Official Report-1944
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OFFICIAL REPORT-1944 THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS A Department of the X.nJoml Education As.sociation of the United St;ucs 57^,. WARTIME CONFERENCES ON EDUCATION r H E M E /fvy Tk Pt'oplc'5 Scliools m War awA Peace Seattle • Atlanta • Islew York • Chicago • Kansas City UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA LIBRARIES EDUCATION LIBRARY OFFICIAL REPORT Wartime Conferences on Education STATE ri^T ;Vf '• ^^ "^^ AND «-**—— ••*- >»Aii>i£SV|iajB, ^^j^ FLA. SEATTLE January 10-12, 1944 ATLANTA February 15-17, 1944 NEW YORK February 22-24, 1944 CHICAGO February 18-March 1, 1944 KANSAS CITY March 8-10, 1944 THE.AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS A Department of the National Fducation Association of the United States 1201 SIXTEENTH STREET, NORTHWEST, WASHINGTON 6, D. C. March 1944 PRICE, $1 PER COPY : J 7^. Cr rDOCATIOS LfBBlil N FEBRUARY 1940, the railroad yards at St. Louis were filled with the special trains and extra Pullmans handling the convention travel of the American Associa- tion of School Administrators. Special trains and extra Pullmans for civilians were early war casualties. In February 1941, two hundred and eighty-two firms and organi- zations participated in the convention exhibit of the American Association of School Administrators in the Atlantic City Audi- torium. Today, the armed forces are occupying that entire audito- rium, one of the largest in the world. In February 1942, the official count showed that 12,174 persons registered at the San Francisco convention. The housing bureau assigned 4837 hotel sleeping rooms. *Now every night in San Francisco, long lines of people stand in hotel lobbies anxiously seeking a place to sleep. In 1943, the convention was cancelled at the request of the Office of Defense Transportation. In 1944, it was neither ppctical nor appropriate to hold a great national convention, and yet the need for school administrators to get together to discuss present problems and future plans afifect- ing education was more urgent than ever. To meet this need, a series of five regional conferences was organized. This Official Report includes addresses delivered at each of the five conferences. Due to rationing of print paper, its size is limited to 256 pages, and so a number of excellent addresses are neces- sarily omitted. The central theme of the regional conference programs was "The People's Schools in War and Peace." The five headings under which the addresses in this volume are organized correspond with the sub-topics for the five general sessions of each conference, which were The People's Schools: An International View The People's Schools: A National View Free Schools for a Free People The People's Schools: Today and Tomorrow What's Right with the Schools in 1944 —— CONTENTS PART I The People's Schools: An International View Page The Schools of Britain Carry On —McClure 5 Education and the People's Peace —Stoddard 17 Education and the People's Peace —Carr . 29 To Bind Up the Wounds in the Schools of All Nations . Russell . 37 Education for Citizenship in a Reorganized World —Hunter . 49 PART II The People's Schools\: A National View Safeguarding the Intellectual Foundations of America . Studebaker 55 Morale for a Free World —Reed 63 Morale in Education in 1944 —Nuttall 71 The Teachers of America Serve a Nation at War —Joynes 75 The Military Training Program of the Army Service Forces . W eihle 82 Education for Civic Competence —Bacon PART III Free Schools for a Free People — . Financing Education in the Postwar Economy Norton . 91 Financing Education in the Postwar Economy — Grace . 100 Protecting Home Rule in American Education —Pillsbury . 105 Universal and Free Public Education —Erivin . 112 Protecting Home Rule in American Education —JVanamaker 117 ^ PART IV The People's Schools: Today and Tomorrow Some Suggested War and Peace Musts for Education . Bruncr 125 The Outlook for Education —Wade 133^ Readjusting the School Service to Postwar Needs — Gi'vens 138 Minds and Materials —Spratt 144 Today's Challenge to American Schools —Flora 145 u The Future of Education in the South —Arnall 154 Readjusting the School Service to Postwar Needs —Sutton 161 Education and Business —Boushall 172 [3] U*AO — 4 American Association of School Administrators PART V What's Right with the Schools in 1944 The Schools as Builders of Men —Engelhardt. 179 Schools, the Citadels of Democracy —Putnam . 183 What Is Right with Health and Physical Education —Bracken. 188 What's Right with the Schools —McFarland 195 Preserving the American Heritage — . DouJna . 200 . What's Right with the Educational Program in 1944 . Samuelsun . 207 The Schools as Preservers of Our Cultural Heritage . — H'arrcn . 213 The Schools as Promoters of Cooperation in the Educational Enterprise — Kennan . 218 School Citadels of Democracy — . Courier . 224 The Schools as Citadels of Democracy —Stoddard . 231 In Looking Forward — Edmonson . 234 Official Records Also at the Conferences 241 Seattle Conference Program 243 Atlanta Conference Program 244 New York Conference Program 245 Chicago Conference Program 246 Kansas City Conference Program 247 Report of the Board of Tellers 248 Report of the Auditing Committee 249 Yearbook Commissions 250 Officers 1943-44 250 Officers 1944-45 . 251 OUR POLICY—The American Association of School Administra- tors endorses no individual or group of individuals or any sentiment expressed by any speaker or other participant in its programs, except by resolution or by motion approved by a vote of its members. i «. Part I The People's Schools: An International View THE SCHOOLS OF BRITAIN CARRY ON WORTH MC CLURE, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON ] PRESIDENT, AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS Address at Seattle, Atlanta, New York, Chicago, and Kansas City Conferences For some weeks I have been privileged to visit the schools of the United Kingdom, running the whole scale from nursery classes for tots and toddlers whose mothers are doing war jobs, to adult programs like the Workers' Educational Association classes and the men's and women's institutes of the London County Council. I was there under the sponsorship of our own Office of War Information at the invitation of the British Board of Edu- cation and the British Ministry of Information to see boys and girls and teachers at work in wartime schools and to discuss those educational prob- lems which are common to both countries. I have observed education first- hand in a rapid sweep that has included parts of England, Scotland, and the North of Ireland. I have questioned and received open, informative answers from teachers, students, and authorities. I have seen nursery schools and wartime nurseries in Willesden, the Northern Counties, and Scotland. I have attended Workers' Educational Association classes in Manchester. I have visited schools of all kinds in the colliery towns, and I have met with eager-minded youth groups and their leaders. I have visited technical colleges where men and women are being trained for war jobs under the War Office and Ministry of Labour schemes, and members of the armed forces are receiving technical training. I have also spent a day at a famous "Public School" in Surrey. I was the guest of the British for a period of eight weeks. I was gone from this country about three months. I left Seattle on the 6th day of October, and I arrived in England on the 8th day of November. Twenty days of that time were spent in crossing the Atlantic Ocean, which in itself was an opportunity to live several weeks, for we straggled behind the convoy, and after we had been out a few days our engine broke down. We had already had the news that several of the stragglers were sunk. Then we started to go back to the nearest port, which was three days away, so we spent three days without support on the broad bosom of the Atlantic, lots of time to reflect on what a grand and glorious place the United States really is and how you had never appreciated it before. Coming back I had another unusual experience, that is, of flying home, touching four continents in the space of forty-eight hours. I literally filled my pipe in the northern part of the British Isles and smoked it in North Africa—they wouldn't let me smoke when I got on the plane. [5] 6 American Association of School Administrators I left in a sleet storm at 10:30 at night. The next morning I looked out of the window about 9:00 o'clock and there was a beach line seven or eight thousand feet below with a white line of surf, palm trees behind, and sand dunes in the background. After about three-quarters of an hour of flying, we came in sight of North Africa ; city, a partly a native quarter ; some modern buildings ; and a camel caravan winding its way along the road toward the gates of the city. In another five minutes we landed at a tremendous American airport which had been developed within the last year, really an immense project. Here were four Arabs squatted around a fire warming their hands, in spite of what I am sure a Californian would have at once claimed as a California climate. The sun was shining and the air was fresh and brisk, and the only thing that was missing to identify it as California was a sign announcing the city limits of Los Angeles. I had never visited England before. It was, therefore, a totally new ex- perience. Some of my British friends sympathized with me because I had never seen the old England, but after I had been there a short time, I felt I had seen an even more magnificent England than the old England which somehow I felt I possessed thru reading Dickens and his successors.