Program 2; Land Grant Centennial Lectures

The end the EBV radio network presents another in a series of programs commemorating the passage of the moral Act of 1862 and the resulting land grab movement in American higher education. These programs were recorded from the centennial convocation of the American Association of land grant colleges and state universities. Our speaker on this program is the Hon. Philip H Coons the assistant secretary of state for Educational and Cultural Affairs. Mr. Combs will speak on the topic land grant colleges and universities in the last hundred years and the next. It is historically fitting. That this convocation should be opened with a message from the president of the United States. It was another president Abraham Lincoln whose signature 100 years ago gave life to the moral act and throughout the ensuing years there has been a close bond of mutual cooperation and assistance between the federal government and the

land grant colleges. At the centennial anniversary like any visit to a museum or an ancient monument affords us an all too rare opportunity to renew our perspective on the long road man has traveled and to speculate about the road ahead. Only with such perspective and speculation can we take stock of future opportunities and problems and formulate adequate goals and plans to match them. I searched for a yardstick to help put these things in perspective and found one in Dr. Carroll Haskins excellent book of societies and men. Doctor Haskins an eminent biologist geneticist and scientific generalist reminds us that the human animal is a very young biological species on this earth. And as a social animal he is far younger still.

Life on this planet he notes runs back to the single cellular organism east of 2000 million years ago. In contrast the human animal in approximately his present form goes back only one million years or one two hundred thousand to thousands of the total span of life. But apparently it was not until one hundred thousand years ago nine hundred years after man appeared that these human animals began associating with each other in groups that they got on to speaking terms as it were and began socializing. But even then things moved very slowly. It was not until a mere 10000 years ago at a maximum that highly organized human societies appeared with distinctive cultures such as the ancient civilizations of Egypt and elsewhere in the

Mediterranean area. For comparison another relatively young and organized society the ants were in business 50 million years ago when we now fit into these facts. The fact that Columbus visited these shores less than 500 years ago and that the United States became a nation less than 200 years ago. Things begin to fall into perspective as the charming middle aged lady said. You make me feel so young. And so the land grant colleges with only a single cent. candle on their birthday cake should also feel young. But what a fantastic century it has been measured against any previous century in man's long residence on this planet. If the word revolution is taken to mean evolution at a breakneck pace then it has certainly been a revolutionary century. Mankind

went from the horse to the space missile by way of the automobile and the airplane. From the dig era type and Pony Express to television and instantaneous worldwide communication dietary standards health standards general living standards and the span of life itself. Have shot upward at least for one small sector of total mankind. Indeed it is the conspicuous gap between this small sector and the rest of humanity that makes further revolutionary changes in the next century. Mandatory. The causal factors behind this past explosive century are numerous and not yet fully discernible but it is clear that several familiar American institutions among them the Declaration of Independence the Constitution the free public school in library and the land grant college contributed considerably to the explosion. Indeed the land grant colleges like the

Declaration and the Constitution is a profoundly revolutionary institution. One wonders whether Senator Morell that son of a Vermont blacksmith farmer who was forced to stop his own schooling at age 15 whether he half realized what was on the other end of that fuse he lighted by promoting not only the establishment of the land grant colleges but the great strengthening of the Library of Congress as well. One wonders even more. What will be the outcome of establishing new universities today in some of the ancient but still underdeveloped and semi feudal nations around the world. It is clear that the land grant colleges have helped greatly to give the American Revolution its continuing thrust and vitality long after the political revolution for independence was won. This continuing

revolution has reached into every corner of our lives. Agriculture industry communications military weapons and education itself. It is now on the march all over the world in the setting of the greatest American experiment with popular government and individual freedom. All educational institutions are bound to be a major revolutionary force. They provide the great motive power of ideas knowledge and develop human talent which propel an ever accelerating rate of change. As we ponder the world of rapid change and turmoil all about us the revolt against colonialism and against tyranny in all its forms. The revolution of rising expectations. The energetic quest of new nations for better living standards and educational opportunity and social justice. It is well to remind ourselves that

this is largely our revolution not the revolution of Marx and Lenin. It was Jefferson who said long before Marx appeared on the scene that the American revolution sought the freedom not only of Americans but of all mankind. And to share the credit or the responsibility properly. We must remember too that the muscular ideas underlying the American struggle for freedom were brought here by Europeans who were in search of freedom. No nation has a monopoly on the idea of freedom. It is the right of all mankind and not less than 200 years later the revolution which gave birth to our nation is being internationalized. The Communists who so often borrow a good thing when they see it have sought to capture this revolution and turn it to their own purposes. It is our job and the job of all free nations to keep our identity with this world wide

revolution to keep it from being stolen or perverted. From the ideological struggle around the world today for the ideological struggle around the world today is not a contest between the Soviet Union and Red China standing for change and the United States and its for your other allies standing for the status quo. Rather it is a competition between two very different kinds of revolutions with very different aims and values. The one is aimed at harnessing the individual to the purposes of the state and harnessing independent nations to the purposes of the Soviet Union and China. The other aims at liberating individuals from all forms of tyranny and bondage hunger disease and ignorance feudal lords and governmental masters and liberating whole nations to pursue the aspirations of their people in freedom dignity dignity

and self-respect and in cooperation with other independent nations. Because education above all else liberate individuals from ignorance to discover the truth for themselves. It is a major instrument of our kind of revolution. All this is well to remember when we find ourselves we in the United States citizens of a strong young and well-intentioned nation are not yet fully accustomed to carrying heavy world responsibilities. When we find ourselves feeling frustrated by crisis headlines and by complex dangerous and irritating world problems it is sorely tempting in times like these to grasp for simple and inexpensive solutions to complex problems for which there can be no quick easy or cheap solutions.

We cannot make these problems disappear by attacking favorite scapegoats and we cannot resign from the world. We can only learn to live intelligently with these complexities. Keeping our heads and our principles and remembering that the reverse side of a problem is usually an opportunity. It is important to remember too that the agenda frustrations disappointments and doubts in Moscow is far longer deeper and more irritating than our list. Indeed therein lies the greatest danger to mankind for frustrated tyrants can make bad judgments such as resorting to terror tactics. The knights in the Kremlin must surely be more restless than in Washington and for good reason. The Soviet revolution has not been doing as well lately as ours. On many fronts its doctrine is not proving

to be as tough and viable as the doctrine of freedom in its staying power and its universal appeal and in its validity under severe test. Indeed there are even serious differences among the high priests of communism today over just what their true doctrine is. This cleavage has lately grown so deep as to cause the mortal real remains of the once unchallenged High Priest to be relegated to a hole in the law all of the Kremlin alongside the bones of earlier deviation ist's. This shocking development shocking and confusing especially to those millions who had been taught to revere Stalin as infallible. It. May well be a very encouraging development for the peace of the world. We cannot yet say. But we can say that in one fell swoop it has certainly rendered obsolete millions of textbooks encyclopedias and road maps. And surely it must have left millions of ordinary Soviet

people wondering just who to believe and where the truth lies. The principles the philosophical and ethical foundations which underlay the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the faith which fostered our land grant colleges have stood a considerable test of time. These principles are not the product of any one person or any one nation. And they are not subject to being rewritten by any new High Priest who comes along. They are the product of the whole intellectual political and religious history of mankind. The universe ality of their validity has been demonstrated. But today they are being subjected to tougher and wider test than ever before. In the midst of this tough testing of our own cherished values all around the world it is not surprising to find many of our land grant

institutions in the vanguard of those promoting better living conditions better education greater opportunity social justice and freedom in the far corners of the earth. Their traditional home arc of practical service to the community once applied to a local and state constituency then to the whole nation has now been broadened to an international constituency. The people of Kansas and California Missouri and Minnesota and a host of other states are being served even better today than ever before by their land grant institutions. But now also the people of Cambodia and Korea Costa Rica and Nigeria and a host of other lions are also being served by these same institutions in behalf of the American people and the whole free world. Land grant institutions have undertaken one hundred twenty six contracts since

1958 under the international cooperation administration now the Agency for International Development. To carry out educational and other constructive projects in 42 countries in Asia Africa the Middle East Europe and Latin America. We can confidently expect the range and size of these services to increase further. The tradition of service of the land grant institutions has proved contagious. I like the idea of popular government popular education individual freedom equality. All American colleges and universities in varying degrees manifest the same mission of practical service to the community at home and to a growing extent abroad. And in many foreign countries developed and less developed alike the contagion of practical university service to the community is spreading rapidly. Just as the

idea of freedom is not the monopoly of any one nation. So are the land grant college idea a practical service cannot and should not be the monopoly of any one type of institution. The land grant colleges can take pride in the fact that their once distinctive characteristic is now being nationalized and internationalized not as a carbon copy of their particular curriculum organizational structure or teaching methods but as a compelling idea which can be adapted to appropriate local needs and forms in any nation. Against the backdrop of what has been said about the road we have already traveled and where we seem to be today. What can be said about the road ahead. The past certainly teaches that the future is inscrutable. Yet to meet our opportunities our obligations and our problems. We

must do our best to identify them in advance and plan to meet them. And since assistant secretaries are more expendable than university presidents I propose to hazard a few brief forecasts in closing. The first is not likely to be challenged in this audience. It is that the United States must invest from all sources over the next 10 years vastly greater resources of talented manpower and money in the whole educational enterprise to meet our rapidly expanding and urgently important domestic and international needs. Doubling our present investment in the next 10 years will not be enough particularly in higher education. But this enlarged investment will prove to be highly profitable to our own people to our nation and to mankind everywhere.

The second projection for the future in addition to vastly increased support from without. There must and will be far reaching changes from within the educational enterprise including a vast overhauling of the curriculum to keep pace with new knowledge and needs and to produce a new generation that can really understand the complex world in which it must live. There must also be improvements in organization in the utilization of educational resources and revolutionary advances in teaching and learning methods materials and equipment. Some of these new approaches may prove far more helpful in fitting the needs and resources of less developed countries than the thin carbon copies of conventional Western educational patterns which one now encounters so frequently in such countries. Third there must be a vast development of

opportunities for adults to continue their learning long after their formal education is finished. The explosion of knowledge which has been referred to the availability of leisure time for fruitful use. The rapid development of new technologies throughout our society and the rapid obsolescence of prevailing ones all make it mandatory that our professional people above all are teachers and a large portion of our the adult population. Whatever their station in life be provided an open ended opportunity to keep learning. Right now for example there is an urgent need for our whole adult population to learn a great deal more about world affairs so that our elected leaders can have the broad support they need of a well informed citizen ready in carrying out appropriate and essential foreign policies and programs. Our adult educators have made great strides under severe handicaps but our

provisions for adult learning today are vastly inadequate to the need. They will grow rapidly more inadequate unless we take vigorous corrective action. Here too there is need for imaginative innovation including the much fuller harnessing of mass media in all forms to the service of learning. Those who run our daily press our magazines our motion pictures radio and television can be among the great teachers in a nation of students if they will. But their curriculum can also stand some critical self appraisal and overhauling. The learning materials which they export abroad should certainly be included in a critical self appraisal. Fourth the colleges and universities will increasingly find the whole world their campus their linkages with world affairs will multiply in a host of ways. They

will teach more foreign students and use more foreign teachers. Their students and faculty will spend more time abroad learning and teaching conducting research and engaging in a wide variety of constructive enterprises. The educational and cultural channels the tiny nations together and through which strength and richness flow in both directions will multiply and enlarge rapidly in the years right ahead to the great benefit of our own nation and others. 50 to carry these enlarged responsibilities in our colleges and universities must become greater repositories of the nation's most talented manpower to teach to pursue research and scholarship to serve overseas and out swear off the immediate campus. And for this the colleges and universities must build a manpower question

so that they can meet the important demands for research and for off campus service without penalty to their own students and disruption of their regular campus programs. It must become an accepted notion that the typical career of many faculty members will include occasional periods of service abroad and out swear off campus to their betterment as teachers and without prejudice to their advancement as members of the faculty. All this of course will require greater finance and I believe the federal government along with others must be prepared to bear its proper share. Six are colleges and universities must develop further ways to mesh their efforts in the international field so that their respective strengths can be more efficiently coordinated and the impact of the burden and the benefits equitably spread. It is

encouraging to see recent efforts to form consortia among universities rendering service abroad and to see even the smaller colleges banding together for service and self improvement in world affairs. But this trend must run much further. Finally there is likewise great need for the academic community as a whole and the federal government to devise more effective ways of working together especially in the international field so that the national interest will be served well. While at the same time the academic integrity and the freedom of the educational institutions involved will likewise be served and preserved. Here again it is encouraging to find clear recognition of this need as well expressed in the Ford Foundation supported report on the university and world affairs.

Now that the need has been recognised however the time is ripe for fast action. So much for predictions of things to come. Needs problems and opportunities. What all this adds up to is that our colleges and universities Land Grant and all others face an enormous challenge. Opportunity responsibility in the next 10 years and beyond. At home and abroad. For which they are right now quite inadequately prepared despite the strenuous efforts and substantial progress of the past 10 years. Our studies projections and debates of recent years seem on the whole to have brought into focus the dimensions of the domestic side of the job to be done more clearly than the dimensions of the international side. Actually of course the two are inseparable. They are interwoven ingredients of the same large job. But we do need now to

achieve clearer insights into the international aspects of the job. This much does seem clear with the strong emphasis now being given to Educational and Cultural Affairs in the international realm by the president the secretary of state and their colleagues. With the heavy emphasis being placed in the new foreign aid program upon the development of human resources as a prime requisite for economic and social development. And with the recent enactment of the Fulbright Hetty's act in light of all these educational and cultural affairs clearly will play a major role in the United and United States Foreign Relations from here on. A large part of the burden and responsibility for advancing on this new frontier of United States foreign relations must necessarily rest with our educational institutions. The government can guide and lead and stimulate it can provide financial

support but it can by itself do but a small fraction of the job. This is a challenging outlook but by no means a bleak and unpleasant one. It means that education can now assume an even larger role in the affairs of man in the building in building the essential conditions of peace in lifting the level and quality of human life and opportunity in the United States and elsewhere. Unless there is both the hope and the reality of a better life for the vast millions living in underdeveloped areas of the world there seems little likelihood that the more developed nations can successfully pursue their own advancement. And there would certainly be little likelihood that the principles and values upon which our own nation was founded and has prospered could survive in splendid isolation on an island of affluence in a sea of misery. Mankind's greatest hope for an enduring

peace with individual freedom and advancement. Rest in the long run. Not alone. Economic growth and cooperation. But equally upon the building of a great international common market of ideas knowledge education and cultural affairs. In building this common market along with all the other great tasks to be done. The land grant colleges and universities have their work cut out for the next decade and the next century. They have shown before that they can do the impossible. They must now do it again. Thank you. You all. You have heard an address by the assistant secretary of state for education and cultural affairs. The Hon. Philip H croons Mr. Combs spoke

before the centennial convocation of the American Association of land grant colleges and state universities. His topic was land grant colleges and universities in the last hundred years and the next. This has been one in a series of programs arranged in connection with the nationwide observance of the land grant Centennial commemorating the 1 100th anniversary of the passage of the moral Act of 1862. The Act which established the Land Grant movement in American education. The program was produced by the radio and television services of Kansas State University and Washington State University. This is the end E.B. Radio Network.