Great Seat Shortage

Last week the children of America inarched off to public school. When they entered their classrooms about two million of them could not find a place to sit down. They had either to go home or interfere with the education of two million others by necessitating " part time" instruction. This in spite of the fact that in 1921, with one-sixth of its population in the public schools, the country spent a cent and a half of every dollar of its income in school bonds, aggregating $240,000,000.

Under our present educational policy, none of the two million standees could be sent home. The land of the free offers learning to all. So the great seat shortage is only one aspect of a bad situation. There arise attendant evils of double sessions, night work, overcrowding, poor lights and air, underpaid instruction, inadequate equipment. Large classes slow up the work. The dullard drags upon the child of fair promise.

Not shortsightedness alone, nor political opportunism, is responsible for the STANDING ROOM ONLY sign upon the nation's schoolhouse door. Prosperity has released a host of wage-earners of school age. When ends meet easily at home children are packed off to school and kept there.

The national scope of the shortage makes for the same conclusion--that an emergency has arisen rather than that a nation-wide blunder has been committed. Los Angeles is most hard put, proportionately, with 16% of 164,000 pupils unseated. Chicago needs desks for 12% of 400,000. In Manhattan, where the hue and cry clamors loudly enough about the ears of Mayor Hylan to make of him an almost national figure, the deficit is less than 8%. Detroit and Minneapolis are large centers lacking only 3% or so, Cleveland 2%. On the grand average, about one child in ten must join the overflow classes in basement or improvised classroom.