The greatest boon to public education will come through an improvement in social conditions. Strange as it may seem, elimination of unemployment will help our schools immeasurably. Passage of a national health plan will improve the well-being of the pupils, mentally as well as physically. Well-nourished and healthy students will provide fewer discipline problems. Furthermore, a federal campaign to provide low-cost housing would help to ameliorate the deplorable conditions in which many children live. Plants cannot grow well in barren ground.
In short, our schools cannot improve until the nation as a whole emerges from poverty and desperation of deprived Americans.