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community colleges and representatives of
private schools of higher education.
For that reason we suggest that the ma-
jority bases its report not on any motives
of individual members of the Committee
as has been alluded to in certain charges
of special interest, but rather requests that
you impute good faith both to the majority
and minority reports and at worst after
hearing the deliberations conclude that one
was conscientiously right or conscientiously
wrong. The majority recommendations
make the case for recognizing that lay
persons who have volunteered to serve
without pay should be continued in order
to insure that position and political ex-
pediency shall have no place in the edu-
cational structure of the State.
For the last thirteen weeks we have been
attempting to fashion a constitution for the
State of Maryland, a body politic to serve
the needs of the people of this State. We
have attempted to make this body politic
a living one. In the traditional three
branches of government, we have provided
the torso, the local government, its appen-
dages, taxation and finance its blood
streams, suffrage and elections and rights
and preamble, its heart, and now that we
have included God, I might add its soul.
Now we turn to the question of the mind.
What kind of mind will this new being
have, this is the substance of the report I
bring to you today, a question which asks
each one of you who are thinking delegates
to keep an open state of mind as we at-
tempt to fashion a mind for the State.
We further suggest that the differences
between the Majority and Minority Reports
in some instances are matters of semantics,
in others, they are much more. It is not,
however, merely a question as might be
suggested by the minority of the long form
compared to the short form or the specific
compared to the general. The differences
which we suggest are differences of sub-
stance and not merely of form. We of the
majority, and with the minority, are say-
ing to you that we should complete the
picture that has begun. I am certain that
the advocates of brevity will disagree. The
most that can be said is that we have been
in many instances specific in some areas
and we say specific as distinct from any
concept of freezing-in concepts. I think that
the best that can be said for the entire
argument of specific versus general is the
addage that I heard in my first week of the
Convention from the gentleman who said
"I think this Constitution should be very
general except in those areas in which I
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am particularly knowledgeable." In those
he suggested they should be very specific
and with that brief background, I should
like to now go into somewhat of the step-
by-step determination.
I might add in parentheses that many
actions have been taken by the Committee
of the Whole in our wait for the presenta-
tion of this article. Consequently these ac-
tions will have affected some of the deci-
sions made by the Committee in its initial
presentation. We will therefore move at the
appropriate time to amend or strike out
those provisions which have been accom-
plished by other committees of the
Convention.
Section 1 and 4 which will be taken to-
gether, will be considered first in our Ma-
jority Report. The most that can be said
for the language here is that it appears in
many instances for the most part to be
identical. Again we would like to illustrate
the difference by the story of the man who
loved children. There is a story of the man
who loved children and we contend, as our
Chairman indicates, that both the majority
and minority love children. This man had
a new driveway put into his home, and
after the driveway had been poured, as is
traditional with children, they began to
inscribe their initials in the cement. After
it was apparent that they were doing some
bit of damage to the driveway the man
ran out and began chiding them in a loud
and unequivocal voice. Two of the neigh-
bors came out and they said, "My, this is
very strange, we always thought Mr. Jones
loved children." To which the wiser and
more discreet neighbor said, "Yes, but Mr.
Jones has always loved children in the
abstract, but not in the concrete." If this
can in any way summarize our position, I
think it will.
We believe in our Majority Report that
the general concept of the State as sug-
gested by the minority should instead be
the General Assembly, the State being a
more indefinite term than the General As-
sembly the latter having been pointed out
by our Legislative Committee to be: "That
group with broad plenary powers to carry
out the mandates of the people as expressed
in its Constitution."
The majority further states that we be-
lieve the responsibility for education should
truly be statewide and that it should be
the responsibility of the General Assembly
to see that this is carried out in each of
its subdivisions.
The further provisions are basically the
same in the majority and minority reports
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