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In education, as in many other areas, Finch usually eludes the conservative or liberal label. Sometimes he sounds almost like Paul Goodman, the iconoclastic critic (Growing Up Absurd) of higher education. "I want to challenge our educational institutions in a catalytic way," he says. "They are operating essentially the same way they operated 100 years ago. I want to shake them up." One of the most important alterations he made in the Johnson budget was to add $25 million for experimental education, enough to fund 15 to 20 projects. "The name of the game is learning, not teaching," says Ed Meade, a high-ranking HEW consultant on loan from the Ford Foundation. "Our focus is going to be to find out how kids learn."
For the later school years, Finch favors faster and more comprehensive development of two-year community colleges, principally because they offer alternatives to the traditional four-year academic course. The Government, Finch believes, should work far harder to give its citizens wider choices, in education and every other field. "American education," he told a congressional committee, "has become a single mechanism, its professors and students interchangeable parts. Under these circumstances, even student riots are monotonously, repellently alike."
∙ HEALTH. Finch wants to hold down medical costs by, among other things, making sure that Medicaid payments are no higher than those for Blue Shield. Indicative of his concern is his choice of Dr. John Knowles, director of Massachusetts General Hospital, to be Assistant Secretary for Health and Scientific Affairs. A proponent of such cost-saving schemes as group medical practice, Knowles has aroused the heated opposition of the ultraconservative American Medical Association and its Senate ally, Everett Dirksen. The G.O.P. minority leader says that he will block the nomination if it is sent to the Senate. Finch will not back down, and the matter rests on the President's desk. If Nixon stays above the battle, it will suggest to many—rightly or wrongly—that the A.M.A. will have considerable influence over health policy, effectively ruling out any significant innovations.
In other areas concerning health, Finch has a free hand. Last week, as guardian of the nation's food, he appointed a commission to investigate the ecological effects of pesticides; he has meanwhile banned DDT-contaminated fish from interstate commerce. "I am very apprehensive about the situation," Finch declared. "Our present estimates are that each American has an average of twelve parts per million of DDT in the fatty tissue." While his department is only one of several concerned with ecology, Finch has been a leader in expressing concern. "The ecological sequence is just frightening," he says, discussing pesticides. "It drives you right out of your mind." A heavy smoker, he has nonetheless publicly supported the stand taken by the Federal Communications Commission against cigarette ads on TV: "I feel very strongly about those miserable commercials."