Dewitt Morgan Essay

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IPS0015429 Dewitt Morgan Essay

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PROTECTING HOME RULE IN AMERICAN EDUCATION

When a request first came to me to take a place on this program, it was that my subject should be HOME RULE IN EDUCATION. With the request I was glad to comply. When, however, a copy of the final program came recently I found that the subject had been changed slightly, -- that my topic was to be not merely HOME RULE IN EDUCATION, but it was changed to a more specific wording PROTECTING HOME RULE IN EDUCATION. Although I was glad to discuss the general subject of home rule, I was even more glad to discuss the more specific subject PROTECTING HOME RULE. Protection of home rule is for me very fundamental. Home rule is a principle for which we must stand and we must act in accordance with deep convictions on this vital issue.

One observes this interesting fact, --almost everyone declares himself to be for home rule. Almost unanimously we say, "Yes, home rule must be protected". Somehow all who have grown up in the American tradition believe home rule to be a fundamental of our American way of procedure. I doubt if there be any in this room, who could or would declare opposition in any wise to the general principle of home rule. To bring it down to our own particular problem, we stand together in the general belief that education is primarily a function of communities, that legally it is a state function, administratively a community task. We believe that what shall be taught, who shall teach it, when it shall be taught, in what environment it shall be taught must be decided by local and state agencies. It is interesting to me further to observe that everyone who declares himself in favor

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-2of aid for education from the federal government has stated quite clearly, -- sometimes, of course, by implication, a belief in the principle of home rule. This implication is always embodied in the strong avowal that "federal aid shall not mean federal control". Whether Federal assistance to the states would or would not mean federal control is a matter which raises much controversy, but whether there should be or should not be federal control we verbally stand quite well together.

I am asked to talk specifically about the problem of protecting this thing which we nearly all say should be protected.Now the first dictum, to my way of thinking, which we need to adopt is that education must be carried on by a unit of government which is generally recognized as a natural community. Dean Henzlik of Teachers College of the University of Nebraska, in a recent bulletin called SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION AND EDUCATION FOR ADMINISTRATIVE LEADERSHIP IN TOWNS AND VILLAGES, made a statement with an import which is great. He said: "In the course of 150 years the people of the United States have evolved a program of public education which we say is the legal function of the state, but which is largely community-centered and locally administered in order to keep the schools close to the people". Now that phrase "in order to keep the schools close to the people" has a wide range of implications, because the greatest problem facing educational administration in America is to set up and so to administer plans which will keep the people very close to their schools; this means, of course, to keep them very close to the problem, of financial support of schools.

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Any man who has worked at administration knows that it's not easy really to keep people close to their schools. People are busy with their own affairs. To get employers close to the schools, or parents close to the schools, or professional workers, any of them, very close to the schools, or to get colleges and universities close to the schools, even to get school administrators themselves close to the schools is a difficult task. Keeping people close to an institution cloistered by nature is not easy. It needs be in the mind of every superintendent, however, that keeping people close to schools is a difficult and onerous and eternally demanding task; but despite its difficulty and its perplexity it is the administrator's first job to work constantly with the people of his community that they become increasingly conscious of the significant place of education in our scheme of living; that people will realize increasingly that their financial bill for the education of children has a priority over whatever other expenditure they have to make. To work with the folks right at home, to enlist their individual assent for full and adequate school support is at the heart of educational administration. Everyone knows that the only thing that will endure in education is to get the home folks to know that education of their children is their first and their major civic responsibility. This broad task of keeping people close to schools is not at heart at all a matter of political maneuvering; rather it is a matter of universal, community education for public understanding of the great significance of education for the welfare of the nation.

When one declares that education needs be carried on by a

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recognized natural community, indeed he must recognize how much thinking and acting must be done toward changing units of school support to do the educational job effectively and economically. We remember that the community of yesterday is only a segment of a community today. The automobile and the paved road caused the township and the parish to lose their once community significance. Today those units are only fractional parts of a natural community as such. But because many good reasons appear for enlarging the community as a basis for community support, does not imply that thinking should run amuck. For example, we know that the township in these mid-central states from many standpoints is too small; we know that the state is too large. At the same time there are very many who would stretch this term "community" to make it appear that the entire nation is now a community. But there are practical things that have to be done. Our practical job is to seek for such working administrative units for school support which will be of such size as will do the work thoroughly and well, but at the same time to keep the people very close to the educational project.

But why should we be concerned about home rule? On the answer to that question rests an essential factor in citizenship, -a term we talk much about. The idea of home rule is at the very heart of concepts which are the basis of our American civic life. We dare never forget that the American form of government as established under the constitution recognized that states were the basic legal agencies of authority; the federal government was then formed to solve a specific number of problems which could not be met by the states individually. The Federalist papers say in one place, "The principal purposes to be answered by union are

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these: the common defense of the members; the preservation of the public peace, as well against internal convulsions as external attacks; the regulation of commerce with other nations and between states; the superintendence of our intercourse, political and commercial, with foreign countries." (Page 136 - THE FEDERALIST, edited by Lodge, G.P. Putnam's sons, 1888). Herein were named four specific objects to be served by federal union; the idea was that powers other than those named would be reserved to the states. Now I am not one who fails to recognize that the relation between federal government and states may change with the years. The relation does change and it is not my thought that the concepts expressed in THE FEDERALIST papers need remain the concepts of today. But we now face this question: Is the problem of providing for education so changed in its character that now it must be reckoned not as a local but as a national problem; and must it be financed, in part at least, from federal funds? If it must be done federally, what will it cost in terms other than money?

There is very much in this inquiry about which we must think. There is a drift to the concept that states, as states, are not able longer to meet many functions of government as they should. Education is not the only field that many times seems bigger than state governments can solve. For example, marriage laws would be simplified if federalized; corporation organization would be greatly strengthened, it seems, if made a federal rather than a state responsibility. It is obvious that there are many things which might be better done by national rather than by state control. But this following sentence from THE FEDERALIST says something

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