The purpose of the Veterans' Readjustment Benefits Act of 1966, as stated in section 1651, chapter 34, title 38, United States Code, follows: "The Congress of the United States hereby declares that the education program BUT, FOR ALL PRACTICAL PURPOSES, FARM VETERANS ARE LEFT OUT The provision of the 1967 Act, requiring a minimum of 12 clock hours of classroom work per week, instead of the former provision of 200 hours a year in the classroom and 100 hours on the farm or in group tours, has made it impracticable for farm veterans to attempt to take this training. A MAN CANNOT FARM FULL-TIME and at the same,time CARRY THE EQUIVALENT OF A FULL-TIME COLLEGE LOAD. Congress should act in 1968 to make education training under the G.I. bill available to farm veterans on a workable basis. IT ISN'T TO TAKE UP WHERE YOU LEFT OFF A FEW YEARS BACK THE PACE OF TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCE IS FAST IN MOST INDUSTRIES AND EXCEPTIONALLY FAST IN MODERN-DAY AGRICULTURE -- It is not easy to begin over again in one's education or in one's occupation. What is accepted good procedure at one time can within a few short years become obsolete and inefficient. Keeping abreast of change is a problem for those in various professions, including agriculture, even for those whose career is not interrupted by a call to national service. The biggest change which has occurred in U. S. agriculture has been technological change. Something over a generation ago, land and labor made up 85% of the inputs in farming --- today, capital and the purchased inputs which capital makes possible, accounts for 60% of the inputs. We see more technical and scientific change in a year than our ancestors saw in a century. Technological research, innovation and adoption of new farming techniques will not only continue in the future, but may occur at a more rapid rate than in the past. Will the young farmer, who interrupted his career to serve the nation, have the chance to catch up with technology? A workable educational program under the G.I. Bill can make a great difference. AGRICULTURAL PROGRAMS UNDER THE G.I. BILL HAVE MADE A GREAT CONTRIBUTION some Training under the World War II and Korean conflict G.I. Bills has helped The educational value of this training is widely recognized. A survey of trainees who participated in the G.I. Bill program following the Korean War, has indicated that over 83% of those completing 12 months of training have continued in farming. THERE IS A POTENTIAL FOR G.1. CLASSES There are about as many veterans of service since 1955, as there were veterans of service during the Korean era. Following World War II, some 16.5 million veterans used portions of their G.Í. educational eligibility and 7.8 million completed training. Following the Korean conflict, 5.3 million veterans used portions of their eligibility and 2.4 millions completed training. Since 1955, about 1.6 million veterans have used portions of their G.I. educational eligibility; only 260,000 have completed training. THERE IS A NEED FOR AGRICULTURAL TRAINING Agricultural colleges and high school and vocational agriculture classes are training only a fraction of the number of farm replacements which will be needed in the future. Only about half of the persons who graduate with college degrees in agriculture go into farming, the remainder go into agri-business and other careers. NATIONAL FARMERS UNION URGES THIS BETTER SOLUTION 1. Restore the classroom hourly requirement to approximately the same as in the Korean veterans G.I. Bill regarding Institutional On The Farm Training, but restore the flexibility so that the classroom hour requirements are stated on an annual basis and can be shifted by the instructor as far as possible to less busy times of the year. 2. Restore the requirement for part of the training to be on-farm instruction. 3. Retain the rates of educational and training allowance substantially as specified in the 1967 law, regardless of the reduced clock-hour per week requirement. 4. Amend the basic legislation for all eligible veterans to receive one and a half month's education eligibility for each month of active service. ATTENTION THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH THIS SITUATION Estimated Number Currently Enrolled in Educational Training Under the 1967 A veteran with educational eligibility under the G.I. Bill can use this eligibility for a variety of approved studies or job training. He should be able, if he chooses, to use his eligibility for farm training. In the educational programs made available to World War II and Korean conflict veterans, hundreds of thousands of young men used their eligibility to enhance their farming skill and management techniques. The 1967 Act, however, because of the stringent weekly classroom clock hour requirement, makes it virtually impossible for the veteran to choose farm training. It is time now for the Congress to restore equal educational opportunity to veterans who choose to farm. Senator MORSE. We will listen to Mr. Fichter at this time. Mr. FICHTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First I would like to follow up with what Dr. Carstenson has said. I think all of us do greatly appreciate the leadership that the chairman of this subcommittee has given to education, not only to education but to all areas of national and world life. We have looked to you, Senator Morse, as a spokesman for the things that are right and the things that are based on integrity. Senator MORSE. You are very kind. Mr. FICHTER. I will take just a few minutes. I have come here without an opportunity to make extensive preparation. This is a subject that I would welcome an opportunity to have a dialog at length on. There are many phases of it. I want to touch just two or three high points. I will not attempt to present any statistics or anything of that sort. But I would start where Superintendent Briggs left off. As the superintendent of Cleveland, some 30 years ago when I was assistant State director of education in Ohio, one of my assignments was to supervise the distribution of what we called equalization fund or State aid fund for the school districts, most of which were located in farm areas, and in what was called the poorer sections of the State. We had to get an appropriation from the State legislature for these funds, and we had a very difficult time in doing so. I recall this was before Superintendent Briggs' day that the people of Cleveland felt that these farm people down in these poor areas were wanting subsidies, and that they didn't look with much favor on helping these rural areas. Later when the depression came, the cities as well as the rural districts got into financial trouble, and we enacted the program, called it a foundation program, whereby all the districts received some money. And now, as Superintendent Briggs has said, the city, the inner city, is in dire trouble. I refer to this because I think it shows two things. I think it shows that this problem is one that can affect any of us at some time. Sometimes those of us that are fortunate in one way or another are not sympathetic to the unfortunate, but time takes care of a lot of these things, and the fortunate become the unfortunate. I think we all have a common interest here. The rural districts and the city districts, the college area and the secondary and elementary school area, there has been over the years sort of a friction between the college area people and the secondary and elementary school people. There has likewise been a division between those who believed in general education and those who believed in vocational education. It seems to me it is a problem that calls for unified action to meet all of these areas. The other thing I would like to point out is that this trend from the farm to the city has been one that the farm organization, some of the farm organizations have been calling attention to for years, and many of us have felt that it has been an undesirable trend and that it has been caused by inequality in economic opportunity between the people on the farm and the people in the cities. |