Hopeful Head Start

THE PRESIDENCY

In one of those ceremonies that bring out the pedagogue in the President, Lyndon Johnson showed up in the Rose Garden of the White House last week to make Operation Head Start a permanent part of the nation's educational system. Though it was established on an experimental basis only this summer, the program to assist preschool children from poor and broken homes has already benefited some 560,000 youngsters in 2,500 U.S. communities. Its success and "our plans for years to come," said L.B.J., "are symbols of our national commitment to the goal that no American child shall be condemned to failure by the accident of birth."

Landmark of Maturity. Before a group of physicians, psychologists and teachers invited to Washington to assess the program's results to date, the President pointed out that Head Start (initial cost: $85 million) was intended to give medical and environmental assistance as well as educational help to backward children between the ages of four and six. Of those enrolled so far in the program--in which Lady Bird Johnson has also taken an active interest--an estimated 70% had never previously undergone a medical or dental examination. The youngsters, in the President's words, "were on the road to despair--to that wasteland of ignorance in which the children of the poor grow up and become the parents of the poor."

Thus, said Johnson, "we have reached a landmark--not just in education, but in the maturity of our democracy." Head Start will now be expanded so that youngsters who took part in the summer program will receive individual tutoring, help with after-school activities, medical and other remedial care throughout the school year. In addition, a year-round program will be started this year for 350,000 more children, including three-year-olds, and still another project will be launched next summer to help 500,000 children who were unable to participate in the previous programs. Henceforth, said the President, the U.S. Office of Education will join Sargent Shriver's Office of Economic Opportunity in funding Head Start, 90% of which is paid for by the Federal Government. At most of his engagements last week Johnson was wearing a small bandage on each hand between thumb and forefinger--a recurrence, the White House explained, of the wartlike growths that erupted on his right hand last year as a result of exposure to the sun. This time the condition does not require removal of the growths. Otherwise, despite a series of late-hour consultations with Administration officials attending the steel negotiations, the President looked as fit as a Pedernales bullfrog. Last week he also:

> Allocated $29 million for some 45 anti-poverty projects in Los Angeles' riot-shattered Negro section.

> Announced that General Maxwell Taylor, 64, who retired last month as U.S. Ambassador to Saigon, would continue to serve as a part-time special consultant on "diplomatic, military, economic and strategic problems that come to my desk"--including Viet Nam.

> Signed a law making it a federal crime to burn or otherwise deliberately destroy a draft card, punishable by five years in prison, $10,000 fine, or both.

> Welcomed Dwight Eisenhower to the White House for an evening's chat about Viet Nam and steel; L.B.J. read his guest a letter from a mother who said that one son had been killed in Viet Nam, while another was in the armed services in Colorado. Said Ike:

"Don't send the other boy too."

> Offered Barry Goldwater 1) coffee at the White House and 2) regular briefings by the CIA, which the Arizonan 1) declined (he prefers Coke) and 2) took under advisement.

>Swore in an old friend, Washington Lawyer Leonard Marks, as director of the U.S. Information Agency, declaring: "We are neither advocates nor defenders of any dogma so fragile or doctrine so frightened as to require propaganda. Truth wears no uniform and bears no flag. But it is the most loyal ally that freedom knows."

> Signed a bill authorizing a 72,000-acre national recreation area on the upper Delaware River in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, within two hours' driving time of the 30 million Americans who live in the Philadelphia-New York conurbation.

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