William Benton

Rolling tape recorded program is distributed through the facilities of the National Association of

educational broadcasters.

Oral essays on education a dynamic radio series designed to present leading

personalities of our society as they attempt to discover the scope of problems which confront

modern education. This week Dr. James and Tara Michigan State University College

of Education will interview Mr. William Benton publisher and chairman of the

Encyclopedia Britannica who discusses the need for new techniques to meet the new

challenge of education.

And now here is Dr. Tim Benton in light

of your many experiences and your travels and your understanding's of

the problems of education. Perhaps we could discuss for a few minutes

here what the problems of facing education really are and how significant they

are. Let's start off with is there a teacher shortage. Is there a

classroom shortage. Is there a dollar shortage to provide these as well

as other things and then perhaps we could discuss curriculum and its effect as a

problem in education. And I think it's rather obvious don't you that we have enough

statistics data presented to us that the exploding growing population

will provide certain kinds of shortages based upon facts or

lack of facts that if we continue education of the kind we now have

we will need to do much more in the future in supporting it. How

significant do you see this really and do you think these problems

actually are facing us today or are they problems which we're going to have to attempt

solutions for today to do something really about them next year or the year after or something.

While everybody likes to start at home and I can tell you that in Fairfield Connecticut one of the

richest communities per capita in the world.

Indeed Connecticut has the highest income per family in the world and the

richest city and the richest town in the world all in my state.

Great industrial state that said 300 years to get rich even it's even

richer at the state of Michigan.

My son was only in high school half a day.

It's one reason Mrs. Bennett and I sent him away to a private school. We didn't like him coming home

at 12 o'clock because there wasn't room to

keep him. So we have a shortage of schools in my community.

The Office of Education reports this all across the United States. There's a lot of

argument at the political level as to how big the shortage is. But I see it estimated

at one hundred fifty two hundred thousand classrooms. Do you happen to know the exact

figure I think the last one from the Office of Education was something like

a hundred fifty or seventy five thousand classroom one hundred eighty thousand two

hundred eighty thousand. All right. So we also have a

shortage of teachers for these classrooms and a good deal of criticism

about the quality of the teachers. The brightest boys

and girls today don't attend

especially the boys when they leave college to go into teaching.

The teachers colleges are tending to draw

their recruits from the lower spectrum in the graduating classes

from the colleges rather than the higher spectrum.

So there's a shortage and grave fear about the quality

now. I don't think we're

ever going to get enough

teachers on the old standards.

One teacher for every 25 or 30 students.

The students are increasing too rapidly for one reason.

At the college level which I'm more familiar with because I'm a trustee of four colleges and

universities we expect by 1970. To

have doubled the number of applicants. Another way

of putting this is that we must in the next 10 years if we're going to take care of them build

as big a plant as we've built since William and Mary was

founded in 16 25 or 30. We've got

to do in 10 years at the plant level what we've taken over 300 years to

do. So this booming birth rate that's

what the journalists and magazines called the exploding

population a world phenomenon is also a United States

phenomenon. Now this leads us to the

need and I'm glad you're studying these kind of needs

a doctor to Michigan State University. I congratulate you on the

grants you have from the on of the Defense Education Act and most

important step forward by the way in the federal activities in

the field of education. But we've got to learn how to use the new

techniques in the teaching process.

In my judgment for 20 years I've been

interested in the development of classroom motion pictures

the growth of their use comes painfully slowly because as you know

educators don't change very rapidly.

I noticed last January the president of the Ford Foundation in his annual report

reported 16 million dollars from that great foundation in the year

1959 went to educational television.

So in the new techniques in television in the

motion picture.

We have opportunities to help relieve the

pressure as indeed last year when I was in Miami and

that was in February and I was in Miami merely to go to school.

Not at my age but I took advantage of being in Miami to go over and meet the superintendent of

schools. And I spent a couple of days because Miami is like

Michigan State owns a television station.

It's bad during the daytime by teachers in the Miami public schools. I sat

there in those classrooms in Miami. There would be three and 400 young people of 15

or 16 and the ones I attended at the high school level looking at 10 or

15.

Screens television screens taking their notes.

There are a couple of teachers in the room but it was 10 times the normal sized class

with their eyes glued to these these screens.

And I could tell from my own personal observation that the superintendent of schools

was giving me a truthful report when he said that this was saving the Miami

school system that year perhaps 500 teachers. And two or three

million dollars worth of school buildings.

Now these weren't quite highly professional teachers on the

TV either. These weren't Dr. White teaching physics the

selected by the Physics Society of the country is the country's greatest physics teacher or Dr.

Baxter teaching chemistry

to two stories told last January. Fascinating article in

the Reader's Digest. These were just ordinary school teachers from the

Miami school system. Of course the best they had and they let them spend

all day getting ready perhaps to teach 30 minutes or

60 minutes.

But.

They weren't highly paid four star personalities and

yet they held command of those three hundred children and it was a great lesson to me.

I wish all our school systems had television stations and I

congratulate the Ford Foundation on their leadership its giving because this is

one technique and procedure with which to relieve this

teacher shortage in direct connection with this

since we end up on this note here of the use of communication media directly in

education.

We have talked about the curriculum the idea here if you can be too much in one question.

Sure.

But you see many critics have said in reality this doesn't

save money and that the money saving aspect of the use of new media mass media

and what we know about them in education the most significant thing is not whether money is being

saved or not in the sum total perhaps it may be and perhaps it may not at the

individual teacher level. Perhaps more is being spent at that point but the use of

then numbers of teachers and classrooms may be less. This is being

held up in these arguments. The fact that this is being compared to the educational system as

we now know it and it had the greatest experience with 30 students in one classroom

approximately and all day in such a situation

isn't really that significant. Aspect or behind the

scenes principle of all of this experimentation that's being done

isn't the most important thing whether or not education is being improved as far as

an individual student is concerned. Do you feel that under such a

system where whatever as I think you identified the best teacher in that system not the

best teacher in the country and not the best as an educator feel but in the school system and

utilizing the best teacher there is the child the learner being

benefited by this or do you think there's any importance to these

criticisms which say it's being mechanized that's all.

Oh I know of course.

Except the reports of Dr Stott or the former superintendent of schools in

Los Angeles who is working for the Ford Foundation and the reports of

these distinguished educators assembled by the Ford Foundation

that these techniques are improving the opportunity for the individual

student. Certainly they should not be judged merely by money saving

yardsticks But you know what.

If they happen to save some money too it's going to minimize the

opposition perhaps of the Chamber of Commerce who's afraid the taxes may go up

in the efforts of the school board to improve education and certainly we don't

object. We should we shouldn't object to take Deeks

that simultaneously may offer a better

education as this airplane that's flying over several Middle

Western States financed by the Ford Foundation. Spraying

television programs to thousands of rural

schools in subjects where the teachers in the ER schools aren't even competent to

teach.

Thus improving the product and at the same time

as these programs are perfected and perhaps accepted also by the

city schools. At the same time perhaps saving money

in the school budget. I don't think however that our objective here

is to bring down the cost of public education. We need to put

more money into public education rather than less money.

We need to pay our teachers a great deal better that will improve the

quality of the teachers. It's going to cost money to build

television stations to operate them and to make the motion pictures that they

require for transmission. These things

are all going to be costly. The proportion of money we're putting into education is far

less than the proportion the Soviet Union puts into education for

example and their proportion in some of our states is far

higher than the ratio in many other of

our states. I don't approach the problem primarily

as a money saver. I approach it from the standpoint of how do we

improve the public educational system this is in line with the greatest dreams of

our political leadership over the last hundred fifty years.

This goes right back to Thomas Jefferson's dream of equal opportunity for all

young people. I think we ought to be giving it the top priority of

the Pacific Ocean opened up tomorrow morning and swallowed up the Soviet Union. Though I

don't object to in fact I myself when I came back in the Soviet Union

five years ago I helped precipitate a lot of the discussion in this

country on contrasting our educational system with some of the

Soviet techniques.

But they should not.

This should not be the prime argument. The prime argument is that it's in line

with the highest dreams of our ancestors and the greatest

hopes of our leadership for our descendants.

Senator Ben we got almost to the curriculum and in this and I think our

curriculum is too soft. All right.

I don't think our boys and girls work hard enough and I don't think they study the right

subjects or apply themselves with sufficient zeal of the right subjects.

I feel very strongly about this. I don't like to see them studying

commercial English when they ought to be studying English learning

some worn and outmoded type of

gibberish under the guise that it's English. And what kind of

mathematics is commercial mathematics. It's just

funny a lot of courses in my judgment for young people who haven't the

intellectual toughness to apply themselves to algebra. So I'm

unsympathetic with the enormous proliferation of

courses in the last 50 years in our high schools. The great

emphasis on vocational ism on which boys and girls often study

things that they won't possibly find useful 10 or 20 years

afterwards because they'll be doing. And devoting themselves to

pursuits wholly different from those that they may have thought that they

wanted to take up when they were age 14 and 15.

I think there's a great deal to the.

Criticisms of some nonprofessional educators such as President Hoover

who is a trained engineer is you know Professor Robbie the

great Columbia physicist Admiral Rickover who's written a

book on this subject.

And one thing these men to take an example of emphasized is the

need for making mathematics compulsory through the high schools.

Now it isn't only that a boy or girl is likely to learn more studying

mathematics than studying a lot of these pap courses that he's

fed because they're easy. Mathematics is hard. It's

not only that and that he'll get better training studying mathematics for almost

anything he decides to do in life. But there's a second factor.

I'm Professor Robbie in particular has pointed this out that a youngster

who enters Michigan State your university at age 18 if he hasn't

had his mathematics. Is likely to find a

career in any of the sciences for close to it. He can't go

on into chemistry or physics or medicine.

Most of the other sciences at least this is true of most universities.

Well if it's not true let's agree he'd have a lot better training for the

sciences if he continued his mathematics up through age 18.

Do you realize the position this is placed on universities.

Because by saying these are close to him this sample student you've taken

here in no way reflects upon his desire to enter into these fields his desire may

be extremely high.

You bet that he may have made the decision when he was 13 or 14 incompetent to make

it on the advice of some incompetent high school teacher. Or

perhaps the high school didn't even teach the mathematics or didn't even have a teacher in

physics. Only a third of our boys and girls at the high school level today get as

much as one year of chemistry. And I think it's something like only a 6 to get

one year of physics. Now every Russian boy and girl gets

seven years of chemistry and several years of physics and several years of a foreign

language and much more thorough training in Russian and we give our youngsters

in the English language and to this extent with all the distortions in the

Soviet educational system. With all the emphasis on

the Leninist Stalinist dogma with all twisted history.

And the distorted ideology in this particular sense the

Russian boys and girls at age 17 or 18 come out of that Russian

Soviet school system on the average with a

solider and better training in the liberal arts than we're giving our young people

here in the United States and a better understanding of science and the new

technology and the impact of science and technology on the world in

which our young people are going to live. They will have had President grace all of you pointed

this out.

The conference that I sponsored at Yale conference in January of

1959 he said there's much too much talk about the Russian

emphasis on science which is true enough there's not

enough talk about their interest on making every point girl learn a

foreign language and having a good

solid grounding in the Russian language and literature.

I remember a friend of mine who was president of the University of Oklahoma one year perhaps this

story makes the point.

One year said to me during his presidency President Brand.

He was using a story to illustrate the unhappy state of preparation in

English of the students that were accepted at the University of Oklahoma

where they had to spend the first couple of years of their English courses doing nothing but

fill in for what the youngsters had failed to learn and study and I school and it's only not

giving them college credit for this either. Well that I don't know. Well if they could learn to master

communication in the form the English language I think that's more important than the college credit

where they got the college credit not I don't know. But he told me about the sad looking

freshman coed who fixed her eyes on him and looked

unhappy and President Brand said Why what's the matter young lady you don't look very happy

and she said well she said I come here to be went with that I

ain't.

This was 20 years ago and it comes back that he had this conversation but it

illustrates the problem faced by some of our colleges and universities in

taking trained products of our high schools.

And we need a frontal assault. On

an improvement of the public school curriculum right across the United States

now this is exceedingly difficult because the educators themselves

change so slowly.

I think you're more likely to get leadership in this area aggressive leadership through the

politicians and the parents than you are through the educators

I don't like to say this to a professor of education but this in

general is my observation. This is why I last

January when I issued a report for the Democratic

Advisory Council and issued I drafted the report as

chairman of their Subcommittee on education. And thus I helped prepare the

report help take responsibility for it. The number one

recommendation in that report had nothing to do with classroom shortages

or teacher shortages or the curriculum

it called for setting up at the federal level. What I call

the council of educational advisers.

To issue an annual report on the state of education in the United States because we're

not going to fix this in a year or five years or 10 years. Dr. Ralph

Tyler whom you will know well is perhaps the best known professor of education in the

country. He's head of the Institute of behavioral sciences at Stanford University.

Once in his speech to the trustees of the University of Chicago said that it takes

50 years for 50 percent of the educators to pick up a new idea

that's manifestly a good idea.

Well I don't like to wait that 50 years from 50 percent of the educators.

I want a council of educational advisers now to give you a

little background on this. The full employment act of 1946

in which I was interested set up a Council of Economic Advisers.

This is been an enormous leap helpful and vital

in the formulation of national policy. Every year this council

puts out a report. For the president and

the Congress this report then goes to a joint committee of the Congress

called the Joint Committee on the economic report. I served on that committee when I was in

the United States Senate. We would debate this report in

terms of its implication for National Policy. This report would have

very important implications applied to the budget problems of

taxation and so forth. And it put before

the Congress in a major and serious way. Each year the

state of our economy I believe that education

much our biggest expenditure if we're going to judge it by economic

aspects of education it's by far the biggest chunk of the budget of

our states and our cities. And second only to national defense.

If you add it all together including the federal government I think education

is so important that a bill of that kind should be passed

at the federal level we should set up a council of educational advisors

each year they ought to put out a report. Which would stimulate a

great deal of price discussion. It would stimulate debates by parent teachers

organizations all over the country. It would make superintendents of schools

and departments of education at our universities continuously

face up to a lot of the tough and controversial

questions. It would help give orderliness and

constructiveness to federal legislation.

It might even take the three hundred different units and bodies

in the federal government that are all devoted to education scattered all over Washington in

every department of the wash in Washington and bring them together into some kind of

orderliness and some kind of systematic

attack on the problem. I give this suggestion to

show that new ideas are needed in this field. No inventions

at the political level. And we can't keep on and shouldn't keep on.

In my judgment the way we're going we're also entering the area here of

leadership in educational affairs and where it comes from and how it comes about.

In the past few years we've had a tremendous number of reports come out about

education sponsored by various organizations some of them come immediately to mind the

Rockefeller report the right to appoint the Rickover. Yes all of these just

immediately come to mind there are several more. As it turns out

each of them propounds a slightly different philosophy theory

and report therefore and different conclusion slightly different come from each one.

Some cases the slight differences are major differences but most of the green on some of

these fundamentals we've been discussing Well such is the fact that there is a classroom

shortage. There is a teacher shortage. The teachers are not paid enough

to attract the quality of teachers that we want. That

more money is required for education. Now that the American people

have got to face up to the fact that if they want top education they're going to have

to pay the taxes and they're going to have to put up the money to get it.

Well no I think they're all together on those. Now they start to argue a

lot when they get down to questions of curriculum and the extent

to which television can constructively be used and

what the standards ought to be for teaching and so

forth I think the whole teaching profession is overlaid with a lot of obsolete

standards in my state of Connecticut a boy was a valedictorian at

Yale and it was majored in physics can't teach physics in the Hartford high schools.

I think that's absolutely ridiculous. And this goes back to the days when

there were low standards for teachers. My mother started teaching school early.

You know I would age 13 in a one room schoolhouse. She was county

superintendent of schools the state of Minnesota with only one year of college.

Now when you have low standards of this kind and the school system has become a

pawn of the politicians and a parade of political patronage you're going

to have a lot of pressures develop to raise standards

and we can understand the reasons we have a lot of these laws on our

books. At the same time we can recognize that a lot of these laws are

now obsolete. They aren't needed any longer to protect the school

systems from the politicians and a boy who was a valedictorian in

physics in a Yale class and we are faced with a

great shortage of physics teachers ought to be able to teach physics in art

from high school in my judgment and get his better gaji at night.

Mr William Benton publisher and chairman of the Encyclopedia Britannica has just spoken

of the need for new techniques to meet the new challenge in education. Mr Benson was

interviewed by Dr James in terror at Michigan State University College of Education.

The next programme in the series will bring back Mr. Charles ACP and chairman of the Department of

Communications and education at New York University. You will hear Mr. Stephen discuss the

mass media and education and their future as either rivals or allies.

Oral essays on education was produced by Wayne S. Wayne and Patrick for distribution is

made through the National Association of educational going castors. This is the

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