Public Schools Best for Country, States Conant to Teachers Group

A perfect secondary school is a public one which combines the ideals of a democratic society with a minimum of class distinction and a maximum of understanding between vocational groups, said President Conant, speaking before the American Association of School Administrators last night.

He pointed out that secondary education can make available new supplies of as yet untapped talent, and at the same time teach and promote social and political ideals of justice. Continuing he said, "Unity can be achieved if our public schools remain the primary vehicle for the education of our youth, and if as far as possible, all the youth of a community attend the same school irrespective of family fortune or cultural background."

After contrasting with ours the educational systems used in other countries, Conant then spoke on the objections voiced toward the American public school system. He charged many people with believing that a secondary education divorced from a denominational religious core of instruction is a bad education. "They erroneously assume," Conant remarked, "that the tax supported schools are not concerned with moral and spiritual values."

Continuing on the subject of private schools chosen in preference to public ones, he charged independent schools with contributing to the threat to democratic unity. This remark was in answer to the question of whether taxpayers' money should be used to subsidize private schools.

In summation he said that unless one is prepared to maintain the thesis that there should be one type of general education for the well to do, another for the poor, we must maintain our present public school system.

Also speaking at the convention, Professor Robert R. Sears, director of the Laboratory of Human Development at the School of Education, said that many of the attacks on public schools in recent years have been made by "paid hirelings of organizations whose motives are suspected." He continued, remarking that the normal person shows interest in his schools not by criticizing, but by conferring with the superintendent, school committee, and teachers. As a means of doing away with the "scapegoat" role of modern schools, he suggested that if citizens are given more of a sense of participation in school work they will not respond with attacks, but constructive work.