"Anger and urgency assail me," snaps Harvard College's Dean John Monro about a problem that roils educators across the country. It is the sad fact—and the underside of U.S. education—that hundreds of thousands of talented and sometimes brilliant youngsters not only lack the means to go to college but do not even aspire to go. Many among them are what sociologists gingerly call the "culturally deprived"—Negroes, Puerto Ricans, poor whites—who do not know that they are bright. Others are slum and farm kids ignored by crowded colleges because they go to "wrong" schools. (Of the nation's 26,500 high schools, a mere 5,000 produce 82% of all college students.) In a "rich and fat" country, says Harvard Dean Monro, "we just cannot sit cheerfully any more and watch good young minds by the thousands shrivel away."
The nation's prodigal waste of talent is no myth. About 20% of those in the upper quarter of their class do not stay on through high school; about half of the top 10% of high school seniors do not go to college; 40% of all college students fail to graduate. In sum: each year 400,000 talented U.S. youngsters quit school and college.
Poor but Rich. The key to the waste is environment. Comparing opposite ends of the social scale, Dean Horace Mann Bond of Atlanta University reports that "culturally disadvantaged" families produce only one talented youngster for every 235 from "culturally advantaged" families. In affluent suburbs, 25% of all youngsters score 125 or above on IQ tests. In poor neighborhoods, only 6% do so. The reason is partly that IQ tests, though aimed at measuring intelligence rather than learning, necessarily reflect "normal" exposure to books, conversation and even material gadgets. Without such riches, the bright slum kid seems to get dumber as he grows older. Schools treat him accordingly. With a dwindling sense of worth, he accepts the verdict and quits school.
By Dean Bond's reckoning, the U.S. talent pool would increase fivefold if every child in the land had the same cultural opportunities as those in the wealthier classes. Pending this millennium, educators are tackling three key problems:
¶ Discovering poor children with rich minds as early as the third grade.
¶ Persuading them and their parents that college is possible and desirable.
¶ Financing scholarships for them.
Biggest Government effort is the $1 billion National Defense Education Act of 1958, which has nearly doubled the number of guidance counselors in U.S. high schools. It is still not enough. Last year high schools had only 18,500 full-time counselors for 10 million students, and they argue the need for at least twice as many. The education act does not apply to elementary school guidance which is a further weakness. And while the bill lent $57 million to 115,000 college students last year, the really needy could well use federal scholarships (promised in both political platforms).