vice were unable to understand commands given in our language. The shortage of qualified and trained teachers, the inequalities in educational opportunities, the backwardness of many schools in still devoting so large a part of the students' time to subjects of no pratical value, are among the other defects of our schools. A considerable part of our teachers, particularly in the rural districts are only children. Some states, and more particularly some communities have utterly failed to provide adequate educational opportunities for their children, with the result that there are two and a quarter millions of children between seven and fifteen years of age who are not attending school, and about as many more between fifteen and seventeen years of age.

These are the main defects in our educational system, but by no means all of them. In February, 1918, the National Education Association appointed a Commission on the Emergency in Education which considered these defects and drew up a bill designed to remedy them. It was introduced in the Sixty-fifth Congress, and again in the Sixty-sixth Congress, where it was revised and amended, and reported favorably by the committee in each house, but it received very little attention from that Congress. It was again introduced in the Sixty-seventh Congress where it is known as the Towner-Sterling Bill.

To the discussion of the Towner-Sterling Bill this number of The Reference Shelf is devoted. Whether this bill is the proper remedy for the grave shortcomings and defects in our educational system or not may properly be a matter for discussion and a matter of difference of opinion, but it is certainly disheartening and discouraging to read the trash that often fills the pages of the Congressional Record and usually fills the pages of the average newspaper while so little attention is given to a matter so vital to our national welfare as the proper measure to remedy the defects in our educational system.

December 26, 1922.

LAMAR T. BEMAN

RESOLVED: That the Towner-Sterling bill should be enacted

A. Explanation of the provisions of the bill.

B. The attitude of the Federal Government toward public education in the past.

I. There are serious defects in our present system of public education.

A. Illiteracy is so prevalent as to be a national disgrace and a menace to our free institutions.

I. About five millions of our people ten years of age and over (or 6 per cent of the population) are unable to read or write any language.

2.

Three million of these are native-born Americans. 3. About one-quarter of the men examined as to intelligence when called for military service during the late war were found to be illiterate.

4. For each one thousand of population there are sixty illiterates in the United States to one in Germany, to five in Switzerland, to six in the Netherlands, to nine in Finland, to ten in Norway and Sweden.

B. The great number of unassimilated foreigners living in great colonies and perpetuating foreign ideals, and in some cases foreign loyalties, is a constant danger. I. There are about fourteen million persons of foreign birth residing in the United States, five million of whom cannot read or write the English language.

2.

In many of our cities a large part of the population, sometimes one-third of it, is of foreign birth, while the foreign-born together with those of

foreign parentage often make a majority, sometimes more than three-quarters of the population of the city.

C. There is a serious shortage of qualified and efficient teachers.

2.

Since the beginning of the World War thousands of public schools have been closed for a time at least because of the inability to get teachers.

One-fourth part of the teachers in the public schools of this country is made up of people twenty-one years of age or under; one-half, twenty-five or under.

3. A large part of the teachers in our public schools has not had the education or training properly to qualify them for teaching.

4. A large part of the teachers takes up teaching as a temporary occupation and continues in it for only a few years.

D. The neglect of health education and physical training in many of our public schools is undermining the vitality of the nation.

I. One-fourth of the men examined for army service in the late war was found to have some physical defect or ailment which in many cases could have been cured by health education or correcting training.

E. Public education now needs from the Federal Government recognition of its dignity and its importance as a national problem, aid and support in its efforts, integration, coordination, and a voice in national deliberations which can come only from representation in the President's Cabinet.

II. The Towner-Sterling bill will remedy the shortcomings and defects in our system of public education.

A. It provides the funds and the incentive for the rapid elimination of illiteracy.

B. It will help and support the states in their Americani

zation work.

C. It will greatly assist in providing a sufficient number of well educated and trained teachers.