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Mr. Chairman, Citizens for Educational Freedom is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, and also nonsectarian-I underscore that, nonsectariancorporate association of citizens with 212 chapters and 29 States dedicated to protecting parents' rights of freedom and choice in educa

tion.

We respectfully submit that our national educational policy must be determined according to the rights of every American citizen and the needs of every American child.

JUNIOR GI BILL

We recommend if Federal assistance is given for education, and there we do not take a stand on Federal aid or not, but if Federal assistance is given to education that it take the form of the junior GI bill introduced by Congressman James Delaney providing for equal assistance to the parents of all children in all schools which comply with the compulsory educational laws.

Now, this morning you, in a couple of questions, said, in substance, that you were in agreement with much of the position of some of the former witnesses, such as Monsignor Hochwalt, but it was also a question of the form in which this assistance would take.

Well, we have stated that this form of aid, that is, giving aid to the children rather than to the institution, this form of aid protects the civil rights to freedom of choice and equality of opportunity in education for all Americans.

Identical bills have ben introduced by Congressmen Hugh Carey, Seymour Halpern, and Augustus Hawkins, and we are very proud to add that on May 17, just recently, identical bills for direct citizen aid were also introduced in the House by the five Congressmen representing all the Philadelphia districts, namely William Green, Jr., William Barrett, James Byrne, Herman Toll, and Robert N. C. Nix. We appreciate the attempts, as have been recently stated by Congressman A. C. Powell and Senator Ribicoff, of Connecticut, to promote opportunity for all citizens, but we feel that their proposals would leave many needful citizens without the equal benefits and opportunities provided by the junior GI bills Congressmen Delaney and Green and the others only have mentioned.

Mr. Chairman, this, in substance, summarizes what we would say in that supplemental statement.

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

If I may, I would just like to add one or two comments. One is that as a Protestant I feel, as a Protestant minister I feel very strongly that we must emphasize this matter of separation of church and

state.

I think that just as the GI bill of rights has never been questioned because of an alleged violation of the principle of separation of church and state, neither would this aid-to-the-individual plan-this junior GI bill of rights-that CEF backs.

I feel, however, that we must also emphasize another aspect; that is an aspect which I have learned myself from being in Holland 4 years where they have a system which I think is an admirable system.

defense effort. In that respect it is doing well. Senate bill 580 is much broader in scope. It is, I would say, all encompassing, reaching into nearly every sector of education, basic and higher, public and nonpublic. As I understand the bill in its present form, I would endorse it and support it almost without equivocation. Like other strong Federal-aid measures that have preceded it, it is ambitious, bold, and far thinking. However, for the purposes of this hearing, I would limit my further discussion to these categories:

(1) Academic facilities for public community colleges, under part B of title II.

(2) College level technical education under part C of title II.

(3) Graduate schools under part E of title II.

(4) Institutes for advanced study for teachers and teacher preparation programs under parts A and B of title III.

(5) Extension and amplification of the National Defense Education Act. Pennsylvania, one of the Nation's largest and most productive States, has no public community college program. A handful of private junior colleges, some of them merely finishing schools for girls, represent our only effort in this field. As a result an estimated 20,000 high school graduates each year are missing the opportunity to continue their education at the college level. Fortunately, the prospects are bright for legislation to establish a State system of such colleges. It has become apparent that many areas of the State, hard hit by unemployment and falling productivity, would be unable to support financially any but the most limited community college program even with the help offered by the State. Yet it is the youth of just these areas who so direly need this kind of education. While the statewide percentage of high school graduates without jobs each year is 8 percent, there are distressed areas of the Commonwealth where that figure is 15 percent and more. For those youngsters, the community college would be a godsend. Any Federal aid-particularly in capital expenditure-to hasten the establishment of these schools can do immeasurable good toward educating a significant number of unemployed young people to get employment.

At this point, I quote from a report of the Milton J. Shapp Foundation on the Pennsylvania economy:

"It is a disgrace that Pennsylvania has no program to establish technical schools and junior or community colleges. Technical and professional workers represented 8 percent of the Nation's labor force in 1950, and by conservative estimates will exceed 12 percent by 1970. Modern industry will continue to bypass Pennsylvania unless trained manpower is available. "In 1961, 750,000 students in the 50 States were enrolled in junior colleges. Of this total, only 15,300 were in Pennsylvania. New York has 43 community colleges and technical institutes scattered throughout the State, with over 50,000 students enrolled. California has over 300,000 students enrolled in 72 schools. Arizona, with only 11.2 percent of Pennsylvania's population, recently appropriated funds to build 17 new junior colleges. In State after State the story is the same. Pennsylvania is one of only nine States in the Union that fail to support such a program. Even southern neighbors are ahead of us in this respect.

"Two-year technical schools and junior colleges will help youth obtain employable skills. Our public schools teach more than the proverbial three R's, but very few high school students learn to read the written language of electronic circuitry, mechanical blueprints, data processing, etc.-the reading skills required to hold good jobs in modern industry. By teaching these and other skills, junior colleges and technical institutes can equip our youth (and adults) to become more flexible in ability and more readily employable."

Here we can sense the extent of Pennsylvania's plight and the urgency with which it must be dealt. The specter is that of unemployment, the lack of new industry to supplant that which is passing from its days of glory. Industry hungers for skilled professionals whose talents have been honed sharp in technical courses both at the undergraduate and graduate level. Our colleges in turn hunger for instructors whose talents have been enhanced in first-rate graduate schools. Pennsylvania's graduate schools are not keeping pace, nor are the traditional liberal arts colleges keeping pace in extending their graduate facilities. Says Milton Shapp:

"We must expand research facilities in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and State College. Equaly important, we must build brainpower centers in other parts of the State to attract growth industries."

Grants to assist existing colleges to build or improve their graduate schools would be the first great measure to encourage the creation of these brainpower centers. Additional grants to help colleges set up 2-year programs of engineering technology and the sciences would produce that kind of scientific work pool that would contribute both to the defense effort and the entire economy. Speaking as a businessman and an industrialist, I find it hard to contain my enthusiasm for these two programs of Senate bill 580.

I am equally convinced that a general effort to keep all teachers more professionally aware of advances in the subjects they teach is of high importance. In fact it is only through teachers that any genuine improvement can take place in the quality of instruction and so I feel that grants for advanced study or for special projects to strengthen the preparation of teachers must be given prominent priority.

And finally I would again affirm my gratitude for the tremendous stimulus generated by the National Defense Education Act. The progress we have seen in Pennsylvania has most assuredly been duplicated in other States and so has served to help the Nation. The good work which has now begun must be continued and Senate bill 580 with it many fine plans for our youth and their wellbeing, should be considered foundation of continued educational progress. The passage of all, or even of any part of it will be of highest benefit and value to us all.

COMMUNITY COLLEGES

Senator MORSE. You are very helpful indeed, Mr. Wilder.

for

I was very much interested in your comments about the program community colleges. I am glad to hear that you are proceeding with the program because the evidence before this subcommittee indicates pretty clearly that within the next 10 years, if we are going to provide any higher education opportunity for thousands and thousands of students, we will find at the end of 10 years that as many students will be going to community colleges as are now going to all the standard universities and colleges combined.

Another vital statistic which has been walking through these hearings is that if we take the decade of 1960 to 1970, we are going to have to double all of our college facilities in this country to meet the increased student population. We must double what we have done in all the decades before. That is what we will have to do in one decade. It does not seem possible. I just did not believe it at first, but the evidence that was submitted convinces me that that is true if we are to avoid the waste of potential brainpower in this country.

I am glad to see you planning to take up this community college approach, because I think it offers us about the only hope out of this

morass.

Mr. WILDER. Mr. Chairman, in our State even though we have substantial out-migration of our younger people because of lack of job opportunities, we still face this problem of a substantial expansion in our higher education facilities.

We are concerned not only with providing for the needs of our young people but also with providing that college level technical training which is required to build the skills for the newer and more hopefully expansionary industries.

STATE REGULATION OF PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS

Mr. Chairman, if I may very briefly comment, as a member of the State Council of Education in Pennsylvania, on several of the comments I overheard this morning

Senator MORSE. Fine, I would be delighted to have you do so.

Mr. WILDER (Continuing). Monsignor McDowell's testimony-I did not hear it all, but I did hear some of his comments-I must say that I think that Pennsylvania may be like some other States. We have every constitutional and legal right in Pennsylvania to do a serious amount of regulating and guidance of the private and parochial school systems.

On the whole, we do not do it, that is, we have abdicated our responsibilities in this field. In my brief tenure as a member of the State council of education we have, I fear, never even discussed the problem.

We do not, for instance, license teachers in the elementary and secondary schools of the parochial system, although we have the legal right to do it. We gather only the simplest statistics about what is going on in the parochial system.

So that one comment I would like to make is that were the day to come when the States would have serious responsibilities, in Pennsylvania, for one, we would have to considerably change our facilities and our methods of working so that we could proceed to work more closely with the private school systems.

Along the line of Senator Javits' questions, we would have considerable trouble both with the public school systems as well as with the private ones to delve too deeply into their curriculums because of the traditional insistence by these local units of their autonomy and independence.

Today in Pennsylvania we require what courses must be taken. and this covers the parochial schools as well as the public schools, in order to receive a high school diploma.

We do not, like New York State, have any sort of statewide board of regents examinations.

This is about as far as our control goes. The State department tries to exercise leadership by indicating what advanced curriculum is, and what they should be doing, but we really have no means of control in terms of assuring that even public schools will offer all of these programs.

Senator MORSE. I think that is a very helpful explanation.

Mr. WILDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator MORSE. One other comment I have made several times in the presence of other witnesses, and I would like to make it in your presence.

These witnesses who have been appearing before us, particularly those qualified in various fields of science, have been pointing out that the oncoming generation and future generations are going to be living in an era quite different from the one you and I have been going through.

We are living in the space age. As a society on the national level, we are going to be confronted with a great many programs that are going to have to be handled at a Federal level. The States are not going to be particularly involved in them or concerned with them so far as the State entity is concerned.

FEDERAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR SPACE AGE TRAINING

A local school district cannot be expected to be contributing to the financing of the type of technical training and scientific training essential to the successful promulgation of such a national program.

The conclusion of these witnesses has been--I think as a business-man I should call it to your attention, and as a businessman I would be delighted to have any comment you would want to make on it-the conclusion of these witnesses is that we are sticking our heads in the sand if we take the position that in this field of education of the future the Federal Government can or should maintain a handsoff policy by way of aid.

The public policy in regard to freedom from Federal dictation and control, remains the same, but we are not being very realistic if we assume that we can prepare the youth of future generations to meet the responsibilities that are going to be theirs and not have the Federal Government come into help finance some of these training programs and education programs that are going to be essential to the training of the young men and women of that period of time.

This point of view has made a deep impression on me. It bears. upon the question as to whether or not you can leave the problem to the local school district, the local school board, or the State school board, for that matter.

I think it is going to have great weight in our deliberations this year in this committee as we come to grips again with those who take the position that this can be done at the local school level and, after all, the Federal Government has no interest in it.

Do you have any comment to make on it?

Mr. WILDER. I can only agree with you, Mr. Chairman, that the traditional way of handling these problems is inadequate for their complexity today.

In Pennsylvania we are having a daily struggle to go through a cycle of school district reorganization to have stronger local units. Even if we get 300 or 500 units instead of 2,100, the overwhelming majority of them will still have less than 4,000 pupils in them, and we will still not be strong enough locally to have the subtlety of administration and the elaborateness of staff, to really adapt and shape themselves to these programs as are required.

Similarly, the State agency can do a lot, but it is limited on how far it can go, and we need both the encouragement, stimulation, and substantial financial aid from the Federal level if we are to have a mod-ern and up-to-date educational system for now and the years ahead. Senator MORSE. I want to thank you very much, Mr. Wilder. Mr. Gerard, do you have anything you would like to add? Mr. GERARD. No. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator MORSE. Thank you very much.

Mr. Reporter, the statement of Dr. Dailard, superintendent of schools of the San Diego unified school districts, as presented to the subcommittee by Mr. Bluford F. Minor, assistant superintendent of schools in San Diego, is admitted to the hearing record with the understanding of the chairman that Congressman Bob Wilson, who had intended to present the statement found himself unable to do so because of urgent public business. The Chair also regrets to learn that Dr. Dailard was unable to present his testimony in person because of illness.

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