By & For the Public

Mr. Josiah Holbrook of Connecticut had no notion at first that his scheme would catch on as it did. Back in 1826, he and his friends were only a handful, but they were serious about the idea that the nation's new common schools belonged to the public and that the public should be concerned to make them better. They organized the American Lyceum to help set standards, soon had members all over the U.S. For more than a decade these members made speeches, wrote articles, held public meetings. They got results: better training for teachers, the formation of state and county school boards, a constant buzz of public discussion on everything from school text books to new courses in the sciences. The U.S. has never had an organization quite like the Lyceum--until this week.

With Josiah Holbrook's example in mind, 28 well-known U.S. men & women had started a new organization called the National Citizens Commission for the Public Schools. Some of the problems with which the commission will concern itself, and try to concern others, are overcrowded classrooms, the shortage of trained teachers, the millions of children who are getting substandard schooling and the confusion in educational goals. The worst problem of all, in the commission's view: in spite of all the efforts of the parent-teacher associations, the public is still doing too little to help.

Last week, the commission, chairmanned by Roy E. Larsen, president of TIME Inc.,/- told where it hoped to begin. From its headquarters in Manhattan, it will send out investigators for pilot studies of just what community groups are doing to improve their schools. It will also act as a clearinghouse for good & bad news about U.S. public education, citing local groups for a good job wherever possible, and spotlighting problem areas. To make sure that the commission stays above all special interests, it will accept only members "not professionally identified with education, religion, or politics." As the commission set up shop this week, it had $250,000 in grants from the Carnegie Corporation and the General Education Board to help it along. To many professional educators, the commission's plans sounded good. Said Harvard's President Conant:" "Potentially the most important move for the advancement of public education taken in the last 50 years."

/- Sample membership: James F. Brownlee, chairman of the Business-Education Committee of the Committee for Economic Development; Mrs. Bruce Gould, co-editor of the Ladies' Home Journal; Lester B. Granger, executive director of the National Urban League.; Leo Perlis, national director of the National C.I.O. Community Services Committee; Beardsley Ruml, chairman of the board of R. H. Macy & Co.; Richard Joyce Smith, chairman of the Board of Education of Fairfield, Conn.; James A. Stevenson, president of the Penn Mutual Life Insurance Co. The full committee will total 60.

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