A Man of Quality

The fastest-rising educator in the U.S. public-school system is a 39-year-old suburban schoolmaster who has made his career by energetically corseting the careless middle-class spread of the community-controlled school. "Too often," says Dr. George Brain, "we in America seem to mean that an equal education should be an identical education."

In the well-heeled, new suburban town of Bellevue, Wash. (pop. 12,500), which lies just across Lake Washington from the skyscrapers of Seattle, George Brain has done a notable job of making democratic education flexible enough to give every youngster a chance at a good education. Taking over as the state's youngest superintendent six years ago, Brain proceeded, on the basis of a comprehensive and deep-delving planning survey, to put together a $45 million system of eleven elementary, three junior high and two senior high schools in a community that was little more than a little-red-schoolhouse hamlet before World War II. Five more schools are now on the drawing boards.

New Forms. Keeping ahead of the racketing clutter of this crashing expansion, Brain has successfully put over some of the most interesting U.S. public experiments in setting up ungraded classes and grouping children according to ability. Bellevue was one of the first cities in the far West to provide foreign-language experience in the elementary grades (French, Spanish, German). Bellevue also cut grade and age barriers to encourage able youngsters to push ahead for advanced work in languages, music, mathematics. Such a pushing program needed a keen staff and close community support. A brush-topped joiner and prizefight buff, Brain got both. "His ability to hire and keep good personnel has given Bellevue the pick of applicants," says Bellevue's school-board president.

New Purposes. Last week George Brain was preparing to move on to one of the biggest public-school jobs in the U.S.; as successor to Dr. John Fischer, new dean of Teachers College, Columbia University, he will be head of Baltimore's schools. Under Fischer, the Baltimore school system has been raised to top level, and the city canvassed the country for the best man for the succession. Brain, youngest superintendent of a major U.S. school system, has come a long way from Ellensburg, Wash., where he attended Central Washington College and later taught after serving in the Marines as a World War II Japanese-language officer. Before saying yes to Baltimore, he passed up an offer to head Pittsburgh's public school system. Early this year he traveled through Western Europe with a State Department-sponsored educational leaders' seminar. Says George Brain: "European and American education seem to be moving closer together in purpose and objectives. Europe is broadening the opportunity for education to more and more children. America, which has had a quantity system, now aims more at quality."

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