On Educational Philosophy, Civil Rights, and the Schools

Abstract

In the last few years, the term "quality education" has entered the
popular educational lexicon as signifying a high degree of excellence. More often than not, the term is injected into discourse for polemical purposes, suggesting a determination to reject its putative opposite, "quantity education," or "saturation services." If one may take liberties with a formula of the Marxian dialectic, the expression constitutes a flat denial that there is a critical point whereat quantity is transformed into quality. It is a declaration that wholesale proliferation of educational plant, albeit designed along advanced architectural lines, and elegantly equipped with the most scientific laboratories, gymnasia, auditoriums, lunchrooms and libraries will not suffice to win the seal of quality education. Nor will staffing of these schools with professionally prepared and dedicated teachers, enlightened administrators, qualified specialists in guidance, librarianship, nursing, and the like alter the rating. The crucial element that must be compresent with these other factors is multi-racial or bi-racial composition of student body.