The U. S. Sits In

Last week the U.S. officially moved into the eleven-month-old United Nations powwow on postwar education. To London went the State Department's broad-beamed, broad-minded Ralph Edmond Turner, a brilliant and experienced educator. He will sit as an observer with the representatives of ten other United Nations (and the still unofficial observers of Russia, China, India, the British Dominions). Chairman is British education chief Richard Austen Butler.

So far no one outside the powwow knows its exact agenda or how it is progressing. But U.S. educational circles felt sure that the discussion revolved around the hopeful principles adopted last month by a major meeting of U.S. and foreign educators at Harpers Ferry, W. Va. Findings at the Ferry:

> Devastated countries should be helped to rebuild their educational systems.

>The United Nations should rebuild Axis educational systems, eliminate Axis-type teaching, and gradually pass the schools back to the Axis peoples as they become good neighbors in a democratic world.

>An International Education Office should be established to keep sharp watch for relapses into Axis-type teaching, and to help democratic educational systems when invited to do so.

>In all countries, world citizenship should be stressed in addition to national citizenship.

That the State Department's Turner would work toward such aims as these seemed clear from the fact that he had helped formulate them at Harpers Ferry. His personal history would seem to assure the forcefulness of his work. The Iowa-born economist and historian (Great Cultural Traditions) is veteran No. 1 of the bitter wars fought around the University of Pittsburgh's skyscraper "Cathedral of Learning." There Turner made a fine teaching record only to be fired in 1934 by Chancellor John Gabbert Bowman. With this ousting, the Chancellor started something. Investigation by a professional committee of highest standing convicted the "Cathedral" of persistent violations of academic freedom, and found Turner a first-rate scholar and educator who had not tempered his opinions to possible sources of extra endowment. The only thing his colleagues could find against Turner was a certain "impulsiveness," a dynamism which provoked extreme reactions, either favorable or the opposite.

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