Dismal Document

Of the U.S. journalists who write about education, the name of Dr. Benjamin Fine leads all the rest. He likes to say: "I follow the teachers as some people follow the ponies." For ten years he has covered education for the New York Times, traveled thousands of miles, attended countless conventions, visited almost every U.S. college, bombarded students, teachers and officials with questionnaires about everything from coeds to cyclotrons.

The editors of the Times give him a free hand, don't even read his safe-&-sane, stuffy, Times-like pieces before they appear in print. One Fine series (on sloppy teaching of U.S. history) won a 1943 Pulitzer Prize. Last week Dr. Fine (he has a Ph.D. in education) began a new twelve-part series on what was wrong with U.S. education. It was based on a six-month swing he had made around the nation's public schools, and on the answers to 5,000 of his questionnaires.

Tough All Over. In his careful way, Ben Fine had documented what most educators and many citizens already knew: that U.S. schools are in a bad way. He had piled up some awesome facts & figures on the teacher exodus (350,000 since 1941), the teacher shortage (70,000), the number of substandard teachers (125,000), their generally low quality (one-third didn't go beyond high school), and the low teacher pay (U.S. average: $37 a week). But like most statistics, these were bloodless. The dismaying story of U.S. education came alive only when he told what he had seen, not what he had counted.

In the Rockies, Fine had stopped at a desolate schoolhouse where he found a "female ancient mariner with watery eyes" teaching 34 pupils. The old woman invited him to listen to a civics class. Wrote Fine: "She began a discussion of good & bad laws, complaining that this country is ruled by wicked men. 'Wait till the women get the right to vote!' she exclaimed in a seeming burst of inspiration. 'Some day they will, and then our laws will be better. . . .'"

In central Georgia, a mother insisted on taking her child out of school. Fine wondered why. "I know the new teacher," she replied. "She was reared in this county. And I know that she has not gone beyond the fourth grade. What is the sense of letting [her teach] my seventh-grade child?"

Second-Class Citizens. All over the U.S., schoolteachers told Ben Fine that they were fed up with the way their communities made them live. They longed for the freedom to marry, smoke, drink, dress and pray when and as they pleased. Many felt like second-class citizens. Said one Nebraska teacher: "The only time I am asked to visit the home of any parent is when little Johnny is in trouble."

It was another Midwestern teacher who made Fine realize what his statistics about overcrowded and rundown schools meant. Said she: "When it's cloudy we strain our eyes or wait until a little more sunlight comes in. If we had electric lights we could do much more work here."

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