St. Paul recorder. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1934-2000, 1947-12-19

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The report will consist of six vol.
umes TO be issued under the genera
title, Higher Education for Amer,
lean Democracy" The first volume
Establishing the Goals" sets the
general pattern for the entire re.
port.
In accepting the report, Presi.
dent Truman said:
Higher education in our Nation
is confronted today with tremen-
dous responsibilities. Colleges and
universities are burdened by great
over-crowding and a shortage Of
teachers.
Most Importantly, however, we
are challenged by the need to in
sure that higher education shall
take its proper place in our ma
tional effort to strengthen democ-
racy at home and to improve our
understanding Of our friends and
neighbors everywhere in the world.
For the great majority of our
boys and girls, the kind and amount
of education they may hope to at
tain depends, not on their own abil-
ities, but on the family or COM
munity into which they happened
to be born or, worse still, on the
color Of their skin or the religion
of their parents"
In a chapter on Education for
AL" the report discusses Barriers
to Equal Opportunity" One of
such barriers with which it is spe-
officially concerned is Racial and
Religious Barriers"
In this section Of the report, the
commission states:
The outstanding example of
these barriers to equal opportunity,
of the quality Of the facilities it
usually does so in fact. The schools
maintained for the Negroes are
commonly much inferior to those
for the whites.
The Negro schools are financed
at a pitifully low level, they are
often housed in buildings wholly
inadequate for the purpose, and
many of the teachers are sorely in
need Of more education themselves.
Library facilities are generally poor
or lacking altogether, and profess
Sional supervision is more a name
than a reality.
These facts are supported
strongly by a recent study in the
District of Columbia. The Districts
Superintendent of Schools in his
l946-47 report to the Board of Edu-
cation states that the student
teacher ratios in the schools for
Negroes were significantly and con-
sistently higher than those for non
Negroes-from the kindergartens
through the teachers colleges.
Segregation lessons the quality |
of education for the whites as well.
To maintain two school systems
side by side-duplicating even in
adequately the buildings, equip
ment, and teaching personnel
means that neither can be Of the
quality that would be possible if
all the available resources were de-
voted to one system, especially not
when the States least able finan-
cially TO support an adequate edu-
program for their youth
are the very ones that are trying
to carry a double load.
1T must not be supposed that
Negro youth living in States in
which segregation is not legaliZed
ire given the same opportunities
as white youth. In these areas eco
nOmic and social discrimination Of
'arious sorts often operates to pro-
luce segregation in certain neigh
which are frequently
by poorer school
less equipment and less
lble teachers.
Equality Of educational oppor-
unity is not achieved by the mere
physical existence Of schools; it in
olives also the quality of teaching
md learning that takes place in
hem"
At the college level the commits :
ion found a different type Of dis
MANY colleges and i
especially in their pro-
essional schools" the report states, {
a selective quota system {
or admission, under which the I
nance to learn, and thereby to be-
ONE more useful citizens, is denied {
o certain minorities, particularly s
D Negroes and Jews" The report |
dds:
This practice is a violation Of a g
lajor American principle and is t
Ontributing to the growing tension I
I one of the crucial areas of our t
S
The quota, or numerous clauses,
certainly un-American. 1t is L
European in origin and application, t
nd we have lately witnessed on a
nat continent the horrors to which, e
! its logical extension, it can lead. 2
o insist that specialists in any p
ED shall be limited by ethnic t
lotas is to assume that the Ma c
on is composed Of separate and
ethnic groups and t
lis assumption America has never c
ade except in the case Of its Ne 5
70 population, where the result is c
ne Of the plainest inconsistencies
it'll our national ideal. t
The quota system denies the n
,..;. A-.r;..n kaI;aF that infal / Il