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Show Eisenhower Formula: Strong Words and Weak Deeds On issues of education the Eisenhower Administration has been characteristically strong on words and weak on deeds. Periodically White House spokesmen have proclaimed the virtues of education and the urgent need for more and better education. Periodically also when the time for action came their voices grew soft or silent. They failed to heed even the modest recommendations recom-mendations of their own advisory groups or to press Republican Repub-lican members of Congress to support even the mild educational proposals of the President. There has been no shortage of Presidential committees on education, and no shortage of committee recommendations. The White House Conference on Education, the President's Committee Com-mittee on Education Beyond the High School, and more recently the President's Scientific Advisory Committee have helped alert the nation to the dimensions and urgency of its educational needs. Their reports have helped to stimulate some constructive actions (Continued on Page Four) Eisenhower Formula: Strong Words and Weak Deeds (Continued from Page 1) outside of Washington. As for action by the very administration which sought their advice these conferences and studies have been earnest exercises in futility. They have served as excuses for postponement and inertia. Seemingly, the Eisenhower Administration Ad-ministration has never been quite able to believe its own words. Even before the first Soviet Sputnik brought about a "rediscovery" "re-discovery" of the importance of education, President Eisenhower told an assembly of educators: "Our schools are more important than our Nike batteries, more necessary than our radar warning ets, and more powerful even than the energy of the sun." Yet nearly two years after the first Sputnik, in August of 1959, a member of his Cabinet warned that he would recommend a Presidential veto if Congress passed a modest compromise school construction bill similar to the one the President himself had proposed in 1957. |