Education: Report Card

¶ U.S. Education Commissioner Samuel Brownell updated some perennial, depressing figures. The U.S., said he, began the last academic year with 1) a shortage of 340,000 classrooms and 72,000 elementary teachers, 2) a plethora (8,000,000) of “functional illiterates,” and 3) an appalling school drop-out rate—49.5%.

¶ St. Louis, plagued by complaints that public high-school students are deficient in handling the language, prescribed a double dosage (ten periods a week) of English for all ninth graders.

¶ The trustees of Southern Methodist University reprimanded Professor John Beaty (TIME, April 12) for publicly charging that the university was being taken over by “powerful non-Christian elements.” The facts, said the trustees, “do not bear out the allegations made by Dr. Beaty.”