The Best Defense

Stung by charges that U.S. schoolmen are too much concerned with group adjustment, too little with individual excellence, the National Association of Secondary-School Principals--some 16,500 members, and an arm of the many-limbed National Education Association--last week had issued a call to arms: "Now is the time for all members of the profession to rise up and make forceful protests against irresponsible and dishonest reporting on secondary education." Targets: TIME and LIFE. Weapon: "To question the continuation of subscriptions to the LIFE and TIME publications in your school . . ."

N.A.S.S.P. President George E. Shattuck and Executive Secretary Paul E. Elicker called the first installment of LIFE'S "Crisis in Education" series "a degrading misrepresentation of today's program," referred to part of an article by Novelist Sloan Wilson (LIFE, March 24) as "a caricature of secondary education." cited charges of statistical inaccuracy brought by Dr. Harold C. Hand, University of Illinois education professor.

Educationists Shattuck and Elicker urged principals to write TIME Inc.'s President Roy E. Larsen, also threatening boycott. The N.A.S.S.P. officials added a professional tip on pressure-cooking: "Of course, the force of your letter will be discounted if you indicate that you have been advised to write such a letter." At week's end more than 100 educators and educationists had taken the advice. Among them: Executive Secretary Elicker, who reported amazement "that you should allow such a distorted presentation, definitely inimitable [sic] to American education."

Replied Larsen, who is also chairman of the advisory board of the National Citizens Council for Better Schools, board chairman of the Fund for the Advancement of Education, and an overseer of Harvard: "I feel that there was something presumptuous, if not insulting, in spelling out to intelligent educators and members of the N.A.S.S.P. precisely what they should think about LIFE'S article and what to do about it. Would it not have been more in the tradition and spirit of free inquiry to suggest to them that they read the whole series of articles in LIFE and then let you and me know what they thought of them?"

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