Brownell Says Teacher Plan May Relieve Acute Shortage

The new Education School plan to train teachers quickly and inexpensively may help to solve the nation's acute shortage of secondary school instructors, Samuel M. Brownell, United States Commissioner of Education, said yesterday.

Brownell estimated in a statement to the CRIMSON that currently there are more than 120,000 openings for teachers in U.S. public schools. "The plan suggests a sound way to meet a portion of this shortage," he said.

The training program provides for a half-year of actual classroom practice in suburban Boston schools as a regular part of the Education School curriculum. The trainees will be paid for their services while they learn.

Expansion of the Harvard experiment to other areas is quite possible, Brownell added. 'If put into nation-wide operation, it could provide a substantial number of new teachers for high schools."

The quality of the liberal arts graduates who will be attracted by the program is its outstanding feature, Payson S. Wild, Jr., Vice-President of Northwestern University, commented last night in Evanston, Ill. "It encourages the right sort of person to go into teaching," he said.

Henry H. Hill, president of George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, Tenn., called the program an entirely new approach which should put teaching on a competitive basis with law, business and other fields in attracting the best college graduates. Peabody College offers a joint training program with Vanderbilt University.

Hill agreed with Commissioner Brownell that national expansion of the plan is entirely possible, "though it would have to be varied to suit local circumstances."

Conditions for the experiment are ideal at present, Hill observed, because the nation's public school teaching staffs are undermanned. "This is a perfect time to try this idea out. Secondary schools will have no difficulty in absorbing the influx," he said.