STATEMENT OF H. V. CHURCH, PRINCIPAL MORTON HIGH SCHOOL, CICERO, ILL., AND SECRETARY, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF HIGH SCHOOL PRINCIPALS

Mr. CHURCH. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, for 12 years I have been secretary of the national Association of High School Principals. That is a country-wide organization of some 3,500 principals. I simply bespeak for them their support of this particular bill for bringing about studies that will be helpful to highschool principals over the country in their work. I might cite one particular instance. For instance, we don't know, as high-school principals, what the size of a class should be. Thirty years ago we used to think that 30 in a class was a good-sized class. Now, in some classes in my high school there are 60 students.

Mr. FLETCHER. How could the Government department ascertain that information for you?

Mr. CHURCH. If a central body here in Washington had information from all over the country, and the principals could write in and say, "What is the size of class for modern languages or shorthand and typewriting," they could get a very definite answer and it would be very valuable. I am not only the principal of a high school of some 4,000 pupils but I am also a farmer. For three months of the year I run a farm and try to run that farm in a scientific way. Whenever I want to decide a question I write to the University of Illinois, or of Wisconsin, and also to the Bureau of Animal Industry here in Washington, and I get the best reply from Washington. I always get prompt replies from the other places, but invariably when I want to feed a balanced ration to my chickens and cows or to find out the best kind of fly spray, I get the best reply from Washington.

Mr. LEATHERWOOD. Do you mean to say you get a better answer to agricultural questions from Washington than you get from either the University of Wisconsin or Illinois?

Mr. CHURCH. Absolutely.

Mr. FLETCHER. Then why don't those universities accept the Government standards and not duplicate this work?

Mr. CHURCH. There certainly is wasteful duplication, I think, just on those items that I search after. There is that concrete instance. Mr. ROBSION. The Department of Agriculture here has so many more sources from which to get information, and a much wider fund of information; it is gathering all the good from all this country and from all over the world.

Mr. CHURCH. Therefore I feel that if we had a large fund of factual information right here, centrally located, and a man could write in and find out what to do, it would be a very great help.

Mr. ROBSION. Unless your statement is true as to the Department of Agriculture, then the Department of Agriculture should be abolished, and we should withhold any further funds.

Mr. CHURCH. Well, as a farmer I would be opposed to its being abolished.

Mr. ROBSION. I say that unless your statement is true it should be abolished.

Mr. CHURCH. I say it is true.

Mr. FLETCHER. Have any of you educators up there ever talked to your own Congressmen about getting an appropriation of this kind?

Mr. CHURCH. You mean teachers in the sixth district, Illinois? Mr. FLETCHER. Whatever your district is.

Mr. CHURCH. No, sir.

Mr. SEARS. Haven't some teachers a greater capacity to take care of large classes than others?

Mr. CHURCH. That is right.

Mr. SEARS. That is one of the questions you couldn't settle arbitrarily.

Mr. CHURCH. Well, we could have information on it. Here is a certain type of teacher. If you have a certain kind of teacher with certain characteristics and certain abilities, that person can be given a large class.

Mr. SEARS. Doesn't your superintendent of schools know that pretty well now?

Mr. CHURCH. You can't run schools on intuition; you have to run them on factual information.

Mr. SEARS. Still the highest one in authority has intuition.
Mr. CHURCH. Yes; and the women have intuition.

Mr. SEARS. You don't think you could get some information along that line that would apply absolutely to all cases?

Mr. CHURCH. I think you would have to use your judgment after you got your information.

The CHAIRMAN. We will stand adjourned until 2 o'clock.

(Whereupon, at 12.30 o'clock p. m., a recess was taken until 2 o'clock p. m.)

AFTER RECESS

(The committee resumed at 2 o'clock p. m.)

The CHAIRMAN. The hour of 2 o'clock baving arrived, the committee will now resume its session.

Doctor DAVIDSON. Mr. Chairman, before putting up the next speaker, I should like to state that as chairman of the legislative committee of the N. E. A. I have had no recent contacts with the five gentlemen who appeared before us this forenoon under Doctor Judd's leadership, excepting only with Doctor Judd himself. To me it is a significant fact that a group of five school men should come here to present arguments in favor of promoting nation-wide research in connection with college and secondary school problems, and that at the same time all but one of that number should have irrevocably committed himself to the desirability of a secretaryship in the President's Cabinet. Doctor Boyd was the only exception and he said that he had not quite made up his mind upon the question, although it was evident that if he had any leaning it was toward the creation of a new Cabinet department of education.

The next speaker, Mr. Chairman, will be Doctor Capen, who comes peculiarly well prepared to speak to this committee on this question. He is now chancellor of the University of Buffalo. For years he was one of the outstanding members of the professional staff of officers in the Bureau of Education. Doctor Capen has, therefore, had an opportunity to view the merits of the question both from inside and outside the Bureau of Education. Doctor Capen.

STATEMENT OF DR. S. P. CAPEN, CHANCELLOR, UNIVERSITY OF BUFFALO, BUFFALO, N. Y.

Doctor CAPEN. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I should like to address myself, if I may, to certain points that came out in this morning's discussion, and so by way of introduction I will say that I am particularly concerned in exactly the phases of governmental organization that occupied the attention of the speakers this morning. I am particularly eager that we should have at the center an agency that will do for us what we have not been able to get done by other means.

This morning several of the members of the committee asked why it is not possible to secure these studies that we have all of us felt the need of through the Bureau of Education, why, in fact, everything that the group here now desires could not be gotten by the existing organization. Doctor Davidson has told you I was connected with the Bureau of Education for some years, and that is true. I think we never have been able to bring the attention of Congress, and I think, even the attention of the country, to the needs of the Bureau of Education. For 15 years I have known the history of the efforts that have been made to get appropriations for that office, and they have been almost uniformly unsuccessful. Several times the Secretary of the Interior has been very sympathetic with the problems that have been raised by the Commissioner of Education and has sought to get the appropriations for that office increased, and has been unsuccessful.

I think it is true that the efforts that have been made by the educational profession itself have been productive of very little in the direction of increased appropriations to the Bureau of Education. Now, perhaps we have not been very intelligent in the way we have gone about it, we who are members of the profession, and I am disposed to think after what I have witnessed at this hearing that if we attack this matter perhaps a little differently, we as members of the profession might help somewhat to bring to the attention of the Congress the desirability of working with the agency that we have until we get another one.

But aside from the fact that the Bureau of Education has not been able to get a sufficient appropriation, there is another matter. This bill before you provides for the first steps in a consolidation of important Government departments that deal with education. Not very much has been made of that this morning. That seems to mẹ to be a very highly important matter and a very vital matter. I don't know just how many offices in the Government now have educational responsibilities. I do know that at the close of the war there were something like 40 different bureaus and boards and agencies in the Government that dealt in one way or another with education. It was true at that time, and I think it is still true of the existing offices, which are undoubtedly fewer in number, that they have practically no connection with one another. They have no intercommunication and none of them really knows what the others are doing.

Now, unquestionably that causes some waste effort. But more important than the possible waste effort, it seems to me, is the confusion that it brings into the minds of the educational world at large

that deals with these various agencies. This bill, of course, does not settle that question. It merely proposes a beginning. But it is a very substantial beginning. I think nearly all of the educational people

The CHAIRMAN. Pardon me, Doctor, I don't want to interrupt you, but that is about the only logical way we could begin, isn't it? Doctor CAPEN. Absolutely, sir. I am not criticizing the measure on that ground. Practically all the educational people, I think, regarded the Smith-Hughes Act as a mistake. They wished to see vocational education promoted, but they did not believe that it was desirable to segregate vocational education in this conspicuous and official way from the other phases of education. And to my mind it has had a peculiarly unfortunate effect throughout the country, because not only is the segregation here in Washington but in all the States as well. Not in all of them, but in a great many of them the official State agencies deal with vocational education apart and aside from other phases of education.

Now, this bill provides for a reintegration of those two functions, which belong together and have been separated, and I think that is a very great advance. I believe that if that amount of consolidation. were made the Bureau of Education and the Federal Board for Vocational Education are, of course, the two conspicuous educational offices in the Government-if that amount of consolidation were made, there would inevitably follow further consolidation or transfer of functions from agencies in the Government that deal with education to the central body that this bill proposes to create, and that seems to me to be absolutely worth while for the whole cause.

The CHAIRMAN. The activities can never be correlated as they are now lodged?

Doctor CAFEN. I don't see how they can. The Federal Board for Vocational Education is, as, of course, you know, a separate administrative agency, and I can not conceive how it can very well be put under a bureau in the Department of the Interior. In fact, this bill itself recognizes the individual integrity of the office and provides for a continuance of the Federal board, but so relates it to the department that is would function as a part of the department.

This morning some members of the committee had something to say about the effectiveness of studies that are made-those that are made by private agencies and those that are made by the Bureau of Education. One member of the committtee asked if anything was done with school surveys. While I was a member of the Bureau of Education a great many surveys of State systems of education were made by that body, at the request each time of the officials of the State in question, and the surveys, of course, culminated in a series of recommendations for changes in the State system, changes of administration, changes in methods of teaching, changes in organization, etc. In an extraordinarily large percentage of cases these recommendations were accepted by the authorities in control of the local situation and incorporated in toto into the working of their local system. That is to say, a survey, properly made, based on facts, which are valid and demonstrable, carries with it compelling authority. The United States Government had no authority in the matter. The Bureau of Education didn't say to the people, "Do so and so," but it was an impartial agency and it found the facts and presented the facts, and the facts did the convincing.

Now, the Bureau of Education has only been able to do that on what we might call an infinitesimal scale. It has had very small slack in its organization at any time and could meet but a fraction of the requests made of it from all parts of the country to render its service. If it could render no other service than that, on the scale on which the country really demands, it would be doing a large constructive service for American education.

May I elaborate one point I just referred to? There is no slack at all in the Bureau of Education. It has certain statutory functions to perform, and less money each fiscal year than it declares it needs to perform its functions, some of which can not be performed because appropriations do not suffice. So there is absolutely no chance at the present time of the Bureau of Education taking hold in an effective way of these larger problems that have been described to you this morning. As a group of professional people, we should like, more than anything else, to see agencies erected which will do this great national job for us. That, I think, is our major contention in favor of this measure.

I would like also to comment somewhat further upon the existing methods of getting this sort of work done. It has been pointed out to you that when we have a task of this kind, which the members of the profession, and some members of the lay public as well, agree is necessary, we resort to all sorts of devices to get the means. I have spent a good many months of my life pestering the foundations with requests for appropriations to get important national investigations made, and the principal ones that have been made in the last 10 years have been made largely with the support of the so-called educational foundations. I think one of the members of the committee said this morning, "Why isn't that all right?" To my mind it is all wrong, for two reasons. In the first place, the foundations are interested only in certain things. If a group of us goes to one or another of the great foundations with a request for study of this large national thing which we say needs to be studied and costs so much money, we don't get a bit of a hearing unless that particular thing happens to fall in line with the predilection of the officers who are then in charge of the foundation. One could make that very picturesque, but I think perhaps it would not be discreet to do it.

Each one of these foundations has at the moment its particular line of specialty in investigations. One of them deals with this by preference and another deals with that by preference. They are all possibly very important things. In fact, I think all of them are worth while. But there is no assurance at all that those are the primary and fundamental national problems with which we are confronted. As a matter of fact, I think all educational people-all of them who are practicing the profession-agree that the great place where we need study at the moment is this field of secondary education which was described to you this morning. But we don't get any hearing for. that. We haven't been able to raise any money for that large thing. That is one reason why I think the reliance on foundations is unfortunate and unsatisfactory.

Another reason is that we can not possibly divest the people of suspicion that the results that come from studies financed in that way are somehow or other going to be used for somebody's personal ends or to further some cause that the group of persons connected with one of these great funds has in mind.