National Reports

...The parent NEA reported three months ago a current shortage of 120,000 classrooms and 180,000 qualified teachers...

...What did we see in that caterers' establishment which had once been a Russian Orthodox Church as the faithful gathered to perform their peculiar rites...

...Those members of the National Committee who were elected on the last day were deliberately chosen to make a high proportion of them Negroes...

...The story goes back to 1948, when the Corps of Engineers published its Main Control Plan for the Columbia River, one of the classic documents of its kind...

...We want to provide courses for everyone who is already in school...

...a Negro leader from Chicago, has been enhanced...

...The teacher shortage won't be solved by television, Russell emphasized...

...In the last session of Congress, the Hells Canyon bill was defeated by a sizable majority in the Senate...

...There are many things television can't do, such as inculcate the values of working in a group," he pointed out...

...Four leaders of the group gave a revealing idea of what they thought was ahead for schools ("The Foreseeable EDUCATION of the Future," as the program billed it...

...The quick-witted Russell admitted that secondary school education is floundering a bit because of the decision not to exclude people who have not benefited from academic-type courses, and that high school aims were becoming "fuzzier...

...Nevertheless, almost to a man the GOP is still against additional large Government dams in the Pacific Northwest...

...Thus, the resolution, which had been passed by the Democratic-controlled lower house, was defeated...

...The Hells Canyon Association, organized by the Grange and members of rural electric co-ops, raised enough money to carry the fight to the courts...

...I hadn't thought about it...

...The people of eastern Oregon and northwestern Idaho are up in arms...

...it is mixed up with political ideologies, campaign contributions and a dogged do-nothingism that has rarely been equaled in the history of this country's resource development...

...Finally, a delegate was granted five minutes to speak in favor of liquidation...

...William Z. Foster, ever the faithful puppet, declared in his address that "The single most important action for the convention is to maintain the party...

...Miss Miel pointed out, "The Bestorites want to turn out of the schools all who can't meet their standards of academic achievement...

...The latter, while Secretary of the Interior, abandoned the Government's claim to the magnificent Hells Canyon site...

...When the Eisenhower Administration came in, the climate in Washington changed...

...When asked to comment upon complaints by some ex-teachers that the emptiness and windiness of professional educators have driven them from teaching, all looked quite surprised at the thought...

...Since that four-day fiasco, Daily Worker editor John Gates has been denied the opportunity to explain it away before students at New York's city colleges, thereby gaining valuable publicity for a bankrupt movement...

...Educationists Remain Optimistic By Richard Rose St...

...The convention's first formal action was to dispatch a telegram to President Eisenhower informing him that bombs were dropping not on the Middle East but on Alabama and advising him that the Communist party thought he should be making a plea in the South for oppressed Negroes...

...Whether to dissolve or not to dissolve was, of course, debated on the floor, with speaker after speaker echoing Duclos...

...Nothing could be more surely ruinous to the Negro cause than to have the Communist party in any way identified with it...

...This observer, a life-long anti-Communist, was hand-picked by nobody except the editors of Dissent, who commissioned him to write an article about the convention...

...Duclos scolded the American parly for its dangerous departures from the principles of Marxism-LeninKkknakd Kosen unite, author of The Values of Veblen and co-editor of Mass Culture, attended the recent Communist party convention as an observer for the magazine Dissent...

...The loss of some 3 million acre-feet of storage at Hells Canyon—the IPC dam will store only one million feet—will be keenly felt for all time in the Snake River valley...

...The U.S...

...This is even evident in stale politics...

...The Party's guiding documents were two in number: a letter from M. Jacques Duclos and an article from the Chinese Communist press...

...It succeeded—but the issue didn't die...

...No other topic received so much attention, or produced such unanimity, as "the Negro people's liberation movement...

...And J. Edgar Hoover has released a statement in which he indicates that the CP "hand-picked" a group of observers (ACLU lawyer Carl Rachlin excluded), presumably to whitewash the party...

...Why this stubborn GOP refusal to look common sense in the face...

...This department of the National Education Association modestly calls itself "the most influential force in determining what American public school children will study.' Despite this clear recognition of its power, however, a spokesman emphasized that it worked through group planning, team work, lay consultation and the sharing of ideas...

...In proposing a series of multi-purpose projects for harnessing the river's flow, the Corps found that a high-head dam at Hells Canyon— one of the deepest river canyons in the world—was the key to flood control...

...He turned out to be an aged and utterly incoherent rank-and-filer not one word of whose stentorian tirade anyone in the hall could understand...

...Duclos violently denounced as "liquidationist revisionism" the idea of creating another political action association to replace the CP, a proposal which had been given pre-convention currency by John Gates...

...The CP at last has given up a plan cherished for many years to carve a Negro People's Republic out of three Southern states...

...The Oregon Senate has just voted along strict party lines on a resolution urging Congress to authorize llie Hells Canyon project...

...ism, referred to the people of Hungary as criminals and assassins of socialism and warned against "the morass of social-democratic opportunism...

...It is not likely that the Hells Canyon bill will ever be passed by Congress, and it is even less likely that the Supreme Court will invalidate the IPC license—though that license clearly violates the Federal Water Power Act provision calling for development of U.S...

...Russell said the teacher shortage was being reduced by special courses in education that prepared liberal arts graduates to teach, by the return of ex-teachers to the classroom and by the payment of higher salaries, which prevent teachers from quitting...

...This speech may be juxtaposed next to several fruitless attempts to raise the question of Hungary as a measure of the new party democracy...

...Communists Unchanged After Party Convention By Bernard Rosenberg The U.S...

...including one on the Hells Canyon site...

...The dam would store almost 4 million acre-feet of water in times of rampaging floods, or about one-fifth of the 20 million needed to assure flood control in the entire Columbia-Snake basin...

...But the people did not give up so easily...

...Russell thought the study of foreign languages will become less and less important because machines "on the Univac principle" will soon be in use to translate spoken and written materials automatically and instantaneously...

...Consequently, the Government abandoned its claim to Hells Canyon, and after a year-long hearing the FPC gave the IPC a license for three small dams on the Snake...

...The Hells Canyon drama will roll on, and the people will continue to mutter their resentment...

...Towns that need protection will continue to suffer, main streets will be flooded every time the rivers eo berserk, fields will be washed out, and homes will be abandoned...

...Investors in the company will continue to reap large dividends, but the region will remain short of low-cost electricity and helpless to cope with the rampaging river...

...Immediately, the private-power lobby went into action...

...David Russell, Alice Miel and Frances Martin, all professors of education...

...The Eisenhower Administration used every device at its disposal to pressure Republican Senators to vote against the bill...

...Or, rather, it made it obvious that plus qa change, plus c'est la meme chose...

...dirt soon began to fly at Hells Canyon...

...They will be predictable and reprehensible to the very end...

...The Chinese article was long and tedious, but boiled down to a simple, though meaningless proposition: We must avoid doctrinairism, dogmatism, inflexibility and all possible synonyms thereof while guarding ourselves just as carefully against revisionism...

...Party headquarters were switched from New York to Chicago, partly to wrest control from possibly rebellious elements in New York but also for the stated reason of getting closer to the Negro...

...The Idaho Power Company, which had long regarded the Snake River as its private domain, applied to the Federal Power Commission for a license to build a series of dams...

...Former utility lawyers who favored private power were brought to the FPC, and the new Secretary of the Interior— McKay—was a private-power man...

...All agreed on the importance of research by education professors...

...The intervenors then appealed to the U.S...

...The party's new slogan is an "anti-monopoly coalition" to be composed of "workers, the Negro people and other democratic strata," a slogan reiterated in just that sequence hundreds of times till the dullest clod could be sure of taking it home with him...

...The Negro Republic has been written off, and the party will now try resolutely to damage the Negro cause as much as possible...

...It never came to a vote in the House...

...But we're teaching the three Rs better than ever," he promptly added...

...Soon afterward, the Bureau of Reclamation drafted a bill that was introduced in Congress to gain authorization for llie dam...

...and Robert Gilchrist, president of the Association, face the future with optimism...

...Louis The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development held its twelfth annual convention here last month...

...The level of teaching in education courses is as high, or higher, than in other university departments," Fiussell asserted...

...The position of Claude Lightfoot...

...Not only did this give the 3,000 educators in attendance the views of leaders in their field, it also provided interested citizens with a chance to evaluate the often talked about and sometimes criticized outlook of the professional educator...

...It struck several of us who were there that these shenanigans may be worrisome in only one particular...

...Since it takes six years to train a doctor, it is certainly not too much to expect professional training for teaching to require two years...

...Communist convention, as Walter K. Lewis reported here on February 25, changed nothing...

...In fact, Hells Canyon became a ringing battle-cry in the 1956 election, and the people heeded it: One Republican Congressman from eastern Oregon went down to defeat, a Republican Senator in Idaho was unseated, and Oregon Democratic Senator Wayne Morse, a sponsor of the present bill, won an overwhelming victory against Douglas McKay...

...In other words, let us be entirely receptive to change and absolutely hostile to it...

...The party was maintained, and John Gates ruefully observed that only a very brave soul indeed would dare discuss the question again...

...Even the Senators from eastern Oregon, where power and flood control are badly needed, voted against the resolution...

...The answer is not easy to unravel...

...Gilchrist, superintendent of an expanding school district in a St...

...But they are at the mercy of a political party that is beholden to the Idaho Power Company and other utilities for substantial campaign contributions...

...When asked what value he placed upon the ability to work against the pressures of a group, the University of California educator smiled brightly and said, "You know, that's a good point...

...Just like at the United Nations," another chimed in...

...When asked whether local, state or Federal taxes would be used to raise such sizable sums, they were vague...

...The gray-haired Miss Martin said more emphasis ought to be placed upon giving pupils "love and understanding...

...Why they have forsaken this solution to the Negro problem is not entirely clear, for it has proved to be only a little less popular than Garveyism among American Negroes...

...Perhaps Nikita Khrushchev provided the cue when he said some months ago: "In the essentials—and the essentials are class interests— God grant that every Communist should be able to fight like Stalin to defend them...

...The fact that the Idaho Power Company is well along in the construction of a dam on the site apparently does not bother the committee or the bill's sponsors...

...We've still got to convince people that it's more important to spend more money on education than on liquor or high-powered automobiles...

...Meanwhile, the IPC will probably have its dam and will undoubtedly sell power at a rate four or five times that of Federal power in the Pacific Northwest...

...Court of Appeals upheld the IPC license...

...Last December, voters in Gilchrist's own district defeated a proposed $3.8-million bond issue for schools...

...They believe the classroom and teacher shortage are beginning to be solved...

...rivers on a comprehensive plan...

...The convention lined closely to this schizoid line...

...Some changes in curriculum have occurred and others are coming, all agreed...

...Supreme Court, and the four Pacific Northwest Senators—Morse, Richard L. Neuberger, Henry M. Jackson and Warren G. Magnuson— vowed to introduce another bill in the 85th Congress...

...The preamble to the new party constitution was enthusiastically amended to give more prominence to the Negro question...

...The three professors of education in the discussion expressed the belief that the expanding gross national product would automatically provide the increased revenue needed for more schools...

...No one knows this better than the Communists...

...Once again, a Senate Interior subcommittee is holding hearings on a bill to authorize Federal construction of a multi-purpose dam in the great canyon of the Snake River that separates Idaho and Oregon...

...This message was calculated to make the President throw away his golf sticks and head for Montgomery, but somehow it didn't...

...The Department of Interior, then under Oscar Chapman, intervened and succeeded in waylaying the IPC's application, but it could not get the Hells Canyon bill through Congress...

...The struggle was fierce but undecided...

...The company lost little time in making good on its application...

...More students could learn foreign languages, she declared, if less grammar was taught in language courses...

...15 Democrats voted for it, 15 Republicans against it...

...Louis suburb, admitted that professional educators have failed to make the public aware of the need for more money to finance more schools...