a unique role in helping develop retraining opportunities, by making it economically feasible for employers to hire and train those in the physical, racial, and age classifications that are generally considered "unemployable." The fact that they have done so indicates business is more willing to hire and train "hard core" than we have given them credit for. Also the fact that the largest number of contracts is for fewer than five in one occupation per employer indicates that smaller businesses are as willing as the larger ones. A distinct possibility, and one that bears discussion among educators, is the concept of the "coupled program." In this type of program the best of both the institution-centered and the organization-centered programs can be combined. In Chicago a coupled program was inaugurated with Brinks in which the classroom was set up to simulate a counting room. Brinks brought in $10,000 daily in cash with which the students worked. After the classroom training was completed, there was a six-week on-the-job program in the Brinks company itself. In the class of 19, two-thirds were 45 years of age, and better than half of them had been unemployed for more than 16 weeks. On successful completion, 16 were placed immediately.10 Another successful coupled program has been between the Urban League and IBM. The Urban League recruited actively for candidates to fill 36 posts with IBM as customer engineers, a classification of technicians in the repair of data processing equipment. Unlike the Brinks project, the classes held by the League were chiefly culture-oriented with instruction in appearance, behavior, testing orientation, and work habits. The technological training was done completely on the job by IBM. While the "coupled programs" have been limited in number to date, an expansion of their use would seem a natural process. The interesting question that these examples raise is, "Could these 'coupled' programs be the answer to our vocational training dilemma today?" One of the possible routes might be to have the schools teach the basic tools of learning and some of the basic skills, and then have industry prepare the individual for the specific task it wishes him to fill. Training for the thousands of different specific occupations that we are developing may be more than the formal education system alone can handle. Issues for Consideration: The depth and rapidity of development of the neces sity for retraining is so widespread that reliable sources estimate that the average high school graduate will have to be retrained between 32 and 4 times in his lifetime. We know that there will be widespread obsolescence, not only of an individual's skills, but also of entire industries. These facts raise very basic questions such as: 1. What constitutes the basic ability to think, to learn, and to re-learn? 2. How much of "native capacity" is native and how much is cultural? How do we make the teacher aware of this difference and emphasize cultural compensations? 3. With the fluidity of technical knowledge and the need to constantly expand the individual's knowledge, do we best develop the ability to learn and re-learn through concentration on teaching abstract thinking procedures intensively enough to make them an integral part of the mental pattern, or do we concentrate on intensifying the technical lanes in order to attempt to put a higher skill level at the student's disposal earlier? The occupations with a future will be predominantly in the service areas more highly skilled levels both in service areas and production areas. There will also be an expansion of jobs in completely cultural areas. These facts raise specific questions of how best to prepare students, whether trainees or retrainees, for the new cultural and technological jobs that are emerging from the technological and social changes in the society such as: 1. What about the comprehensive high school v. the separate vocational school? 2. Should vocational educators be technicians who have been taught to teach or teachers who have been given skills courses? 3. In vocational counseling, how do we get counselors to drop their traditional practices of basing their recommendation on the economic, intellectual, ethnic, and social background of the student rather than an imaginative exploration of the student's interests? 4. How many years of schooling is going to be the necessary average if more than 12 is needed? 5. How do we face the financial problems involved with scholarships, universal free schools, or salaries for students? Two hundred thousand jobs a year are automated out of existence. While more of these, surprisingly, affect the younger worker, the older worker, once unemployed, is harder to place anew. Since we have concentrated on the education of the young in the past, re-education of the older worker raises these questions: 1. How much knowledge, unrelated to previous experience, can the average mind of 25, 35, 45, or 55 absorb and in what period of time? 2. How big a skills leap can these age ranges make? 3. What about retraining the older worker, including the professional, whose knowledge is obsolete but who is still employed? New training and retraining tools, both institution-centered and organization-centered, are developing concurrent with the rise of the new education problems. They are available, together with new financial resources, to use in creative combinations to solve the dilemma. They raise the new dilemma, however, of what the related roles of education and business should be in training and retraining. As we explore the explosive problems of almost diabolically rapid changes brought about by automation and social change, we realize that we must solve them or the great promise of more time, more goods, more leisure, and more comfort that automation can bring will become dust in our hands-a curse rather than a blessing. The determining factor will be whether we reform our education system in such a way as to develop the full potential of each child in our society and find the ways to correct in adults the shortcomings of our former practices. Our development as a continent-wide democracy was due in great part to our belief that the mind of the "common man" could be educated. We devised an educational theory and system to tap this resource as a result. Jefferson said, "Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind-as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change . . . institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times." Today we must reexamine our own ideas on the limitations of the individual mind in light of growing scientific evidence that our great grandfathers were ready to repeat our historic contribution by developing new educational concepts to meet the age-old challenges of human development as it appears in new forms. Footnotes 1 Information Office, U.S. Department of Labor, Washington, D.C. 2 Address by Francis Keppel, U.S. Commissioner of Education, before the Annual Meeting of the Education Writers Association, Feb. 13, 1965. 3 Out of School Youth, Washington: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, February 1963. 4 Education and Training, the Bridge Between Man and His Work, report of Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare Celebrezze, Apr. 1, 1965. 5 "Knowledge: The Biggest Industry of Them All," Fortune Magazine, Nov. 1964. Two hundred billion dollars is an estimated figure based on all educational media. Eighty-six billion dollars is considered direct outlay, of which $31 billion is expended for personnel, tuition, and so forth. Included in the remaining $55 billion are the taxes not assessed on schools, libraries, commercial schools, and education in the armed services. 6 Donald J. Bogue, Population of the United States, Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1959, p. 873. 7 Statistical Abstract of the U.S., 1964. 8 Ralph G. Bohrson, "It's Too Peaceful in the Country," The Bulletin of the National Association of Secondary-School Principals, May 1965. 9 Swanson J. Chester, ed. Education for a Changing World of Work, Washington: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Office of Education. 10 Manpower Research and Training Under the Manpower Development and Training Act of 1962, a report by Secretary of Labor Wirtz, March 1965. 11 Formal Occupational Training of Adult Workers, Washington: U.S. Department of Labor. Manpower/Automation Research Monograph No. 2. 12 Training of Workers in American Industry, Washington: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training, 1964. 13 U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training. 170,000 total registered apprentices in the Nation, entering at the rate of 60,000 annually. IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF EDUCATION Vice Chairman: HAROLD B. GORES, President, Educational Facilities Teacher Education Consultant: NORMAN J. BOYAN, Associate Professor of Education, Stanford The first strategic question in teacher preparation is how to separate preparation for a part-time occupation from preparation for a career. The second, is how to achieve synthesis between the education of the teacher and the training of the teacher. The search for answers to both questions involves analysis of conditions which prevail outside colleges and universities, conditions which prevail inside colleges and universities, and the nature of the interplay between the two sets of conditions. External Conditions: A complex and intricate network of external conditions has influenced and been influenced by the continuing conversations and debates in colleges and universities on teacher preparation. State and national public policy, the policies and activities of professional associations, population trends as reflected in school and college enrollments, the employment practices of schools and school systems, and changes in the world of work have shaped in various amounts and degrees decisions on the designs of programs of teacher preparation. Public Policy: The highly publicized change in the teacher credential structure introduced by the California State Legislature serves as a dramatic example of the connection between political decisions and institutional decisions. It represents truly, however, only one example out of 50. Each State has at one time or another adopted legislation concerning the licensure, or certification, of teachers. These are political decisions which reflect in one way or another the political and economic bases of action in the State itself. Our very Federal system of government has, promoted wide variability in certification practices, which range from licensure after completion of two years of posthigh school education to a minimum of five years of posthigh school education. Some students of teacher certification propose even further decentralization of certification practices through assignment of basic policy decisions to each college or university. Other observers have asked whether a national system involving nationally established minimums squares more with our expanded in which way we will go is fundamentally a matter of public policy and, therefore, a political, not an educational decision. Professional Aspirations: Professional associations have served as extra-legal vehicles for influencing public policy and institutional decisons at both the State and national levels. The influence of the professional associations, acting independently or in concert with other interested parties, on State legislatures has affected legislative decisions on certification. The effect of the education lobby on certification is, however, not independent of its general posture of relationship to State legislatures. The professional associations at the national level have recently devoted themselves with increased vigor to raising the standards of admission to practice and performance. This goal. indeed, is the specific commission of the National Commission on Teacher Education and Professional Standards of the National Educational Association. The Commission and also the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education represent two of the most vigorous associational forces which have focussed on a national effort to raise the standards of teacher preparation. The vehicle which they have chosen to implement their aspirations is the National Commission for the Accreditation of Teacher Education. The controversy surrounding the activities of NCATE, which is an extra-legal organization, has spread widely and deeply. As in the case of certification, some observers and protagonists have proposed to leave the matter of accreditation solely to the colleges and universities. Others have proposed schemes for improving the representation of colleges and universities on NCATE Others believe that only a powerful accrediting association which represents the interests of the practitioner can serve to drive the marginal colleges and universities out of the teacher preparation business. The nature of the resolution of the accreditation controversy carries with it important implications for college and university decisions on teacher preparation. Population Trends-Supply and Demand: National population trends, and variability among the States, also affect institutional decisions. The postwar population explosion has contributed to a continuing shortage of teachers. In addition we find ourselves in a period when the ratio of adults available for teaching to youth in school is disproportionately low. We really do not know whether the projected reversal of this ratio will materially affect the size and internal distribution of the overall teacher shortage. Nor are we sure of the effect of dramatic changes in the world of work related to technological developments on the attractiveness of teaching as a career. The need for large numbers of teachers has created a supply and demand picture which has prompted a number of students to despair of preparing teachers at other than the undergraduate level. These observers do not disparage five-year or 5th-year preparation programs on qualitative grounds. They merely note that the number of teachers required is so large that only the enrollment base in the undergraduate years can provide the necessary output. Other observers have reached the conclusion that it is no longer possible to accommodate all the necessary and desirable elements of teacher preparation in a four-year period. Still others believe that teaching can achieve professional status only if the preparational requirements for admission are forced upwards from four to five years and even to six years of education and training. Some have committed themselves to raising the level of total preparation quantitatively by instituting or supporting the "provisional-deferred permanent" cer |