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From The New International, Vol. XXIII No. 4, Fall 1957, pp. 251–253.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Sputniks I and II, the irrefutable proof of Russia’s tremendous scientific and technological advances, have brought about in the United States some strange and very instructive things, not the least of which was the sudden interest, a few weeks ago, of the Eisenhower Administration in certain aspects of the U.S. educational system. This high-level evaluation of our schools was, admittedly, a hasty operation, cut short by more pressing governmental duties – such as the planning of new billions of dollars of “defense” spending – but while it lasted it provided a fascinating view of the inner workings of U.S. officialdom.
The Administration’s concern in education was real enough; the nation had become painfully aware that Russian progress in the rocket race had a great deal to do with the fact that they were mass-producing the scientists essential to their war machine – while we were not. There was even a made-in-the-USA documentation of the efficiency of Soviet methods. The United States Office of Education had published a report, entitled Education in the USSR, which underlined the rigorous training in science and mathematics, the demand for individual excellence in school performance, the high quality of teaching on all levels in Russia. By U.S. comparative statistics, the Russians were far ahead in turning out scientists and engineers. Even beyond the first necessity of quieting public dismay at these facts, the government was faced with a serious situation, with serious implications for future success in the competition of the cold – or a hot – war.
The trouble was, though, that Administration spokesmen couldn’t get close to the problem without revealing a raft of contributing issues – which officially did not exist. There were rumblings from private education authorities of deeper faults in the American school system than a mere neglect of science and math, reports of the mediocre quality of many schools and colleges, of the national shortage of good teachers, of the lack of incentives for exceptional students, of the prohibitive cost of higher education. But to acknowledge the existence of these things, to publicly admit their truth, might further upset people, might bring a logical demand for improvement and reform.
Amazingly, it was a top member, no less, of the Eisenhower team who beautifully illustrated the dangers involved in tangling with reality. Speaking in Chicago on November 2 before a conference on scientific education, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Marion B. Folsom was actually blunt in his critical comparison of Russian and American educational methods. His exact words are worth recording; referring to the opportunities offered the talented in Russia, the Secretary said:
“The most qualified Russian high school graduates – about thirty percent – are offered free higher education, and all but the weakest students are actually paid for going to college.”
He applied this to the U.S. situation:
“It disturbs me greatly that the best estimates available indicate that about one-third of the top quarter of our high school graduates do not now go on to college. This is a serious national waste ... it tends to limit opportunity for higher education to those who are relatively wealthy.”
What was this? A plea for subsidy for needy students, or a suggestion of some system of federal selection of qualified youths? A tactic admission of the hardships caused by the spiraling costs of college education? Official recognition of actual conditions would be heartening indeed to children barred by poverty from any thought of higher education, and to students and parents recently advised to “go into debt” to pay for college expenses currently averaging $2000 per year.
Turning to the reports of the prestige position of teachers in the USSR, Folsom compared the American situation :
It doesn’t do much good ... to provide quality graduate study facilities and fellowships for potential teachers if what lies beyond graduate school is social and economic disappointment. It is nothing short of a national disgrace that we are discouraging people who want to teach by offering salaries that are far below the level justified by their training ...
In a sense, however, low salaries for college teachers are simply a reflection of a more fundamental fault – the lack of respect accorded to teaching by the public. A society that has become preoccupied with action has, I am afraid, tended to neglect those whose function is somewhat more remote from the arena of activity. The task of re-establishing the college professor as a key figure in our society, worthy of society’s high regard and reward, is a task that requires more than raising salaries ...
This was strong stuff, venturing far beyond the assigned task of providing more scientists for “national defense.” It could be, in fact, potential dynamite. Who, among the members of the Team, would care to change, or even evaluate, the traditional role of the intellectual in the capitalist society? (Besides, such a foray might conceivably reveal the disastrous toll of McCarthyism on the professorial population – and nobody wanted to bring up that subject.)
Folsom’s plain talk, his unprecedented critical attitude, was obviously out of line. From the rarified atmosphere where official speeches are written came more typical pronouncements, cutting off the rough edges of criticism, soothing public uneasiness, and in effect burying the whole disturbing subject. In his mid-November speech in Oklahoma, Eisenhower set the tone with a positive approach: there was really nothing wrong with American educational methods, the President said, for deficiencies, if they existed, were merely a matter of a temporary lack of emphasis on scientific study. All we needed was a “system of nation wide testing of high school students; a system of incentives for high aptitude students to pursue scientific or professional studies; a program to stimulate good quality teaching of mathematics and science; provision of more laboratory facilities and measures, including fellowships, to increase the output of qualified teachers.” And if the responsibility for developing this fine-sounding formula was vague, so it was intended to be.
With the discussion back on safe ground, good Eisenhower Republicans – or, for that matter, Democrats – hastened to support these words From On High. The New York Times, in its enthusiasm, hailed the President’s speech as a “New Look at Schools.” And in Washington, Commissioner of Education Lawrence G. Derthick assured himself a headline with the sweeping statement that education, in this best of all possible countries, was the best in the world. Some adjustments to new situations might be necessary, Derthick added, but in his view the President’s speech, which presented a “many sided program for education,” covered the essential modifications.
And Marion B. Folsom? Not surprisingly, his recantation was immediate and complete. Of course, said Folsom, he had not advocated change; there would be no imitation of the Russian system, for to do so would be “tragic to mankind.” (Translation: All hail the glory of “free enterprise!” In this system the state never subsidizes students; private corporations buy them.) The Russian advance, continued Folsom, “had been achieved by the sacrifice of freedom of choice for the individual student and by injecting dictatorial requirements of political conformity which are totally alien to our free way of life.” (Observe: When against his own better judgment a Russian capitulates to the demands of ideological cant, it is “political conformity”; in a similar situation, an American is exercising his “freedom of choice” in our “free way of life.”) American education, Folsom concluded, would continue to stress the development of “broadly educated men who have the intellectual ability and the moral conviction to make those difficult and often unpopular decisions that determine the course of mankind’s advance.” (Interesting statement, that; too bad Secretary Folsom himself lacked the intellectual ability and the moral conviction to continue in an unpopular examination of the real faults in American education.)
With unanimity restored in its ranks, the Administration has submitted an education bill to Congress, a program that restates the points made in Eisenhower’s November speech. The bill asks for an “emergency” program, for federal assistance to scientific study, and for governmental encouragement of potential scientists and science teachers through a limited number of scholarships. And the passage of even this modest request, in a Congress concentrating on defense demands and monumental military appropriations, is, according to the opinions of congressional leaders of both parties, extremely “doubtful.” Thus the furor has died down, the pressure is off, the crisis has passed, and education in the U.S. continues as before. But the fizzle of the “New Look at Schools” has not been entirely wasted; for the critical observer it offers still another picture of the patent phoniness of the Eisenhower Administration.
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