Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Mr. SEARS. Oh, yes. I like the different ones, I like the denominational shcools for those who want them.

Mr. DORE. In my opinion, of course, the effect of this bill on the public schools is identically as it is upon any private schools, whether they are secondary or elementary or schools of higher education, and I think it would be ruinous if anything could be done that would tend to standardize education in the United States.

The CHAIRMAN. Oh, well, I think practically everybody has testified to that here on both sides of this bill.

Mr. DORE. But I say this bill tends toward that. You say it is a figment of my imagination. Do you believe, as I believe, that this bill has substantialy the same proponents as the original bill 10 years ago?

The CHAIRMAN. I don't know whether it has or not. I simply know one of the large organizations interested. I know immediately after the war there was a great dearth of teachers in a great many schools, hundreds of them that did not have teachers, and the country was facing almost a national crisis, and they were looking for someway out of the situation, something to help, but the conditions have changed now. And the bill is in this form.

Mr. BLACK. The Federal aid bill was here in 1924.

The CHAIRMAN. The condition was still serious in 1924.

Mr. DORE. Don't you think the bill is changed, not because those primarily interested in it have changed their minds, but because they realized they could not get through a bill such as they desire?

The CHAIRMAN. No. I think there was a great deal of suspicion conjured up in the minds of the people here. And if we had that with all legislation we wouldn't have anything in connection with the Federal Government now.

Mr. DORE. Don't you feel we have too much in connection with the Federal Government now?

The CHAIRMAN. Would you suggest that we abolish some of these things? What would you suggest that we abolish?

Mr. DORE. I am not going to attempt to reconstruct

The CHAIRMAN. If you say there is too much, what would you eliminate right away?

Mr. BLACK. That's easy.

Mr. DORE. Well, there are so many trees in that forest that it is difficult to select. The people in New York with whom I talk feel that there has been in the past 25 years a tendency to federalize entirely too many things.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, there has been a tendency for the country to grow and develop at a terrific pace, and the States have been asking for help and receiving it.

Mr. BLACK, The President has asked for a reorganization of the Government with the idea of doing away with bureaus.

Mr. DORE. That's it.

The CHAIRMAN. Hasn't it been said that in some States the people were educationally subnormal and the State has failed to raise them, to a normal position and therefore it is the duty of the Government to do it? Isn't that the fact?

Mr. DORE. Not so far as I know.

Mr. DOUGLASS. There was the argument on illiteracy this morning by the distinguished lady from Massachusetts. That was her argument.

The CHAIRMAN. Of course we have illiteracy. We have it in a very pronounced degree. The gentlemen has it in his States and I have it in my State.

Mr. SEARS. One of her arguments was that there was so much illiteracy.

Mr. BLACK. Let me point out something in this appropriation situation. This bill calls for an appropriation of $1,500,000. I think the current appropriation for the bureau is about a million dollars. For the sake of getting a half million dollars more they want a department of education, with all the dangers involved. I think any man who is keenly interested in setting up that Federal bureau of education, if there is any argument to it, he can go on the floor and offer an amendment when the deficiency comes in.

The CHAIRMAN. I am very glad to get so many people on record all of a sudden in support of the Bureau of Education.

Mr. BLACK. You are not getting me on record. If you are for it, you can do it that way instead of this way.

Mr. SEARS. I think myself that probably the basic thought back of the proponents of this bill is that education is the main thing of the people. They think that within the bounds now, the departmental system would work for more efficiency along educational lines. I think that is the idea.

Mr. DOUGLASS. Isn't the idea of this bill that the department of education would get them more facts? Isn't that the idea of this bill? Mr. SEARS. I know, but that word "facts" is kind of a new thing

to me.

Mr. DOUGLASS. More facts to be correlated for the benefit of the educators.

Mr. SEARS. I realize there are a thousand and one things that come into a department that I don't know about. That word "facts" may have been applied to agriculture or to commerce when those bills were passed. Now I myself would never have known just what they meant, but I suppose the present known meaning of that reference is all of the related questions that might receive some help from this departmentthe Commerce Department or the Agricultural Department-all of their different investigations and activities that can be given out and thrown out for the benefit of the people. I presume that is it.

Mr. DORE. Here is a quotation, Mr Chairman, from one of the speakers in favor of this bill. I haven't the name of the speaker before me. "A Federal department must be created to assume the responsibility which such people as these (referring to people in certain States) are manifestly unfit to assume.'

Mr. SEARS. What are you reading from?

[ocr errors]
[graphic]

Mr. DORE. That is a quotation from the remarks made by one of the speakers in favor of this bill.

Mr. SEARS. At this hearing?

Mr. BLACK. At a prior hearing, you mean?

Mr. DORE. At a prior hearing.

Mr. FLETCHER. What is the name of the speaker?

Mr. DORE. I don't know. I haven't got it here.

Mr. SEARS. I don't doubt there have been a good many things Isaid that wouldn't sound well.

Mr. DORE. I think these people are sincere. They are uplifters. But how can they do that without a Federal Government directly or indirectly controlling education?

Mr. FLETCHER. Do you mean they designate the State as being unfit?

Mr. DORE. No; it referred to a part of a State, and showed they were unfit as they had not taught the people properly. I think the specific reference was to the battle two years ago regarding the teaching of evolution. Now, how can they attempt to dictate to people in a part of the country? The good lady read here this morning numerous statistics regarding illiteracy in different parts of the country. How will the Federal Government overcome that without setting itself up in the business of education?

The CHAIRMAN. Well, it brings the facts home to the various States on the situation there, and as you bring out the facts the people in a given State set up their own machinery to correct the situation. Now, a great many people have not forgotten the situation during the war, when thousands of fellows were unable to perform their duty to the country, and it was thrown upon their brothers who had had the advantage of an education. Those boys were not prepared to go out and serve their country. The same thing holds true in times of peace. Without education they can not carry their share of the burden. If these facts are brought home to the people in an intelligent way, from one reliable source, national pride alone will cause them to set up the machinery in their own localities in order to correct that situation.

Mr. KVALE. Can't the Bureau of Education as at present constituted collect these facts and bring them before the people? Mr. BLACK. This lady had them all here this morning.

The CHAIRMAN. I am trying to find out if the people opposed to this bill would be as much interested in enlarging this bureau and supporting it to accomplish the ends sought by this bill. I am trying to find out where they stand on that question.

Mr. DOUGLASS. On the point of illiteracy, those facts presented by the lady this morning were obtained from some national source, and that source is available now to all the States affected. Those States have done nothing—or perhaps they have done somethingto overcome the illiteracy. What further would you have the Federal Government do?

The CHAIRMAN. That is only one of a hundred, or perhaps thousands, of definite things that the public should know, and which they would correct, if they knew the facts.

Mr. DOUGLASS. They haven't corrected that, with the information they have now.

The CHAIRMAN. There has been a vast improvement in the last few years since the facts became known. In fact, I think it had a

great deal to do with the restricted immigration from certain illiterate localities.

Mr. DOUGLASS. That being so, these facts having been obtained without a department of education, why have one now?

Mr. DORE. Why isn't it possible to get those facts now?

The CHAIRMAN. I have been asking repeatedly if you people will get behind the Bureau of Education, and say that it should have sufficient financial support from the Government to accomplish some of the things that ought to be done.

Mr. DORE. If they are not things that would tend directly or indirectly to put the control of education in the Federal power, I can see no reason why, with an increase in expenditures, an increase in the appropriation for that bureau should not be made.

The CHAIRMAN. So you don't see any particular danger in the things to be accomplished as set forth in this bill?

Mr. DORE. Yes, I do. I see a great danger. The great danger is the setting up of a secretary in the President's Cabinet. The CHAIRMAN. Well, eliminating that feature.

Mr. DORE. Well, then the bill isn't necessary.

You see no praticular

Mr. KVALE. You take out the heart of the bill if you eliminate that. The CHAIRMAN. I say if it could be done. danger in the activities outlined in the bill here.

Mr. DORE. Except they centralize the whole of the Federal educational power in one man. That is a danger.

The CHAIRMAN. Then you wouldn't want even the present head of the bureau to go ahead and do the things set forth in the bill?

Mr. DORE. Not if it were all centralized in one man, a national secretary for education. This bureau is a research bureau, is it not? The CHAIRMAN. That is what we have here. Those are some of the things to be achieved.

Mr. DORE. But in addition to that you have a number of other departments consolidated with it. You have the creation of a Federal conference on education, and a national council.

Mr. BLACK. What do you think of that?

Mr. DORE. I think it is a very bad thing. I think it is tending toward the very evils I have been attempting to describe, namely, it attempts to canonize educational power toward the Federal Government. That is a bad thing in principle, and a particularly vicious thing in America, where we have been committed from our foundation to the very antithesis of that, namely, that States should control education. I don't see how the Federal Government could teach children to read and write unless it had control of education. Mr. FLETCHER. You really believe the States should be allowed to control education? Don't you think the local communities should be allowed to control?

Mr. DORE. In our system of government the States and the States alone are the ones who have civil jurisdiction over education. and not the Federal Government.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, we are all agreed on that.

Mr. DORE. May I read just this quotation from Thomas Jefferson? He was not speaking of education, but he was speaking of the cen

tralizing power in the Federal Government and of the bureaucracy that it creates. This is taken from his second inaugural address:

At home, fellow citizens, you best know whether we have done well or ill. The suppression of unnecessary offices or useless establishments and expenses enable us to discontinue our internal taxes. This covering our land with officers and opening doors to their intrusions had already begun that process of domiciliary vexation which once entered is scarcely to be restrained, reaching successively every article of produce and property.

I believe that this bill, innocent as it appears, is what he has designated there as a process of "domiciliary vexation which once entered upon is not to be restrained."

The CHAIRMAN. You say he was not speaking of education?

Mr. DORE. No. He was speaking of the abolition of internal

taxes.

The CHAIRMAN. Here are some of the statements of men who were speaking of education.

George Washington.-Promote, then, as an object of primary importance institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it should be enlightened.

Thomas Jefferson.-If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

John Jay. I consider knowledge to be the soul of the Republic, and as the weak and the wicked are generally in alliance, as much care should be taken to diminish the number of the former as of the latter.

John Adams.-Laws for the liberal education of youth * * * are so extremely wise and useful that, to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant.

James Madison. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

Horace Mann.-The common school is the greatest discovery ever made by man. Other social organizations are curative and remedial; this is a preventive and an antidote. They come to heal diseases and wounds; this, to make the physical and moral frame invulnerable to them.

Abraham Lincoln.-I view it (education) as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in.

Daniel Webster. On the diffusion of education among the people rests the preservation and perpetuation of our free institutions.

Herbert Hoover. The Nation as a whole has the obligation of such measures toward its children, as a whole, as will yield to them an equal opportunity at their start in life.

Charles Evans Hughes.-The American ideal is the ideal of equal educational opportunity, not merely for the purpose of enabling one to know how to earn a living and to fit into an economic status more or less fixed, but of giving play to talent and aspiration and to development of mental and spiritual power.

President Warren G. Harding. The Federal Government should extend aid to the States for the promotion of physical education, the Americanization of the foreign-born, the eradication of illiteracy, the better training of teachers, and for promoting free educational opportunities for all the children of all the people. H. A. L. Fisher. That nation which employs the best teachers with the highest pay and as a part of the best school system will be the best governed and therefore the greatest nation.

H. G. Wells. The teacher-whether mother, priest, or schoolmaster-is the real maker of history; rulers, statesmen, and soldiers do but work out the possibilities of cooperation or conflict the teacher creates.

And so on down the line, every prominent statesman taking that position. They were speaking specifically on education.

Mr. DORE. Certainly, but, Mr. Chairman, I have wholly failed to express my mind if you think that I wouldn't subscribe to every

105682-28-27

« AnteriorContinuar »