A Fifty-Year Program?

Abstract

IT WAS a summer evening of one of the early years of the century. A polyglot group of students sat around a table in a garden typical of a German university town. As usual, there was earnest discussion of what would now be called national ideologies. The attitudes were those of the dispassionately philosophical rather than of the political minded. National theories and practices of education became the centers of argument. The one American in the group was the target of many pointed questions regarding the American educational system-particularly its concept of the of and the meaning of this for human welfare. Throughout the long session, one member of the company had remained silent. Only when midnight had come and the impatient headwaiter had announced the closing time, did this silent member from China rise and request the privilege of one question. This he put to the American. Is it possible, my good American friend, said he, that the time may come when your people will discover that they cannot or will not pay the cost of money and of mind for the execution of this plan for of educational opportunity? The American's reply was brief and confident; that with its high idealism, with its vast resources, and with the things already accomplished, there was no doubt that America would reach the goal. Often has this fugitive incident come to mind during the years between-years of slow and wavering progress, years when the early confidence became a bit weakened, years when the realization that equality of opportunity was a complicated, many-sided concept. Had the man from the old East detected the flaw in the aspirations of the new West? The recollections were especially vivid during the reading of the volume of the significant Report of the President's Commission on Higher Education. Here was a new challenge to the validity of our underlying theory, and the soundness of our actual practices, of higher education. During the past generation, many more or less comprehensive, evaluating surveys of American education have been made. In the main, these have been concerned with elementary and secondary schools. From time to time particular institutions, segments or features of that conglomerate of institutions making up our structure of higher education, have been brought under critical review. The appointment of twenty-eight of the nation's educational and civic leaders as a Commission on Higher Education by