Change the Thinking

It was National Education Week, but from President Eisenhower on down, most Americans were in no mood for applauding the nation's schools and colleges. Stunned into sudden--and at times, hysterical--awe of Soviet science, they could scarcely find words harsh enough to say about themselves or their campuses. "Throughout the entire country," noted Columbia University's President Grayson Kirk, "the subject of education has moved out of the quiet of the classroom into the arena of bitter controversy."

"For the long haul," said Astrophysicist J. Allen Hynek, director of the nation's satellite-optical-tracking program, "this country must change its way of thinking about education--clear back to the kindergarten." The big change would probably have to begin in the home. "Parents," said a group of Albuquerque science teachers, "generally fail to counsel their children on school courses, and they have a get-by philosophy of their own. The elder generation wants to work short hours, get high pay, ride in big cars and watch television." The effect on the schools, said Grayson Kirk, has been devastating. "Many a bright student finds only boredom in a class where the intellectual level is pitched to the duller students. Many will even conceal their capacities and knowledge because . . . they are intimidated by the anti-intellectualism that dominates so many classes."

Too Many Majorettes. In New York City, the High School Teachers Association declared that only 25% of the city's high school science teachers and 40% of the mathematics teachers have the proper licenses to teach in their fields. In a refreshing stand for a teachers' organization, it also denounced the single-salary schedule, which, in giving equal pay to teachers, no matter where or what they teach, has removed "the incentive to qualify for the high school teaching license."

President Logan Wilson of the University of Texas warned that "too much leeway is given youngsters in evading such fundamentals as mathematics, foreign languages and science. Extracurricular demands on student time--clubs, student newspapers, marching bands and drum majorettes--have become excessive."

And what of teacher training? Last year, the National Education Association reported, U.S. colleges and universities turned out only 2,982 mathematics teachers, compared to 9,783 teachers of physical education. Said Dean Lester Vander Werf of Northeastern College of Education: "Teachers are of a lower mental caliber than members of any other profession and are not intelligent enough for the functions they perform. Bright students are not encouraged by parents and teachers to become teachers."

Professorial Prestige. Speaking in San Francisco for Harvard College's $82.5 million fund-raising campaign, President Nathan Pusey highlighted some figures that should give Americans pause: while the average salary of the American college teacher is $5,400, "in Russia the basic professor's salary is $18,000, and the top professors earn $35,000 to $50,000." U.S. experts do not know exactly how many professors earn such salaries, but the figures provide startling evidence of the high prestige that teachers enjoy in Soviet society.

Though President Eisenhower offered no definite plan for encouraging bright students, Health. Education & Welfare Secretary Marion Folsom hinted that the federal funds that now go into the vocational education program might well be used to raise straight academic standards. The University of Michigan set up a Special Science Advisory Committee in the hope of finding ways to increase the number of science Ph.D.s by 50%. New Mexico Superintendent of Public Instruction Georgia Lusk proposed that high school science and math requirements be doubled. But while New York City was also making noises about increasing science requirements, it was still trying to find a director of science for its schools--a post that has been vacant ever since it was created four years ago.

Think of the Whole. In all the viewing-with-alarm, there were words of caution. Money alone, said President Henry Heald of the Ford Foundation, will solve nothing, nor can the Federal Government "decree the study of science." In Washington, the National Student Association warned that if the nation fails to improve not only the scientific but all aspects of education, the U.S. educational system might be "reduced to a satellite of the Russian system, spinning in an orbit dictated by Russian scientists."

What is really needed, said University of California's Chemist Joel Hildebrand in a speech called "Education in the Light of the Satellites," is to wipe away the distortions of John Dewey's thinking that have led so many schools to fall for the cults of life adjustment. "One of our greatest dangers lies in an anti-intellectualism fostered by school authorities who should be among its most valiant opponents. One expression of it is the pious cliche, 'We teach boys and girls, not subjects.' The superintendent of schools in a large city puts this into practice by assigning his teachers to subjects they have never studied, because, he says, he wants his teachers to be 'child-centered,' not 'subject-centered.'

"In pleading for mathematics I am not recommending that they replace other basic subjects. Let them replace things like 'how to have a successful date' and 'how can my home be made democratic' and 'how to predict business trends.' We need foreign languages now more than ever. We need history and geography. We need ability to read, write and speak and think clearly . . . How fortunate it is that Galileo, Newton, Beethoven, Faraday and Pasteur had not been taught to work in an 'atmosphere of social awareness.' "

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