Oral essays on education; Chester Bowles

The following tape recorded program is distributed through the facilities of the National Association of educational broadcasters. Oral essays on education a dynamic radio series designed to present leading personalities of our society as they attempt to discover the scope of problems which confront modern education. This week Dr. James in terror of Michigan State University College of Education. Interviews Mr. Chester Bowles former ambassador to India and congressional representative from Connecticut who urges an awakening to the fact that ours is a world society. And now here is Dr. Htun Tara. Dribbles in order for us to get a perspective of the Educational Complex and I do believe it is a complex in our country here. Would you comment upon the directions that education has been going the directions both financial and academic directions.

What were our goals of education. How well have we achieved them. Well of course America pioneered the public school system really throughout the world in our our contributions to our two educations through the public school system was it was a magnificent thing. We have to go back I believe and review some of the reasons for and some of the accomplishments during the last century in particular we were a country growing immigrant strains. Wave after wave of immigrants came to America. There was a German wave there was the Irish wave the wave for the fall from from Poland and Italy in South Europe. These ways of hit us one after another and each wave has had his difficulties in becoming maced in an integrated American life. And I think that our posed school system probably paid by all odds the greatest made the greatest contribution to enable this to happen. It made Americans out of us a lot of these boys and girls to break with the past of Europe and to find their way into an integrated life with

their fellow Americans. This was an enormously important and I think we did it magnificently of course as. As immigration has died down this dis golden role has become less important still Lehr Puerto Rican is still coming into the country there are many other boys and girls too coming in from other parts there were oh but that big task is behind us and I feel it now. We need to look not only to the quantity of education but also increasingly to the quality of it. This of course is a big subject. Trying in trying to project to the future and what seemed to be the most meaningful corrective procedure regarding the several problems facing us in educational circles in this country Senator Benton in commenting on the US used an illustration saying that several years ago there was a National Economic Advisory Council put together whose main function was to make recommendations but they just

made them not to anyone specifically just made them. And he indicated a feeling that this would show some future direction in education perhaps yes. And he raised this as an illustrative kind of a measure. We're all faced with a problem every one of us who are thinking people faced with the problem of trying to have education keep up with this with a rapidly advancing world you're talking about and we need to get some way seize upon to inforce and enable this to happen. So I'm going to put this question because assuming all these. Or so when I've given you a little clue here from another gentleman's point of view and perhaps yours is the same and perhaps it is somewhat divergent. Would you predict and not being a crystal ball games are I know that would you predict what you would see as the most meaningful future direction for us to go as a country and move in the direction of enabling education to keep up with our rapidly expanding and complex involvements.

Well that of course is a is a very. That's the heart of the whole thing I suppose. I feel first of all that the liberal arts are privately financed universities and schools have a real role to play. I think that they can. First of all they have total independence from state legislatures or government of any kind. Well they are depending as we point out more and more on the federal gov for scientific contributions. But I think they have a tremendous role to play and I hope they won't get so big that they can't play it. I hope that they will be able to maintain very high standards of independent thought. They carriages through the McCarthy period to a large degree of Harvard ever crumpled the onslaughts of McCarthy. The whole American educational system might well have quit crumpled. I think that these educational institutions have a very major role in in trying to set standards in constantly raising those standards raising the sights of the American people in education.

This doesn't mean that a lot of state institutions won't pass them by and perhaps do a better job but nevertheless they do have that role. I think some of the private preparatory schools I used to frankly laugh that I went to one and I never had any great use for them and I think today they're for performing quite a function. I know some boy schools up in New England that are doing some marvelous work in world affairs with boys 15 16 17 18 years old and girls too that are setting standards that I think our high schools can learn from. Then I feel as the foundations have their peculiar role to play because they can subsidize and contribute to those particularly healthy elements of American education which which create this new dynamism we'd like to see in it. They can encourage this by their grand style. This implies decisions by the trustees of these various foundations and this is good Somebody has to decide. To be sure they're not elected. But after all they they have this role I think they played

I think it's an important one. I don't I think the state boards of education let's hope that they are consciously improve let's hope that they're not not don't become political footballs that they get higher and higher quality in caliber people on them and I think you almost finally get back to all these forces working on Congress working on the presidency because I feel strongly that the president is the greatest potentially the greatest educator in America with his great power over TV and his ability to take the front pages of the newspapers and to attract enormous attention wherever he speaks. And if I had one thing to wish of the next president I'd States I'm not sure it would be the hope that he either is a great educator in his heart or that he becomes one because I think he can lead us through these some of this confusion to the heights and standards that we must reach. How do you feel to that our educational system ought to

concentrate more upon similarities of people or do you feel that the direction has already progressed. We're getting now into the area of something you have been identified with for many years and exert a tremendous amount of excellent leadership in specifically India. I suspect Africa fits right into this I know. I think people talk about the inscrutable Asians in the mystic east but I've lived a good deal many years one way or another in Asia and I've never yet met an inscrutable Asian and I never find very mystical about Asia. The Asians and Africans too are Latin Americans react very much the way I think I would do or you would do or any of the people who may be listening to us would do in similar circumstances. I'll die keep stressing the very point that Norman Thomas Moore Norman Cousins have stressed the similarity between people every religion on earth has some expression of the Sermon on the Mount. When the people of of India Africa and Asia met

together at Bonn doing in Indonesia 955 to try to find common ground for the future they chose the 19th of April on which to start their conference which is the anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord the first battle the American Revolutionary War. They read Longfellow's Midnight Ride of Paul Revere from the rostrum. They then proceeded and the next five or six days to pass a whole series of resolutions which were almost drawn out of American history they sided like Jefferson or Lincoln. We believe in the dignity of man regards his race his creed is color. We are opposed to colonialism in any form. We favor much faster economic development and we want to see that shared with justice and we of course will work for peace because unless there is a peaceful world these other objects act is not attainable. That's not Karl Marx or Stallin or Mao Tse-Tung or Lenin or quote you off. That's right out of our own philosophy. And I always thought that the greatest tragedy

and the greatest revealing one is to why how we lack understanding. It was a comment by a State Department official when asked to comment on bond. He said we view Baan doing with benevolent indifference. Now this it seems to me is a measure of the gap between America and the world of understanding. But this isn't their fault it's ours. We've drifted away from many of these principles. Now I harbor this new generation I think is going to close this gap particularly if they have help. First of all let's start stop talking about world history unless we are really mean world history. My son Samuel just graduate Meo recently came back from India he was very excited over the fact that he was going to study world history high school next year. And I said Sam it won't be world history that you're Coca-Cola and that you know started in Egypt and you then tackle the Calgary ends in the Middle East and the creation of a civilization. Then you go to Greece then you go to Europe and Rome and

finally you reach America. But what about India What about Asia what about China what about all these forgotten efforts of civilization Africa. These won't be touched upon. We don't teach world history we teach our own parochial Western history. Now therefore let's give these boys and girls some help in his direction. But the really learn about the civilizations of the east as well as the West. Already I think this is where doing this. But it's nowhere near rapid enough. We have the teachers for one thing we have in the textbooks we've been blind. We have we have been the run of the white rather arrogant elite of the world. And this isn't going to take us very far we've got to change we've got to become part of the human race and understand it and reach out with understanding develop partnerships with it with the two thirds the world who simply don't like communism. This is the question of communism. It took people in Africa or India or Asia to most of Asia. Communism is a foreign ideology. They don't want to live under

communism. They want to live under something resembling freedom liberty expressed in different ways. But this is what we've got to educate our children to understand. In addition to the direct connection we have with some of the non-western civilizations that you've been identifying here. There is also an exchange system going on where American education is attempting to service the needs of some of these foreign countries who are asking for help. Who assume the ideology that you are referring to here who wish it and are hungry for it and requesting aid for themselves to move in this direction. What's your reaction to the rule of education in there. Should this be an honored request. How do we coordinate it. As you see the structure of American education because I know you've been involved with some of the. Well the first thing I think we should do is develop a sense of humility on this subject which we now lack is generally thought by most Americans perhaps at

least many. If one of these foreigners could come over here and go to a good American school and university and see what we're like everything or nearly fall in order and it all go back home to create a little democracy just like the United States. Well it just ain't going to work that way. First place a heavy share of. Foreign students coming to America come from countries in Africa or new countries in Africa or other countries where their skins are darker than ours. And this is of course some difficulties and some very unhappy experiences. Most foreign students coming here are sophisticated enough mature enough to understand that we're making enormous strides in this whole area but that we have a long way to go. But some of the younger ones cannot make this transition and go home with considerable bitterness. I would like first of all to see is a little more selective in the foreign students who come to America not like to see is do a better job of having them once they get here. Now you people in Michigan have done magnificently in this work I've been there and seen it. I don't think there's a

better operation of integrating foreign students anywhere in the United States other universities and colleges have done less well and those that are in large cities have had a particularly difficult time. So I'd first like to just say that I think the far the flow of foreign students to America is good but we ought not to take it for granted as as always good. We have we've got to do a better job of saying they enter into American homes and really see something more of American life. I would like to see however much greater emphasis on Americans going abroad. I would like to see is helping to set up teachers colleges in Africa. Asia and exporting a lot of our good teaching talent this really in a sense is a new frontier for many American boys and girls and I think it'll become much more solid. I have a daughter right now in India who is working for the World Health Organization she's 23. Son just graduate from college this year. Now 21 is going to Nigeria to teach school for two years. He's teaching history in the northern

provinces of Nigeria. He's going over there with his wife they're not married in a short while and she's going to teach to and working welfare work. He's then coming back to finish his education by going through law school. Now he told me that he thought his class at Yale he could perhaps they could recruit 50 to 100 broilers to take similar jobs if they were offered and available. Now this is good. A lot young Americans go abroad. I encourage them to go out and and play their part in helping to build these new countries. They'll return to America with a sophisticated view of the world with an understanding of this point that you brought up before. There's a tent there of the university ality of all these values and ideas you know preach this lesson to the American people. I have communications here is so wonderful you can go so many places so easily and increasingly so cheaply that we that we must spread ourselves around. But let's not do it with

a sort of arrogant feeling that ours is the right way. Let's approach there was some humility. We have the highest crime rate in the world. We have about the highest divorce rate in the world and we don't do all things well. We have great needs for improvement in our own society. Did you ever think often we give the wrong reasons for doing the right things. I believe the right reason for foreign aid for instance is to help other people to make their own choices within their own societies within their own cultures with their own religions to build their future a future of freedom an opportunity a little bit higher living standards more literacy and better health. With their own system in their own ways we don't want their thanks we don't want them to be satellites we want them to succeed and we know if they do succeed then communism in such areas will have no chance. But ask a congressman or many congressmen or senators why they vote for foreign aid. You say well if you fill people's stomachs with rice then they won't become

communist of course is nonsense. If you fillers those with rice and you fail to give them a sense of justice of belonging our participation you may end up with more muscular communists. People just don't want more food they want more justice. They want to feel as individual that they have a future that they have some meaning. This is the real reason. And this is a reason I think in our hearts we understand that why then do we have to always give these rather cynical reasons. We send food and medicine to Chile and then we have people hurrying all over Washington explaining to everybody that this was not a foolhardy act. This was good public relations this was smart propaganda. This such the Communists back in Latin America. Why can't we say we sent the food in the Med.. Because a lot of people down there were in trouble and we typically American want to help them. Why are we ashamed of our good motivations. Applying this bank to our home situation. Do you feel that the coming generations will recognize this problem more

so than past generations or the immediate generation in our country. This general morality factor you're speaking of and the ability to recognize principles and activities based upon a humanities point of view. Do you feel that this is a movement arising in our country or are we on another direction where it's being buried and more so we are looking for the practical. Well I think we we skated here for quite a while Woodrow Wilson really picked this up and gave us a real vision of the world. And it was an exciting vision and people I hope more and more will go back and read their Woodrow Wilson and realize not only that he what he was saying was typically out of our history typically of our tradition typically reflected our religious faith but also caught the imagination of the world everywhere all over Africa Asia Europe everywhere. The American ideal the American dream came came

into being through the voice of Wilson for Franklin Roosevelt provided a great deal of this vision also in his his period. Now I feel it. Then we have been Swedes slumped a bit I think we were frustrated by the Second World War we hadn't expected it. We'd assumed we could turn our back on Europe and the world and somehow it would go along well even without our participation. This didn't occur. We found ourselves plunged into the war in Europe and of course and the Pacific as well. The war was over and we sort of said well that's that now we've licked the Russians and the Germans and the Japanese so we can go back about our business. Next thing we knew we were called upon to build a Marshall Plan the Truman Doctrine point for start thinking about Africa Latin America. All these things that my generation was just not prepared for a motion Lee by its education or by its training. I think we did quite well really. We

did muster our capacity in Europe magnificently Europe was relatively familiar to us it also had a common culture. We were much slower to to understand the needs of the world. But this is my kid back to is this question of giving. The most cynical reasons for doing good things. This is really quite true throughout our life the rich man who is probably operating from the most generous and decent motivations when he goes to the local community chess explains to his business friends at the club that although his gift may have looked big he figures it was really pretty good publicity for his insurance business or his automobile dealership. And in any event the tax system is such that it really cost him very little. Now what does he have to say that he did it for good reasons. Why not let it stand on its own feet. Why are we shamed of doing things for the right reasons well. I think this is going to solve itself. I think that this is improving I think the young people are not quite as

embarrassed and ashamed about doing things for good reasons. This again is a challenge to our churches challenge to our religious faith. As well as our schools schools we're not going to like these problems purely on economic basis or power basis. Fundamentally we're going to get back to this question of principle and what life is all about. But I'd like to add one thing that I think is awfully important. People who talk as I'm talking sometimes make a very dangerous mistake. I was serving that goodwill and good deeds will give us peace and a good future they will not. We have to have power. We have to have military power and plenty of it. We have to make sure our economy is working at full blast and expanding rapidly so that we can have the the goods and the services and the potential power to do the things that the world requires it was all as is necessary. We also of course want to be constantly striving to see some way out of those Cold War impasse. And this may not be possible for many years. But what I'm suggesting is the strong rebuild our

economy is strong we build our democracy the stronger we build a partnership with the world's people the more likely we are to find ourselves in a position to negotiate effectively with the Soviet Union and China in the years ahead. A week wildly divided cynical America would not have much chance in the next 20 years dedicated expanding growing determined bold courageous Creative America has only a great chance. But I think almost the certainty of coming through this next generation with flying colors. In that statement you have perhaps identified the job of education as concisely as anyone I've ever heard. What in effect you have done is to say I think the education although criticized by some people for attempting to be all things to all people and very obviously it can't to do it's right. Perhaps under

your statement here who should and can be given the responsibility of identifying the direction which America should be taking in the future. An America composed not of a country bounded by some boundaries but existing in a universe with no boundaries. And now the question becomes very obviously here. Can we expect reasonably expect and put some faith or trust in the educational process as we have developed here in this country that it will being enable us to do exactly the kinds of things you've been defining as needed in the future. Even more strongly than we need them now. Well yes. I don't think it's unfair to say look you educators solve our problems for us. You have our boys and girls of four five or six hours a day. You must take them in those four five six hours a day and save them from the television sets that they look at all evening

say them often from family surroundings that are not always constructive save them from the cheapness and Tauren is so much of our our publication in history as it's grown up today. I think this would be a little too big a load even for the kind of educational system I believe in hope that we're building. However I think we have to we have to go out all the way around. The biggest single factor of course is the American family. It always will be. This is an enormous factor and the big factor this shapes the child the time he or she is born it determines the kind of love affection and decency and which he sallies out to a boy or girl to school every morning in the kind of environment to which he comes home at night. This family is enormously important. Second there's a lot that can be done of course through the churches and through our education system adult education through publications all out to strengthen the family viewpoint and to

help parents to see their real dominant enormously. Part difficult responsibility. Also I think we have to stop talking nonsense about our capacity to. To do something about these forces these harsh sadistic forces that are hitting every child many hours a week. I speaking of all this is the sadism and violence of the TV sets and do agree over radio that you just don't build good citizens when you take formative years and fill it with all the trash that were filling it with no wonder we have no delinquency no love wonder we have across the high crime rate. Violence is there before them and people are it's TV too often appeals to the worst in people not the best. I want to point out to TV I think understands this is trying to do something about its being improved all the time. A lot of wonderful new programs coming out. But still we have a long way to go. The comics is another reflection of some of the violence and set

and sadistic attitudes that that we allow to flow out to the children. We say that the TV and the comics to keep the children quiet that they allow us to get dinner and read our evening paper in peace. All right we should I think look beyond someone's narrow motivations to see what's really happening to us. We've got to going on the educational system. We've got to pay our teachers better and we not only got to pay them that are and we have made some improvements a lot by no means enough. We have to have bring a new respect to the teaching profession. We must give a new dignities a t to teaching. I know young man who lived in a nearby city in my state of Connecticut. He was a schoolteacher. He found it very difficult for his wife to make friends around the community had a great very difficult time getting to know people. He came back two years later as a Navy lieutenant. And the whole study opened up to him and immediately said in the two months you know everybody want to know

now why is that. Teaching is one of the most honored professions there is this is this is it's entirely well paid. It's entirely be respected. It's and people should listen to their teachers and in the local community through parents teachers organizations through its local school boards and the rest. All of this is important. The home the surroundings that we do our communication centers they used to which we put our communications networks and technology and fire to school. Now you have buildings which are important but the caliber of teaching the dignity of the teaching profession and of course the content of teaching. All this rolls together into one representative Chester Bowles from Connecticut our former ambassador to India has been discussing the need for a more universal aspect to our education in this world society. Mr. Bowles was interviewed by Dr. James in

Terre Michigan State University College of Education. Next week in a program titled The Here and now Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey makes some rather candid observations about the nature of American society and some of its many problems in education. Oral essays on education was produced by Wayne S. Wayne and Patrick Ford distribution is made through the National Association of educational broadcasters. This is the end E.B. Radio Network. From. The room. In the morning on why. Don't we.

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