Are You a Trustee of Education
W ITH every phase of education questioned and brought under review, little has been written about the ultimate authorities-the county and city boards of education, the college and university boards of trustees. There are ten times as many members of school boards as there are superintendents, and at least twenty times as many trustees as there are college presidents. Yet there are several professional organizations and many publications which are constant aids to the professional leaders of education, but there is no association and few guides for these important laymen. The belief in education as the first essential of democracy is still unshaken. Primary and secondary schools are no longer the upper limits for those who rightfully claim the advantages of higher learning. There are more students in college today than in high school thirty years ago. It is evident that there is less relation between the aristocracy of learning and the aristocracy of wealth than ever before. This increasing enrollment adds new opportunities and new responsibilities to governing boards and their members. A school board should be nonpartisan, but often it is not; the members should be elected from among the outstanding citizens of the community, but frequently they are not. Yet the present training and future success of every child in the community are involved in the quality of education sponsored by the school board. The community has no greater responsibility than the training of its future citizens. There are few positions of trust with greater human satisfactions than membership on a board of education. University, college, and privateschool boards should be a natural habitat for men and women of outstanding ability. Yet in the desperate search for financial giants capable of sharing the heavy business load, trustees often overlook the selection of intellectual giants. The alumni elections are likely to go to the athletic or social heros of former undergraduate years rather than to the unheralded victors of the classroom. The university can command the services of experienced executives who handle the affairs intrusted to them in a large way. Loyalty to Alma Mater, the prestige of the position, the associations on the governing boards, all attract the kind of leadership which has won success in finance, in business, and in pro-