All of us need better equipment and federal funds should help us acquire it. But the best equipment will not assist the motivated learner unless that equipment is passed to the student through the hands of a creative, dedicated, energetic, highly motivated and adequately compensated teacher.

It can be argued that the most important work going

on in America at this hour is in the nation's classrooms. As that work goes, so goes just about everything we value for our national life.

Foster the

So, Mr. Chairman, target on the teachers. research we need on new instructional technologies. I'm sure the research community will respond to requests for proposals. Perhaps funds would be well spent first on a few conferences designed to identify the central research questions.

By all means provide fellowship and scholarship support for students interested in teaching careers. And be generous in funding renewal workshops for teachers already in the

field.

Let me conclude with a plea for the house in which this work of teaching mathematics, science and foreign language will continue to take place, namely, the physical plant and equipment necessary for this intellectual formation. In so many cases, the house is in a state of physical decay. equipment is obsolete.

The

It comes down to a question of balanced support of plant and persons.

Replacement and renewal of plant should accompany strategies for the recruitment and renewal of persons in the, teaching profession. Such renewal will produce an environment within which the cultivation of the motivation to learn is more likely to succeed.

At bottom, the problem of motivation remains to be solved. In this regard, money is not the ultimate solution but without more money--for teaching salaries and learning fellowships--no national solution is likely to emerge. Federal assistance to the learners should be enhanced by special merit scholarships directed toward national need (recognizing, however, that the nation needs poets and philosophers as well as mathematicians and microbiologists). With respect to teachers' salaries, I recommend federal support of sabbaticals, summer study stipends, and generous research grants. I also suggest that tax credits for teachers be considered as well as non-taxable federal bonus awards to full-time teachers at stated intervals in their

careers. This is not a policy proposal for a deficit-plagued federal budget. It is, however, a policy question to be taken seriously by those searching for means of motivating those who have the talent needed to overcome the national problem being considered by this Committee.

The Washington Post

AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1983

William J. Byron

A Nickel-a-Book Tax?

A nickel a gallon for roads, bridges and mass transit. Why not a nickel a book for research libraries?

By imposing a five-cent tax on every gallon of gasoline sold, the federal government expects to generate $5.5 billion annually for road repairs. The motorists will pay for better highways. Predictably, the trucking industry is unhappy, but all users, heavy and light, will benefit, and hundreds of thousands of repair-related jobs will be filled. Relaxed size and weight restrictions on trucks eased passage of the bill. Nickela-gallon is now the law of the land.

Why muse over the possibility of a nickel a book for research libraries? There is no federal library system to speak of. Such a tax would, some will certainly argue, pose a threat to freedom of the press (although the telephone excise tax seems not to impair freedom of speech). Others will ask: What is a book? Are pamphlets exempt? Will magazines be next? Isn't the tax regressive? Why raise the issue at all?

Our research libraries are in need of repair. Retrofitting for the new library technology is an even greater need. New equipment is necessary for the new information systems. Roofs, pipes, wiring, shelving, walls and climate control require attention in most old libraries, of course. Construction and reconstruction jobs are waiting to be done: jobs would be generated.

But even if all our libraries were in perfect repair, a major unmet-and often unnoticed-capital need would remain. Scholarly periodicals will soon be published electronically. Scholarly output will be stored in computer banks, not printed journals. People will use the journal and the article by going to a terminal, not a shelf. Front-end capital costs of electronic journal depositories for scholarly output will be great. So will costs of placing terminals and display screens within reach of readers and researchers across the nation.

Publishers, already uneasy at the prospect... of electronic journals, cannot be expected to hail the possibility of a nickel-a-book excise.. tax any more than the truckers welcomed the nickel-a-gallon on gasoline. The vast majority of book buyers, however, would follow the drivers in accepting the levy without protest. Revenues produced by this tax, if spent wisely "on the improvement of research libraries, would guarantee that readers will have better books to buy in the decades ahead.

A federal initiative toward the improve. ment of research libraries would be a welcome signal that Uncle Sam expects the nation to tip its hat, instead of tapping its head, in the direction of those who dedicate themselves to scholarly research.

The writer is president of Catholic. University.

Senator STAFFORD. Now, Dr. Smith, we would be very happy to hear from you.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am Joshua Smith, and I am the president of the Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of New York. And today I am wearing more than one hat because I am representing the American Association of Community and Junior Colleges and the Association of Community College Trustees by being the vice chair of the Joint Commission on Federal Relations.

This joint commission believes that our country should make at least as much of an investment in new skills development and human infrastructure improvement as the Congress seems inclined to make in public works infrastructure repair.

The aim of our joint commission is to encourage a broad national strategy that would harness the now fragmented Federal programs on job training and employment in the comprehensive development and full use of the Nation's human resources.

We believe that the House has made a good beginning in H.R. 1310, and wisely it is bringing the resources and leadership of the community colleges and of the National Science Foundation together to attack the private sector's pressing need for special skills in targeting 20 percent of the $100 million that title II provides for the National Science Foundation on strengthening the instructional models and faculty in high technology in the community and technical colleges.

The committee report from the Science and Technology Committee on H.R. 1310 observed, and I quote:

The committee realizes that NSF has traditionally not been involved in community college programs. However, in view of the critical importance of technician training to the future of high technology industries, the committee believes strongly that the NSF must take responsibility for developing and demonstrating the most effective programs for technician training.

The committee intends that funds under this section be used to develop and conduct model instructional programs, to purchase and lease appropriate instructional equipment, and to provide the opportunities for professional faculty development. Unless we succeed in eliminating the technician gap, the leadership that the United States still maintains in technological and scientific discovery inevitably will decline. Repeatedly our scientific community turns out new technology only to have the Japanese steal the markets growing out of that technology because they have the technicians to move into production faster than we do, as Representative Gillis Long observed in the House Rules Committee deliberations on H.R. 1310.

Mr. Chairman, the bill that you and Senators Pell and Cranston developed last December and that Senator Pell reintroduced 2 weeks ago, the Education for Economic Security Act, you have recognized that the critical teacher shortages in math and science are not confined to the elementary and secondary schools, and you have earmarked nearly as much support for postsecondary teacher development as you have for teacher training in the lower school systems.

Partly because of our steady growth in enrollments-and I will parenthetically say the growth in my own college is so spectacular between semesters this year we increased by almost 30 percent

and then partly because our technician programs are very popular and because our teaching salaries cannot meet industrial competition. The community colleges are grappling with grave shortages of faculty in the computer and electronics sciences and math and physics as well, and in my printed testimony I have included some tables that will give you some idea of the results of a national survey which the association recently took.

But as you go about blending H.R. 1310 with the Senate legislation, Mr. Chairman, we have two specific recommendations. If you maintain the set-asides which S. 530 proposes for vocational programs, then the postsecondary set-asides should equal the elementary, secondary set-aside.

As Dr. David Pierce, executive director of the Illinois State Community College Board noted in testimony before this committee last week, the data collected on vocational enrollments for the 1979-80 academic year by the National Center for Educational Statistics shows that 39 percent of all students in vocational programs were in postsecondary courses. And if only occupational specific programs were counted, the postsecondary share was 51 percent.

Community college growth would make that percentage even higher now, yet the set-aside prescribed by S. 530 for secondary programs in the emerging technologies would be 22.75 percent of the total funding for the bill, while the set-aside for postsecondary programs within the same area would just be 12.25 percent.

And that imbalance, we believe, tends to run counter to today's trends and to the reality which point us toward yet more advanced technician training beyond high school to serve the needs of industry for tomorrow.

Our second proposal goes to the other part of H.R. 1310, and that concerns the congressional scholarships to aid students who want to seek careers in teaching mathematics and science.

We endorse the concept, but we strongly recommend that students become eligible for the scholarships in their sophomore year of college rather than in the junior year. We believe that it is altogether too late to wait until the junior year to determine that a student is going to make the decision to go on into a career in education. We also believe that the student will not have the proper foundation in science and mathematics that would be required to make that person a good teacher.

In closing, Mr. Chairman, we would like to add to the hearing record the general statement of legislative priorities from the Joint Commission of ICCT and AACJC, entitled "Paramount Priority, Human Infrastructure." And that will accompany my prepared testimony, and we thank you again for the opportunity to appear.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith and the general statement referred to follow:]