Education: The Danger of Disaster

Is the U.S. prepared to take care of the tidal wave of students now sweeping toward its schools and colleges? Absolutely not, says Harvard Historian Oscar Handlin in the Atlantic Monthly—and he presents a gloomy set of statistics to prove his point. The teacher shortage alone has become so acute, says he, that a whole generation faces the prospect of a totally inadequate education.

In 1955 the nation's elementary and secondary schools employed just over one million teachers. By 1959, says Handlin, they will need 600,000 more. But since "well over 50,000 retire or...