The Wasteland

Arnericans do a lot of worrying about waste of the nation's natural resources, but few give much thought to waste of its human beings. Last week, with the publication of its first major report--The Uneducated, by Sociologists Eli Ginzberg and Douglas W. Bray (Columbia; $4.50)--Columbia University's Conservation of Human Resources Project gave the U.S. some worrisome facts & figures:

P: Of 18 million men examined for military service during World War II, one in every twelve turned out to be illiterate, semiliterate, or mentally deficient. In 1941, 12% of all employed males in the country had less than five years of schooling.

P: A goodly share of the uneducated came from the Southeast, partly because of discrimination against Negroes. During the war, two out of ten Southern Negroes were rejected for "educational deficiency," compared to only one Northern or Western white in 100.

P: Another pocket of illiteracy is the Spanish American population (in the five counties of Texas with the highest rejection rate of 40% or more, 70% of the people were Spanish speaking). Still another: the Navajos, with an illiteracy rate in 1941 of approximately 90%.

P: Because of the growing tendency on the part of industry to reject illiterates, many of the uneducated are forced to become agricultural migrants. This, says the report, helps to explain the fact that each year "125,000 illiterate children are moving past the compulsory [school] attendance ages ... It is not comforting to realize that the Federal Government spends many times as much on assistance to migratory birds as on assistance to the children of migratory families."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.