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At right: The author visits a tenth-grade class in one of his high schools.
An angry educator, fed up with-second-rate teaching, and "the waste of a generation's mind," indicts our shortsighted school policies.
WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOUR SCHOOLS
By CHARLES H. BOEHM Pennsylvania Superintendent of Public Instruction as told to Anne Selby
I have been a public-school educator for more than thirty years, and I have reason to say that I am sick and tired of the nonsense that comes with public education today.
I think it is wrong that in the fourth-largest city of the United States-Philadelphia-some school maintenance men make more money than some teachers.
To me it is ridiculous to exalt memory so that in time a parrot may well be held the wisest of the Lord's creatures.
I fine nothing that excuses school boards who put up new buildings and believe that mortar, stone and steel make an education.
And I am angry at those who say that education fails today because it does not emphasize the three R's.
At the same time I am appalled that we think it right that a student spends forty minutes a day on English-and two hours on football.
But what makes me angriest of all are those who want a single scapegoat for public education's failures-and equally a single cure.
There is neither. We have failed to look at the fundamentals of education. Let me tell you what you may not know about our schools today.
There is a new high school in the central part of my state. It is a triumph of modern-school design; it cost more than $1,000,000. Naturally there is a fine library room in the main building. But on the day the school was dedicated the principal pleaded with parents to donate the books needed to fill the empty shelves. And yet no one thought it odd that $60,000 had been spent to equip the football field with lights for night games.
That school is not unique. In Pennsylvania and in other states across the nation there are many schools which don't come even close to the American Library Association standard of ten books per pupil.These same schools often have superb playing fields.
Does this mean that I believe our schools should immediately suspend all football and other sports? Of course not. For many years I was a coach myself. Sports are important to our youngsters-but lights for football are miserable substitutes for the books that stretch and strengthen their minds.
Today we even misuse the books we have. In my state, and in others, certain schools have answered the challenge of Sputnik with "busy-work"-meaning more history dates to memorize, more arithmetic problems to copy at home. It is homework hysteria. Often it is unplanned and gives students impossible loads of work one night and little the next. Busywork bores the bright student-and overwhelms the average.
Public education has done great things in America-but most of them were yesterday. This leads some to think that education was best in the time of the little red schoolhouse and that we must return to the ideals of those days. This could be done. A teacher could demand nothing more than the memorizing of Shakespeare's sonnets and Euclid's theorems and all the other loadstones of yesterday's education. Certainly a man's spirit can be turned back 100 years-or 2000-but, inescapably, his body exists in the present. We live in our own space age. It is my hope that the schools will follow the missile into new pioneering. In my state Gov. David L. Lawrence has called for a study of education's needs. Every local school board should do the same.
There can be a startling improvement in our schools. The right teachers, properly encouraged, will bring it.
I am, for example, proud of a young chemist in my state. After the first Sputnik he decided he could be more useful to the future if he left industry and began teaching. In his first year he has given his students a hundred and more extra hours of science education. How? By his knowledge of modern techniques. To be specific: For years his school-and many others-spent-weeks on a routine chemical demonstration. But after being trained in an industrial laboratory, this teacher knew that the demonstration was useless in today's chemistry. It was so basic that a machine did the work in any plant. The teacher discarded it from his course. He used the time for new experiments.
Ten thousand teachers should do exactly that. They do not, because they do not have this man's knowledge. Every parent and every school administrator must face this fact: Two out of three of our science teachers today are not trained to do the job they should be doing.
This is true in nearly every state. The majority of our science teachers were graduated from college a whole generation ago. Only a few have found the time-and the money-to continue their educations in this new era of atomic energy, missile shots and lunar satellites.
To me there is a pathetic note in the frequent question put to educators: Do our schools concentrate too much on science today? The answer to that is simple - and somewhat frighting. Right now science cannot dominate our education because it is going to take years- five, maybe ten-to train a corps of qualified instructors.
Some people in Pennsylvania, for instance, take comfort in knowing that 50 per cent of our physics teachers have master's degrees. What they do not know is that only 10 per cent earned their advanced degrees in science. The others did it either in pupil guidance or school administration. Why, then, did they bother to get a master's? Because our state says a teacher with an advanced degree is entitled to higher pay. It doesn't matter in the least in what field the advanced work is done. Education never hurt anyone - least of all a teacher-but I would find it more comforting if all the physics teachers with master's had won their degrees in science.
At the other end of the scale is a group of about a dozen or os Pennsylvania teachers who didn't take a single undergraduate science course in college. So, what are they doing today? Teaching high-school chemistry or physics. And because they were certified before special courses were required, they could be doing this if they had not even taken a science course in high school.
Is it only in science that we lag? Consider our methods of teaching literature or history. We ask our children to memorize dates and battles. We are the prisoners of horse-and-buggy education. In industry we use every technological discovery. In teaching we suspect all but the old ways. We find it hard to escape into the twentieth century. We still teach as if books were so few that our only alternative was to make the students memorize, memorize, memorize.
This, of course, is absurd. Books are not intended to be used as mere exercises in memory. They hold the real treasures of life. Why don't more students seek them out? Because we discourage them. We make reading a penalty. We insist that our pupils write book reviews, naming principal characters and important events in a format unchanged for 100 years. So our youngsters read the short, the concise easily remembered book. And teachers, should be the last to criticize them. The challenging, the thought provoking books are to be shunned because teachers want only dates and names.
Educators have done even worse. We have permitted our children to be graduated from our high schools basically inarticulate in our own language. They can neither write nor speak it well. It is no accident that a comedian can say there's no point in learning to speak English - because if you did, to whom would you speak it? We have shrugged off the importance of speech. Blandly we draft any teacher with a free period to teach the tongue of our forefathers-and of our future. We jam our youngsters into the English classrooms. In Pennsylvania schools, for example, our English sections are larger than any in other courses. Seventy per cent of them are overcrowded. Some have 100 or more students.
And yet it is in these classes that we offer a most useful modern-fast reading. In Pennsylvania we say that any pupil in the grades from seven through twelve may take this subject. That's excellent. But-only 10 per cent the teachers have any training in the techniques of reading fast for understanding.
When I think of this I am reminded of a certain school district in Western Pennsylvania. The board had some extra money. Was it used to get additional training for teachers? No. The board decided the money would be used to hire additional athletic coaches.
Is it so different in your own school district? Do not be shocked that many school boards behave as if books and classrooms, trained teachers and bright students were the forgotten ones of American education.
In the United States conformity has become the bright badge of the good junior citizen. As a result we have too often, in our schools, neglected the gifted-and even the not-so-gifted-to graduate masses of average students.
To me this is wrong. I am convinced we must end the boredom of the bright. We must challenge their minds; we must insist that they function in our schools to the peak of their capacities. That way we help, not only the best but every public-school student.
Because you-and I -are so at home in the language of sports, my conviction is best explained this way: On the football field we delight in the "brainy" quarter- back who can run the trickiest of T formations. Coaches push his intellectual ability to its maximum. Well, why limit that challenge to the playing fields? Why not give that boy the same chance in his classroom? 1t can be done.
A recent study showed that 20 per cent of our high-school students would give up history classes if given a chance. Why? Too many dates, they said; too many battle names to memorize; too much repetition of the same old story. Today children in Pennsylvania and in most other states must, under the law, stay in school until they are sixteen years of age, but we teach history just as we did when many youngsters quit after they had completed eight short years. We teach no additional history; we simply repeat in high school what pupils supposedly have learned in grade school. We add more detail, of course, but basically it is the same. The tragedy of this is obvious. Within our grasp at this moment ate the tools to revitalize history. With the movie screen and the sound track we can make history live in F.D.R.'s "Day of Infamy" speech after Pearl Harbor. And tell me which is better-to ask a sixth-grader for the date of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address or let him hear it, in all its dramatic meaning, from the lips of Raymond Massey?
We can so easily stretch history's horizons; yet I have talked to teachers who regard television and modern educational movies as tricky innovations, not as important aids to them in their work.
This is silly. Pennsylvania has more than 2200 school districts. It is only in Philadelphia and the Pittsburgh area-and in a closed-circuit program from Pennsylvania State University - that we make any real use of educational television. Why? Because too many people in my profession regard it as a novelty instead of a reality. Let's stop to remember how few trained scientists we have in our schools. Perhaps then wet will realize that television is one of the few ways now available to bring the qualified instructors' knowledge into our classrooms to teach our youngsters the facts of their own atomic age. This we must face, not just in my state, but in yours as well.
In our teaching of the social sciences we have been mousetrapped by tradition into thinking that he learns best who learns about exports and imports. The sheep of Australia, the fish and forests of Norway-we talk about them as though they were the master key to native cultures. As a matter of fact, we have the same attitude about our own country. We pay great attention to the shoe factories of New England; but do we teach understanding of how those bleak shores could spawn a Cotton Mather's hell-fire-and-brimstone sermons?
Today, 70 per cent of the world's population is concentrated in Asia and Africa. War-and maybe oblivion for man-may well depend on what happens on those two continents. Do the schools prepare our youngsters for understanding their cultures? Of course they don't. But the blame is not altogether due to the shortage of teachers qualified to speak about these areas. Such subjects are sometimes controversial; with the best of intentions a teacher may nevertheless draw the wrath of parents and school boards by attempting to explain the South African's apartheid or Red China's communes.
In Russia today the study of English is a must in many schools-and not in a cursory manner. The Russians are so advanced that a student may elect to learn English with a British, or an American, accent.
On the other hand, many Americans have long behaved as though learning Russian were-like learning a dirty word out of bounds in the schools. In Pennsylvania we have 5000 public schools, with 79,000 teachers and 2,000,000 students. In 1957 we offered not one class in Russian to our youngsters. We have progressed. Today Pennsylvania leads all the states in classes in this tongue. How many do we have? The grand total is sixty-two. And let's face another reality: In more than one out of every three Pennsylvania schools there isn't a single course in German offered to public-school students.
We Americans cannot withdraw from the world. As it gets smaller our responsibilities for-knowing about other countries get bigger. I am convinced, for example, that the American teachers of modern foreign languages must be sent to the countries whose tongues they would teach-at least for a summer. This would not be simply a chance to practice conversation; it would help them learn the ways of the people. Luxury? Nonsense. The nuances of language are so delicate that even diplomatic talks can break down when there is no real understanding of the words exchanged. What I suggest is new and untried.
To me it seems a better approach than we now have-in Pennsylvania, where we do not even test our foreign-language teachers for fluency in the tongue they teach. We shall do that for the first time in 1962. That is important when you realize that almost-a third of our French and German teachers received their training thirty and more years ago-when grammar was the important thing, not the shades of word meanings.
We must find bright young men and women to teach modern foreign languages - and it can be done. In my state there is a certain school superintendent who was determined to find a teacher truly proficient in French. It took months, but he was finally able to attract from Canada a young woman who is fluent in French. Not only are there Canadians, Frenchmen and Germans willing to come to our schools, but there are former G.I.’s who speak one and more European languages. Why waste the training our Government gave them? We have, ready for the tapping, a great reservoir of teaching talent. Obviously not every veteran wants to be an educator, bun believe that many men who have served overseas could- and would-bring their knowledge to our schools if they knew the depth of our need of it.
I disagree with those who say we must not clutter our children's minds with foreign-language study in the early years of their education. In England, on the continent and in some of our own American private schools, such courses are started in the earliest grades. I see nothing but good coming out of sixth- and seventh- grade students beginning to learn the language of some other country.
For, let us face this reality, we cannot expect good study habits from our high- school pupils if we have encouraged them to loaf along in their early education. Today we do just that, even though there are thousands of youngsters in the lower grades who could enlarge the vistas of their lives by learning a new language. But again we run head-on into the thesis of American conformity. I personally know of all too many twelve-year-old boys who have been bored into eternal apathy because they were forced into the mold of every other child their age and size.
Efforts to improve America's secondary schools will be wasted unless we can streamline the whole business of education, particularly for our bright youngsters. Today, much of the freshman year of college is devoted to a review of high school subjects. It has one effect-it adds a little more boredom for the able student. In my state-and in others-advanced courses are being offered in a few schools during the twelfth grade. I hope the day will soon come when more schools give the bright and eager pupils an opportunity to take such courses. Only then will that last year-too often empty for too many today-take on life and meaning.
The waste of a generation's mind-and its time-must, of course, be our greatest concern. And with the lack of challenge of the status quo-the second-rate education - educators face their greatest problem today. .)
But there are others no less irritating. In all too many school districts, local school boards and parents alike are content with big new buildings. Little thought is given to the teachers of the courses in those comfortable classrooms. There are many teachers in elementary-school classes Who have no college certificates for the grades they are teaching. Yet it is in these grades that education really starts.
Sometimes I think we do better with our coaches of football, basketball and baseball. Each year their won-and-lost records are reviewed. Schools often, vie for their services. But with our teachers the situation is very different indeed.
Let's say there is one outstanding teacher-a man (or woman) who gives students the feeling that they have brushed against greatness in their study. So what can the school board offer this teacher that is really special? It's quite simple-a job coaching the dramatic club with an extra honorarium of $500 a year. But perhaps the teacher isn't much at play- acting; well, there's always the promotion to an administrative post.
Certainly I am the first to say we need instructors in dramatics, and we must have good school administrators, but it is ridiculous that we can reward a fine teacher only by taking him away from the classroom.
Let's face it; in my state we spend nearly $900,000,000 a year on our educational system. But little of that money is used to provide special incentive pay for good teachers or to aid educators in further study and research. To me, that's just dead wrong. Industry has a financial incentive for its best workers. Why shouldn't schools?
I have a plan for Pennsylvania that will mean earmarking some money for the successful teacher and some for the special training of science, English and modern-foreign-language teachers. The money involved is small. I ask only that we spend one half of 1 per cent of our school subsidies to lift the level of education. We not only will have better-trained teachers but, we also will improve our libraries, set up accelerated courses for our bright students and institute "on-the-job training" for hundreds of our teachers.
Why haven't we already done these things, not just in my state but in yours? One thing I have learned in my years of being an educator-change comes exceedingly slowly. We are too often comforted by the thought that we offer an education to every child; we too seldom think whether it is quality education or just plain second-rate teaching.
Perhaps that is why we have lost so many of our ablest teachers to business and industry. In my job it is commonplace to meet ex-teachers. For example, I went to a state Chamber of Commerce dinner recently. Two of the principal speakers were industrialists-both former teachers. And let me tell you about a bright young man in a steel plant near Philadelphia. He once taught mathematics in one of our high schools and taught it well. He left the business of education not for money alone but for feeling of prestige.
Time was when teachers in America were respected, even consulted by their communities. Today they are often regarded as a drab and dreary lot, good enough to teach our children - at a pay rate that is, in many areas, less than that of the average baby sitter.
Do you know that the very word "teacher" has become so unattractive that there's a country-wide trend to strip it from the names of undergraduate colleges? In Michigan and in New Jersey you'll find no teachers' colleges - least not in name-and in my state the governor recently signed a law taking the word "teacher" from the names of a dozen teachers' colleges.
Certainly we need to pay our teachers a decent, competitive wage and must give them the warm honor their profession warrants; but more than honor and money is needed to make education come alive.
A frank look at our world shows that private industry is far rom pioneering than most of our public schools today. In business, time is money. As a result, there is always a greater push to get things done better-easier. Why shouldn't teachers be exposed to those advances, so that they can bring them to their students
Lets get our science teachers into the industrial laboratories for a look at what is going on in them. And let's send our English teachers to the men of business who employ many of our graduates.
There is no great trick to achieving this. Let's pay teachers for twelve months of the year, provided that their summer months-minus vacation time-are spent in private industry. Thus the schools would be paying them, and the private employer would be getting the advantages of their services and exposing the teachers to the techniques of industry. I believe this would take a comparatively small part of the billions of dollars that our schools cost today. And by the same token shouldn't schools take advantage, of their own resources and pay outstanding teachers for summer work in planning ahead for a better school program.
It is time now to stop fooling ourselves about another need. With all the pageantry of sports in our schools and the entertainment of the community, we are constantly breaking into our children's education, both during school and homework hours. There is no choice. We want our pageantry; we also want to teach our children. We must lengthen our-school year. Educational innovation comes with glacial slowness. It took a fight of more than thirty years to get people to accept the idea of free textbooks.
Certainly I suggest change. It is high time we unhitch education from the horse-and-buggy past and let it live in this space age. If it is the tradition. of America that every man is entitled to an education, it is equally our tradition to borrow only the best from the past and never yield our right to take the new. In our heritage lies education's future. THE END
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The average price of a new home then was $12700 about 2.46 times the yearly average wage of $5162. Which was about 1.99 times the price of a new car $2600. Today?
Plus with the loss of your Homemaker Spouse, and with your family debit increasing, your family is at risk!
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