1939: General Education Board

An institution incorporated by an Act of Congress in 1903, with the stated object of promoting education within the United States of America, without distinction of race, sex, or creed. The total amount received by the Board in gifts and the accretion thereof, exclusive of income from investments, was $179,756,000. The Board is empowered to expend the principal as well as the income from these funds. The present program is restricted largely to three types of work: (1) the support of research and experimentation in relation to the problems presented in the field of general education, i.e., the secondary school through the junior college level; (2) the continuance of the existing program in the Southern states; and (3) a program, now coming to a close, in child growth and development. At the end of the year 1938 the Board's unappropriated assets amounted to $23,907,761, of which the major portion was definitely earmarked for programs already undertaken, leaving a free balance of about $8,336,000.

During the year ended Dec. 31, 1939, appropriations approximating $3,814,000 were made by the Board. Some of the larger of these were as follows:

General Education.

To the American Council on Education: $442,000 for the work of its Commission on Teacher Education, $373,480 for the programs of its American Youth Commission, $95,000 for its general expenses, and $47,000 for the preparation of materials for the White House Conference on Children in a Democracy. To the Progressive Education Association, $105,905 for its service program. To Ohio State University, $165,000 for support of a study of school broadcasting. To the Art Institute of Chicago, the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Milwaukee Art Institute, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, a total of $89,300 to further cooperation of these institutions with secondary schools. To the American Association of Junior Colleges, $25,000 for a study of terminal education at the junior college level; to the National Association of Secondary School Principals, $24,600 for a study of occupational adjustment; to Teachers College, Columbia University, $32,800 for a program of science teaching of the Bureau of Educational Research in Science; to Bennington College, $58,700 for a study of their experience in the field of general education for their guidance and that of other colleges.

Southern Education.

To the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, $50,000 for a study by its Commission on Curricular Problems and Research; to the State Department of Education of Virginia, $36,600 toward support of a cooperative project for the revision of the State high school curriculum; to the University of North Carolina, $47,000 for agricultural research at North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Engineering; to Duke University, $45,000 for studies of industrial problems related to the economic development of the South; to Clemson Agricultural College, $25,300 for a study of the place of small-scale enterprises in the social and economic development of the rural South; to the University of the South, $25,000 for repairs, furnishings, and general equipment for the science building and for laboratory equipment; and to the University of Mississippi, $25,000 for books and periodicals for the library. For the salaries and travel expenses of state agents for rural schools for Negroes in the Southern states during 1939-40, $140,000; to the Board of Control of the State Institutions of Higher Learning of Florida, $35,000 for constructing and equipping a library building for Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes; to Meharry Medical College, Nashville, Tennessee, $160,000 for current expenses of the Medical School and Hospital; to the University of Chicago, a final grant of $75,000 toward the support of instruction of Negroes in the clinical branches of medicine in Provident Hospital; to Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, $53,000 for current expenses while endowment is being raised.

The executive officers of the General Education Board during 1939 were: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (to April 6, 1939) and Ernest M. Hopkins (from April 6, 1939), Chairman of the Board of Trustees; Raymond B. Fosdick, President; Albert R. Mann, Vice-President; William W. Brierley, Secretary; Edward Robinson, Treasurer; George J. Beal, Comptroller; Thomas M. Debevoise, Counsel; Chauncey Belknap, Associate Counsel; Albert R. Mann, Director for Southern Education; Robert J. Havighurst, Director for General Education. The offices of the Board are at 48 West 49th Street, New York City.