William Benton

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Rolling tape recorded program is distributed through the facilities of the National Association of
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educational broadcasters.
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Oral essays on education a dynamic radio series designed to present leading
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personalities of our society as they attempt to discover the scope of problems which confront
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modern education. This week Dr. James and Tara Michigan State University College
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of Education will interview Mr. William Benton publisher and chairman of the
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Encyclopedia Britannica who discusses the need for new techniques to meet the new
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challenge of education.
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And now here is Dr. Tim Benton in light
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of your many experiences and your travels and your understanding's of
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the problems of education. Perhaps we could discuss for a few minutes
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here what the problems of facing education really are and how significant they
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are. Let's start off with is there a teacher shortage. Is there a
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classroom shortage. Is there a dollar shortage to provide these as well
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as other things and then perhaps we could discuss curriculum and its effect as a
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problem in education. And I think it's rather obvious don't you that we have enough
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statistics data presented to us that the exploding growing population
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will provide certain kinds of shortages based upon facts or
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lack of facts that if we continue education of the kind we now have
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we will need to do much more in the future in supporting it. How
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significant do you see this really and do you think these problems
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actually are facing us today or are they problems which we're going to have to attempt
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solutions for today to do something really about them next year or the year after or something.
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While everybody likes to start at home and I can tell you that in Fairfield Connecticut one of the
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richest communities per capita in the world.
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Indeed Connecticut has the highest income per family in the world and the
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richest city and the richest town in the world all in my state.
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Great industrial state that said 300 years to get rich even it's even
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richer at the state of Michigan.
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My son was only in high school half a day.
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It's one reason Mrs. Bennett and I sent him away to a private school. We didn't like him coming home
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at 12 o'clock because there wasn't room to
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keep him. So we have a shortage of schools in my community.
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The Office of Education reports this all across the United States. There's a lot of
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argument at the political level as to how big the shortage is. But I see it estimated
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at one hundred fifty two hundred thousand classrooms. Do you happen to know the exact
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figure I think the last one from the Office of Education was something like
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a hundred fifty or seventy five thousand classroom one hundred eighty thousand two
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hundred eighty thousand. All right. So we also have a
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shortage of teachers for these classrooms and a good deal of criticism
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about the quality of the teachers. The brightest boys
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and girls today don't attend
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especially the boys when they leave college to go into teaching.
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The teachers colleges are tending to draw
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their recruits from the lower spectrum in the graduating classes
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from the colleges rather than the higher spectrum.
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So there's a shortage and grave fear about the quality
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now. I don't think we're
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ever going to get enough
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teachers on the old standards.
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One teacher for every 25 or 30 students.
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The students are increasing too rapidly for one reason.
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At the college level which I'm more familiar with because I'm a trustee of four colleges and
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universities we expect by 1970. To
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have doubled the number of applicants. Another way
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of putting this is that we must in the next 10 years if we're going to take care of them build
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as big a plant as we've built since William and Mary was
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founded in 16 25 or 30. We've got
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to do in 10 years at the plant level what we've taken over 300 years to
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do. So this booming birth rate that's
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what the journalists and magazines called the exploding
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population a world phenomenon is also a United States
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phenomenon. Now this leads us to the
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need and I'm glad you're studying these kind of needs
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a doctor to Michigan State University. I congratulate you on the
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grants you have from the on of the Defense Education Act and most
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important step forward by the way in the federal activities in
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the field of education. But we've got to learn how to use the new
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techniques in the teaching process.
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In my judgment for 20 years I've been
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interested in the development of classroom motion pictures
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the growth of their use comes painfully slowly because as you know
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educators don't change very rapidly.
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I noticed last January the president of the Ford Foundation in his annual report
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reported 16 million dollars from that great foundation in the year
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1959 went to educational television.
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So in the new techniques in television in the
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motion picture.
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We have opportunities to help relieve the
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pressure as indeed last year when I was in Miami and
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that was in February and I was in Miami merely to go to school.
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Not at my age but I took advantage of being in Miami to go over and meet the superintendent of
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schools. And I spent a couple of days because Miami is like
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Michigan State owns a television station.
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It's bad during the daytime by teachers in the Miami public schools. I sat
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there in those classrooms in Miami. There would be three and 400 young people of 15
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or 16 and the ones I attended at the high school level looking at 10 or
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15.
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Screens television screens taking their notes.
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There are a couple of teachers in the room but it was 10 times the normal sized class
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with their eyes glued to these these screens.
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And I could tell from my own personal observation that the superintendent of schools
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was giving me a truthful report when he said that this was saving the Miami
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school system that year perhaps 500 teachers. And two or three
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million dollars worth of school buildings.
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Now these weren't quite highly professional teachers on the
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TV either. These weren't Dr. White teaching physics the
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selected by the Physics Society of the country is the country's greatest physics teacher or Dr.
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Baxter teaching chemistry
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to two stories told last January. Fascinating article in
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the Reader's Digest. These were just ordinary school teachers from the
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Miami school system. Of course the best they had and they let them spend
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all day getting ready perhaps to teach 30 minutes or
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60 minutes.
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But.
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They weren't highly paid four star personalities and
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yet they held command of those three hundred children and it was a great lesson to me.
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I wish all our school systems had television stations and I
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congratulate the Ford Foundation on their leadership its giving because this is
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one technique and procedure with which to relieve this
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teacher shortage in direct connection with this
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since we end up on this note here of the use of communication media directly in
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education.
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We have talked about the curriculum the idea here if you can be too much in one question.
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Sure.
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But you see many critics have said in reality this doesn't
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save money and that the money saving aspect of the use of new media mass media
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and what we know about them in education the most significant thing is not whether money is being
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saved or not in the sum total perhaps it may be and perhaps it may not at the
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individual teacher level. Perhaps more is being spent at that point but the use of
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then numbers of teachers and classrooms may be less. This is being
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held up in these arguments. The fact that this is being compared to the educational system as
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we now know it and it had the greatest experience with 30 students in one classroom
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approximately and all day in such a situation
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isn't really that significant. Aspect or behind the
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scenes principle of all of this experimentation that's being done
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isn't the most important thing whether or not education is being improved as far as
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an individual student is concerned. Do you feel that under such a
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system where whatever as I think you identified the best teacher in that system not the
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best teacher in the country and not the best as an educator feel but in the school system and
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utilizing the best teacher there is the child the learner being
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benefited by this or do you think there's any importance to these
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criticisms which say it's being mechanized that's all.
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Oh I know of course.
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Except the reports of Dr Stott or the former superintendent of schools in
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Los Angeles who is working for the Ford Foundation and the reports of
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these distinguished educators assembled by the Ford Foundation
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that these techniques are improving the opportunity for the individual
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student. Certainly they should not be judged merely by money saving
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yardsticks But you know what.
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If they happen to save some money too it's going to minimize the
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opposition perhaps of the Chamber of Commerce who's afraid the taxes may go up
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in the efforts of the school board to improve education and certainly we don't
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object. We should we shouldn't object to take Deeks
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that simultaneously may offer a better
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education as this airplane that's flying over several Middle
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Western States financed by the Ford Foundation. Spraying
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television programs to thousands of rural
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schools in subjects where the teachers in the ER schools aren't even competent to
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teach.
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Thus improving the product and at the same time
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as these programs are perfected and perhaps accepted also by the
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city schools. At the same time perhaps saving money
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in the school budget. I don't think however that our objective here
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is to bring down the cost of public education. We need to put
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more money into public education rather than less money.
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We need to pay our teachers a great deal better that will improve the
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quality of the teachers. It's going to cost money to build
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television stations to operate them and to make the motion pictures that they
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require for transmission. These things
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are all going to be costly. The proportion of money we're putting into education is far
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less than the proportion the Soviet Union puts into education for
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example and their proportion in some of our states is far
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higher than the ratio in many other of
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our states. I don't approach the problem primarily
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as a money saver. I approach it from the standpoint of how do we
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improve the public educational system this is in line with the greatest dreams of
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our political leadership over the last hundred fifty years.
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This goes right back to Thomas Jefferson's dream of equal opportunity for all
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young people. I think we ought to be giving it the top priority of
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the Pacific Ocean opened up tomorrow morning and swallowed up the Soviet Union. Though I
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don't object to in fact I myself when I came back in the Soviet Union
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five years ago I helped precipitate a lot of the discussion in this
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country on contrasting our educational system with some of the
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Soviet techniques.
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But they should not.
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This should not be the prime argument. The prime argument is that it's in line
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with the highest dreams of our ancestors and the greatest
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hopes of our leadership for our descendants.
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Senator Ben we got almost to the curriculum and in this and I think our
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curriculum is too soft. All right.
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I don't think our boys and girls work hard enough and I don't think they study the right
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subjects or apply themselves with sufficient zeal of the right subjects.
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I feel very strongly about this. I don't like to see them studying
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commercial English when they ought to be studying English learning
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some worn and outmoded type of
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gibberish under the guise that it's English. And what kind of
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mathematics is commercial mathematics. It's just
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funny a lot of courses in my judgment for young people who haven't the
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intellectual toughness to apply themselves to algebra. So I'm
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unsympathetic with the enormous proliferation of
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courses in the last 50 years in our high schools. The great
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emphasis on vocational ism on which boys and girls often study
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things that they won't possibly find useful 10 or 20 years
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afterwards because they'll be doing. And devoting themselves to
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pursuits wholly different from those that they may have thought that they
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wanted to take up when they were age 14 and 15.
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I think there's a great deal to the.
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Criticisms of some nonprofessional educators such as President Hoover
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who is a trained engineer is you know Professor Robbie the
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great Columbia physicist Admiral Rickover who's written a
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book on this subject.
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And one thing these men to take an example of emphasized is the
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need for making mathematics compulsory through the high schools.
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Now it isn't only that a boy or girl is likely to learn more studying
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mathematics than studying a lot of these pap courses that he's
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fed because they're easy. Mathematics is hard. It's
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not only that and that he'll get better training studying mathematics for almost
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anything he decides to do in life. But there's a second factor.
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I'm Professor Robbie in particular has pointed this out that a youngster
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who enters Michigan State your university at age 18 if he hasn't
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had his mathematics. Is likely to find a
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career in any of the sciences for close to it. He can't go
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on into chemistry or physics or medicine.
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Most of the other sciences at least this is true of most universities.
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Well if it's not true let's agree he'd have a lot better training for the
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sciences if he continued his mathematics up through age 18.
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Do you realize the position this is placed on universities.
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Because by saying these are close to him this sample student you've taken
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here in no way reflects upon his desire to enter into these fields his desire may
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be extremely high.
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You bet that he may have made the decision when he was 13 or 14 incompetent to make
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it on the advice of some incompetent high school teacher. Or
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perhaps the high school didn't even teach the mathematics or didn't even have a teacher in
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physics. Only a third of our boys and girls at the high school level today get as
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much as one year of chemistry. And I think it's something like only a 6 to get
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one year of physics. Now every Russian boy and girl gets
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seven years of chemistry and several years of physics and several years of a foreign
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language and much more thorough training in Russian and we give our youngsters
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in the English language and to this extent with all the distortions in the
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Soviet educational system. With all the emphasis on
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the Leninist Stalinist dogma with all twisted history.
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And the distorted ideology in this particular sense the
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Russian boys and girls at age 17 or 18 come out of that Russian
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Soviet school system on the average with a
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solider and better training in the liberal arts than we're giving our young people
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here in the United States and a better understanding of science and the new
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technology and the impact of science and technology on the world in
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which our young people are going to live. They will have had President grace all of you pointed
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this out.
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The conference that I sponsored at Yale conference in January of
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1959 he said there's much too much talk about the Russian
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emphasis on science which is true enough there's not
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enough talk about their interest on making every point girl learn a
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foreign language and having a good
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solid grounding in the Russian language and literature.
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I remember a friend of mine who was president of the University of Oklahoma one year perhaps this
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story makes the point.
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One year said to me during his presidency President Brand.
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He was using a story to illustrate the unhappy state of preparation in
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English of the students that were accepted at the University of Oklahoma
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where they had to spend the first couple of years of their English courses doing nothing but
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fill in for what the youngsters had failed to learn and study and I school and it's only not
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giving them college credit for this either. Well that I don't know. Well if they could learn to master
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communication in the form the English language I think that's more important than the college credit
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where they got the college credit not I don't know. But he told me about the sad looking
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freshman coed who fixed her eyes on him and looked
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unhappy and President Brand said Why what's the matter young lady you don't look very happy
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and she said well she said I come here to be went with that I
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ain't.
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This was 20 years ago and it comes back that he had this conversation but it
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illustrates the problem faced by some of our colleges and universities in
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taking trained products of our high schools.
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And we need a frontal assault. On
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an improvement of the public school curriculum right across the United States
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now this is exceedingly difficult because the educators themselves
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change so slowly.
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I think you're more likely to get leadership in this area aggressive leadership through the
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politicians and the parents than you are through the educators
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I don't like to say this to a professor of education but this in
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general is my observation. This is why I last
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January when I issued a report for the Democratic
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Advisory Council and issued I drafted the report as
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chairman of their Subcommittee on education. And thus I helped prepare the
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report help take responsibility for it. The number one
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recommendation in that report had nothing to do with classroom shortages
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or teacher shortages or the curriculum
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it called for setting up at the federal level. What I call
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the council of educational advisers.
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To issue an annual report on the state of education in the United States because we're
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not going to fix this in a year or five years or 10 years. Dr. Ralph
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Tyler whom you will know well is perhaps the best known professor of education in the
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country. He's head of the Institute of behavioral sciences at Stanford University.
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Once in his speech to the trustees of the University of Chicago said that it takes
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50 years for 50 percent of the educators to pick up a new idea
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that's manifestly a good idea.
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Well I don't like to wait that 50 years from 50 percent of the educators.
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I want a council of educational advisers now to give you a
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little background on this. The full employment act of 1946
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in which I was interested set up a Council of Economic Advisers.
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This is been an enormous leap helpful and vital
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in the formulation of national policy. Every year this council
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puts out a report. For the president and
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the Congress this report then goes to a joint committee of the Congress
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called the Joint Committee on the economic report. I served on that committee when I was in
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the United States Senate. We would debate this report in
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terms of its implication for National Policy. This report would have
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very important implications applied to the budget problems of
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taxation and so forth. And it put before
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the Congress in a major and serious way. Each year the
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state of our economy I believe that education
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much our biggest expenditure if we're going to judge it by economic
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aspects of education it's by far the biggest chunk of the budget of
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our states and our cities. And second only to national defense.
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If you add it all together including the federal government I think education
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is so important that a bill of that kind should be passed
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at the federal level we should set up a council of educational advisors
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each year they ought to put out a report. Which would stimulate a
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great deal of price discussion. It would stimulate debates by parent teachers
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organizations all over the country. It would make superintendents of schools
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and departments of education at our universities continuously
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face up to a lot of the tough and controversial
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questions. It would help give orderliness and
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constructiveness to federal legislation.
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It might even take the three hundred different units and bodies
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in the federal government that are all devoted to education scattered all over Washington in
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every department of the wash in Washington and bring them together into some kind of
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orderliness and some kind of systematic
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attack on the problem. I give this suggestion to
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show that new ideas are needed in this field. No inventions
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at the political level. And we can't keep on and shouldn't keep on.
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In my judgment the way we're going we're also entering the area here of
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leadership in educational affairs and where it comes from and how it comes about.
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In the past few years we've had a tremendous number of reports come out about
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education sponsored by various organizations some of them come immediately to mind the
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Rockefeller report the right to appoint the Rickover. Yes all of these just
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immediately come to mind there are several more. As it turns out
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each of them propounds a slightly different philosophy theory
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and report therefore and different conclusion slightly different come from each one.
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Some cases the slight differences are major differences but most of the green on some of
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these fundamentals we've been discussing Well such is the fact that there is a classroom
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shortage. There is a teacher shortage. The teachers are not paid enough
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to attract the quality of teachers that we want. That
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more money is required for education. Now that the American people
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have got to face up to the fact that if they want top education they're going to have
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to pay the taxes and they're going to have to put up the money to get it.
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Well no I think they're all together on those. Now they start to argue a
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lot when they get down to questions of curriculum and the extent
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to which television can constructively be used and
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what the standards ought to be for teaching and so
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forth I think the whole teaching profession is overlaid with a lot of obsolete
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standards in my state of Connecticut a boy was a valedictorian at
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Yale and it was majored in physics can't teach physics in the Hartford high schools.
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I think that's absolutely ridiculous. And this goes back to the days when
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there were low standards for teachers. My mother started teaching school early.
[27:38 - 27:43]
You know I would age 13 in a one room schoolhouse. She was county
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superintendent of schools the state of Minnesota with only one year of college.
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Now when you have low standards of this kind and the school system has become a
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pawn of the politicians and a parade of political patronage you're going
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to have a lot of pressures develop to raise standards
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and we can understand the reasons we have a lot of these laws on our
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books. At the same time we can recognize that a lot of these laws are
[28:13 - 28:18]
now obsolete. They aren't needed any longer to protect the school
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systems from the politicians and a boy who was a valedictorian in
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physics in a Yale class and we are faced with a
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great shortage of physics teachers ought to be able to teach physics in art
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from high school in my judgment and get his better gaji at night.
[28:37 - 28:42]
Mr William Benton publisher and chairman of the Encyclopedia Britannica has just spoken
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of the need for new techniques to meet the new challenge in education. Mr Benson was
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interviewed by Dr James in terror at Michigan State University College of Education.
[28:52 - 28:57]
The next programme in the series will bring back Mr. Charles ACP and chairman of the Department of
[28:57 - 29:02]
Communications and education at New York University. You will hear Mr. Stephen discuss the
[29:02 - 29:07]
mass media and education and their future as either rivals or allies.
[29:07 - 29:12]
Oral essays on education was produced by Wayne S. Wayne and Patrick for distribution is
[29:12 - 29:16]
made through the National Association of educational going castors. This is the
[29:16 - 29:19]
end AB Radio Network.