Oral essays on education; Fred Hechinger

The following tape recorded programs distributed through the facilities of the National Association of educational broadcasters. Oral essays on education and dynamic radio series designed to present leading personalities of our society as they attempt to discover the scope of problems which confront modern education. I can this week Dr. James in Terra Michigan State University College of Education interviews Mr. Fred Hawkins you're the educational editor of The New York Times who this week analyzes the financial support factor in education. And now here is Dr. Tim. We very often hear whenever education is discussed and everything you said costs money and the competition for the American dollar is very heavy especially with tax dollars. Now realizing our whole concept of education in this country has tended toward the direction of making education available to those who can profit from it not

to create a profit making structure. Would you react to this Jeff. Well first of all I'd like to say that I don't think we ought to apologize for the fact that education costs money. We keep saying I know we don't always realize it when we say it but we keep saying that education is our first line of defense. Well it is we know it is. There's no reason to believe that one's first line of defense is a very cheap thing to build up. You don't assume that in physical defenses we can do it without without a good deal of money. I think the first thing we have to do is establish a sense of some priorities in our minds and on this again I'd like to be very specific. I have done a good deal of research. Russian school system Russian school financing. I've

also followed the American school financing debate very closely last year. In town after town that I watched one special topic of concern that came up again and again in debating with the teacher's salaries for instance could be traced was if we do all this what do we do about it. The salaries of other state employees or Municipal Employees can raise teacher salaries for instance without raising the Firemen's and policemen's salaries. Now there is and there hasn't been one instance in all the discussion of Russian school financing where the pay of policeman was pegged to the pay of teachers. And this leads me to think that this is one of the ironies of modern times that the police state worries less about the pay of its policemen and more

about half its teachers. This is a very basic thing to to think about. Now the second point in discussing educational financing is that I don't think we can continue to think in terms of a separation of local state and federal responsibility. Educational financing has to be able to count on the money where it is and it has to be able to count particularly on getting money that will help to equalize to do away with natural differences in ability to pay. We know that today the state has the lowest per capita income in the country makes an effort

in terms of what it provides for the education of its children. Roughly about the equal of the state with the highest per capita income. The difference about 1 percent in effort that we know and when I say effort I mean the FAA based on the comparison of per capita income between those two states because that's presumably what they can afford. Now we know that. If you're income is very different from that of your neighbor. If you pay practically the same percentage of that income to support anything with it your schools your fire department whatever it baby. If you pay within of 1 percent the same percentage as your neighbor you're making a much greater effort and you're much closer to the saturation point

and you are much closer. In other words to the point at which you need it. I think one of the most vicious arguments against some equally sation in terms of federal aid the most vicious argument against it has been the argument which you constantly in the wealthiest states that I've always lived in the way of the estates I've heard these arguments. We don't get anything out of this. We would be paying more into this than we get back. This I think is a symptom of what the chancellor Eddie of the vice chancellor of the University of New Hampshire called and he was talking only about the college student population called the new decease of privatization. And he says the slogan of privatization is what's in it for me. The point is that. Much more important than what's in it for me is the

fact that we're all in this together. And if 10 or 12 states can't afford to finance first rate education the other states will suffer just as surely as those that that can't pay. Does it seem to you that we are in a situation where we have exhausted these traditional areas of financial support for education. I think we've exhausted the traditional areas of support largely because they were based on an assessment which is no longer equitable based number one almost entirely on personal property tax which is a very debatable way of rasing raising money for school support it's also a method which inevitably rallies the forces of opposition on a very

narrow basis. More important than that we may have exhausted the structure of our support. We have come near to exhausting our ability to pay. Now in this I think is is the most important point to keep in mind. We are at the height of prosperity as a nation. We as a nation have reached a standard a level of living which is without any question the envy of every nation in the world. When the Russians talk about overtaking us that's what they are talking about. The whole world knows that we live more comfortably. We live in greater affluence than any civilization has ever done before. I haven't the

slightest doubt that this being the case we could if we wanted to finance the best education system the world has ever seen. But it's a question of priorities. We we may have to spend a little less on some of the things that we now spend money on I think we could still live comfortably if we did this. But it's a question of what we want to pay for what kind of what kind of things we want to save a little on. It's a question also I think and this is even more important of looking on education not as something that you spend money on. Money that's lost and gone nobody likes to spend money that that doesn't come back we all our mind is adjusted in terms of finances to the idea of an investment that brings returns. We don't hesitate to to use the term missing money into a venture if we think we are going to get a

return from it. This I think has to be the approach to our support of education. We are putting an enormous investment potentially into something that is going to bring much greater much more enormous returns. And by the same token if you want to put it in negative terms which perhaps is in a in a crisis society is more successful. If we don't make the investment we are equally sure to lead ourselves to drive ourselves into bankruptcy and I don't just mean intellectual bankruptcy I mean economic bankruptcy as well. This support you're speaking of you're Do you see that is primarily coming from the federal level I get the impression you do. I see it coming from us. Level of stress the federal level only because that is the level that hasn't been tapped at all I think. If I remember correctly at the last count about three to four percent of the education

dollars came from the federal government. The great weight of the education dollar has been has been coming from the great portion of the education dollars been coming from the community. The next higher level is the state which has been re apportioning it to some extent. I think we have learned and I think this is really where the the crux of the argument lies. We have learned that at present with our present tax structure and nobody likes to pay taxes on any level. But as things stand now the most effective efficient and equitable level Levy is the federal income tax. Therefore it is potentially the most economically warm from which money can be fed back into the local schools. We know that.

Where ever the meth money comes from Eventually it comes from our own pocket. But it is a question of how you how you tap it most effectively and and most justly how you charge the cost most effectively to those who are most able to pay. And in many local communities we simply have reached the the saturation point where the schools can no longer draw on the local treasury without at the same time disrupting the other services that the community must provide. It's of course very interesting to me that you start with the local effort. Let me try to capsulize here and then get your reaction to a capsule ization. I think we could reduce this into a formula and A plus B plus C equals X. Now let me substitute what I'm talking about here. It would be local wealth B would be local effort x at the other end of the scale would be the kind of

educational system pattern that we would want in turn translated into dollars to equalize children's educational opportunity and you've given a circle suggestions on how to do this one of them of course is this commission you referred to on the national level as a guiding commission. And that leaves me which is the support which would come from several areas as you've indicated local state or federal. Now our formula says this is what I'd like your reaction to local wealth plus local effort plus whatever support it takes from whatever level we get to equal this equalized educational opportunity. Is this what you have been referring to this is exactly what I've been referring to and to underline it. I want to add only this that the greatest effort in every way is needed where there is the greatest economic need whether it is the lowest

economic standard and what I mean by this is number one. In order the only way. Let me start this way the only way to uplift economically. Forget for a minute the educational problem. The only way to uplift economically depressed areas is through the best kind of schools. The only way to get youngsters from those areas to avail themselves of education high school education college education graduate school. The only way to get them into this is by extraordinary financing much beyond the level of financing in the wealthy areas. It's the child from the or we call it under privileged or deprived areas. The

it's the chai from those fields from those regions. Who needs the major scholarship. Which again means an expenditure from the outside U.S.. And so that I completely agree with you for that I'm simply adding this as a documentation for it that this is needed to give us a. Sense of excellence across the entire country. And this is the only way incidentally through which I think we can continue to have an expanding economy and this is important because we shouldn't ever talk about the support of education in terms of what we can afford today if our aims and goals and dreams really mean anything. Then this is a almost a pitch motion idea. As we spend more

product we'll increase people standard of living as they would expect more and they would be able to pay back more. And so the share of education will automatically become more even with the same effort of the whole point however is that now we are at the at the dividing point and now is the time that we have to increase efforts on what maybe double it. Once we've done that the natural progression we take of take care of itself. I hate to be playing devil's advocate here but I must I feel compelled you again because of criticism and comments which you've received a vast amount of publicity underlying some of these areas of critical evaluation seems to be an idea that creativity comes from poverty. The artist in the Garrett idea and you have to suffer the pangs of something or other in order to become better. No I'm using words that I really don't like to use because I don't believe

it myself. But I'd like your reaction to this too because this seems to be a common concept held as a value by many people that are experiencing. I guess you call it suffering leads to greater creativity on the part of people. I have found no evidence that this is true. If you know I don't think it's true I think what probably leads to this idea is that the opposite may be true away I think. The kind of comfort which leads to well I called it private just before the kind of comfort that leads to smugness to a divorcing of you assailed from the problems of your neighbors and of the world. Obviously leads to a dull to a dull edge of the mind and the opposite of

creativity. So all this I think is very likely to get misunderstood and be become the germ for the other interpretation that only if you are poor can you create. I don't think creativity as such is related to. You economically if I think there's a point of such low economic levels at which people don't get a chance to be creative. That's just too much of a struggle for them to live and they don't they don't think about the creation of great art.. I think at the same time I would like in order not to create the wrong impression I would like to put in this warning. I think equally dangerous is not providing the money that is

needed to do things that must be done. Is the idea that money alone can do the job. I think simply poor pouring more money into a thoughtless approach to education won't give you better education. Money is an essential aid to doing certain things it's not a substitute for thinking and planning and not a substitute for. For a demand on the mind I don't think we can substitute money for for mental effort. I don't think incidentally that we care by sound education simply putting up structures the bricks and mortar but by the same token I don't think we're ever going to teach

our children for instance physics without providing them with the laboratories in which they can make that discovery and those laboratories cost money. I don't think we can teach our children languages without. Both offering them modern language laboratories and well-trained language teachers training language teachers is an expensive thing. If you want to have good language teachers you're probably at some time or other will have to send them abroad for a succession of theists and that costs money. And this is giving you examples in various areas this would be true in other fields. Your examples are very interesting because they bring up another ally IRI are directly related to this topic of creativity which we excluded perhaps met with now directly.

How do we develop creativity. Do we develop it from a construct of a historical nature and a repetition of ideas in thinking. Or do we develop creativity by freeing young people in a kind of a UN directed world with guidance. I think we do two things. First of all I think we must permit young people to discover for themselves many of the things that have already been discovered. In other words we must. Teach them the sense of discovery instead of making them. Memory is in the beginning formulas or theories whether they be in science or in the humanities. We must make them discover them for themselves. This takes a certain amount of manipulation. You set up conditions under which they will discover

certain things you don't expect them to do it is the original discover est but it it will hope this in itself will open their minds. The idea of discovery. From there on I think you you must do two things. You must teach them some of the things that have already happened. You must teach them some of the things they have already been discovered. Some of the thoughts that have already been thought because you must give them stand of comparison a reference library of their own lines. I don't think any of our great discoveries would have been made except by people who have read widely. One who thought deeply would have been completely familiar with the many great people before them. How they live how they thought how they went about their work. Call it study habits call it research

happiness or whatever it may be. This is important. This is part of the discipline and teaching. This is part of if you want to call it the traditional curriculum but then you have to give them something else in addition to that and I think this is where we have been frequently remiss. You have to give them the chance to work on they'll have to free them from repeating what the teacher wants them to repeat. Freedom even from the straight jacket of the number of hours at which they are made to work on their own. After you've given them the more formal approach to education let them branch out and let them experiment and again I don't care whether this is with a pen typewriter or with a test tube or whether it's in the

workshop at a workbench. There you have to give them the chance to show that they have on their whole unconventionally and with their own ideas can search for things of their own to do. But do you think. You see I think the. The two ways in which we've heard in the past has been on the one hand to either give students an overemphasis on the third or more repetitive uncreative pre-digested approach to education. In the end in the relatively few instances where we wanted them to be creative we tended to go to the other extreme and simply leave them alone and think and thought that they

could become creative by expressing their souls without any previous guidance without any previous background of knowledge. And I think either one of those two extremes is misleading. You first have to give them this reference library of the mind you have to give them the directions the anchor and them at the same time free them to go beyond that. The discussion about creativity in the learning in a creative atmosphere and of course teaching we choose learning in a creative fashion leads me then to a question of could you illustrate by some concrete examples some areas and in brief probably easier in higher education colleges to do this in which creative approach and creative results are actually occurring. Are there any in your direct experience. Yes Ron that comes to my mind immediately is

the approach taken at Amherst in the second the courses required of all students called problems in American democracy. The approach is relatively a simple one. You start out with a problem the problem may be inflation or it may be the civil war. It may be the new deal. You can name any number of the problem area. The problem itself might be taken up for all students for anywhere from two to five weeks depending on the depth required. All the departments or at least all the departments that can be tied into it will work on this problem together. Sociology history

languages sciences literature of course all work together outside speakers abroad and preferably outside speakers who disagree violently on the particular problem. The students then permitted to question the speakers and to cross-examine them. Now the important element in all this and this is I think where creativity comes in. The student is expected to is required to write a short paper of his own personal approach to that particular problem area before the problem is taken up. Then he is required to write a second paper about half way through the problem. And finally he writes a paper again making his own personal judgments and giving his own recommendations of how to deal with this problem. After this area has been thoroughly explored.

This does several things. It gives the student first of all a sense of the first aspect of learning that we discussed of his own in adequacy until he knows a good deal about the facts. And then it challenges him to go beyond the facts. And this I think is the perfect balance of traditional and structured learning. And the invitation to use that let me be what has been learned in this I think is creativity. That was Mr. Frederick and your educational editor of The New York Times author lecturer and critic discussing the price of creativity and an analysis of our support of education. Mr. Hechinger was interviewed by Dr. James and Tara of the Michigan State University College of Education. Next week Dr. Margaret Mead makes her second

appearance and we learn from where the greatest pressures for change are coming and how effective they are. In a programme titled Can education change oral essays on education was produced by Wayne S. Wayne and Patrick Ford distribution is made through the National Association of educational broadcasters. This is the end E.B. Radio Network.