A Corps of Field Specialists in Education
NEWS AND COMMENT.
The Russell Sage Foundation, through its Department of Child Hygiene, has given ardent support to the movement for enlarging the Federal Bureau of Education. Last June this department, of which Dr. Luther H. Gulick is director, issued a circular describing “a plan to promote educational progress through the United States Bureau of Education,” which up to that time had been endorsed by the school boards and superintendents of 40 states and 263 cities, by 46 universities and normal schools, and by the superintendents’ associations of Michigan and California. Later, at the annual meeting of the National Educational Association, in Boston, the movement was heartily endorsed by that body.
The United States Bureau of Education, as this circular states, was established in 1867 as an independent office of the government, through the efforts of the National Association of School Superintendents. The bill was defended in Congress by no less a person than James A. Garfield, later president of the United States. The main arguments of his defense are as cogent to-day as they were forty-three years ago. “As man is more precious than the soil, as the immortal spirit is nobler than the clod it animates, so is the object of this movement more important than any mere pecuniary interest… .We expend hundreds of thousands annually to promote the agricultural interests of the country. Is it not of more consequence to do something for the farmer of the future than for the farm of to-day?” The disparity between the appropriations for the Department of
Agriculture and for the Bureau of Education is greater now than it was in Garfield’s time. Congress appropriates annually from ten to twenty million dollars for research in agricultural and industrial matters, while it allows the Department of Education little more than half a million, of which the greater part is spent in educating the natives of Alaska. There are many problems of school administration which call for investigation by the Federal Bureau. The present movement plans to secure an addition of $75,000 to the funds already granted to the Bureau, this sum to be used to maintain a staff of ten specialists, who will study, investigate, and consult with local schoolmen on the following subjects:
The construction of school buildings; school administration; accounting and statistics; industrial education (evening, trade, and continuation schools); education for housekeeping; school hygiene; rural schools; agricultural and mechanical colleges; commercial education; the wider uses of the school plant.
If successful, the plan promises co-operation with state and local educational administrators, and is in harmony with the previous policy of the United States Commissioner of Education. The Commissioner has included the necessary amount in his budget, and the matter is being held under advisement by the Secretary of the Interior. The creation of a corps of field specialists in education can not be much longer delayed. When this enlargement of the Bureau of Education does come, it will reflect lasting credit on the administration which undertakes and carries through its organization.
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