This collection of readings was assembled and edited for use at the White House Conference on Education in Washington, D.C. on July 21st and 22nd, 1965. Some of the twenty-nine documents of historical value and relevance in today's educational milieu are: 1) Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin, 1749; 2) The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1837; 3) The Republic and the School: The Education of Free Men, Horace Mann, 1846; 4) Theory of Education, William Torrey Harris, 1870; 5) Declaration on Intellectual Freedom, Daniel Coit Gilman, 1875; 6) State Schools and Parish Schools: Is Union Between Them Impossible? Archbishop John Ireland, 1890; 7) The School and Social Progress, John Dewey, 1897; 8) Five Evidences of an Education, Nicholas Murray Butler, 1901; 9) Strategy for State Universities: Two Views, Charles Van Hise, 1904; 10) Debate on Smith-Hughes Vocational Education Act, 1917; 11) The Aims of Education, A.N. Whitehead, 1929; 12) The Higher Learning in America, Robert Maynard Hutchings, 1936; 13) Toward Equalizing Opportunity, 1947; 14) The Decline and Fall of Progressive Education, Lawrence A. Cremin, 1961; 15) In Support of Federal Aid to Education, Robert A. Taft, 1948; 16) Prejudice and Your Child, Kenneth B. Clark, 1955; 17) Brown vs. Board of Education, 1954; 18) Nationwide Educational Policy, James Bryant Conant, 1964; 19) The Partnership of Campus and Country, Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964. (Author/SBE)