Uniontown, Pa., 1924: Recommendations regarding school-building program unanimously adopted by the board of education. A month later the people voted a bond issue of $600,000.

SCHOOL-BUILDING SURVEYS

Meriden, Conn.: Board of education unanimously adopted report and obtained bond issue of $750,000 for the building program.

Colorado Springs, Colo.: Board of education unanimously accepted report and are reorganizing the schools in accordance with the recommendations. Gloucester, Mass.: Board of education unanimously accepted report. Athens, Ga.: Board of education unanimously accepted report, and voted to adopt recommendations. A bond issue of $175,000 was voted.

Raleigh, N. C.: Board of education unanimously accepted report.

Washington, N. C.: Report unanimously accepted by board of education and a bond issued of $300,000 secured.

Parkersburg, W. Va.: Report unanimously accepted by board of education but to date funds not secured for building program. A bond issue of $650,000 was asked for by the board.

Portland, Oreg.: The board of education unanimously voted to adopt the report and follow its recommendations in toto. In accordance with this decision the board is now asking for a $5,000,000 bond issue for a school building program to be carried out on the work-study-play plan.

Lexington, Ky.: Board of education unanimously adopted the report. A bond issue of $400,000 was secured.

Brunswick, Ga.: Board of education unanimously adopted the report. A bond issue of $250,000 was secured. Winchester, Mass.: Board of education adopted the report.

STATEMENT OF DR. C. R. MANN

Doctor MANN. Before I begin the argument, gentlemen, may I say a word to you about these surveys by the Bureau of Education that were mentioned to you a few minutes ago?

surveys.

The process is

I have had a minor part in some of those that the State invites the bureau to make a survey. The State makes an appropriation and the expenses of the survey are paid by the State. The bureau then employs specialists for a short period and makes the survey.

We made a survey of Alabama some three or four years ago, and the result was most gratifying. The State legislature adopted many of the suggestions, and it has been the cause of starting Alabama on an upward career in education.

Another was the recent survey in Massachusetts to determine whether a State university was needed there or not. That was a very interesting survey, financed by Massachusetts.

An invitation is pending from New Jersey.

Mr. WELSH. What was your conclusion in Massachusetts?

Doctor MANN. It was a fact-finding survey; conclusions were not wanted. It showed the facilities of Massachusetts for college graduates, the number of high-school graduates who were prepared for college and who were qualified by intelligence ratings to go to college, and the facilities for vocational training for people in the junior high schools and the senior high-schools and the junior colleges. I think that one of the possibilities suggested was the establishment of a junior-college system that would take care of a good many of those who are not properly taken care of by the State under the present. system. That is just my guess.

The survey work of the bureau has been very significant. I have followed a number of their surveys and they have done a great deal of good.

Mr. REED. Have you in mind some of the other States?

Doctor MANN. Iowa; as I recall, the State of Washington; and I think Arizona; and I am not sure about New Mexico. They have been pretty well scattered. Mr. WELSH. Do you recall what the general difficulty was in the States; lack of funds or lack of system, or what?

Doctor MANN. The general difficulty in the States is in organization. That is, there are too many small units and too many commanding officers. You will be interested to know that there are more school board members than there are public-school teachers in the country as a whole.

The other factor is the financial factor; the way the State taxes are set up and the way the moneys are raised and distributed by the

States.

I know in Alabama the financial factor was very prominent.

Now, gentlemen, I want to give you a very brief summary of my impressions of this problem after studying it for the last 15 years and listening to the hearings here. I want to appear as an individual and not as representing either the American council on educationand of course not the War Department-or the Federal council of citizenship, with all of which I am connected.

There are certain things upon which everybody is agreed. The first of these is that the present status of the Federal organization for education, is not satisfactory. Within the resources at its command, the Bureau of Education is doing a very admirable work and always has done a very admirable work, as I said the other day. The long series of statistical reports and discussions of educational problems that were published under Commissioner Harris are a very complete history, and contain many significant documents concerning American education. The same is true of the statistical reports that have come out biennially. Foreign nations have regarded our educational reports as the best that have been produced in the world. Within the appropriations and facilities given to the bureau, it has always done an excellent piece of work.

It has, however, not been able to do the work that the Federal Government might do and properly ought to do, because of lack of appropriations. The total appropriation this year for the educational work of the bureau, exclusive of the Alaska work, is $274,000.

Another unsatisfactory feature is the separation of the different educational bureaus, and particularly the separation of the Federal Board for Vocational Education, from the Bureau of Education. Your chairman has just stated that the director and other supervisors of the Federal board have objected to an amalgamation.

Mr. ROBSION. If the gentleman will permit, there, did you say that the Federal Government certified $274,000 for education? Doctor MANN. No; I said that was the appropriation for the Bureau of Education.

Mr. ROBSION. Well, for the Bureau of Education?

Doctor MANN. Yes.

Mr. ROBSION. I think the Federal Government allows about $125,000 for looking after the tobacco worm in this country.

Doctor MANN. Yes. The bureau's total budget, as Secretary Work stated, is $754,000, about; but the larger part of that goes to Alaska.

The Federal board's situation is unsatisfactory, I think, to most people. If you want to understand the situation, you have to go back to the origin of that board. It started with the propaganda in favor of industrial education, which became active about 1904, in the organization of a society for the promotion of industrial education. That society at once began a campaign for an independent organization to push vocational training in the Federal Government.

At the same time they started the same campaign in the States, and the proposition, you remember, in Illinois, was very noteworthy, where they employed the ex-superintendent of schools, Mr. Cooley, to make propaganda to establish a separate administrative system within the State of Illinois for vocational training-industrial training-apart from the regular school system.

At that time that movement was, in a sense, justified, because the public-school system had not taken proper account of vocational training; but as a result of the discussions that have gone on since, it has now come to be very generally recognized, I think, by all who are familiar with the technique of the situation, that the two functions, general education and vocational education, ought to be operated together.

The campaign in Illinois was not successful. They did not establish a double-headed system. They have set up double-headed systems in some of the States, but I understand some have gone back to the single control or supervision of general education and vocational training. From the point of view of fundamental educational principles, that is the way to handle it.

There is still a group in the country, represented by that same society for the promotion of industrial education-I think they have changed their name to "National Industrial Educational Association,' or something of that sort that same group, which is still holding to the idea for which they fought so long, and which led to the establishment of the Federal board, and to the appropriations. That group still feels that vocational training must be separate from general education, because the school system as a whole is so slow in making progress in vocational training and industrial education. They feel they would make better progress alone. As the chairman. remarked, any group of Federal offices are always loath to be mergedthat is, the actual men who are doing the work are loath to have their offices merged with other offices; but after the merger is made. it turns out to be a very useful thing, as a rule.

May I point out that Secretary Davis, chairman of the Federal board, is on record in the hearings before the reorganization commission as favoring the uniting of the educational agencies within the Federal Government under one organizaion. He favored there a bureau, but he wanted that bureau in the Department of Labor. He specifically states that he considers it absurd to have independent educational agencies like the Federal board.

Another member of the Federal board, Secretary Hoover, has told me that he feels that these separate, independent boards are very bad administrative organizations unless they have judicial functions, and he feels that there is no excuse for the separate maintenance of the Federal board as an independent organization.

I know that the Commissioner of Education, who is a third member of the Federal board, feels the same way about it.

The second point then concerning the unsatisfactory condition of Federal organization for education on which the great majority of people are agreed, is that the Federal board, is separate from the Bureau of Education.

The third source of unsatisfactoriness in the present situation is the lack of coordination among the other educational offices within the Federal Government. That is, the extension service in agriculture is carrying on a very extensive educational work throughout the States by means of their county agents, and their Smith-Lever Act, and so on. They operate the four H clubs which have some 500,000 children

in them.

The Army and Navy are training every year a great many thousands of our young men with their own educational agencies.

The naturalization bureau's educational department is doing an extensive work with aliens.

The Veterans' Bureau is doing rehabilitation work, and so on. The fact that there is no coordination now among these bureaus is another source of unsatisfactoriness in the present situation.

Mr. REED. Is it not a fact that the work that the Department of Labor is doing along so-called Americanization lines is rather educating these people up to the necessary standards to become citizens? Doctor MANN. Yes, that is their function.

Mr. REED. They are not taking that up in the broader aspect? Doctor MANN. No, their function is teaching aliens the American language and the functions of the Government, and things of that sort. Mr. REED. To the end that they may pass the examination?

Doctor MANN. To the end that they may pass the examination and become citizens. That is naturalization work. They do not take any active part in the very much larger problem of Americanizing Americans; and that, as Secretary Work stated, is probably a function of the Bureau of Education or a department of education. I am going to take up a little later a method of coordinating these agencies.

Another unsatisfactory element in the whole situation is that this bill, the Sterling-Towner bill-the Sterling-Reed bill-has been before Congress for 5 years, and Congress has taken no action one way or the other. There is justification for the feeling on the part of the public that it is time something happened. I do not say that it is time that the bill was passed; but the problem has been here for 5 years, and it is time that something happened.

The delay in the consideration of this bill, 5 years, indicates that there are in the proposed legislation certain very fundamental difficulties; that is, there are certain fundamental questions concerning which the public and the committee are not agreed as to the proper answer. Among these questions is that of constitutionality. This can be argued without limit on the purely legal side. It has been and is being so argued.

Another question is that of centralization. Is this a centralizing process, and ought we to encourage such centralization of government functions as has been going on in Washington for the last fifty years or more?

That centralization has been accomplished by the use of two general principles, namely, the principle of implied powers, by which the Interstate Commerce Commission, for example, now maintains Federal inspectors in packing houses on the ground that this is necessary to proper regulation of interstate commerce. The other is the principle of grants in aid.

By the use of those two principles applied either singly or together, there has been a tremendous mass of centralization of government functions in Washington. That question is involved here. It is a very technical question. This particular bill seems to me to use both those principles of centralization, implied powers, and grants in aid, and therefore it needs to be studied very carefully. It does involve a very important fundamental principle.

The third fundamental factor involved that keeps us all in doubt as to what ought to be done is the appreciation of the psychology of the American people. It is generally agreed that an education office here should stimulate local activities for the improvement of local school systems. The question is how shall that stimulation be given. Shall it be given by an information service-news serviceand by publishing reports and carrying about information as to what successful experiments are being performed at various places? Or shall its stimulation be in the form of a money grant? This leads one to ask which produces the greater results, in consideration of the type of people that Americans are? This is a fundamental problem concerning the psychology of our people; so I am not at all disturbed or surprised that it takes a long time to analyze the situation and find out what is really best to do. But it seems to me, and I think the public generally feels, that it ought to be possible to reach some kind of a conclusion and take some kind of a practical step.

Now let us take the Sterling-Reed bill first. There are three propositions in this bill on which there is general agreement, as I have already said; namely, that it provides for information, and a news service; it provides for some degree of Federal coordination; and it provides for stimulation of self-activity in local communities. On those points I think everyone is agreed that the bill is good; but differences of opinion exist in regard to the department-whether we shall have a department or a bureau---and in regard to the subsidy. Now, if we accept the general agreement that the Federal education office, whether a department or a bureau, shall be established to carry on investigation, to disseminate information, and to run a news service, we may ask what sort of a news service is required, and whether the bureau is now adequately supplied, and whether this new bill makes it possible to have improvement.

As to the sort of investigations or studies that are needed, several have already been mentioned here in this committee. You remember the other day, I think it was Mr. Judd pointed out there is need of a better understanding of the financial problem, before making large appropriations and distributing them. We need to know more about the actual financial conditions in the various States throughout the country. There has recently been conducted by the American Council of Education a very exhaustive study of the financial situation in four States, New York, Illinois, Iowa, and California. That study is now being published, and I have brought with me the volume on the subject of the financial statistics of the