The fourth objection is that federal aid _to_ education inevitably means federal control _of_ education. For many years, advocates of federal aid denied that aid implies control, but in the light of the National Defense Education Act of 1958 they cannot very well maintain their position. Federal aid under the act is conditioned upon compliance by the States and local educational institutions with various standards and specifications laid down by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. _There are no less than twelve direct controls of this kind in the act._ Moreover, the acknowledged purpose of the act is to persuade local educational institutions to put greater emphasis on the physical sciences and other subjects directly related to national defense. I do not question the desirability of encouraging increased proficiency in the physical sciences, but when the federal government does the encouraging through the withholding and granting of funds, I do not see how it can be denied that the federal government is helping to determine the _content_ of education; and influencing content is the last, not the first, stage of control. Nobody should be surprised that aid has led to controls. It could, and _should not_ be otherwise. Congress cannot be expected to appropriate the people’s money and make no provision for how it will be spent. Congress would be shirking its responsibilities to the taxpayer if it distributed his money willy-nilly, without regard to its use. Should Congress permit the use of federal funds to subsidize Communist schools and thus promote the cause of our enemies? Of course not. But a prohibition of such use is clearly an exercise of federal control. Congress will always feel impelled to establish conditions under which people’s money is to be spent, and while some controls may be wise we are not guaranteed against unwise controls any more than we are guaranteed against unwise Congressmen. The mistake is not the controls but appropriating the money that requires controls. So much for the evils and dangers of federal aid. Note that I have not denied that many of our children are being inadequately educated, or that the problem is nation-wide. I have only denied that it is the kind of problem that requires a solution at the national level. To the extent the problem is quantitative--to the extent we have too few classrooms and pay some of our teachers too little money--the shortages can be taken care of by the localities concerned. But more: to the extent the problem is qualitative--which in my opinion it mainly is--it is manifestly one that lends itself to correction at the local level. There is no place where deficiencies in the _content_ of an educational system can be better understood than locally where a community has the opportunity to view and judge the product of its own school system.