WILLIAM L. SLAYTON

The Office of Education Conference on the Impact of Urbanization on Education, May 28-29, brought together two groups of men and women-school leaders and Federal officials—interested in improving life in the cities. The Federal officials were the administrators of programs that affect city life-public housing, urban renewal, highway, child welfare, education, and labor-and directors of the President's committees on youth employment and deliquency. The school leaders were members of school boards and superintendents in the 15 large cities that make up the Research Council of the Great Cities Progam for School Improvement.

The resulting exchange of information and points of view suggested a number of possibilities for relating Federal programs to the needs of schools in major urban centers. It was generally agreed that cooperation between Federal officials and school administrators, beginning with the initial stages of all projects in urban areas, would be extremely helpful, both to the Federal agencies and to the schools. A summary report of the conference is being prepared.

Mr. Slayton's address to the conference, reprinted below, describes one of the major Federal programs helping counteract physical deterioration in the great cities.

The great cities of this Nation are in trouble. For you, the officials responsible for the school systems in our larger cities, this scarcely requires any emphasis. You spend your days living and struggling with the fundamental urban problems of America.

These problems reflect the parallel forces of growth and decay. We can see their effects in the physical and functional obsolescence facing the hearts of our great cities, in the dreary gray areas of run-down housing, in the deterioration of mass transportation facilities and the choking congestion of the streets and highways. The problem is no less evident in the consequences of the fragmentation of the tax base necessary to support community services. And perhaps most of all, it is evident in the changing social pattern of our great cities—a trend

MR. SLAYTON is Commissioner, Urban Renewal Administration, Housing and Home Finance Agency.

towards ever-increasing stratification, making the cities the abode of the very poor and the very rich, with the middle class living in the suburbs.

At the same time that these forces of decay are at work, the new and urgent demands of the 1960's are competing for attention-new housing for our growing population, new sites for industrial expansion, new commercial enterprises, new institutions-hospitals, schools, and public buildings.

The problems before us are immense. They involve no less than the restructuring and redesign of our major urban centers over the next decade or two. In Newark, New Jersey, for example, a recently completed study estimates that the renewal of the city will require the replacement of one-fourth of all existing housing, while an additional 30 percent will need rehabilitation. In addition there must be a wholesale redesign of the central business district to fit changing economic functions. A significant part of our industrial plants will have to be relocated and rebuilt. More land will have to be provided to meet the expanding needs of hospitals and universities.

as one.

My point of departure and major emphasis today is the integral nature of the urban community. The key word is community-the unity that embraces all of these problems and brings us together in this common interest. The many functions, problems, and sectors of the community cannot be peeled off like the skin of an onion. They are, rather, integral and inseparable parts of a series of interrelationships between people and functions. The community is one and we must learn to deal with it Neither the schoolman, the planner, the urban renewer, nor the highway engineer can retreat to the better ordered world of his separate profession. They are of the community, not apart from it. In short, we cannot deal with the problems of the modern community in parts and fragments without greatly impairing the effectiveness as well as the efficiency of our efforts. A comprehensive approach is essential. This is a simple statement, and very nearly a truism, but it is employed too seldom as a guide to action in the community. In many cities, the school system and other municipal functions are organized with a substantial measure of independence from the overall governmental structure. While there are some virtues to such an arrangement, we should never let the shibboleths of independence obscure the real interdependence of functions. In the important problems with which we are con

cerned, independent status is only another reason for the need for more effective and imaginative efforts towards coordination and cooperation in programs dealing with the same city and the same set of taxpayers.

We in urban renewal have been learning for 13 yearsand we are still learning-what a comprehensive approach involves and how it may be accomplished. After a decade of projects imperfectly related to the overall fabric of the city, we now have an important and promising instrument for developing a long-term comprehensive strategy for community improvement-the Community Renewal Program. This is an action-oriented program, through which a city marshals all of its resources and problems, working out a schedule for community-wide improvement. While initially it was conceived as a tool for identifying and scheduling renewal action on a citywide basis, it has now become a tool for community decision-making on a broad front.

The Community Renewal Program recognizes that renewal actions must be programed in conjunction with decisions and plans for schools, highways, and other public facilities which not only support renewal objectives but represent a concurrent drain on the same local re

sources.

It reflects the view that a long-range community improvement program must be based upon a realistic assessment of the local economy and the actions necessary to strengthen it. It reflects the need to plan for, and make decisions on, the problems involved in providing adequate housing for displaced families of low and moderate income. It reflects our only recently developed view that community renewal cannot succeed unless it can deal constructively with the great problems of human adjustment uncovered by, or involved in, renewal action.

Thus far, I have barely mentioned schools, but schools are crucial in any effective effort for the improvement of our urban communities. In the complex of interrelationships between the schools and community planning, I would like to touch on three important aspects of the problem: (1) The advanced planning of schools and comprehensive community planning; (2) the role of the schools in urban renewal areas; and (3) the role of the schools in the slums.

Decay and obsolescence in the physical fabric of the city are not confined to the housing, the stores, and the factories. They tend to be no less characteristic of the public facilities that serve the blighted areas. Long-range planning must, therefore, anticipate the gradual replacement of the significant proportion of the public school plant over a period of years. It must at the same time provide for new schools to meet new needs.

In this connection, I do not need to point out to you that our largest cities are facing a fundamental anomaly

the anomaly of rising school enrollments while total population declines. At the same time, our cities are witnessing sharp shifts of population within the city-with drastic and serious impact upon school enrollments. These forces of change, coupled with the effect of large-scale urban renewal and highway projects, are making long-range school planning in the large cities a nightmare of complexity. Under these circumstances, the long-range planning of schools-more, indeed, than any other public facility is dependent upon a better understanding of both the probable impact of change upon the demographic structure of the city and better planning for directed changes in land use through urban renewal and other tools of public action.

The Community Renewal Program should meet this need. It will not reduce the magnitude of change but it should add a coherent sense of direction. It should provide an intelligent basis for planning schools in conjunction with plans for the changes in land use. It should provide an opportunity to schedule with greater accuracy the provision and expansion of schools at the places and at the times when they are going to be needed. Further, it should provide for better relationship between school and neighborhood.

At the same time, there are other substantial benefits that can be derived from the scheduling of schools in conjunction with renewal action. Urban renewal can remove one of the most serious roadblocks to the improvement of school plants in congested central cities by providing sites needed for new construction or expansion— and providing these sites at a cleared land cost. At the same time, Federal urban renewal legislation provides that the cost of building schools serving urban renewal areas may be treated as part of the localities' share of the cost of the project. As a rough rule of thumb, for every three dollars invested in local school construction serving a project area, two additional Federal dollars are made available for carrying out the project.

Communities must be built to serve human needs. The success of our efforts ultimately will be determined not by the quality of housing or school buildings but by the opportunities the community provides for a satisfying life for the human beings who live and work there. It must meet felt human needs and accommodate the living preferences of many diverse individuals and families.

We need to begin with an image of the community which can fill this prescription. The key, in my opinion, is diversity. While heterogeneity is the cause of many of the problems of the city, it is also a major strength. By bringing together many types of people and many needs, the cities have served as generators of culture and of ideas. The city school must necessarily think of its mis

sion in terms of heterogeneity. The schools have many roles to perform as they serve the varying neighborhoods in the community. The school must educate both the socially disadvantaged and the privileged.

We are witnessing at present a social movement of great momentum, with a great shift of white middle class to the suburbs while the central cities become increasingly the haven for the impoverished and the non-white. This movement is destructive of the heterogeneity of function, of purpose, and of people on which the viability of the modern urban community is dependent. A continuation of the present trend of the middle class away from the central city will mean eventually the attrition and decay of the unique commercial and cultural facilities and institutions of the central city that are dependent upon this group for their support and prosperity.

This means that urban renewal must be heavily engaged in the protection and development of central city heterogeneity. This is a current major-though not always recognized-role of urban renewal. It is providing opportunities for housing for the middle-income families in close-in locations; opportunities for major urban cultural institutions such as Washington's Arena Stage, and the massive Center for the Performing Arts now being constructed at Lincoln Square in New York City. It is making possible livelier, more active downtowns.

The role of the schools in the success of new neighborhoods now emerging in central city areas must not be underemphasized. These neighborhoods are dependent upon their ability to attract families who already have a wide range of housing choices. Middle- and upperincome families have in recent years shown a marked preference for housing in the suburbs. There are many reasons for this but one persistent factor is the belief that the suburbs offer opportunities for better education for their children. It means that the central city schools with a tremendous advantage in fixed plant, with going administrative and teaching staffs, and with all of the cultural advantages of the city, are unable to provide the educational opportunities available in suburban areas. For the urban renewal program, the success of both redevelopment and rehabilitation appears to be intimately related to the availability of superior educational programs attuned to the cultural pattern of the new neighborhoods that are being created.

The attraction of renewal areas cannot be effective without a highly regarded school program. The striking success of the Amidon school in the Southwest Washington renewal area is illustrative. The failure to provide good new schools on a timely basis in many other renewal areas is no less instructive in its impact. I should emphasize in middle and upper class areas the special importance of

schools or school programs aimed at high achievement, and the provision of unique educational opportunity. As Dr. Conant has pointed out, the movement of the middle class to the suburb has resulted in cultural and intellectual segregation in society and in the school systems. This pattern will not be disturbed without an effort to provide equally acceptable alternatives within the city.

The essential step is recognition of the special problems of schools in redevelopment areas where important changes in the population are taking place. The schools in these areas must be organized and equipped to carry out their mission in a radically changed environment. The objective is to align the school program to support efforts to redevelop slum areas. Only in this way can the central city survive as a balanced community. Not the least of the problem is the need to retain in the city a portion of the leadership elements in the population which are now fast being lost to the suburbs.

I would like to turn now to another and vastly different aspect of the problem-the slums and the underprivileged and impoverished families who live in the slums. The city slum, as a social complex, has three salient characteristics on which our attention must be concentrated. First, the slum represents a concentration not merely of bad housing but of virtually all of the social problems of American society. Crime, juvenile delinquency, alcoholism, drug addiction, poverty, illiteracy, disease, unemployment, and broken families are all found here in massively greater degree than in society as a whole. Secondly, the problem of the slum is in substantial measure a problem of race of the Negro, of the Puerto Rican, of the Mexican, and of the Oriental. and of the Oriental. It is a community of the underprivileged, the discriminated against, and, if you will, the second class participants in the American dream. Finally, the slum is as dynamic an aspect of the American life as the mushrooming suburb. It is the destination of a vast migration of opportunity-seeking Negroes and Puerto Ricans. It is a way station for those who are moving up and out of the slums.

I am confident that the physical job of eliminating the slums is within the capacity of any American city with the determination to do it. I am convinced, too, that the slum families can be rehoused in a manner which gives them, in President Kennedy's words, "the opportunity to live in the dignity befitting a free people." It cannot be done, however, unless the community deals forthrightly not merely with the need for middle-income and public housing but also with the easing of discrimination in housing markets and with more effective efforts to provide housing for families of moderate income through the operation of the private housing market. As my chief, Housing Administrator Robert C. Weaver, has said: "A

primary objective of the Kennedy Administration has been to increase the housing choices available to all Americans. This means, first of all, increasing the supply of housing. But it is not just the supply of housing that limits the choices American have. It is also discrimination that artificially restricts the housing market to conform to racial or religious prejudices." Nevertheless, it is clear that good housing open to all is not enough.

In this connection the role of the schools is crucial. I think that this has been stated extremely well by the distinguished British historian Dennis W. Brogan. Mr. Brogan, in discussing the American school system, points

out:

"[A] . . . very large portion will be the children of migrants from different parts of the United States. Others will be the children of rural-bred parents, forced to adjust to the new urban world. They have to learn a common language, common habits, common tolerances, a common political and national

faith.

"The political function of the schools is to teach Americanism, meaning not merely political and patriotic dogma, but the habits necessary to Ameircan life."

The schools of the slums today, despite strong and enlightened efforts by teachers and school administrators, are not achieving the objective.

The basic reason for this failure has been most directly stated by Dr. Conant in his recent book on Slums and Suburbs:

"Big cities have always had slums. In the United States in the past it was possible for people to raise themselves by their own bootstraps in the course of a generation. Why be alarmed about the present situation? Such a complacent projection of the past into the obscure future is fallacious for several reasons. First and foremost is the fact that in the past most of the inhabitants of slums were recently arrived white foreign immigrants. They knew that their predecessors for generations had worked their way out of poverty in the cities. They were convinced that they could do likewise. The almost complete lack of such conviction—a consequence of the tragic story of the Negro in the United States-is the outstanding characteristic of youth in the Negro slum."

It seems to be obvious that the problems of the school administrators in the slum schools and the problems of urban renewal in the rebuilding of our cities are not going to be solved unless and until we can deal successfully with this central issue. This is not a matter merely of better education and better housing. It is at its heart a question

of opportunity-opportunity for jobs, opportunity for choices in housing, and opportunity for full participation in American life.

This is no longer a problem which can be swept under the rug and forgotten. Our continuing failure to resolve it will mean the increasing bifurcation of urban society in America between city and suburb, Negro and white, the haves and the have nots. It will mean at the same time the destruction of an urban culture dependent upon a wider degree of heterogeneity.

This job can be done and it will be done through good faith and the collaboration of all concerned. As I indicated in my opening remarks, the Federal Government is striving to coordinate its approach to helping the cities, and we in turn expect the cities to coordinate their efforts. We must all be involved in the clearing of the slums, the provision of decent housing, the development of public facilities, and education for urban living. Training for work, for example, must be considered a part of efforts to strengthen the local economy and to provide increased job opportunities. There must be a continued chipping away at the structure of discrimination which hobbles every effort at community betterment. Finally, there must be a commonly accepted sense of form and structure for the developing community, striking a balance among mutually supporting component functions and people.

CONFERENCE REPORT

THE REPORT on the Conference on the Ideals of American Freedom and the International Dimensions of Education, called by Commissioner McMurrin on March 26-28, has been released by the Office of Education. It is a summary of the deliberations of 140 leaders in U.S. education on the state of education in this country in the light of its traditions and the need for more understanding of other cultures. Participants discussed such topics as the worldwide challenge of communism, the meaning of freedom, and teaching about national ideals. In addition, they called for an organized national effort to define more clearly the fundamentals of freedom.

The report, titled "Education for Freedom and World Understanding" (OE-10016, 60 cents) may be obtained from the Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington 25, D.C.

Improving the fire loss record

R. N. FINCHUM AND GLENN C. BOERRIGTER

IRES ORIGINATING in public and private elementary and secondary schools in the United States caused 426 deaths and the loss of property worth millions of dollars during the quarter of a century from 1933 through 1958. Most of these lives and much of this property could have been saved had those responsible for the schools taken all precautions necessary to fire safety. Loss occurred in many instances because of failure to install adequate detection and alarm systems; to provide and maintain approved fire protection equipment; to design and maintain safe routes of egress; to plan adequate exits at proper locations; to develop and follow appropriate plans and procedures for evacuation; to follow satisfactory housekeeping practices; and to allow for human fallibility. Usually failure to provide one or more of these precautions occurred because of inadequate laws or because officials were not aware of the need for these precautions and the protection they offer or of the resources available to help them provide fire-safe schools.

Since 1958 those responsible for the schools have done much to tighten precautions. Though no loss of life in a school fire has been reported since 1958, property loss continues at an alarming rate: about $17.4 million in

Dr. Finchum has been specialist for school plant management in the School Administration Branch since August of 1958. He has been a teacher, a high school principal, city superintendent of schools, a college instructor, and was director of school plant services for the Tennessee State Department of Education.

Dr. Boerrigter, a research assistant in the School Administration Branch, came to the Office in 1961 from South Dakota's Northern State Teachers College, where he was an assistant professor of education. He has been a teacher, principal, and superintendent in Nebraska. He received his Ed. D. degree in school administration in 1961 from the University of Nebraska.

2,900 fires in 1959 and $16 million in 3,000 fires in 1960.1 This means that each day of these 2 years there was an average of more than eight fires and an average property loss of about $45,822. When this loss is considered as a unit of cost for a complete school plant with all related facilities, $45,822 equals the approximate cost of one well-equipped classroom. If we think of this loss as one classroom a day, 730 classrooms accommodating 21,900 children (30 to a room) were destroyed during 1959 and 1960. Such a figure makes us realize that the problems of school fire safety persist and require the constant attention and vigilance of responsible officials.

Improving the country's record on school fire loss should be the concern of all citizens, but responsibility for accomplishing this goal rests in varying degrees on national, State, and local governments and organizations: The Federal Government because of its obligation to protect the well-being of all citizens, national and State private organizations for professional or humane reasons, and State and local governments by statute. Each of these has resources and machinery that make it possible for them to help the school improve the fire loss record.

The Federal Government discharges its obligation for fire safety through several agencies, principally the Federal Fire Council, the National Bureau of Standards, the Building Research Advisory Board, the Committee on Fire Research of the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council (an affiliate of the Federal Government), the Office of Emergency Planning, and the Office of Education. These agencies conduct or support research on the causes and prevention of fires; test materials used in construction; develop standards for the performance of materials, supplies, or equipment; disseminate information to the public; or offer consultive and advisory services to State and local school systems and others interested in school safety. The Federal Fire Council, for instance, extends the benefits of its long experience with the safety of Federal buildings, for which it is responsible, to the schools. The Office of Emergency Planning, though primarily concerned with rebuilding schools after a fire or