516 CONFERENCE ON NATURAL BEAUTY 



Mr. KEPPEL. I confess I had hoped that it might be an inter- 

 esting experiment for an ex-academician and a present bureaucrat 

 to listen instead of talk, but I will do my best. 



The answer to your question, bluntly, is: Yes. The best influ- 

 ence on the local schools in the United States comes from the com- 

 munity, not by orders from Washington. To the extent that Wash- 

 ington plays a part in this, and it is not a major part, nor do I 

 think it should be, we will vigorously support what you have said, 

 under both titles I and III of the Elementary and Secondary Edu- 

 cation Act of 1965. 



RICHARD KLINCK. I would like to suggest that our war on poverty 

 should more properly be a war on poverty of the soil. I would like 

 to say that a presentation of beauty is needed for our elementary 

 school children. We teach them much of conservation as fact and 

 we teach too little of awareness of beauty as part of conservation. 

 Even in teaching conservation as fact, concentration is on reclaimed 

 and manmade beauty. Our youngsters have the impression that 

 the United States would be better if we made it over. 



I have heard Mission 66 defined as an approach to making 

 the national parks more beautiful. I choose to believe they were 

 most beautiful before the people came along. 



As an example, I am privileged to use in my own school sys- 

 tem, a laboratory school, during which time my youngsters are 

 taken on four or five days of intensive outdoor study. This can be a 

 practical approach throughout the United States. 



I would like to see assistance given in taking groups of teachers 

 into the outdoors and perhaps taking with them a person who fully 

 understands the outdoors and the beauty that is there, to spend 

 some time in the summer to help them to become aware of this. 



FITZGERALD BEMISS. I believe the key to our problem is 

 the thing Lady Jackson talked about, but I would like to pur- 

 sue it a little more specifically. I hope you will press for the 

 understanding of the economics of a metropolitan community. I 

 know from my own political experience and everything else I can 

 see, that a metropolitan area is a new phenomenon, and its eco- 

 nomics are simply not understood. It is not that the city council or 

 the board of supervisors of the adjoining county is stupid. It is that 

 they just don't know the economics or the dynamic factors of metro- 

 politan growth. What I would like to propose is that Lady Jackson 

 be captured while she is here. Maybe Mrs. Johnson could take her 



