Newspaper Page Text
Griffin Daily News
School
*■ problem
By LOUIS CASSELS
« WASHINGTON (UPI) -
P Parochial school enrollment,
P steadily downward in recent
w years, is expected to register
w another substantial decline this
P fall.
r * The National Catholic
n Education Association estimates
that 4.9 million students, at
most, will return to school at
c Catholic elementary and high
y schools.
j, That compares with
a 5,033,000 in the 1968-69 school
p year, and 5,255,000 in the
/ 1967-68 school year.
c The number of parochial
c schools also will shrink by at
v least “a couple of hundred,”
a NCEA spokesman forecast. Last
t year, there were 10,406 Catholic
t elementary schools and 2,181
r high schools.
I Across the country, Catholic
( schools are closing, consolidating
, or cutting back enrollment
because of serious financial
troubles.
In the past, the low-cost labor
of teaching nuns enabled
Catholic schools to operate with
modest tuition charges. But in
recent years, there has been a
sharp drop in the number of
nuns available for teaching duty.
As a result, Catholic schools
have had to hire more and more
lay teachers. Last year, for the
first time, lay teachers
outnumbered nuns in Catholic
schools.
Since lay teachers cost four
to six times as much as nuns,
staffing charges have soared.
And attempts to raise tuition
have run into strong resistance
from Catholic parents.
In the Archdiocese of New
York, for example, cash
operating costs increased from
$55 per pupil in 1958 to $156
per pupil in 1968, and are
expected to rise to $379 per
pupil in 1972. By that time, the
New York parochial schools will
be running S3O million a year in
the red.
The Chicago Archdiocese
projects an $lB million annual
deficit in the next three years
unless tuition charges are hiked
substantially above the present
ceiline of SIOO a year for
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Picking up a Soviet invitation, the Western ollies are ask
ing that Berlin again be put on the agenda for four-power
consultations. The United States, Britain and France are
acting following a statement by Soviet Foreign Minister
Andrei Gromyko last month that Moscow is ready to dis
cuss the city. The former German capital is still techni
cally under four-power control, but the three Western
sectors have long functioned as the self-governing city of
West Berlin while the East German regime, located at
Pankow, claims East Berlin as its capital.
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Monday, August 11, 1969
10
BRUCE BIOSSAT
Next month Japanese Foreign Minister Aichi comes here
to discuss, among other major matters, early return to
Japanese rule of the strategic island of Okinawa. We ought
to know not just what it is, but what it was and what it
cost us to win it.
For centuries the island was independent. From the 17th
century on, Japan and then China exacted tribute from its
people. In 1874, the Japanese formally annexed it and the
other smaller Ryukyu islands.
Today the one million Okinawans think of themselves as
Japanese in language and culture, but in origin they are
not.
The world knew little of them and their previously peace
ful farmlands until April 1, 1945, Easter Sunday, when the
largest U.S. Pacific force of World War II went ashore to
begin seizing the last big stepping-stone before assault on
the Japanese home islands.
Though just 60 miles long and about the size of the City
of Los Angeles, Okinawa’s location 350 miles south of
Japan proper made its importance obvious.
That significance is only underscored today, for Okinawa
is probably the most highly developed military, naval and
air base this nation has ever had outside U.S. soil.
Nothing agitates Japan’s political atmosphere right now
more than our continued hold on Okinawa. Yet, even
though the event is 25 years behind us, perhaps the Japan
ese need to be reminded of the price in blood their military
fanatics made us pay at a time when they knew the war
was lost.
From April 1, 1945, until June 22 of that year, Okinawa’s
peaceful fields and coastal waters were churned into a
fury of fire and death. Having just lost 6,000 dead on tiny
Iwo Jima in February-March, we suffered 12,500 dead and
a total of 50,000 casualties on Okinawa. (Thus our dead in
3'Z. months of fighting on Iwo and Okinawa were roughly
half our total dead in the entire Vietnam war.)
Qualified historians of the U.S.-Japanese war offer
families with one child in
Catholic schools and $l5O a year
for families with more than one
child enrolled.
Catholic leaders say there is
no hope of bailing out the
parochial school system solely
through higher tuition
payments.
“Unless the federal
government and the state
governments come forward with
more aid, we cannot survive,”
says Msgr. James C. Donohue,
education director of the U.S.
Catholic Conference.
He warns that withholding
public aid “will spell not only
the end of the private school
Japan vs. U.S.-Costly Island in Dispute
Okinawa: Guardian' in Pacific
By BRUCE BIOSSAT, NEA Washington Correspondent
WASHINGTON (NEA)
system as we know it, but also
financial chaos in the public
schools as well.”
If all of the 4.9 million
parochial students were dumped
on public schools, it would add
billions of dollars annually to
their cost of operation and also
would necessitate large building
persuasive evidence that Japan’s ruling fanatics wanted
to bleed us badly, not in hope of final victory but to force a
more favorable settlement.
We landed on Okinawa and took its northern two-thirds
with deceptive ease, needing only one division for the
northern mop-up. But the real Japanese defense force,
buttressed by Japan’s biggest artillery concentration of the
war, was dug in to the south in high ground and deepset
caves.
Several divisions strong, the main U.S. force lunged
southward to begin what one writer calls a “savage killing
match.” In one 53-day stretch, they advanced an average
of 135 yards a day, suffering and dealing out murderous
fire- . ....
The noise and persistence of combat was so great that
when the fighting ended, some 13,000 U.S. fighting men
were on the brink of collapse from combat fatigue.
We inched southward until May 4, when restless Jap
anese officers tried a costly, futile counterattack. It ended
quickly as they went back to defensive posture. It was the
last Japanese offensive of the war.
While this brutal fighting went forward on land, U.S.
ships standing offshore took an incredible pounding from
Japanese Kamikaze suicide planes. The first day of the
assault they sank or damaged 24 U.S. vessels. Altogether,
the Kamikazes hit or destroyed some 400 American ships
off Okinawa and caused nearly 5,000 Navy dead.
When famed Shuri Castle, defensive position in the
southern highlands, fell on May 31, the end was near. But
two fanatical generals kept the slaughter going (it cost
Japan 100,000 or more dead) until they signaled surrender
by killing themselves on a moonlit hill at 4 a.m. June 22.
Japan’s interest in regaining Okinawa is understandable.
But its grim price—and its present value—to us are of a
magnitude which any terms for its return must take into
full account.
(Newspaper Enterprise Assn.)
programs to accommodate the
sudden, sharp expansion of
enrollment in many
communities.
With this spectre as their
most telling argument, Catholics
waged major campaigns in the
legislatures of 26 states this year
for public assistance to parochial
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schools. The biggest victories
were won in Connecticut and
Rhode Island. Both enacted laws
— patterned after one which
Pennsylvania adopted last year —
under which the state will pay
part of the salaries of parochial
school students who instruct
students in secular subjects.
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