington can serve us best by cutting Federal participation in education and other fields which can best be handled by the States and local communities. They might better devote their energies toward the balancing of the budget and the saving of our economic system through halting the inflationary trend.

Local and State governments can, should, and, in my opinion, will make the wisest decision--and adequate provision-for the best development of education.

[Excerpted from pages 63 and 64 of the hearings, Wednesday, July 16, 1958]

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EDUCATION OF THE COMMITTEE ON LABOR AND PUBLIC WELFARE, Washington, D.C.

*** I have always been opposed to Federal aid for schools or education in any form. I am opposed to general aid, and also opposed to the present bill which calls for aid for school construction purposes. It's my feeling that the communities of Nebraska and, for that matter, of the entire United States are better able to build their own school buildings than is Uncle Sam. There isn't a school district in the United States in as bad shape, financially, as the Federal Government. Furthermore, if we ever accept aid from Washington, we will have to expect to accept accompanying control. Contrary to what some people try to say, there is no such thing as Federal aid without Federal control.

A good example is in the field of vocational agriculture and home economics. We receive Federal aid through the State department of education in the amount of about 27 or 28 percent of the teachers' salaries in these two departments. In order to get this money we have to accept and adopt the course of study outlined and specified by the Federal Government, through the State department. We have to permit inspection trips by State employees who receive part of their money from the Federal Government. We have to hire teachers whose qualifications are approved by the same groups. We have to send our teachers to conferences designated by those authorities. If we have night classes, they have

to be operated according to the rules of the Federal and State departments. In other words, we are perfectly able to work out our own course of study in all other fields, including science, mathematics, English, and other technical fields.

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because we don't get any Federal aid-but, because we get Federal aid for agriculture and home economics, we have to accept courses of study worked out by other people. We, also, have to accept supervision from the outside in those fields, while in every other field we are trusted to do our own supervision. Other examples of control in these fields are these: We are told how long our periods of recitation have to be-that's not true in any other field; we are told how large the classrooms and the shops have to be, what type of equipment we have to have, even the type of floor in the rooms. We are told about how much money to spend per student. We are not allowed to use the teachers in those departments in any other fields, except home economics, or agriculture. If we do, we lose our aid money.

If all the above doesn't constitute control from Washington, then at least it's a reasonable facsimile thereof. The school lunch program, veterans aid for college students, etc., are all examples of aid with control. There is no such thing as aid without control and, for that matter, there probably should be control with aid. My whole story is that we don't need the aid, and since we don't need it, why should we ask for it and then give up local control of the schools in the process ALLEN P. BURKHARDT, Superintendent, Norfolk Public Schools, Norfolk, Nebr.

[The Norfolk Daily News, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 1958]

WASHINGTON TELLS US

We have been assured all along that Nebraska could accept Federal money for mathematics, science and other programs without fear that the Government would insist on calling the rules.

So the State board of education voted to accept $152,036, laid down the plans to use it and sent the information to Washington.

Now the State's plans have come back with instructions to follow the plan established by the Federal Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

And State Commissioner of Education Freeman Decker announces that at the next meeting of the State board "the math and science program would be revised according to the final guidelines sent out by the Federal Government," as the commissioner is quoted in Nebraska Education News.

The Federal Department will set the terms and the State will follow them. This is as it has been and as it always will be. The Federal Government is not going to pay the bill unless it makes sure the money is used as the Government wants it used.

NEBRASKA STATE EDUCATION ASSOCIATION,

Lincoln, Nebr., March 10, 1959.

Representative CLEVELAND M. BAILEY,
Chairman, Subcommittee on Education,
House Education and Labor Committee,
Washington, D.C.

DEAR CONGRESSMAN BAILEY: Enclosed is a copy of the testimony given before the Judiciary Committee of the Nebraska Legislature on March 2, 1959. The testimony was presented in support of a measure designed to give Nebraska education, at all levels including higher education, financial support so urgently needed.

At the present time Nebraska has no State financial support for public elementary and secondary schools. As a result, Nebraska's school district reorganization has been seriously retarded. Our average teacher's salaries are approximately $1,000 below the national average, our schools are for the most part-too small to offer a comprehensive program, our out-migration of qualified teaching personnel is excessive, and even though our school-age population will increase materially in the years immediately ahead, we see little hope of resolving these critical problems without Federal support for education.

A concerted effort has been made to get our Nebraska Legislature to recognize the State's financial obligation in the support of education. The enclosed statement stressed repeatedly the need for such help. Specifically, the committee that heard this testimony was advised that failure on the part of the State to assume

its proper share of the financial obligation for public education was an admission that "we must look to the Federal Government for the needed revenue."

No testimony was offered to show that our school needs were being adequately provided for. The committee, however, killed the bill by a vote of six to one. It may interest you to know that supporters of the bill included: the Nebraska State School Boards Association, the Nebraska Congress of Parents and Teachers, the Nebraska Council of Churches, representatives from the University of Nebraska, the State teachers colleges, the Nebraska State Education Association, representatives of Nebraska homebuilders, and representatives from Nebraska real estate boards.

I am also taking the liberty of sending a copy of an article that appears in the March issue of Air Force magazine. This article is authored by Donald W. Douglas, chairman of the board of the Douglas Aircraft Co., Inc. In a little different and eloquent-way, he tells the fundamental story.

It is my sincere hope that the material enclosed will be of value to you. Education needs the help you and other members of the Congress are trying to secure. Please feel free to use my statement before the Judiciary Committee in any way you like. Our Nebraska State Education Association is on record through its legislative and executive committees-representing the professional teacher in all parts of the State-in favor of the School Support Act for 1959. Your continued efforts in behalf of the Murray-Metcalf measure will be deeply appreciated.

Sincerely yours,

DONALD F. KLINE, Executive Secretary.

[Space Digest, March 1959]

SPACE, SCIENCE, AND EDUCATION

(Donald W. Douglas)

Western civilization has known the estate of the clergy, that of the nobles, the third estate of the commons, and the fourth estate of the press. Each grew to power and made lasting impacts on the institutions and way of life of the time. None seemed to hold more promise than the present and coming ascendancy of the engineer.

The pace of the technological revolution speeded by the genius of such men as Edison, Urey, Whittle-and many others-is sweeping forward and upward with a fierce vitality. The scientists and engineers are today clearing the frontiers of space. The fields of past learning are being weeded of errors and misconceptions. No longer does it appear that man's fate is to spend the balance of his time in the confining atmospheric bonds of the present, "chained to this rock and lost in the stars."

But if our habitat inexorably is to be extended, if a limitless new dimension is to be added to our way of living, the probe of that destiny will surely depend to a large extent upon the findings of pure research coupled with the ability of many specialized engineers to weld the yield of this research into the complex vehicles of space penetration.

I say "many specialized engineers" advisedly, because the past 40 years have seen a growth and breadth of engineering development in our industry far beyond any comparable advance in an equivalent decade.

Today, missiles engineering has a requirement for well trained, experienced engineers and scientists in no less than 11 major categories, including, in addition to aeronautical experts, architects, chemists, metallurgists, nuclear physicists, and mathematicians. Within the major categories we must have access to the talents of more than 30 different classes of specialists, each an expert in his own field.

Basically, this requirement for more specialized talents may be attributed to the advent of the missile age.

But that, I think, is an oversimplification and deserves a bit of analysis. Today's most pressing aim in the look to outer space is toward the admittedly difficult-perhaps unattainable goal of full performance reliability. We want to hit-or orbit-the moon, but we don't want to do it as the result of one lucky shot.

Hence, missile design and construction have brought the need for much more advanced research by the aircraft companies themselves, work that in the past has been shared with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, that agency, however, carrying the major share of the load.

It has become increasingly necessary ot keep close watch on research developments countrywide, because with the "systems" concept the lack of one perfected component can effectively block the completion of a system design. If a weapon system is under consideration, this lack makes it impossible to offer the using military service a fully developed operational proposal, which is to say no proposal can be made.

Hence, the increasing need for an accelerated "do-it-yourself" research program. Some advances come so fast that we simply can't wait for the outside development of the missing component.

This need for a greatly increased volume of independent research will require the talents and the best efforts of a highly educated and truly dedicated team of men and women, scholars who must sustain enthusiasm for their explorations in the knowledge that, of all basic research, 95 percent may be negative, with only 5 percent productive.

Which brings us to what I regard as a most serious matter, a realistic appraisal of our educational system.

It finally has been recognized that the state of the Nation cannot be evaluated without including education as one of the main yardsticks.

We owe this new situation to the Russians with their supersonic fighters, their big jet transports, their nuclear explosions and their satellites. Across the skies, over every farm and city in our land, they have written the ancient truism that "knowledge is power."

It is for us vital that the nature of this change is generally understood and suitable action promptly taken.

To this end various groups in recent months have been analyzing our educational system and all of the practices, facilities, and people involved in it. They have criticized methods and revised techniques. They have made motivation surveys among the children, argued about Federal subsidy, devised new aptitude tests, and sought opinions and statistics in all walks of life, even to the point of asking advice from people who, like myself, employ engineers and scientists.

Being an engineer, I must respond by first pointing out that there is utterly no basis for assuming that our educational system has failed us in any way. I ́can make this assertion safely because we never have had any generally accepted criteria for the end products. There is a saying attributed to a great scientist, Lord Kelvin, to the effect that "If you can't measure it, you don't know what you're talking about."

Without such a yardstick, our teaching policies could remain matters of opinion indefinitely and probably never would be mentioned in connection with the state of the Nation. The system could drift through successive experiments in the name of progress, without the means of measuring that progress. The result being leavened by the vagaries of free enterprise competition, would lead to no conclusion unless one were willing to measure the product in dollars.

Now we have had thrust upon us, for the first time, a yardstick of our educational achievements. We are confronted with a record of Russian technical progress that sets some hard new goals for us.

Looking more closely at this record, we see that the real problem and threat is not their present status, but in their momentum.

The threat of world domination in Hitler's Mein Kampf was no clearer when it first appeared than the threat that is implicit in possession of a completely modern technology for the ever-increasing masses of the Russian people who, until 25 years ago, were living in the atmosphere of the Dark Ages.

It hasn't been much over 25 years since Russia was offering triple salaries and careers of ease to engineers and skilled craftsmen who would migrate from America and show them how to build dams, fabricate plumbing systems, and operate the simplest kind of factories.

Yet in that quarter century—in a single generation-Russia has managed to absorb the whole technology of Western civilization and move on ahead in significant areas. They have their share of geniuses.

A tremendous momentum-regimented scholastic effort was created for which the West has no ready counterpart. Nothing can take us back suddenly to the invention of the steam engine and then permit us to actually experience, in rapid sequence, all of the history of modern science. Nothing can give us the advantage of exploring thousands of theories with the assurance that each has already been confirmed empirically-and with the actual hardware proof before us. If this were possible, the effect would be an inspiration of such breadth and power as to draw invention from the mind of the dullest student.

We would proceed step by step through the conception and construction of the first blast furnace as if it were getting its first coke tomorrow. We would participate in designing the first harvester, the first standardized machine parts, the first volume production assembly line. We would watch with the Curies for the first glow of radium, and join with Newton in the perfection of calculus, with Kepler and Archimedes standing by as contemporaries.

Somehow, we must reveal more imaginatively the glamour that will draw young minds into science at an earlier age. By some new handling of the exciting history of science and by making certain that ability and ambition are encouraged, we can match or improve the thrills and triumphs that the Russians have found in their catching-up process. For now, in terms of momentum and national dedication, it is we who must catch up.

I don't believe the answer is in scholarships alone although these occasionally save a promising talent that would otherwise go without further development. Part of the answer is public backing for ample school plants in all corners. of the country, financed under conditions that make Federal control of education an entirely separate controversy at the policy level, and not a qualification for brick and mortar. Let's make sure of the food before we bicker over the flavoring. This isn't centralization; it is simply unity of purpose.

Most of all, we need higher salaries, exemplary salaries, for the people who have the special talent and training to teach. We cannot depend only upon those whose call is so strong that they would starve to fulfill it. Here, as elsewhere, we will, in general, get only what we pay for.

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May I suggest that to meet the Russian challenge, we might go further than

we have in establishing incentive for the real inventors and innovators. The Russians have the built-in advantages which accrue from a low-standard economy in which the special social and economic privileges granted their professional people give comforts which would not loom large in the eyes of their Western World counterparts.

In addition, however, major accomplishments are rewarded in very tangible fashion and I would like to advocate a similar practice. Sir George Edwards, managing director of Vickers-Armstrong and president of the Royal Aeronautical Society, points out that Tupoley and other Russian aircraft designers have received from the state large tax-free grants.

To the best of my knowledge, the only comparable reward in recent years made in this country was the $100,000 which the Congress voted William F. Friedman, the modest civilian cryptographer who broke the Japanese "purple" code during the last war.

I would propose that the Federal Government consider the establishment of an awards system, possibly patterned after the Nobel prizes, but preferably recognizing more categories germane to the space age. An equivalent of the $9 million with which the Nobel prizes were endowed is surely not beyond the means of the Government, which is to say, the American people.

I have a deep conviction that those people are wrong who think that this heavy emphasis on the sciences is dangerous and may produce ethical blindness, ignorance of human values, and brutish materialism.

Historically, learning in the physical sciences and learning in the humanities have seldom proceeded independently.

A revived thirst for knowledge, such as we have the opportunity now to foster as a national duty, will not be confined to technical matters.

It will merge into a revitalized respect for all learning, and finally for wisdom itself. It is this very formula-this certainty of eager migration from one field of knowledge to another-that mass psychologists tell us may eventually subvert the Russian technical community and turn them against their masters.

The Russians have learned the processes of scientific inquiry. They have the trained technicians-and the occasional genius-to continue this inquiry at a fast rate. They, too, will have their scientific breakthroughs in such exotic fields as antigravity, weather control, controlled hydrogen fusion, and spaceflight; and mingled with these pursuits that have recognizable military significance, they are not neglecting pure research, which by definition rejects arbitrary direction. We are engaged in a contest of total technologies or societies, testing whether in the long run learning itself can best be furthered by free men or by police state slaves.

A recognized superiority in modern science, which could snowball out of the present situation, would put Russia in a position to dictate a radically different way of life to a "world of satellites," perhaps without striking a blow.

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