maintain the intellectual standards we require as serious educators and develop the processes of thought and action which art requires of its best practitioners. Any program which will attract to the arts the gifted and imaginative young people who will become the next generation of artists, and any devices that will enable us to identify and measure their talents, will contribute in extraordinary ways to the wealth and welfare of this country. PREPARED STATEment of Merrill F. HARTSHORN, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, my name is Merrill F. Hartshorn, and I am the executive secretary of the National Council for the Social Studies, a voluntary, nonprofit, educational organization founded in 1921. Our membership is composed of social studies teachers (from the fields of history, government, economics, geography, and sociology) in the elementary and secondary schools of our Nation. We also have in our membership a sizable number of instructors in colleges and universities whose main concern is the education of prospective social studies teachers for our schools. At the present time our membership is slightly in excess of 11,000. First of all, I should like to express our general support for S. 580 which should, I believe, have priority consideration by the appropriate committees of Congress. In connection with this general support, I appreciate the opportunity on behalf of social studies teachers to submit this statement which deals with part D of title III in S. 580. The Cooperative Research Act has made a substantial contribution to educa tion, and its potential for the future is indeed very great. Proposals to amend and strengthen the act certainly deserve careful and serious consideration. Outmoded content of courses, curriculum design, and teaching techniques must be eliminated, or our educational program will fail our Nation at a crucial point in history. This is especially true in the area of the social studies where change is developing much more slowly than in some other curriculum areas. Education is a vital part of our national defense and it is crucial that it have the moral and financial support from all levels of government that it needs to Leet its responsibility to our Nation. To meet this responsibility, more research oa educational problems is urgently needed. At the same time the base for this research and the dissemination of research findings, should be as broad and strong as possible. We need to move as rapidly as possible with this task and need assistance from all sources that can make a significant contribution. The proposals to amend the Cooperative Research Act to enable the Commissioner of Education to make grants to public or nonprofit private universities, colleges, or other organizations with research or professional training facilities, and to local educational agencies, certainly would broaden the base for research and increase the opportunities the act provides for making a significant contribution to education. By broadening the base of those eligible for contracts or grants to be awarded by the Commissioner of Education, several specific benefits would emerge. First of all, it would enable the Commissioner of Education to draw on a much larger pool of manpower and talent, that could bring their special competencies to bear on some of the urgent research problems in education. Considering the size and nature of the problem, that could prove to be a great asset. Second, national nonprofit educational organizations could make a significant contribution to the purposes of the Cooperative Research Act. One especially unportant role they could play would be in the dissemination of the results of the Various research studies being supported under the act. One criticism frequently made at the present time is that the results of many research projects with subventions remain in reports on shelves of offices-that they do not get into the bloodstream of American education. This is indeed a great loss to education, and at the same time it means that the potential of the money invested in research is not realized to any considerable extent. Organizations could utilize their channels of communication with their members in the dissemination of the results of research, and do so economically. This could be done through the regular publications such as monthly journals, through special publications, and through programs at annual meetings. Third, national organizations, with branches in all parts of the United States, ould assist greatly in heiping to locate and to mobilize talent needed to assist in developing and implementing desirable research studies. They could sponsor seminars or conferences to assist the Commissioner of Education in discharging his responsibilities under the act. Finally, national organizations could assist in serving as a clearinghouse on the various ongoing research projects being supported in their special fields of interest. This could be of great assistance to the individual projects. It would enable those responsible for specific projects to exchange information that could prove helpful in their project development and the conduct of their work. Consequently, it is respectfully requested that members of this committee, and other Members of Congress, give their support to S. 580 that broadens and extends the Cooperative Research Act to empower the Commissioner of Education to make grants and to extend the act to groups presently not eligible to assist in furthering the basic purposes of the act. PREPARED STATEMENT OF LESLIE H. FISHEL, JR., DIRECTOR, THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN Our deep concern is with the social studies in Wisconsin and the United States and specifically with the social studies curriculum in elementary and secondary school systems. Social studies embrace those areas of knowledge which are primarily concerned with man's relationship to man and the impact of nature upon this relationship. Taken with the natural and biological sciences, language, and the arts, an intimate knowledge of the social studies, or social sciences, is a basic requirement for an educated people. Two Russian historians, visiting the State Historical Society earlier this month, commented on the explosive news and headline techniques of American newspapers. Our reply was that, as an educated people, we deserve to know all of the news and could select the pith from the trivia. Our democracy is rooted in the elemental fact that we are a thinking people and we have our educational system to thank, or to blame, for that. It is this educational system, particularly in the area of the social studies, which is faltering, unable to live up to its responsibilities. Teachers need to be trained and retrained so that new interpretations of old information as well as new information itself is made available to them (title III, pt. A). Teachers need time and study to develop, with those more expert in subject matter than they can be, new curriculums and new curricular material (title III, pt. B). More importantly, colleges and universities and other institutions with research and training facilities need to have support for initiating and developing new ideas in teaching and teaching materials (title III, pt. D). A reexamination of the social studies curriculum will quickly reveal a dull. repetitive, and unexciting series of courses. While details differ all over the country, the general picture is one of American history courses rigidly slotted at two or three grade levels, frequently going over the same ground in much the same way. Courses in economics and sociology, if offered at all, are offered at the last moment in high school and as entirely new subjects. Courses in political science, often called civics, examine the process of government as if robots, not men, governed the affairs of the country. Courses in world history are jammed so full of required material that teachers must depend upon their own and their pupils' rote learning to complete them. Courses in geography are almost nonexistent except for those students who are not able to handle world history. These courses are constructed as if land masses existed for statistical groupings of temperature, imports, and major industries, or are so well inte grated into history courses as to be lost. It is a dismal and depressing picture. History and the social sciences are in a constant state of flux. New areas of history, such as the history of American science, of mass communications, of urban history, have not filtered down to elementary and secondary school levels, yet no one can gainsay their tremendous significance for midcentury Americans. New information in the social sciences is equally significant and, at present. blocked from elementary and secondary education because teachers are not informed and materials are not available. New interpretations of older concepts need to be presented, too, but cannot be unless the teacher and the materials are readied for the presentation. History and the social sciences need to be revitalized if they are to perform their function of preparing young people to shoulder the increasingly heavy burden of living in a democratic society. They must know about their society, their environment, and their economic system-and those of their opponents. They must have this information, be permitted to think about it, be encouraged to work out study problems with it, be urged to stretch their imaginations about it so that they can approach their problems, when they become adults, with the wisdom of the ages, the reflectiveness of a trained mind, and the speed of the 21st century. And their problems are and will be the problems of national survival. STATEMENT BY LINDLEY J. STILES, DEAN, AND JOSEPH V. TOTARO, DIRECTOR OF TEACHER PLACEMENT, SCHOOL OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN, MADI SON, WIS. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, permit us to express appreciation for the opportunity to appear before you today in order to support S. 580, the National Education Improvement Act of 1963, which is designed to upgrade the quality, quantity, and the opportunities provided by American education. Since time is limited, and because others have already given attention to various aspects of this bill, our testimony will focus primarily on title III: The Improvement of Education Quality. However, we should first like to personally endorse recommendations for (1) substantially expanding course-contentimprovement programs; the number of training institutes for teachers in the natural sciences, mathematics, engineering, and social sciences; the number of fellowships and new teaching grants for graduate study; the matching grant program permitting institutions of higher education to strengthen graduate and undergraduate science facilities; the program of science development grants which will contribute to the strengthening of graduate education-all under the National Science Foundation program; and (2) extending and expanding provisions of the National Defense Education Act as they concern the student loan program; fellowships and teaching grants for graduate study; university programs for area centers, language research, and stipends for the study of critical languages and areas; and research and experimentation in the more effective utilization of television, radio, motion pictures, and related media for educational purposes. The net effect of both the NSF and National Defense Education Act programs in strengthening education cannot be questioned. If there is a criticism, it is that they did not go far enough-and this you can remedy. While we speak as individual educators, we should point out that it has been our privilege during the past 3 years to have had the active cooperation and support of over 400 Americans in all parts of the United States in efforts to improve the quality of education through a more realistic investment in educational research and development. It has been the desire of these individuals, who represent many different walks of life, that the emphasis in American educaion be such as to assure that our people not only be equipped to keep abreast of the latest advances in all fields, but that they also continue to be actively inFolved in pushing forward the frontiers of knowledge. That they have had a profound effect on the thinking of people in their own communities regarding educational improvement is most gratifying. But while our gains have been Considerable, much remains to be accomplished. Other nations-cognizant of the relationship of education to progress have made dramatic advances in recent years because they recognized the need for improving education and were Wing to invest what was necessary for its accomplishment. We, who have achieved so much in the past, must not now take educational quality and progress for granted. Quality in education is directly related to the investment made in research and development. In the past 6 years the major thrust to improve schools has been primarily in the fields of science, mathematics, and certain foreign lanages those areas that have had the benefit of the investment of funds for research and development, curriculum improvement, and the updating of the knowledge of teachers. Such funds have come primarily from Federal appropriations through the National Science Foundation, the National Defense Education Act and the cooperative research program of the U.S. Office of Education. They have also come from key philanthropic organizations, such as the Ford Foundation and others. Federal investments in educational research and special programs of school provement have centered primarily in terms of amount of dollars invested-in the scientific fields, those judged vital to the national security. The gains ade in these areas are now tending to bring about an imbalance in school pro grams. Students now coming from high schools to colleges have been reported by President DuBridge of California Institute of Technology to be far ahead in the fields of science and mathematics of their counterparts a decade ago. On the other hand, the Superintendents of the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, at Randolph Field, and the Air College at Montgomery, Ala., reported at the Air Force Association's 16th National Convention and aerospace panorama, held at Las Vegas, September 18-23, 1962, that recruits in the Air Force. although well up in science and mathematics, fall down in English, history, and other basic studies. The need now is for the National Defense Education Act to be expanded to include programs of improvement in other basic fields such as English, history, geography, technical education so important to defense efforts. foreign languages not now included, and in the creative arts, whose study can contribute to the development of the type of creativity needed in today's scientifi age. Experience with the cooperative educational research program of the Office of Education has demonstrated conclusively that investments in research can produce knowledge on which better school programs may be built. The research or creativity has already given us insights into the identification of young people with high creative potentiality. Further research is now refining our knowledge of how to develop the kind of creativity in people that is needed to produce the Edisons, the Einsteins, and the Fermis of the future. Project English, the cur riculum improvement program in the field of English, has already set in motics a nationwide effort by leading scholars to improve the English preparation of our students, from kindergarten through college. Evidence is accumulating that dynamic advances can be achieved in other fields with similar support. The attached statement, "Some Accomplishments of Cooperative Research," indicate a number of areas in which significant findings are being uncovered. Local supporters of educational research strongly recommend the broadening of the Cooperative Research Act to authorize support for centers for multipur pose educational research, for development and demonstration programs, for broadening the types of educational agencies eligible to conduct research, and te increase the investment in the program to assure that the most pertinent research findings may be implemented in the Nation's schools with dispatch. The quality of American education, and the degree to which it can condition our people to respond, efficiently and effectively, to the dynamic challenges which lie ahead, will largely determine whether we continue as a leader among nations or slip to subservience. A continuing, realistic investment in educational re search and development is absolutely essential if we are to remain on top. At a time when our very survival is threatened, can we afford not to create an atmosphere in which all Americans may have the opportunity and will be encouraged to pursue the amount and kind of education of which they are capable? Education for survival is nonpartisan. Accordingly, we hope you will consider this plea for improving American education on its merits. SOME ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF COOPERATIVE RESEARCH From its inception through December 31, 1962, the cooperative research program has initiated over 508 major research and demonstration projects covering the wide spectrum of educational problems throughout the United States. The program's project-by-project approach for researching problem areas is producing unsable results of significance to education. Well-known examples of the range of results now available to educators are the recently completed projects in mathematics education, in which children in the early grades have shown unusual ability to understand advanced mathematics when taught by a method developed under a cooperative research project, and the success of the compressed speech method which has quadrupled the rate at which blind children learn. New dimensions are resulting from more recent studies. Illustrative of the range of topics studied, knowledge emerging, implications of the findings, and new directions for continuing research and development in 1964, are the summaries which follow: 1. Preliminary results of Project Talent, a nationwide inventory of the talents of over 440,000 American youngsters, reveal many important characteristics of our schoolchildren and the relationship between academic achievement and community characteristics. There is ample evidence that teachers, median income of parents, and type of housing in areas served by the schools have a high positive correlation with achievement in such areas as English, mathematics, and abstract reasoning. Most startling is evidence that when the same achievement tests are given to 9th and 12th grade youngsters, the upper 25 percent of the 9th graders score higher than the average 12th graders. 2. A project at Indiana University has analyzed in detail the language of elementary schoolchildren and its relationship to the language of reading textbooks. The relative complexity of sentences spoken even by very young children is demonstrated for the first time. Questioning the extreme simplicity of sentence structure in children's readers, the study is leading commercial publishers to reexamine the principles upon which their reading textbooks have been based. 3. Another cooperative research project at Harvard University has developed a method of using lay readers to assist high school English teachers in grading compositions. As a result of this study, several hundred school systems, including large cities such as Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Milwaukee currently employ lay readers. The effectiveness of instruction in many of these systems has been measurably improved as housewives put their educational backgrounds to work assisting in schools. 4. A recurring question is that of special classes for educable mentally retarded children. Are such classes really helpful or do they tend to keep these youngsters out of contact with other children? The results of a 4-year research project concerned with the efficacy of special classes for educable mentally retarded children, completed at the University of Illinois, show that with a well-designed curriculum and trained teachers certain clear differences are emerging between groups of identified educable mentally handicapped youngsters who have had special classes and those who have not. A group of children attending special classes since school entrance appeared to be more advanced academically and socially than those who entered and remained with a group attending regular classes. Moreover, intelligence quotients as measured by standard tests showed improvement, in many instances increasing to the degree where an individual who at 6 years of age was judged to be mentally retarded was now considered to have advanced to the slow learner level and possibly even within the slow average range. Implications based on the final results of this research emphasize the need for: (1) early identification and placement into special classes; (2) systematic evaluations of children during special class placement because many may become eligible for and could profit from classes designed for slow learners and slow average youngsters as a result of special class experiences; and (3) highly trained teachers and well-designed and executed curriculums. After these materials have been more thoroughly tested the more encouraging findings will need to be freely disseminated. 5. Two recent cooperative research projects deal with the education of Alaskan natives. The first is a comprehensive treatment of the development of educational programs for both Eskimo and Indian youngsters from 1850 through 1958. The project examined the curriculum and educational objectives for native elementary schools, the secondary education provided, education beyond high school, and the major problems encountered. Among the 16 major findings in this study are clear indications that: (1) native students were considerably retarded in terms of standardized achievement tests and that ability to understand and use English was a prime factor in this retardation; (2) Alaskan school facilities were found to be inadequate for the demands of natives for increased educational opportunities, particularly at the secondary level; and (3) qualifications of teachers in native schools were found to be generally low. This report provided an extensive assessment of native education at the time when Alaska became a State. The second project concerned the dropout problem among Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts prior to high school graduation. This project has particular significance because of the tragic waste of human resources in Alaska. Researchers found that a high school education is still a rarity among natives. They uncovered evidence of academic weakness in specific subject areas. generally low academic achievement, and lack of participation in extracurricular activities. Community studies point to major cultural conficts regarding education because of the bilingual and bicultural background of youngsters. The attitude of teachers toward native students has also been Identified as a major problem in their educational progress. This project 98-466 0-63-vol. 8-11 |