Doctor BOYD. That would be true for the individual, but I think we need to recognize the dangers that exist in uniformity. You can not raise wheat in all parts of the country. The Department of Agriculture will encourage a certain section to raise wheat or cotton. You can not say we must have uniformity in farming, or that you will have a uniform course in education. Mr. SEARS. I think someone said that his idea of a university was a bright boy on one end of the log and Horace Mann on the other end. I do not mean to refer to the question of the initiative of the teachers or the advisability of the teacher taking hold of the children and instructing them, or invading the province of school boards, neighborhoods, or localities in their school work; but if there was found a normal, a proper way to lay down lines of study, the equipment of teachers, and those other things, as far as they can normally be laid down, and it was applied all over the country without invading these other points, would that be of value to the country as a whole? Doctor BOYD. It would benefit persons who move about, there is no doubt. Mr. SEARS. It would tend to the normal development of our national life. Doctor BOYD. That is true. Mr. ROBSION. Is not that the policy attempted to be followed by Commerce, Agriculture, Labor, the Army, the Navy, and every branch of this Government, and the industrial and social life of the country? You are trying to find out what they are doing in every community and whether we can improve conditions in our respective communities? Doctor BOYD. Yes. Mr. ROBSION. That is the purpose of this bill? Doctor BOYD. Yes; but please keep this clearly in your mind, that there is one specific problem in education that we have faced in the regional association, without enough money to develop it, and we are here to ask you to develop it. Doctor JUDD. Mr. W. I. Earley, principal of the Washington High School, Sioux Falls, S. Dak., and present president of the North Central Association, is the next speaker. The CHAIRMAN. The reason Mr. Lowrey is not here this morning is that he had planned to be at another meeting. He hopes to be here this afternoon. He is vitally interested in this as are all the members. STATEMENT OF W. I. EARLY, PRINCIPAL, WASHINGTON HIGH SCHOOL, SIOUX FALLS, S. DAK.} Mr. EARLY. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I shall be very brief in what I have to say. I will make two points. The question of authority was raised in this committee coming here and making its requests. I should like very much to go into the history of what the North Central Association is doing along this line, but time forbids. I will say that the association is made up of colleges and high schools over the country, both public colleges, State universities, and parochial schools. The same thing is true of the high 105682-28- -11 schools. There are public high schools, private academies, and parochial secondary schools in our group. The North Central Association at its meeting March 13, with representatives from these various organizations, after this matter was discussed, voted unanimously in favor of this thing. I am simply stating that because the question of authority was raised. I will make the further statement that before these institutions become members of the association which I am representing here it is necessary for the board of control of the individual institutions to signify its willingness that the particular institution should join this association. So this question does go back to the very people who are behind these organizations, and while the representatives in Chicago voted that this matter should be presented I am sure I am safe in saying that we have the support of the entire body clear back to the origin. We have over 2,300 members in our North Central Association, and they voted unanimously to have this thing presented. I do want to speak to a point, and it seems to me we have wandered here this morning and have not quite stuck to what we are here for. I am speaking not as a representative of the North Central Association, but as a high-school man, and I want to stress some of the problems that high-school men are thinking of. We are engaged in the problems of human welfare, trying to take this body of secondary students, coming to us in such large numbers, and prepare them for the jobs they will fit. It is a matter of human welfare. We are here for an appropriation to do the job better. I will give you roughly a number of things that enter into the matter. We high-school men know that 15 to 20 per cent of the young folks who leave high school and get into college are sent back some time in the first semester because they are not fitted for college. It may be that they are not intellectually capable. We do not need to discuss that. There are 10,000 boys and girls sent back from college each year because they are unable to do the college work. Of the people who stay we lose 30 per cent more. Somebody has called them the ones we have lost by having been killed, captured, or missing. They are retained in college in the sophomore and junior year, and by the time the senior year comes around we lose 30 per cent more. I suspect that we have made some mistake, perhaps, in keeping some of these people in college. Some should have gone out with the first group, but I am equally certain that the students' difficulties arise because of their peculiar habits of mind, their attitude of mind, their inhibitions and problems. That is what calls for guidance in college and it enters into this very thing for which we are asking an appropriation. The third group I am thinking of includes the folks who stay during the senior year for graduation. It amounts to 30 to 50 per cent, in various colleges. In Columbia it is 53 per cent. I am giving approximate numbers. These figures represent a great mortality in this group of young folks that wanted to go to college and had ambition or whose parents had ambition for them. Of this 50 per cent that go through college, 20 or 30 per cent, according to the Dean Johnson report, studying a University of Minnesota group who graduated do know what they want to do. Mr. FLETCHER. On a scientific basis or on the basis of vocational motives? Mr. EARLY. Probably both. I can not answer that. Mr. ROBSION. Then 70 or 80 per cent do not know what they want to do. Mr. EARLY. Twenty to thirty per cent do know what they want to do. Mr. ROBSION. Then the converse is true, that 70 to 80 per cent do not. Mr. EARLY. That is correct, of those who finished college. Mr. FLETCHER. Have you any facilities in high school to give scientific information to prepare these people? Mr. EARLY. We are working on that problem. It is a matter of Vocational guidance. We are in the beginning of the problem. Mr. FLETCHER. This legislation would help you? Mr. EARLY. It certainly would. If we can get means whereby we can make a study of this problem, get experts into that field to make a specific comprehensive study of it, we can solve these problems. We high school men are interested in better selection, in the first place. We are also interested in knowing what the demands are and in preparing for them. Those two questions come up here, with regard to the 15 or 20 per cent of freshmen students. There are a lot of young people who should not go to college. We want information to determine who should go. Mr. LEATHERWOOD. Who is to determine that? Mr. EARLY. It must ultimately go back to your educational leader. Mr. FLETCHER. Is the number of high-school graduates unable to adjust themselves to college requirements increasing? Mr. EARLY. I can not answer that. I have no statistics. The whole problem is one of getting funds to enable us to do our work better. It calls for a better selection in our college program, an understanding of the problem, an understanding of the equipment of these young people-what they are really able to do-and then for settingup machinery in college and high school to carry out the conclusions arrived at. It is a problem of better adaptation of colleges and high schools. I have tried to give you these things entering into the problem, and the things we are asking for would enable us to ascertain specific facts in solving this problem. Mr. LEATHERWOOD. After you have determined the facts to which you refer, and that must be from educational sources, is it your idea then, that the educational authorities should apply that test and exclude those who do not meet the test? Mr. EARLY. I presume that you are thinking of the matter of the intelligence testing. Mr. LEATHERWOOD. I do not even think about that. I think it is too foolish to think about. Mr. EARLY. There are so many factors in selection. Mr. LEATHERWOOD. I will tell you of a little test I conducted recently. I happened to be fortunate enough to have the intelligence test for entrance to Barnard College in my possession at a little party where there were six or seven distinguished professors from Columbia University, during the holidays. We applied the test, and none of the men passed it. Do you think that would be a fair way to test my child? Should she be kept from going into Barnard because she did not make 50 per cent on such a test? Mr. EARLY. I have definite ideas in regard to this. These examinations are one factor. I do not think the decision should be made on that alone. Mr. FLETCHER. Are not the tests to which Mr. Leatherwood referred the result of unscientific conclusions, not the result of research? Mr. EARLY. I think the thing is in its infancy. Mr. LEATHERWOOD. But this test, the one I subjected my friends to, was prepared by the authorities of Barnard College. Mr. ROBSION. That only argues in favor of this relief to get this general information and to show Barnard College and others they should not do these foolish things. Mr. EARLY. I have concluded my statement and I thank the committee for its attention. Doctor JUDD. I will introduce now Mr. W. P. Morgan, president of the Western State Teachers' College of Macomb, Ill., and present president of the American Association of Teachers' Colleges, a department of the National Education Association. He appears also as representing the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, of which he is a member. STATEMENT OF W. P. MORGAN, PRESIDENT, WESTERN STATE TEACHERS' COLLEGE, MACOMB, ILL., AND PRESIDENT AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF TEACHERS' COLLEGES Mr. MORGAN. I appear first of all as a member of the North Central Association. This relief that the association is asking for is national in its scope. I also appear as a representative of the American Association of Teachers' Colleges, and I feel at liberty to speak here in connection with all the teachers' colleges and normal schools in the United States. Our membership, however, in the American Association of Teachers' Colleges consist of about 150 of these institutions, distributed throughout the United States, and in those 150 institutions there are probably 7,500 faculty members and 175,000 students, running through the regular school year. We are intensely interested in this whole problem, because whenever any point in education, either elementary, secondary, or collegiate, is attacked we find ourselves immediately connected with it, because it is our business to train teachers not only for the elementary schools but for the high schools, and we go into the colleges and universities to secure the teachers and faculty members of our institutions. Now, any investigation that we should undertake as an individual group, known as the American Association of Teachers' Colleges, would be very limited, because with our 150 members and our $10 annual dues, which is all the money we collect, we would have $1,500. If we should undertake to distribute that over the 48 States we would have about $30 apiece. Now, the very reason we are coming here and asking for relief is that we can't get the proper reaction as individuals, nor as the private organizations or groups to make the kind of survey that we need to make, or the kind of research work that we need to establish in order that we might solve some of our very fundamental problems. One question in particular just now is whether the teachers' colleges and normal schools of the United States ought to offer a two-year curriculum or a four-year curriculum for the preparation of teachers, either elementary or high school. Now, an investigation into one problem in one State would more than exhaust all the funds we have at hand. There are a number of other problems of equal importance in that particular field, for example, the nature of the curriculum that we ought to have in teachers' colleges. Someone made the statement in my presence only last week that he had examined catalogues from these teachers' colleges and found there were 139 different courses in English offered. He figured out that it would take one more than 11 years if he only pursued English in order to finish the full curriculum of English as laid out in the United States. That shows something of the diversity of effort that is being put forth now in the teachers' college group itself, but we are not in a position to say to the board of directors in the colleges of our State that this is wrong, that this is what they must do, because we haven't the information at hand. We had hoped that the National Government would be sufficiently interested in the great problem of education to be willing to appropriate at least a small amount. Five hundred thousand dollars for two years' research work is a small amount, to answer some of these questions, or put the answer where we can obtain them, and where we can attack our problem with full information. Mr. ROBSION. What is in your mind as to how this research would be conducted? Mr. MORGAN. It ought to be organized into a very definite undertaking, with someone at the head of it who will plan it in its relations, because the teachers' college movement is not independent of the high-school movement. Mr. ROBSION. Would it be your thought that it should be conducted by the Bureau of Education? Mr. MORGAN. It certainly ought to be conducted by some national organization. Mr. ROBSION. Well, is there any organization, or could one be set up that would be more effective, under our present system? Mr. MORGAN. Do you want me to say what I think of the organization in a department as against a bureau? Mr. ROBSION. No. We haven't a department of education yet. All we have so far is a Bureau of Education. Mr. MORGAN. Yes. My opinion, which I think would answer your general question, is this: Until the National Government shows an interest in education sufficient either to appropriate a liberal amount for the Bureau of Education or for a department of education, education is going to continue to struggle and to be diversified. in these particular fields and never get to a very definite conclusion about what it ought to do in any reasonable time. Mr. DOUGLASS. Do you really think this question is going to be solved without a department of education? Mr. MORGAN. I don't hope to see it solved without the Government's help, in my day, at least, sir. Mr. ROBSION. But you haven't answered my question. Mr. ROBSION. If Congress authorized this $200,000 the first year, and $300,000 the second year to make this research, is there any present agency of the Government that you think ought to make |