The Danger of Disaster

Is the U.S. prepared to take care of the tidal wave of students now sweeping toward its schools and colleges? Absolutely not, says Harvard Historian Oscar Handlin in the Atlantic Monthly--and he presents a gloomy set of statistics to prove his point. The teacher shortage alone has become so acute, says he, that a whole generation faces the prospect of a totally inadequate education.

In 1955 the nation's elementary and secondary schools employed just over one million teachers. By 1959, says Handlin, they will need 600,000 more. But since "well over 50,000 retire or resign each year, the schools will find it necessary to recruit almost three-quarters of a million new teachers in the next three years. In addition, the 200,000 or so instructors now on the staffs of American universities will have to multiply themselves in the next twelve years to at least 450,000, through the recruitment of no fewer than 25,000 new faculty members each year."

A Tragic Delusion. "It will be a tragic delusion to imagine that the problem can be 'solved.' The enlistment of 200,000 or more new teachers a year between now and 1959 would absorb about half the total recipients of bachelor degrees in that period. In view of the demands for college-trained personnel in industry, in Government service, in science and in the other professions, such a diversion of talent is not likely or desirable."

What sort of future do the schools face? "The size of classes will no doubt grow, and many schools will fall back upon double sessions. The standards of certification may be undermined, and the quality of instruction will decline. Already, 100,000 'emergency' teachers are in service, and almost half the elementary schoolchildren receive instruction from unsupervised green hands. Less than 70% of elementary schoolteachers are college graduates, and only 60% of the college faculties have earned the Ph.D. . . For some subjects, a total collapse is imminent; 46% of American public high schools offer no foreign language at all; 23% no physics or chemistry; 24% no geometry."

Decline & Fall. "Nor can we blink the fact that the quality of those teaching has steadily been falling. College graduates of the highest caliber are ever less likely to select teaching as their career . . . The level of preparation for, and instruction in, the colleges will decline."

To help meet the crisis, says Handlin, the U.S. can fall back on such devices as classroom TV and the use of lay assistant teachers. But the problem will never disappear until the U.S. has raised salaries ("Teachers are the only occupational group whose real earnings have actually fallen since 1940") and changed its whole attitude toward a profession that is too often caricatured as made up of frustrated Our Miss Brookses. Meanwhile, "makeshifts" will have to do. We can only minimize the damage, maintain standards as best we can for the time being, and lay a foundation for future recovery. If we fail, the consequences will be disastrous."

In Providence, President Barnaby Keeney of Brown University offered his own succinct suggestion for staving off future inundation. His suggestion: "To refuse admission or dismiss from college all those students who are not qualified to do college work, or will not do college work, of whom there are a great many."

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