Public Affairs Forums in the United States

Abstract

ADULT civic education through “public affairs forums” is now being energetically pushed by the United States Federal Office of Education, the present head of which, Dr. Studebaker, played a principal part in the launching, several years ago, of the pioneer forums in Des Moines. The latest official publication on the subject, a pamphlet entitled “A Step Forward” (Superintendent of Documents, Washington, D.C. 10 cents), includes an account of ten forum demonstration centres in as many different States, managed by local educational authorities. A foreword by the Commissioner strongly emphasizes the principle of local responsibility and control, but the enterprise has been financed largely out of the Federal Emergency Relief Appropriation, and several hundred relief workers have taken part as assistant librarians, research assistants, artists, writers, accountants, typists, etc. The Secretary of the Interior, in commending the Commissioner's scheme, observes that it has brought about an essential and practical contact between “those few of our citizens who are concentrating their time and effort on the pursuit of truth in the field of social problems” and the average citizen who cannot devote much time to a specialized study of these complex questions. The success of the scheme hinges on finding competent leaders for the forums, for they have the difficult task of first presenting a topic in simple language in a way calculated to sustain interest, giving a fairly comprehensive and impartial outline of the problem and the alternative solutions, and then stimulating, leading and organizing a free discussion for forty or fifty minutes. Most of them have been obtained on leaves of absence from colleges and universities. The improvement of social intelligence for the democratic control of our material resources is, says the Commissioner, the challenge of our day.