other agencies of the Government to complement rather than to duplicate types of information.

For instance, there is the area of information about enrollments, teacher shortage, and that sort of thing. I am attending on the 20th of this month a conference in New York City at which there will be representatives of professional organizations, the Office of Education, of the State departments of education, and some of the foundations, just to study that whole question of how we can improve the reporting of information and how we can improve that and utilize our facilities to better advantage.

Mr. ELLIOTT. As it is now, the best source of information, the most reliable source of information, and the most constant and efficient source of information that the State and local school boards have is the United States Office of Education.

Dr. BROWNELL. On some things, yes. We are not as adequately staffed and our relationships are not as good as they should be with reference to some kinds of information.

One kind of information that disturbs me is this information about supply and demand of teachers, what happens to teachers. What we need is a considerable amount of information in there that we don't have. One of our professional organizations, the National Education Association, has done a much better job on that than the Office of Education.

That is one of the things that we are discussing on a cooperative basis, to see what we should do that we are not now doing in order to have more adequate information about the teaching shortage and what we can do about it.

Mr. ELLIOTT. Would you recommend, Doctor, that the Office of Education be given more money with which to provide the facilities to acquire and disseminate more information in these fields that pertain to education?

Dr. BROWNELL. Yes, I have so recommended in our operation that there should be an increase, particularly for strengthening that field. I want to tell you very frankly that in our operations at the present time, we are doing a considerable amount of soul-searching and, as I shall mention a little later in my statement, we are also making a pretty careful study to see if there are activities that we are carrying on that should more appropriately be provided by local communities and the States, or by professional organizations.

I am just as interested in eliminating things that we are doing that we ought not to be doing as I am to be doing other things that we are not now doing. It is quite possible that one of the ways in which we can strengthen the Office of Education somewhat is to give up some kinds of activities and utilize our resources to strengthen in other areas.

Mr. ELLIOTT. Has your study progressed far enough that you can give us an example of some activity that you are now carrying on that might best be delegated to some other agency or department? Dr. BROWNELL. I will tell you one that I am concerned about. That has to do with some of the services of what we call our subject matter specialists. This service has been used and is much called upon. We have requests for more of the service. These specialists go out to communities at the request of the superintendent, or wherever

it may be, to work with the supervisors in assisting them with their program.

I question whether that is a function of the Office of Education. I think that is a function of the State departments of education. Whether it is possible for us to say to the State departments of education, as of such and such a date we are no longer going to provide this kind of service, or we are gradually moving out of that because we feel it is more important for us to collect this information on a nationwide basis for your use, I do not know. That is the sort of thing that I have in mind which we need to determine.

We have had a number of those specialists that have left the Office of Education because they had better opportunities elsewhere, and we just have not filled those jobs until such time as we are sure that that is a proper function for the Office of Education to perform.

Mr. ELLIOTT. How long has the office been engaged in that particular function, Dr. Brownell?

Dr. BROWNELL. It has been a very considerable period of time.
Do you know, Dr. Stewart?

Dr. STEWART. At least 50 years.

Dr. BROWNELL. I would say more than 25 years.

So it has become more or less of a traditional function. Therefore, I don't think we ought to just move out of that without seeing whether it would handicap the education picture. But during that same 25 years or more, State departments of education have been increasing their resources, and it is quite possible then that that can be gradually shifted over to the States to do.

Mr. GWINN. Dr. Brownell, it seems to me that there is an inherent difficulty that you have brought out in this question of classroom shortages, and teacher shortages. The very fact that the United States Government issues a statement that there is a classroom shortage and that there is a teacher shortage will be taken as the truth because the United States Government says so. I mean if the United States Government says so, who is there to say that it is not so? Does it not follow from that that the United States Government puts its approval on the fact that what we are doing in education is desirable and necessary, and that we must have teachers for all of the things and all of the subjects that we are now regarding as essential?

Dr. BROWNELL. I think that that is stretching a possible interpretation pretty far. It seems to me that all that the Federal Government is saying is this: The United States Office of Education is an arm of the Federal Government, and you people in the State and local communities have established schools. If you are to provide teachers, qualified under the terms that you set up in your State laws, you are short this many. This gives people a picture of what the situation is. It seems to me that we have that obligation for several reasons: One is that our national security requires that we have an educated citizenry, educated to the point where they can provide the types of service that are necessary for the maintenance of our democracy. Now, that calls increasingly for persons who are more and more competent, and I will point out in a moment just what relationship there is between inadequate education and rejection in the armed services.

If we look at the kind of service that is now being required of more and more people in the armed services, we recognize that it is not just a matter of their being able to read and write, if they are going to be effective in their participation in our Armed Forces. They have to have some understanding of why it is important that they put in a few years of their life in that way.

Certainly, from the standpoint of our leadership in the field of science and technology, which has been one of our major areas of leadership, and in our development of the whole field of economic production that makes American living more attractive than living under some other forms of government, there is not any question but what we have to be concerned from the standpoint of the National Government with seeing that we have a more and more competent citizenry.

To that extent, if we fail to bring to the attention of the American people, who make the decisions in 70,000 school districts, what is the problem and why it is important for them in each hamlet to provide an adequate basic education and not only to provide an adequate basic education but to encourage young people to go on and get the kind of advanced education that we require increasingly in our society, I think that we would be putting ourselves in a position of not looking after our national security.

I think we have to face up to that, because as we look at the problems that we face we cannot dodge it. When we are putting that up to the people all we are doing to them is to say, "Here are the responsibilities that we face, and if we are going to, as voters, in community X, Y, and Z, safeguard our future for our children, we have to know what they are up against and see that they get the necessary education."

Mr. GWINN. If that is true, then, you are faced with the necessity of indicating what is a good education for national defense.

Dr. BROWNELL. I think only to this extent, Mr. Chairman. We proposed to this last session of Congress, and you gentlemen approved the plan, of having the citizens in each State get together and take a look at their picture on a statewide basis. They would come together as citizens and educators to say what kind of education they want and what facilities they have to have for it, where they are now, and what course of action they should pursue in order to provide the kind of education that they want. They will have to decide within their own States whether they want to do that on the existing pattern of organization, or whether they think that they want to change their pattern of organization and place more responsibility on the local community or on the State, or how they are going to share that responsibility.

We have provided that when the 48 States have had their facing up to the situation then they can come together to share their ideas and experiences from the standpoint of a national conference.

It seems to me that this does not mean that the Federal Government is saying to the people what they should have, but rather to the people, "Here is the problem, and now it is up to you to decide what you want to do and how you want to do it.'

To go back to my earlier illustration, it is tempting I think for all of us to feel that we are aware of a problem, and therefore we ought

to give the answer. But I think that would be shortsighted on our part, the same as it would be on the part of a parent or teacher.

Mr. KEARNS. I am sorry that I had to be absent for a few minutes, Mr. Chairman, but I would like to go back to the 81st Congress, and I think that that is the first year for Mr. Elliott. I remember when we were considering Federal aid to education, and we beat it 13 to 12 in this committee, and it did not go to the floor. I had a resolution that we would no longer consider any Federal assistance in education until the Office of the Commissioner of Education was redefined. If you will recall, we went into executive session and passed a resolution and sent it to Mr. Truman, who was then President.

This committee has a definite purpose, in my opinion, that we define the duties, and I think, Mr. Chairman, this is what you are trying to do, the duties and the authority of the United States Commissioner of Education.

I have said it time and time again, and I do not say this with any reflection upon you, Mr. Commissioner, I don't think that you are anything more than a glorified clerk over there. To me the United States Commissioner of Education in this country should be one of the most highly sought persons in consultation for the advice of what we do throughout the country to eliminate any potential of Federal control, but to keep the educational problems back in the States and in the communities which I know you personally want to do.

But the way this thing is set up now, with all of your charts, and I have read your very fine statement, you definitely are working under a handicap. Personally, as a former superintendent of schools, I would not take the job for any amount of money.

If I were superintendent of schools, I would be the administrator, and if the school board did not want me, they could be the administrators and they could run the schools. But if I were superintendent, I would run the schools or get out. That is the position you ought to be in.

Then I think, too, that all of the States and chief school officers should be a factor in having a person like you in the position you are in, looked up to as one of the great educators of America, which I think is due to you.

You have done a good job, and you have tried to assimilate and work all of this thing together and correlate it and integrate it.

We have these needs that vou know: We are three-hundred-somethousand classrooms short today, and we do not have teachers; if the married women did not come back and service it, we would not have our schoolrooms open today. The girl today going to school does not go to the old normal school or the college to be a teacher; she is not interested any more. She has art or advertising, or she is going to be a secretary, and she does not want to be a teacher.

What are we going to do in America with the greatest collateral we have, that is, the children of America, to furnish teachers to teach those children with a birthrate of over 4 million a year as we have now against less than 2 million 10 years ago?

Now, Mr. Chairman, the Commissioner's duty is to try to advise all of the States as to the overall problems and the need; yet, sitting before us today is the Commissioner of Education, who has really no authority. And yet under all of these laws, like on chart No. 1, which

he showed us, we give him the authority and really he should answer to nobody, in my opinion, but the Treasurer of the United States because he signs the checks and pays out the bills, as we authorize.

There should never be any control over the Commissioner. I do not think that we will ever get Cabinet status for it, probably; perhaps not in my time, but it might be in your time, Mr. Commissioner. Every other country that has grown great has emphasized education; yet here in this country we never have. We have always put it under the table, and it has always been something that we did not want to bother with.

Yet we take the instruments of operations throughout all of these agencies out of the hands of the Commissioner and through very clearly enacted laws, which I know the chairman and counsel are very familiar with, we delegate those functions to somebody else that this man never knows anything about. We sit here as a committee trying to ask him, and he is not in a position to tell us. I know he is not in a position to tell us. My sympathy goes with him because, my goodness, when we are spending around 3 or 4 billion dollars a year in education, federally, it is infiltrated through other channels, and the ridiculous part of it was when we had a Federal bill for education up here of $300 million, that was peanuts. That was S. 242, as I recall, for $300 million, and yet here we are spending billions and there is nobody supervising the program, and I know the chairman is highly cognizant of this, and no one can come up to the Congress and say: "This is it. We know what is going on and what is being taught." What are we going to do about a thing like that?

I voted against this department organization, and if I had my vote to make tomorrow, I would still vote the same way. I believe in it. I feel, as an educator myself, that the Office of Education of the United States of America should be a constructive office to help and assist, never to grab control, but to be the dominating factor and to improve education in this country. It should try to impress upon the States and the communities the need of education and to alert them to have classrooms.

No matter what we do federally, all throughout this country, you have communities who are in this situation today. They have ai bonded-debt limit in a State that you can sell bonds to build schoolhouses. Here is a community or a township today, and you have had your consolidated program which is marvelous, and many States have gone ahead and done a marvelous job, and those building authorities in many of the States are just out of this world.

But here are 10 townships who go together, or 10 counties. And they find that they are 30 classrooms short after they dedicated the building.

They are indebted for 30 years and they have sold those bonds. And they have no possibility Mr. Chairman, of ever getting any more money for 30 years, and their bonded indebtedness has run out.

But with our great birthrate today there is no place for these boys and girls to go to school. So we come back and we say to the Commissioner of Education, "What are you going to do about it?" And here he sits today, in this position, and all of these classroom shortages are here.

This committee, Mr. Chairman, could do a great service in assisting the Commissioner of Education and focus and funnel all operations

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