To administer its educational funds, the Foundation has set up the Fund for the Advancement of Education and the Fund for Adult Education.

Since its creation in 1951, the Fund for the Advancement of Education has allocated more than $30,000,000 to the attainment of its major objectives. The largest single portion of the Fund's resources has been concentrated on the problem of improving the quality of teaching in secondary schools and colleges. Through two fellowship programs, the Fund has sponsored year-long leaves for more than 1200 selected high-school and college teachers, in order to encourage them to broaden their own knowledge and teaching experience.

Under Fund grants, over 250 college faculty members leave their posts each year to study at other institutions. More than 50 of these teachers come to Harvard annually to observe teaching practices in college courses. Some spend most of their time in the Widener stacks engaged in individual research; others sit in on General Education courses for ideas to use in their own courses.

A Transition Not a Shortcut

Through studies and experimental programs, the Fund has sought to clarify the function of various parts of our educational system. In 1952 Andover, Exeter, Lawrenceville, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton joined in a study which recommended a special integrated curriculum to enable superior students to accelerate their educations. Fifty schools and colleges have joined in programs to bring about a more flexible progression from high school to college, involving advanced courses in high school and advanced standing programs in colleges. With the support of the Fund, twelve colleges have waived their normal entrance requirements and accepted gifted students who have not completed secondary school.

At the College the Fund underwrites most of the expenses of the Advanced Standing program.

The Advanced Standing program here will take effect in the fall in three forms: advanced placement for incoming Freshmen who have done some college-level work; Sophomore standing for first-year students who have completed the equivalent of three full courses before coming to the College, and early admission for able students who have completed the eleventh grade of high school.

A useful modification of rather than an illusory shortcut to education, the Advanced Standing program will try to smooth the transition between high school and college for those gifted students who are retarded by formal requirements.

Another area of concern to the Fund for the Advancement of Education is the balance between liberal arts and practical training for American colleges. In an attempt to appraise different educational philosophies and practices, representatives of the faculties of 21 colleges have formed a committee to analyze the means and ends of American higher education.

At the same time that the Ford Foundation set up the Fund for the Advancement of Education, the second subsidiary agency was established--the Fund for Adult Education. Founded to provide adults with liberal education beyond formal schooling, the Fund seeks to foster "the ability to think independently and the habit of critical thought rather than passive acceptance of ready-made opinions."

Football and King Lear

Through grants to library and university extension association, the Fund fosters discussions groups and public education projects. The Fund was set up, wrote Paul Hoffman, the Foundation's first president, in 1951, because "education is seldom thought of as a life-long activity for everybody. An integral part of the Fund's work," he continued, "is to explore the possibilities of using new means that invention and technology provide to help interest people in ideas."

When Hoffman wrote, the Fund's TV-Radio Workshop was in its experimental stage. But in November, 1952, the Ford Foundation began to use television to bring liberal education into American homes.

Omnibus, a 90-minute television program, has produced an unprecedented range of educational programs--from Shakespeare's "King Lear," to specially-commissioned music, drama, and ballet performances, to a demonstration of "What's New in Football," by the Columbia football team. In every case, Omnibus has attempted to escape the more stereotyped entertainment of most commercial television.

But although it receives the largest single slice of Ford Foundation money, education represents only a part of the Foundation's work. "We will support activities that promise significant contributions to world peace and the establishment of a world order of law and justice," the trustees said in their 1950 report.