rent famines, countries that are equally overpopulated might yet feel that there is no other alternative to starvation. It appears that the commune system does produce more food than China was able to produce in the past. The establishment of 26,000 communes of 20,000 to 80,000 persons each has given China a foundation of flexible industrial and social units that are largely self-supporting and integrated as to industry and agriculture. For this reason, China, in the event of war, is much more capable of surviving than more complex and advanced industrial economies, where large destruction could occur.

But what I am really trying to say is that, faced with the world situation today, a legislative body such as Congress has no more important function than to prepare for the future. The world outside the United States is being transformed so rapidly and so completely that we cannot afford to stand still. In my opinion, we are not adequately planning for the future.

Mr. MILLER. The future in education which is the real foundation of our democracy.

Admiral RICKOVER. Yes, sir. If we have properly educated people we can solve all other problems, but if we don't have well educated people, we can't solve any really difficult problems. That is why education must be given priority in our scheme of things; from a national standpoint even more than from the standpoint of the individual citizen-that it is good for him to be more intelligent and to know more. Education benefits both the Nation and its individual citizens.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, would you say that one of our weakest links in our chain of education is the failure to produce enough highly qualified technical men, especially scientific men?

Admiral RICKOVER. It is not merely a deficiency in quantity; it is a deficiency in quality as well. We do not have sufficient numbers of scientific and technical people who are good in their particular fields and who also have a broad liberal education. Without a broad liberal education, such people remain narrow specialists, and they are not as useful to our Nation as they could be. Now in Europe the future scientist or other professional man has received a very thorough general education in free public secondary schools before he enters a university and begins his professional education. We had much the same type of general education in our college-preparatory schools half a century ago it wasn't as good as that in the European schools, but it was pretty good. The men who fought to make education beyond the elementary school available to all our children wanted this kind of broad general education for those whose parents had heretofore not been able to afford the tuition fees. They were a few decades ahead of the European democracies in advocating free secondary education.

Unfortunately, when it was found that the majority of youngsters had neither a gift nor a desire for an academic secondary education we downgraded the curriculum until it met the lowest levels of competence, instead of setting up different types of secondary schools for the different types of students. When the Europeans decided to make secondary education free, they did not make this mistake. They did not confuse equal educational opportunity with identical education for all in a comprehensive school, as did our educationists. As things stand, those of our youngsters who want to become professional people receive a meager general education in

high school and must make it up in college. We have the curious situation that it actually costs more in the United States to become a professional man than in most of the European democracies. It also takes about 3 years longer.

Our people marry very early and there is great pressure to cut down on general education in college so as to get started on professional education. Many professional people here, therefore, lack the broad general education which makes them something more than narrow specialists. In Europe because of their strong tax-supported secondary school system-those who begin professional training at the university are already broadly educated persons.

The more we advance technologically, the greater the need of a broad general education for our professional specialists. Without this they do not speak a common language and they do not see their own speciality in broad perspective.

This is where we fall down, and the reason is our poor secondary education. Abroad, a professional person is a broadly educated man at 18 when he begins his professional education at a university. Here he needs 3 or more years at a liberal arts college to obtain an equivalent general education. This has been brought out by many persons who know conditions here and abroad. Yet the National Education Association and the U.S. Office of Education still claim that an American high school diploma is equivalent to the leaving certificate of a European academic secondary school. Even when the high school diploma here is for a college-preparatory course, this

is not so.

Mr. MILLER. I think Admiral, one of the most significant things you told us today about the Russian system of education is that they are beginning to investigate the humanities, which means now they are coming into the broad field of education.

Admiral RICKOVER. Mr. Miller, I referred earlier to the statements of the presidents of two colleges as reported in the New York Times. I don't know how much time is left but I think we should get to the problem, if it is possible, sir, on what could be done to correct the situation. I think we should get on that.

The CHAIRMAN. Will you proceed on that basis, then?

Mr. MOELLER. Mr. Chairman, may we have one more question, please?

The CHAIRMAN. If it is a short question so he can get to that one item, yes.

Mr. MOELLER. I am sure the Admiral has observed the public education system in America. We know also in the past 10 years there has been about 42 percent increase in the private and parochial, church-operated schools.

Have you had an opportunity to inspect these schools, their curriculum, what they are producing, and if in your feeling the Federal Government should do more for education, do you feel it should reach into these private areas of education?

Admiral RICKOVER. When you start doing that you get into a religious issue. When you talk about support of private schools, you may have to support denominational schools, whether they are Protestant, Jewish, or Catholic, and I think that is a matter for Congress to decide.

I would rather not get into that. that has been going on in France the major political issues they have. sue in Holland also.

That, of course, is the big fight since about 1870. It is one of It has been a major political is

I would rather not get into that field. If we had an adequate public school system we wouldn't need so many private schools. The number of private schools is increasing primarily because many parents are dissatisfied with our public schools. This is a free country. No educationist can force a parent to send his children to schools where they don't get an education the parent considers good enough—that is, if the parent can find the money to send them to a private school. But this, of course, introduces class privileges into education. It makes it undemocratic.

Educationists like to confound their critics by claiming that European education is class education while American education is mass education. But, it is a curious fact that except in England which came into public education at a very late date, practically all European children-rich or poor-now go to the same tax-supported schools. These schools are free and anyone can get into them if he can pass the requisite examinations.

England, which got into tax-supported education much later than the continental European countries, still has many private boarding schools attended by the children of parents who can afford the high fees and who regard them as superior to the state schools. Although the educational ladder is wide open in England, the preference of the upper classes for private schools introduces an undemocratic element into education there. If our public schools do not improve, we may find that we shall eventually have a similar situation here. Well-to-do parents will send their children to good private college-preparatory schools where they receive an education that gives them an advantage in the severe competition for admission to the better colleges. Even today the number of preparatory school youngsters over high-school graduates in the freshmen classes of our best colleges is way out of proportion to their relative numbers.

It may well happen that in the name of absolute equality of education, we will get an undemocratic system of education here where the poor go to the public high schools and the rich to the private collegepreparatory schools; where State universities that are not allowed to select among candidates for admission will get the least able poor and our best private colleges will get the most able rich. We must not let this happen. We must preserve the principle of equal educational opportunity for all children. The only way is to upgrade our public schools.

Mr. MOELLER. That is a sufficient answer. Thank you.
The CHAIRMAN. Now would you proceed to the remedies?

Admiral RICKOVER. I have thought for many years, Mr. Brooks, about what practical steps to help this situation we could take within the context of our form of government. As an engineer I know that we must have standards and I gather this is also the sense of this committee. I don't believe any member of this committee objects to this concept of standards for students and teachers. That we must have.

The next question is how do we go about getting those standards. If you leave it up to the United States Office of Education or to the

National Education Association, you will get no real help; you will be told, as you have been all these years, that our secondary education system is the best in the world and that it should be copied by everyone else.

According to the National Education Association, Dewey is god, they are his prophets, and the professors of our teachers colleges are his disciples. I don't believe we can get anywhere with that religion any more. I think we need a new one. This philosophy, these kinds of people, I believe also predominate in the U.S. Office of Education. You will not get much help from them either. What I should do is to take a leaf from the political notebook of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was reputed to be a good politician. I don't want to get into a Republican versus Democratic argument here. I simply believe that Roosevelt hit upon a good scheme for bypassing existing bureaucracies when he wanted a job done. He established the OEM, the Office of Emergency Management. He used that office whenever he wanted to get a job done fast. He knew that if he went to the routine, established agencies his plan would be obstructed; he would be told all sorts of reasons why it couldn't be done. This is always the way it is. It has been that way for thousands of years, and it will be that way for thousands of years more. Bureaucracies do not innovate. They defend the status quo. We will get further if we stay outside the regular established channels which have become ossified because they are honeycombed by vested interests. I would suggest that Congress set up a Commission on Education.

Members of such a Commission should be carefully chosen in order to obtain people who are entirely devoid of commitment to our existing public school system. They should preferably be eminent scholars, perhaps presidents of our best colleges and universities; men with a broad general education and much practical experience in dealing with the products of our schools. Men who have distinguished themselves in the sciences should be balanced by those whose eminence lies in the humanities. If you agree that education is as important as I say, it certainly needs a Commission of this kind if it is to be wisely guided toward greater excellence. The success of such a Commission depends entirely on the quality of its members who should of course be appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate exactly as are members of other commissions.

Initially, the function of the Commission should be to draw up standards-permissive standards, not mandatory standards. I do not believe in mandatory standards for education in the United States. What I have in mind is that if such a Commission sets standards for the college-preparatory high school curriculum, perhaps putting them alongside the requirements of the Russian 10-year school; and if these were widely distributed throughout the country, quite a few students and their parents would become unhappy with their local schools and would agitate for a program more nearly in line with what youngsters of ability are offered abroad. Similarly, if the Commission set standards for a high school curriculum for average students and another for those whose aptitude is vocational, and listed alongside the curriculums of European schools for students of this type, other groups of students and their parents would become unhappy with their local schools.

In other words, what the Commission would initially do is to provide a yardstick which can easily be understood by everyone. No generalizations about democratic versus aristocratic education; about educating the child for service to a totalitarian state versus democratic education; about narrow technical education versus educating "the whole child", et cetera. Simply factual data on each subject, year by year, on a vocational, general or average, and college-preparatory level of secondary schools here and abroad. Something clear and simple that the public can get its teeth into; something to back them up when they encounter resistance from progressive educationists.

Similarly, the Commission could begin setting standards for teachers, by establishing a minimum and comparing it with standards abroad. I feel certain that once the public here is confronted with disinterested and unimpeachable evidence that our standards for schools and teachers are inferior to those abroad, it will want to improve them. We are a pretty competitive people. We don't like to be inferior in anything. I know that our people want good schools. To get them they must first be given a chance to know exactly where we stand educationally.

To my mind, setting up a yardstick through minimum standards is the first thing that should be done. This would not cost much money. Getting comparative educational data would not be difficult or expensive. I cannot understand why this has not been done long ago by the U.S. Office of Education. After all, collection and distribution of educational data is their prime responsibility. If they had kept us informed on what was going on in Russian education, we should not have been caught by surprise when sputnik went aloft. I may say that most European ministries of education are well informed as to what goes on in neighboring countries. They issue booklets on the education of other countries. I have some of them.

Here, the Office of Education has only recently entered this field. In 1957 they published Education in the U.S.S.R. and since last fall they have begun putting out brief mimeographed studies of education in specific countries. Incidentally, these publications still maintain the fiction that the certificate obtained by graduates of the European academic secondary schools is similar to a diploma from the collegepreparatory section of an American high school. Such erroneous statements prevent the American people from knowing the whole truth about our public schools. I am sure you are familiar with the treatment received by Miss Eleanor Lowman who wrote the book Education in the U.S.S.R. for the Office of Education. Since no one in the Office knew Russian, they engaged Miss Lowman. She did the job but was dismissed as soon as the manuscript was completed. Thereupon these people who knew no Russian edited the book. They cut out much material, often distorting its real sense.

Curiously enough, everything cut out editorially "for policy" happens to be material showing where the Russians were doing a better job than we. These cuts give the reader an erroneous idea of the way in which the Russian Government manipulates competition for places in the universities so that the best minds are directed into professions which will strengthen the state; of the rigorous training program for teachers in grades above the elementary level-which contrasts far more with the training of American high school teachers