The Washington herald., 1921-01-14

- house Committee on Education has APP
proved the so-caled Smth-Towner bill
creating a Department of Education. This will,
If passed, add eleventh member to the Cabinet
1t carries an appropriation of $4,000 for de-
Partment expenses, and $Ioo,oooooo for educa-
tional welfare and health promotion. This is
equal to half of what it is believed can be saved
by reorganiZing and condensing the governments
administration service
1t is interest on over $2,3oo,oooooo. 1t is not
a charge for year, but for long series Of
years. 1t is another example OF using the Federal
treasury to bribe the States larger expenditures
1t is a scheme to make the States believe that
by spending dollar. of their own money, they
will get a dollar of Federal money free.
OF course the States in the end pay it all
Theysare merely relieved OF their own response
bility initiative in education and formulating
their own school systems by adopting methods
provided for them.
The department would start with this
SIooooo,ooo elevator to induce the States to go
along easily up the educational ladder built for
them. Certainly it should not be difficult to make
an elevating record with this we'll oiled machine
A Department OF Education may be needed
1t may be wise to add another member to the
Cabinet There is now demand for several others
Maybe they should all be granted If the sup
Porters Of the others get into the game it should
not be impossible to form a combination that
would assure them all
If the others equally we'll fabricated the
appropriations for them all would equal the in
terest the debt. This would Simplify the
tax situation by adopting the Soviet system OF
merely taking all everyone could earn.
- But the logic of this educational bill is made
more striking by comparison with the action OF
Congress as to the Washington schools While it
is proposed to appropriate $780, 100000 to promote
Rdu nd hctte
tional system in the States, what of the schools
of the National Capital.
Here 100000 has been refused for new school
buildings. Here there seventy-two portable
schools without ventilation, unsanitary, heated by
stoves, and more are building.
Here thousands OF children can 90 to school
but halftime. Here the effort is to reduce classes
to forty pupils, now over fifty, while the
maximum fixed by educators is twenty-four
Here are school buildings without any mod
ern conveniences, with toilets for scores where
hundreds are packed in. Here is needed such
usual equipment manual training shops, gym
nssiums, monographs and moving picture ma
chimes.
Here the administrative offices are in a school
building, one of the older ones wholly unadapted
for the work, taking needed for classes
Here is anything but a model school SYSTEM
with conditions making any fair approach to this
impossible.
For small part of the appropriation carried
by this bill, the schools of the National Capital
could be made model for all the United States
Educators, if asked, would frankly say that such
model covering a whole city, would be of far
more value to education, than the proposed
department
1t is what educators most need and is in
fact all that this bill possibly produce
somewhere a city to whose schools any teacher
can go and find in operation exactly what solves
his or her problems.