he was a member of the staff in the Bureau of Education. I should like to call attention at this point to the fact that these departments are still just about the same in number as they were when Doctor Capen was a member of the bureau. I beg to submit for the record a list of these educational activities showing their wide distribution through the several Government departments and the amount of appropriation for each in the year 1926. Approximate figures for Federal expenditures and appropriations for educational work in 1926 I. United States Veterans' Bureau, vocational rehabilitation... $17, 003, 245 II. Federal Board for Vocational Education_.. III. Department of Agriculture: 1. Experiment stations__ 7, 399, 017 2. Arizona and New Mexico school funds.. $2,735, 242 10, 167, 328 VII. Department of Justice: 1. National Training School for Boys-- 2. National Training School for Girls... 3. Federal Industrial Institute for Women_ VIII. Department of Labor: Children's Bureau (includes $1,000,000 for maternity and infancy)__ IX. District of Columbia: 1. Public schools (this includes Federal por tion only)- 2. National Training School for Boys_-_ 1, 294, 000 17, 105 12, 095 1, 250 2,750 13, 185 1, 125 2,774, 958 NOTE 1.-These figures do not include a considerable amount expended in educational work by the Public Health Service of the Department of the Treasury and the salaries of Army and Navy officers in the various schools of those departments. NOTE 2.-It will be noted that there are 40 educational activities listed in the above table. They are as follows: I. Veterans' Bureau.... II. Federal Board for Vocational Education III. Department of Agriculture.. IV. Department of Interior_ X. Other educational activities__ Total_ 5 1137303181 40 These figures do not include the considerable amount expended in educational work by the Public Health Service of the Department of the Treasury and the salaries of Army and Navy officers in the various schools of these departments. The total amount which I have listed, appropriated in 1926, was $63,351,191. That list is the list referred to by Doctor Capen, and is the list usually had in mind when reference is made to the fact that there are a large number of activities scattered in the several executive departments of the Government. I wish to call attention, before introducing the next speaker, who will be Doctor Marvin, to section 7 of the bill itself. Section 7 reads: In order to coordinate the educational activities carried on by the several executive departments and to recommend ways and means of improving the educational work of the Federal Government, there is hereby created a Federal conference on education, which shall consist of one representative and one alternate appointed by the head of each department. The Federal conference on education shall not report as a body to any one department, but each representative shall report the findings of the Federal conference on education to his own department for consideration and independent action. It is believed that this section of the bill will in time result in a natural and proper assimilation of some of the scattered educational activities into the proposed department of education. The CHAIRMAN. Doctor, in carrying on the educational work in each of these various departments, there undoubtedly are times when the same research would answer the problems concerning one or more or maybe a half dozen of these activities? Doctor DAVIDSON. Surely that would be true. The CHAIRMAN. And as a result, if this section were to be carried into effect, it would eliminate much of the over Doctor DAVIDSON. Overlapping of work. The CHAIRMAN. Overlapping of work, yes; and probably save the cost of the department. Doctor DAVIDSON. Undoubtedly it would. 105682-28-12 But it should be made clear that the National Education Association does not expect to see the time ever come when all these activities would be transferred to the Department of Education. The CHAIRMAN. Not at all, but they would get the benefits. Doctor DAVIDSON. Yes; they would get the benefits. But I desire to make the further point that some of the activities would in time on their own volition desire to be transferred to the department of education. The future would take care of that matter, sanely and naturally, without forced transferrence. Mr. LEATHERWOOD. Doctor, did you ever hear of a Federal bureau that wanted to merge itself into another department? Doctor DAVIDSON. I have understood that there have been some expressions from time to time, given by some members of some bureau staffs, that transfers might be made in the interest of better administration, but I am not familiar with concrete examples of such requests. Mr. LEATHERWOOD. Well, I am looking for them, but I have never found one yet. Doctor DAVIDSON. It is a well-known fact that the tendency is not to make such requests. The CHAIRMAN. It is not a question of whether they make the request or not. It is a question of what is good for the country. Doctor DAVIDSON. Yes; and for the development of our educational institutions in this country. Mr. LEATHERWOOD. Doctor, I am very much of the opinion if we were to have a department of education and a secretary at the head of it, that there should be a centralization of the educational activities. I can not understand why, if Congress is going to legislate upon this question, we should not put the activities that should be under the secretary of education under him at once. Why wait for them to drift in haphazard? Doctor DAVIDSON. Well, I think that is a question that the future can decide better perhaps than we can decide it at this time. The bill itself points the way toward gradual and peaceful assimilation. Mr. Chairman, may I now present Doctor Marvin, formerly president of the University of Arizona, at the present time president of George Washington University of this city, as the next speaker? STATEMENT OF DR. CLOYD HECK MARVIN, PRESIDENT, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, D. C. Doctor MARVIN. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, the care and culture of man, I think we will all be agreed upon, is productive of the greatest assets of the Nation. The second premise that I want to place before you is that a Nation that believes in democracy must of necessity accept the basic premise that education is fundamental, and being fundamental, it must be dignified in proportion as we believe in it. I want to answer two questions that have come to me out of the hearings this morning. You asked whether the Bureau of Education could not, in its background, carry on in the strength that it should have in the department of education. My answer to you is this: If the newspaper has quoted right, for last year the Bureau of Education had $921,000. This year you have allocated to it $914,000, showing the importance that you are giving to it. You certainly would not expect a lieutenant in the United States Army to have the importance that you would expect the colonel in that regiment to have, and you can not expect the people to think, by and large, that the Congress of the United States of America, or the educational leaders, by and large, are going to place the same importance in a bureau as they place in a department, any more than you would expect them to place the same importance in a lieutenant as they would place in the colonel of the regiment. I was glad for what Doctor Capen brought out. It was another answer that I had for you, namely, that as we are now organized, with the several parts of education distributed here and there throughout the Government, it would be impossible to organize them or correlate them under a bureau in one department. I want to say right here. and now, and make it emphatic, that the time is at hand when it is important that we correlate the educational activities of this Nation to get ready for the progress that education is going to make over the next two decades, because regardless of how much any one of us believes in education, elementary, secondary, or higher education, at this particular time, none of us has a conception of the bounds to which it will go during the next few years. Let me give you some figures. I am talking about formal education alone at this particular moment. In 1870 there were enrolled in public high schools-these statistics are from the Bureau of Education-80,227 students; in 1880, 110,277; in 1890, 202,963; in 1900, 519,251; in 1910, 915,061; in 1920, 2,199,389; in 1926, or only six years of this decade, 3,757,466. In other words, our enrollment in our public high schools has just a little more than doubled each decade, and we can reasonably look forward, in 1940, if you please, on this same basis to having seven or eight million high school students in this country. That is but one phase of education. The elementary phase is doing likewise. But this phase is more nearly related to the problem that I want to bring to you to-day. Let us talk for a minute about the high schools. There are now, according to the sixth annual report of the department of superintendence, 18,000 high schools in this country. Eleven thousand of the eighteen thousand high schools in this country have less than a hundred students enrolled in each one. In other words, we have out on the firing line, in the small communities of this country, hundreds of little high schools with 100 or less students in them. They need all the guidance we can possibly give them. I need not plead for the large high schools. They have the funds; they have the resources. But these small high schools haven't the funds and haven't the intellectual resources that are needed to carry on. And I need not plead to you that the boy who is brought up in a farming community or a rural town has just as good a right to as good an education as it is possible to give him, and the way to bring that about is to make sure that the proper information, through a department of education, is disseminated, with the right type of background. Mr. LEATHERWOOD. Do I understand you to take the position, Doctor, that the rural high schools are not up to the city high schools? Doctor MARVIN. Under the present conditions they haven't the means; they haven't the intellectual background that the city high schools have to bring to bear on their problems. Mr. BLACK. Just what do you mean by that? Doctor MARVIN. I mean by that, if I can put it into commercial terms, the rural high schools can't get the specialists that the large industry gets, no more than a person at a country crossroads can get the advice of specialists. Mr. BLACK. Just how will this bill help that situation? Doctor MARVIN. This bill will help that situation in that it will provide a means for gathering the statistics. The department of education will be a clearing house, so that the high-school principal who has a problem in a rural community can come to this clearing house, without cost, and the school board can make application to the board of education, which will have at its finger tips the very best experts that you can get in sociology, economics, and education. Mr. BLACK. You mean the principal will be able to get from this central bureau a course of study? Doctor MARVIN. Yes; or information as to administration. Mr. BLACK. Well, his real problem, of course, is money. And because of lack of money, probably he has not gotten schoolbooks. Doctor MARVIN. I want to differ with you. In education to-day the real matter is not money. At the present time the real question is the dissemination of the right kind of knowledge. If we had the right kind of knowledge disseminated throughout this country to-day in education, secondary and higher, and could cut off the practices. which are resulting from lack of education, we would extend education 25 years. Mr. BLACK of New York. You seem to take a broader position on this bill than anybody who has appeared before us. I have understood that those who appear for this bill, generally, believe that they ought to have a clearing house for strictly pedagogical information to teachers. You are taking it one step further, and taking out of this department of education actual educational information for the students. Doctor MARVIN. That is it exactly. Mr. BLACK. That is more than research now. That is direction, information, discipline and everything else? Doctor MARVIN. That is the application of research. Mr. LEATHERWOOD. Doctor, I am interested particularly about these rural schools. I was under the impression that we had a pretty good system of rural high schools. Doctor MARVIN. We have a good system of rural high schools. Mr. LEATHERWOOD. My experience in appointing boys to the United States Military Aacademy and the United States Naval Academy has been that the boys of the rural high schools who work a little in the mornings and evenings, pass a better examination than the city boys, uniformly. How do you account for that? Doctor MARVIN. You are leaving out the question of selective processes, I think. That is, you have a certain selective process where you would perhaps choose certain boys. I can't take specific questions with that in mind and read them without having the records before me. But the chances are there are certain selective processes which you are not accounting for in your generalization. |