FOR one out of five Americans--the children in U.S. public schools--the picture above is an image o; the future. Classroom TV is one way to face an overwhelming fact of U.S. life in a nation whose soaring birth rate now approaches India's. This week the new school year begins with a shortage of 195,000 teachers; the need is so great that nearly half the next decade's college graduates should theoretically become schoolteachers. TV will soon be familiar in more than 750 schools; in time, it will be used in the rest of them.

What the man on the screen teaches is another matter. Teaching is not technology. It is the splendid province of the remarkable man on this week's cover. In the last year he has done more than any other single educator to throw Sputnik's red glare where it belongs--on the curriculum in U.S. public schools. James Bryant Conant is a product (1910) of one of the nation's best secondary schools, Roxbury Latin in Boston. In his 303 he was one of the country's most brilliant young chemists. At 40 he became president of Harvard (1933-53). At 60 he became U.S. High Commissioner and Ambassador to West Germany (1953-57). At 66 he is deep in a third career--teaching Americans about their public schools.

Conant has never been easy to ignore for long. Beginning with his first year as Harvard's president (TIME, Feb. 5, 1934), through Harvard's tercentenary (TIME, Sept. 28, 1936), through postwar revamping of Harvard's curriculum (TIME, Sept. 23, 1946), Conant has been on TIME'S cover three times before. This is his fourth appearance--a rare record for a nonpolitical personage. Even this appearance goes back to his Harvard days. For Conant's fascination with public schools began in 1933, when he had to decide "whether to drown a kitten," meaning Harvard's ailing Graduate School of Education. Conant fed it instead and raised it to be one of the nation's best. What evolved was a rare understanding of public schools, capped by this year's bestselling The American High School Today.

All of this would be enough to talk about at length. But TIME'S object this week is a little more. The nation has steadied down since its first feverish response to Russia's sweep into outer space. A series of impressive public school reforms and experiments has begun. As the new school year opens, the top education story is a growing campaign to galvanize every talent at every level--a kind of common consent that equality of effort ranks as high on the agenda as equality of opportunity. This week's cover story is a panoramic view of schools in ferment, your guide to what may prove the most rewarding school year in U.S. history.

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