The American Scene; Creating a National Image

Good morning. This is Howard Benson, doing the arch for the Illinois Institute of Technology on the program, The American Scene. The arch, as I've said, again and again, is a wide term. But the other day, we had an interesting discussion you will remember with the Byron Holland's head on American education, contrasting it with European education, and pointing out our American apologetic attitude towards what we have created, what we operate, and trying to recognize it in its true significance. After that program, I was reading a newspaper and Tatanga hit the front headline. Well, I'd never heard of Tatanga before, but Tatanga is obviously a very important point in history at this moment, and since that time. And the problem I'm getting towards is the problem of America. The American image abroad, and what America must do, not merely to maintain an image, but really must do in the light of our own tradition,

in not Europe so much, as in the undeveloped countries. And I thought instantly again of Mr. Holland's head, who for five and a half years was director of the Technical Assistance Department of UNESCO, which is a program on the UNESCO level roughly equivalent to the point four program of our own State Department, or the ICA as it is called. And during that time, Mr. Holland's head visited 47 countries, the undeveloped countries especially, in connection with this program, the future of it, and there's a lot to be said about it. I think it's worth going into. Mr. Holland's head is very good here to come again and to resume the discussion of America and the problem. How will we start out here? Well, I think Howard that we ought to start out by saying that what we want to talk about today is not the kind of aid that the United States gives when it gives something like a Red Cross Assistance to meet a catastrophe, or when it is trying to simply eradicate disease or something to start. What we want to talk about is how do you get

the undeveloped countries up to the level of the 20th century? How do we move them along in what I hope would be the easiest and the best way to change from the traditional society in which they know are with a hierarchy of a tribe or the medieval system to the kind of free and open society that we think of as existing in the West. So what we have, what we often talk about in the foreign aid program, so it is a crash program, momentary, temporary. We have the future and in fact it has to really start me off because so much of what you and I saw in Europe is trying to maintain an image which has been established for hundreds of years or decades anyhow. And that is the past essentially. The future is, I think we agreed before this program, the future lies, not that we are going to bypass Europe, but the future lies in South America, Africa and Asia. And there we have to operate. That's right.

And Europe got away from this period, I think, the feudal period, by going through what was a fairly lengthy renaissance in ideas and one sort and another, the whole development of science of new notions of how things should be done. And then went into the industrial revolution starting in England sometime around the beginning of the 19th century with the invention of the steam engine and preceded as it was by the invention of the printing press and so on. The machine. That all had to go before this revolution of ideas. And it seems to me that one thing we should all recognize when we are talking about getting the underdeveloped countries further along than they are is to say, well they have to change their ways of doing things first. They have to develop some kind of educational system that gives them notions of science that changes their, well, not parochial ideas exactly, but where everything, for example, depends upon

the supernatural. Let me illustrate what I mean. In the Middle East, the Arab always says it's all in the hands of Allah. This means that nothing that he can do will make any difference as an individual because Allah has fordain everything anyways. Well, in other words, they would take the Yankees who believes in trusting in Allah, trust in God, but keep your power dry. And they've got to add that on them there. That's right, but help out all your kind yourself. That's right. Well, it's this kind of thing. It seems to me that we need to consider. And another thing that I think we have failed to do somehow in this is to study how we ourselves made the progress that we did, why we did it, we in the West. I would say that you could list almost the things that have made us what we are. We had some unusual discoveries, which was in some ways an accident, I suppose. We had new ideas

introduced to the West by great intermixtures of people coming in from Asia, people coming down from north to south. You'll remember, you know better than I because you know English history, better probably, that England was made great after the first Elizabeth simply because she'd been overrun by so many different peoples than our regions, the Danes, the Swedes, and so on. Yes, the Baltic pirates that we now call the Anglo -Saxons had swept over England. And then she was swept over again by the Normans in 1066, so that the whole development there was this crossing and intermixture, and we've had the advantage in the United States. That's exactly right. So that you might say that one way to ensure a kind of development is to have an intermixture of races or an intermixture of racial origins at any rate. So that you cross the customs, you get

the advantage of the knowledge and customs of different groups, and also you have some biological crossing. Well, that's one thing. Another thing that seems to me is terribly important, and I suppose people would think we might be prejudiced when we talk about it, and that is the development of a school system. In the United States, for example, they're with us. That's the way of formalizing these things we believe. That's right. Yes, in the United States we never had any great industrial progress until after we had a universal public school system, and indeed our biggest growth came after President Lincoln had authorized the land -grant colleges with their development of agriculture and practical arts, and so on. I have a question about that. I agree that they came, but it's a hand in the egg business. They came because they were needed in the United Furnish workers, informed people, informed a group of citizens to operate this kind of system. Well, that's true. On the other hand, why do we have surplus as coming out of our ears today

if it wasn't for the development of the agricultural research stations, which was authorized first by President Lincoln, I think in 1862. We are the only nation in the world that has developed this kind of college, which started land -grant college for this specific purpose, and we're the only one in the world that has agricultural surpluses, so that my point here is that if you want to get development, the way to get it is by developing human resources, people who are trained and knowledgeable about subjects, and that is precisely what's lacking in the underdeveloped countries. There are not very many people who have had experienced it running anything. There aren't very many people who have had any kind of education enabling them to think new ideas about it. Now, let's get back to where we opened. Isn't this pointed up in Katanga and in the Congo that say the Belgians move out, and they leave a group of people with a taste for a

Western way of behaving politically, economically, but without the skills, the techniques are strategies to having trained the people. That's right. The underdeveloped countries have very quickly adjusted themselves to the ideas, to the idea that they ought to be in the 20th century, that they all ought to have refrigerators and stoves and water closets and so on, but they have never yet, anyway, paid the price of education and organization, which would allow them to have that kind of development. They're not paid the price, or they have been allowed to pay the price in the colonial system sometimes. Well, that's true, except that if you take Africa, for example, and take the countries which have not had the colonial system, they too are pretty far behind it. That's true. In fact, you might argue this both ways, I'd say, you might say that the colonial system has pushed people along further. Yes. Well, Algeria is a good example of it.

Algeria might do having seen it. They owe everything to France in terms of everything by everything we mean the modern way of life. And here again, as I say, they're quick to pick up the advantages, but they want, again, something they see that goes along with this in the West, which is the kind of freedom we possess. So they want the freedom almost before they're ready to have it, and therefore it seems to me that we ought much more than we have in the past. Think about how do you develop these ideas in people? How do you free their minds? And my notion is that the only way to do this is to provide dedicated people who will develop educational systems in these countries, who will, to some degree, open up the society. Here you get into the question of a fluid society where the bright can move up instead of having to be the chief son or the nobility. Well, you

got a lot that we need a lot of dedicated people. You mean we need Americans showing out there? Sure. Beautiful Americans and not ugly ones. Well, the ugly American, you remember, was a good one. He was the one that developed the pump. There wasn't on running on bicycles. And there's another very interesting point that the ugly American illustrated. This fellow developed a pump that was run with the bicycle pedals you remember, which was the next step for them, rather than going to the hydraulic pump where you need some source of power that they didn't have. He developed something that they did have. And this is difficult for Americans to go abroad and to adapt themselves to whatever it is that's the next step for the people there. This is the question of whether you go from the the hand of the cycle to the cycle to the side, the side to the binder and the binder to the combine. What a good many of these countries want to do is to go from the hand to the combine and make it all in one jump.

Make haste slowly. Well, I don't know how fast you can go. I wasn't trying to say that you couldn't skip some of them, perhaps you can, but at least you have to recognize that the West has gone through a lot of steps that the underdeveloped countries have not yet gone through. We can speed up history now, we've gone through the steps, we worked them out, we can help speed it up. But incidentally, did you see in the report the other day, I think it was in Life magazine, of the situation in India, which the the brooms, the length of the brooms, you see the untouchable sweep and they have to lean way over because the broom handles are so sharp and the ambassador's wife was annoyed at this since she thought how bad, how bad for them, the dust comes up in their face. So she insisted that she introduced, she in fact she put in her own money, introduced in various places, long broom handles, and finally narrowed, is behind it. And this may be effective change, if there's a large class of millions of Indians. Yes, well, it's absolutely right. And this is what I mean by saying that people must have their minds open to the idea that they can

change something. Now, maybe we do this too rapidly in America, the Europeans criticize this because we change our model of car every year and so on. And there may be something to that. But the problem of the underdeveloped countries is how to get them to change at all. It sounds very easy this business of going in furnishing materials and money. But it isn't any good unless you've got this willingness to change. Let me ask a naive question. You made the you made the point very well taken of that. After all, there are a lot of these countries have not advanced on their own. They haven't been able to they put forth pay for it for themselves. They haven't been willing to. How are you going to make them willing to if they've had the thousand years to do this? Why didn't an industrial development scientific development occur in Africa over the past thousand years? Why did they happen to occur here? Well, this is a very interesting question. A good bit of it. It's pure accident as I say. I think that well you and I

were talking the other day about Benjamin Franklin. How can you explain a man like Benjamin Franklin or how could you explain that he pushed America head his just the influence that one man probably as much as any other man of his century. Oh, it had been fact that it had been somebody else by the same name maybe. Well, I'm not so sure. At any rate now what you're getting I think in some of these African countries is someone does get pushed up to the top who is a leader. He may be the wrong one temporarily but at least he then gets replaced because people now in those countries have seen enough of the west for you you talked about the Congo. They've seen enough of how the Belgians dress and act and drive cars so so that they want to be like that. Then there is a secret to say they see they then they want to imitate. It's an illustration in a way. Yes. That's why it's important I think for our state department to have trade fairs and it's why it's important for us to have demonstration schools in a number of places. This kind of thing wets the

appetite which has to be stirred first certainly before you get any idea of yes you've seen you've seen the people of another country out of trade fact that the people of the street coming in simply wrapped this thing because this touches their life immediately imagine having a washing machine instead of going out of the broken beating your linen against stone. Well, I've been a lot of countries you probably have to where people come up and feel the cloth to see that this really is what it looks like they can't believe that a suit has made that way and I remember one night my wife and a friend were lost in the in Old Delhi in India and they were completely surrounded by Indians who were looking at them. They had been dressed up to go to a tea and they had some pretty fancy clothes even for them they were on but to these Indians this was a complete fascination they were almost as if they were at a circus looking at the animal and it's this sort of thing though that motivates them to want to do something of that kind. Now

it doesn't always motivate them to want to be like us I don't mean that but it motivates them to want to change whatever it is that they have because they see that there is something better and it's this it's this kind of motivation that we must stir or we get nowhere in my view. All right now you say you've got to have a lot of dedicated Americans going out and you were talking about the when the chief devices is through education. Yes. Through schools or not even you don't have to have formal schools education of a sort one sort of yes. Well how are you you're arguing for a big expansion of our State Department program and this or what? Well we're now spending I know something like four billion dollars a year for foreign aid some part of that military aid. Well that's total foreign aid. That's total yes. Actually we give a lot of money for things like steel mills and this is what countries ask for we give them in a cent. Well we really give them whatever they ask for we never decide what ought to go there. Now the point I'm

making I think is that there ought to be a lot more study on our part and theirs too of what it is that they most need first. Is it a steel mill or is it something like just our old country school? Well we have plenty of examples of they're putting in something like a concrete a concrete mill where there's no need for the thing. That's right. This is developed again and again it's sort of thing because we couldn't dictate could we. That's right. No we can't dictate and this is one of this is one of the problems. As a matter of fact the United Nations has the same problem. This is one of the great difficulties the United Nations program that even though it knows what a given country most needs let's call it country apple pie because I don't want to name any in this respect. It does not dare to say to that country this is what you most need even though it has observed from its experience around the world that a school system would do much more than say well use our old example steel mill because all of these technical assistance programs are developed on the notion that it is the country

itself which must request the assistance and of course that's where a very good reason too because you must have the complete cooperation the interest of the country itself if you don't your loss. Well I know why it's easier I mean I will suggest why it's easier to put in a steel mill or something like that some gadget I mean it would even be a large one a dam or something like that rather than a school system because the school system cuts into vested interests of the most subtle and complex sort in a society whereas they don't have any steel mill there and so they couldn't do it themselves so you're just putting something down in that doesn't really interfere this other interferes and yet it's a more important thing. Well the business that you've just mentioned of vested interests is terribly important in this and one of the one of the most difficult things to handle in the underdeveloped countries is that there always is a ruling class and they are the one speaking for the government and there is no middle class there never very

much of a middle class anyway and then the very large lower class people that are never heard from so that the only place that you get this request is from this upper class which wants to maintain it naturally wants to maintain its own position that it's sometimes is held for thousands of years. All right Holly you go into apple pie country country apple pie and you meet the upper class naturally going in there as a delegate and you attend the usual parties and functions which are given you as you go in but you but you must have sensed these undercurrent needs and it might give you kind of feeling helpless as you would like to say look upper class look at the lower class really needs which country really needs do you have that feeling. Yes and I think on this particular subject that the United Nations is doing now a pretty good job because the United Nations has hired a number of experts from different countries to tell countries how development

comes most easily and they can advise them much more readily than say the United States could advise them because this is coming from the United Nations where there isn't the the tendency to say well this they want to be imperializes or something like that. Power image of that's what America is. So that I think there is progress being made on this but as you say it's held back by the the feudal society now existing in most of these places and the anxiety to protect the vested interest whatever it may be. How are you going to loosen up this class stratification? Well my my my feeling about this again is that education is one of the few answers. In an educational system you get a chance for the bright to come up to the top. When you don't I've often sought for example in some of the Middle Eastern countries that you had all of these very bright boys undoubtedly around in all of these Quranic schools where they

learn only the Quran but nobody ever finds out which of the bright ones they don't go beyond four years of education anyway so there's never this chance to pick them out as we have here where they go through a public school system and then have a chance to go to a college or university if they're bright. This pushes the society along therefore I think education a system of education, universal system of education would be one of the best ways or is one of the best ways to keep society fluid. You don't mean education simply by schools although that's prime that's a primary institutional form but education going in there with programs is an educational form. This broomstick operation or this pump operation is an education operation fundamentally but the school system itself that well if you can get in a what a democratic school system. That's right. But how are you going to get a democratic school system into a say an Arabian country? Well I think what you have to do first probably is to get a number of Arabs to go to some other country and see the school system there. The exchange

programs will do that and then when they go back particularly if they are in the class structure at a point where they can be important they will motivate this kind of thing. I've seen that happen before and I know it can happen again. In other words a good bit of exchange back and forth between Middle East and Europe, Europe and the United States, Asia and the United States, Asia and Europe and so on. That helps a lot. Now you have a problem here you're going to go we're going to go in with all the tact in the world. We're much greater tact than some people think we have perhaps and try to change bring them into the 20th century but you are running against religious views, attack structures, education and so on. And you're running against land holdings. In many cases tremendous land holdings where the only possibility of any kind of free society is to have agrarian reform where you have other situations where the hierarchy of religion controls the country. You have other situations well. India

would be an example where you have a Hinduism making cows sacred which does really harm the diet of the Indians. They sometimes said facetiously that India is the country where cows are treated like human beings and the human beings are treated like cattle. I don't mean I don't want to make anything of that but it is true I think that unless a good many of these customs are changed and changed gradually they can't be changed quickly. You never can get to the kind of government, social, political and economic system which will allow a development of industry, a developed country with which we're familiar. You break, you have to break this stratification and you have to break stratification of all kinds of social, political and economic. Well how do you just have to keep pushing and pushing? Pushing on the I think for example

immigration is one good way to break up class structure too. Some of the South American countries Guatemala is an example bringing in a certain number of Germans each year because they need their technical ability but this also brings an influence into that society which breaks up the old society and in fact Argentina is an excellent example of a country which has brought in many different nationalities and because of that has had many new ideas and customs. Well Argentina is a good example also of a country where you've had a pretty widespread educational system and here you can contrast that with a country like Brazil which has more in the way of resources than the United States by far natural resources but which has never been able to develop these natural resources because it has not developed its human resources. This is the very great problem. How do you develop the human resources? Well as I said before how are you think I'm just beating on one engineer here? The only way to do this I think

is to develop an educational system and that in itself will do many of the other things that we've talked about. Let me give you an illustration from Europe if you have time. The two countries in Europe with the highest standard of living are Switzerland and Denmark and they have almost no natural resources those two countries but they have a very very good educational system and they've developed themselves to a very high degree on their human resources. You could illustrate this same point in many other ways but England herself, England herself now my dear. I'm not talking about the empire has very few natural resources comparatively speaking but she's been able to make a goal by using the rest of the world. That's true. But if you take the countries of the world which have large natural resources I think you could say they're at least five or six then have as much in the way of resources as the United States. There would be Russia, China, Brazil I mentioned

before, great Britain with its possessions, France with its possessions Australia is practically the same size in the United States. All of these countries can and at one time or another in case of England France at one time or another have been at the forefront by developing human resources. Well we still have an answer how we're going to say in a country like Brazil get the human resources you'd love. I think it's happening. I mean the few signs I've seen that just the establishment of Brasilia the great town and giving a new national pride and things like that. You've got to stir the affections and I don't mean just the like you've got to stir the effective side of people to give them the true motivation to change. And you're getting a good bit of this now because more than ever before we can go by plane to see another country quickly we we see motion pictures which illustrate what another country is doing. Can we do see machinery all the time that well breaks down in the

underdeveloped country and rusts out in the sun but at least they know what it's like and how it did work. And motion pictures and motion pictures have done a lot I think in this respect. So that it's something that takes patience but my main point I think is that we ought to give a lot of thought to how to do it. Well thank you very much Mr. Horns have for coming and talking about this American image and the American problem. Thank you.