Promises To Keep (1966)

[Music] This is Mid America, a land as diverse in its features as it is rich in resources. For many, the promise of America has fulfilled itself here. The merchant, the builder, the cattleman, the farmer, all have done well. Yet the greatness of our country lies in the promises it has still to keep more than in those it has fulfilled. The former mean opportunity, the latter achievement. [Music] We're on a typical farm in this mid-continent region. Everywhere we see evidence of agricultural technology, mechanization, the use of hybrid seed, [Music] fertilizer, soil conditioners, agricultural chemicals. [Music] [Applause] Successful farmers throughout the region accept innovation, experiment with new ways of doing things. As they learn about them from each other, from their farm organizations, and from their county agents, they have learned that it pays. >> Hi. >> Hi. How are you today? Pretty good. >> Looks like you got a pretty good corn crop coming over. >> Yeah, that's why I wanted you to come out. >> Looks like >> working cooperatively. >> Crafting the new ideas as they seem suited to their various needs and purposes, our farmers have made the mid-continent bloom. Unusual? Not at all. Successful American farmers are always on the lookout for new and better methods to increase production and raise the quality of what they produce. As a result, American farming practices are the wonder of the world, and the success of our agricultural methods is studied by hungry nations everywhere. [Music] But we still have promises to keep here in the heartland. Somehow, education has lagged behind. Some of our children still go to school in buildings like these and try to prepare for life in the space age with facilities like these. Even where new schools have been built, and many have, children are often taught by the same methods that were used when their grandparents were in school. There are explanations for the gap between the best teaching methods and what is practiced in too many of our classrooms. the teacher shortage, the population explosion, the vast amounts of new material to be taught. The pressures of the Cold War. These are a few of the reasons, but not the real problem. The real problem is how to get people to make full use of the resources they already have and experiment with new and better ways to use them. To close the gap will take some doing. But some people have decided to do something about it. The president and the congress made it possible when they passed the elementary and secondary school act of 1965. Title four of that act authorized funds for the establishment of regional educational laboratories across the country. Their purpose is to help improve the quality of educational practice in the regions they serve cooperatively in public, private, and parochial schools. So all through the winter of 1965-66, leading educators of this mid-continent region met and deliberated and planned. >> How will this new educational laboratory function? >> It'll have to be a two-way program, I guess. >> Do you feel that the regional education laboratory movement that we have planted at Kansas City will actually improve the practice in education in the area? >> Just how is the educational laboratory going to work? I think it will work somewhat like the agricultural extension service. >> Are they going to set up the new office in Kansas City? >> Well, I should think that this would be a very good place. It's central and and >> by June they had some answers and a name, the Midcontinent Regional Educational Laboratory. They even had a door to paint the name on. Headquarters of the laboratory will be Kansas City, Missouri. But from the beginning, the aim has been to serve all the schools of the region, rural and urban, public, private, and parochial in an area that includes parts of Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Missouri. 16 area service centers will be activated during the laboratory's first year. Their methods of operation will be similar to those of the agricultural extension service. Through the area service centers, channels of communication will be established between local school people and interested citizens and members of the laboratory everywhere throughout the region. Because its mission is primarily to collect and disseminate information, communications must be the first concern of the laboratory. Only through discussion among the people of the region can the lab effectively serve their needs. Through cooperative two-way communication, the Midcontinent Lab can link children where they learn with the latest and most effective educational practices wherever they originate. In every sense, the mission of the lab will be shaped and determined by the people it serves. New ideas that originate in one part of the region will be discovered and made available to schools and teachers everywhere. Through its many connections, the laboratory will have access to information on the latest developments in education globally, thus opening the doors of our classrooms to the crosscurrens of thought and practice in education everywhere. Problems that affect all of our schools will be met in a concerted rather than a peacemeal fashion and the results of new research and experimentation will be made available in usable form to all member schools and their teachers. It may be a question of coordinating the placement of hundreds of student teachers who graduate from the region's training institutions each year. Or it may be a matter of devising better methods for evaluating the performance and effectiveness of student teachers in the classroom. It could involve the introduction of better methods to teach our children to read or teach them mathematics. [Music] It could concern the application of what we have learned about how a neighborhood operates to improve the schools in that neighborhood by involving more of its people in the school program there. Certainly part of the lab's work will be to test out the new technology of instruction. New teaching devices will be thoroughly evaluated. Techniques for using them effectively will be studied. One possibility being examined is to establish experimental classrooms where teachers may bring their students for a week or more of intensive work with all the latest mechanical and electronic gear. In this way, the lab will be able to serve its members in the same way the agricultural experiment stations serve the farmers of our region. The association between schools and the laboratory will be wholly voluntary and the needs of the individual school or teacher will determine the nature and extent of the service performed by the laboratory. [Music] We do not tend to think of the mid-continent region as an area of violent contrasts. Yet, if we look around, we see that there are great disparities in education, housing, health, economic status, and all the other things that make life what it is for the people of this region. In the matter of education, our nation is committed to the proposition that everyone should have full opportunity to fulfill his potential. That is a promise we have to keep. This is not a wild idealistic dream. The cold facts indicate that people who do realize their potential are happier and more productive. Their productivity is reflected most convincingly in the relatively high standard of living they enjoy. [Music] [Applause] But there is more to life than producing and consuming things. And most important for the future, the well- educated and qualified young people of such a region do not need to migrate to other parts of the country to find employment for their skills or jobs for which they are qualified. They don't. That is if their own region makes an effort to keep a breast of changing conditions in this age of automation, cybernetics and revolution in almost every aspect of daily life. Most school people are well aware of all this and most of them are doing all they can to meet the challenge of the times. >> Today it a teacher is just not uh a general teacher. Uh a teacher has to have appropriate training for the kind of a job that she's asked to do. For example, a teacher who is working in special education uh classes has to have different training and different experiences than one who's working with the regular group. Uh teachers who uh work in communities where there are disadvantaged children uh likewise have to have uh different kinds of experiences and understandings. Uh it would seem to me that the laboratory uh would be able uh to uh make an assessment uh of these needs. After reading about McCrell, I became interested in being involved in the projects. I'm particularly interested in research that's being done on new techniques. Uh new >> I'd like also like to know what some of your other areas are doing with their problems when they get these students that have not been exposed to any of your modern math. And u I wonder if the lab could help me. Well, I personally feel that the area service center of the Midcontinent Lab, which will be located in Colombia, can be of tremendous influence and value to our own local school district, as well as to other school districts throughout the area. >> Productivity on the farms of the Midcontinent region has earned it the nickname bread basket of the nation. The resources of soil and climate have been developed wisely by progressive farmers who understand and accept innovation as they set new harvest records annually. Through their co-ops and exchanges, they help each other keep informed, keep a breast of the latest developments pouring out of agricultural research laboratories. Working together to make the educational laboratory do for our schools what the agricultural laboratories have done for our farms. We can make the Midcontinent region a model for the nation, a model of excellence in education. We can and we will. For we have promises to keep. [Music] [Applause] [Music]