"I WILL never do anything in my entire life that excites me more, or benefits the nation I serve more, or makes the land and all of its people better and wiser and stronger, or anything that I think means more to freedom and justice in the world than what we have done with this education bill."
So said Lyndon Johnson in his rambling pastoral prose, and many U.S. educators agree with him about the historic importance of the new law that is formally titled the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. "It is a tremendous breakthrough," says Atlanta School Superintendent John Letson. "As significant as the passing of social security legislation," says Lindley Stiles, dean of the University of Wisconsin's School of Education. New York State Education Commissioner James E. Allen Jr. forecasts a "tremendous impact" for the bill; to him, it symbolizes the fact that the knowledge explosion has put an end to the mythology of the self-made, self-educated man as well as the self-sufficient local school.
The bill authorizes the spending of $1.3 billion—a relatively small sum considering the fact that public education in the U.S. is an annual $34 billion business. The real breakthrough lies in the fact that the Federal Government has overcome a longstanding taboo and become a full-scale partner in grade-school education, both public and private. Thomas Braden, chairman of California's State Board of Education, sums it up this way: "With the rapid moving of families in our nation, the interlocking economy, the sense of a national community, it is archaic to think that education is not a national task."
Historic Shift
Not since the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which set aside new lands for public schools, has the national government been formally committed to broad support of education at the precollege level. Explained the Ordinance: "Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." Yet the U.S. Constitution, drafted the same year, said nothing at all about education, reserving that function to the states—which assumed the task so conscientiously that, even without federal direction, the uniquely American drive toward universal education soon became a key strength of the nation. In fact, education became almost synonymous with democracy.