504 ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS

No weight counts more than excellent teachers. While we may
point with pride to the exciting technological advances designed to
expedite the educational process, these are supplements to and not
substitutes for the human element. Your conscientious participation
in the P. T. A. indicates your recognition that there is no substitute
for the dedicated parent, that the State and school may do much but
the home must do most. This same principle may be extended to apply
to our teachers. A good teacher is our greatest educational force, our
primary source of intellectual discipline and stimulation.

Sometime in February 1969, if our target date holds as scheduled, a
fifth weight will be added to the scale, when Maryland's Educational
Television Station begins to broadcast. The ultimate potential of
ETV is as yet unknown but it cannot be underestimated. Open circuit
ETV will be an asset to every classroom, an aid to every teacher, a
dramatic source of stimulation to every student. Master teachers, com-
munity and world leaders become readily available lecturers via video
tape. ETV will be equally valuable to further adult education. ETV
can reach the illiterate adult, ashamed or frightened to enroll in
classes. ETV can reach the aged, the physically handicapped, the
prisoner whose rehabilitation may depend upon a high school di-
ploma. While ETV is not the ultimate weight, its potential is exciting
and its possibilities nearly limitless.

The great wealth and diversity of teaching material, media and
techniques are weights that count. In Palo Alto, California, children
are being taught reading by a computer. Other teaching machines
and instruction devices developed within the past two years are being
tested with great success in many states including Maryland. These
technological advances applied sensibly and sensitively are valuable
supplements.

The extraordinary improvement in school construction is a weight
that counts. We are not only building bigger schools but better ones —
buildings designed to accommodate and adapt to diversified educa-
tional functions. Better than 75 percent of Baltimore County's stu-
dents attend schools built or renovated since the Second World War.
Yet we are challenged to make this weight a uniform benefit. Balti-
more City still must rely upon at least fifty buildings constructed at
the turn of the century. Many counties have been compelled to utilize
obsolete and overcrowded facilities. Fiscal reform has produced al-
most $22 million in additional State aid for school construction and
Baltimore City received a special $5 million grant. These measures
should not only expedite essential school expansion but assist in the
replacement or renovation of our antiquated schools.