SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS NINETY-FIFTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR AND HEALTH, DANIEL J. FLOOD, Pennsylvania, Chairman HENRY A. NEIL, FREDERICK F. PFLUGER, ROBERT L. KNISELY, NICHOLAS G. CAVAROCCHI, PART 8 TESTIMONY OF MEMBERS OF CONGRESS AND INTER- 27-613 O Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON: 1978 COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS GEORGE H. MAHON, Texas, Chairman JAMIE L. WHITTEN, Mississippi ROBERT N. GIAIMO, Connecticut DAVID R. OBEY, Wisconsin EDWARD R. ROYBAL, California LOUIS STOKES, Ohio GUNN MCKAY, Utah BILL CHAPPELL, Florida TOM BEVILL, Alabama BILL D. BURLISON, Missouri ELFORD A. CEDERBERG, Michigan J. KENNETH ROBINSON, Virginia WILLIAM L. ARMSTRONG, Colorado CLAIR W. BURGENER, California BILL ALEXANDER, Arkansas YVONNE BRATHWAITE BURKE, California JOHN P. MURTHA, Pennsylvania BOB TRAXLER, Michigan ROBERT B. DUNCAN, Oregon JOSEPH D. EARLY, Massachusetts MAX BAUCUS, Montana CHARLES WILSON, Texas LINDY (MRS. HALE) BOGGS, Louisiana ADAM BENJAMIN, JR., Indiana NORMAN D. DICKS, Washington MATTHEW F. MCHUGH, New York KEITH F. MAINLAND, Clerk and Staff Director (II) EPARTMENTS OF LABOR AND HEALTH, EDUCATION AND WELFARE APPROPRIATIONS FOR 1979 WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12, 1978. SCHOOL LIBRARIES AND LEARNING RESOURCES WITNESS MARLO THOMAS, ACTRESS Mr. PATTEN. The meeting will come to order. Miss Thomas, would you proceed. MS. THOMAS. Mr. Chairman, members of the Subcommittee, I am Marlo Thomas, I am an actress and a producer and a graduate teacher. I am very grateful for this opportunity to testify regarding appropriations for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. My particular interest today is the appropriation for Title IV-B of that Act, regarding funding for school libraries and learning resources. The Administration has committed itself to new educational programs, with special emphasis on developing basic skills for younger children. Toward that end, significant increases have been requested for many educational programs. However, no increase has been requested to enable expansion of school library resources acquisitions and I would like to tell you why that concerns me particularly. In 1974, I gathered together some colleagues in the entertainment industry and we created a record called Free To Be You and Me. We were motivated by a desire to do something entertaining and fun for children, which would also stimulate a rethinking of traditional sexstereotyped roles for men and women. I produced that record, and it was a labor of love. The many artists involved worked for the lowest conceivable rates, because they cared about children. We had all seen what sex stereotyping had done to distort the lives of men and women when we were growing up. We had lived through an era when people were locked up by public expectation into tight, little roles, a situation which repressed individual talent and destroyed individual dreams, depreving our country of vast human resources. We wanted to change that situation. And we used the way we knew best-writing; composing; singing; telling jokes-to make our point. All the profits of the record went to the Ms. Foundation, which supports programs in non-sexist education. And our success went beyond anybody's wildest dreams. We ended up with a gold record, a book based on the record, an Emmy-award winning television special, an audio-visual kit which is used over and over and over again in thousands of schools. Free To Be You and Me was grabbed up by educators and included in school cur (1) ricula all over the country, because teachers need materials; they need multimedia materials; they need new ideas all the time; and the school libraries are the chief resource centers to fill that need. In 1978, 167.5 million dollars was appropriated for funding of the school library program (ESEA IV-B). I would like to see that appropriation, which supports acquisitions for 16,000 school districts, increased by at least 30 million dollars. That is a modest sum in view of the great need, but it would help to make the market for ideas what I believe it should be-a buyer's market. The buyer in this case, the curriculum programmer and the school library-should have as many ideas to choose from as possible. The richer that market is, the more competition there is among creative people to provide ideas for it. And the more competition there is among creative people, the greater the chance of producing something really excellent for our children to learn by. In a changing society, in a nation currently and constantly discovering its variety, what is good for children today and may not be good for them tomorrow. Therefore, schools must have the money to update their collections when necessary. Although our basic values may remain the same, the way we teach them is constantly changing. The idea of individual liberty, for example, has as strong a hold on our people today as it did in 1776. But the way we teach it, and the tools we use, changes as media technology develops. That means that the need for new materials is ever-present. If we cease to feel the need, then we have ceased to acknowledge change and then we're in trouble, as a society. The whole entertainment industry is set up to stave off that kind of trouble. The dynamics of our business make us a force that just naturally fights stagnation. Our stock-in-trade is new ideas. What we do in television and film, in recording and publishing, is to constantly strive to know what will be great for the public-tomorrow. Now, the incentive to allocate venture capital to produce something for the school market is not just created by the producer, who may be mad for a new idea, but by the prospective receptivity in the market itself. We the people who developed Free To Be You and Me, for example, eventually had to funnel our ideas through a complex network of packagers and distributors, who would agree to market our concept only because they thought there was someone out there to buy it. |