unfortunates are a national problem that must be dealt with.
If America consisted only of the very bright at the top and the least intelligent at the bottom, our nation could exist much as Mexico has existed, with its very rich allowing just enough of the nation’s wealth to trickle down to the least fortunate to forestall revolution. Fortunately for us, our nation has been able to create and nurture a large middle class on which our strength has depended. In my childhood days, my village of four thousand consisted of perhaps four hundred members of the elite at the top, six hundred disadvantaged at the bottom and three thousand of the finest middle-class people the nation has ever had—the storekeepers,the secretaries, the people who worked as farmers cultivating the land, the schoolteachers, the lawyers, the salesmen and the large contingent who traveled each morning by train into Philadelphia to fill mid-level jobs there.
At the age of fourteen, primarily because of my athletic ability but augmented by my scholastic record, I leapfrogged from the bottom group right into the center of the middle group, which turned out to be decent and congenial. In those years, we students in the middle group were supposed to prepare ourselves for employment in the businesses of the community. Girls learned typing, boys were expected to master the rudiments of learning, including a proficiency in mathematics; all were expected to learn good manners. In 1925 in my high school graduation class of about seventy, only three or four went on to college; almost all the others were sufficiently well trained to find employment.
How different is the fate of the middle group of students today. Their level of education and mastery of skills are so deplorably low that they constitute a national crisis.
The nation has a vital concern in the failure of the public school system to provide a constant supply of young people adequately trained in language, mathematics, history and the social sciences. Industries large and small are experiencing an inadequately educated supply of workers. I am worried about the future of our nation. A complex democracy cannot be operated by a citizenry increasingly unable to compete in the world marketplace against the people of better-educated nations.
If our military capacities were in as much peril as are our intellectual capabilities, the nation would be taking gigantic and immediate steps to repair the deficiencies. It is scandalous that we are not taking equally huge steps to reverse the decline in our basic educational adequacy.
I am frightened by this descent toward incompetence within the middle group, a decline that stems primarily, I believe, from the many unfavorable social changes I detect in the nation. When the average child of school age is allowed to spend seven or eight hours a day watching television, there is no time left for reading. Children who do not read the important books when young fail to learn the great lessons of history, and will become illiterates wedded to television.
I should say here that I recognize the positive aspects of television and what it can contribute to an education. High school students today have a much larger base of general knowledge than I had at their age. Via the electronic marvel of television they have viewed foreign countries and traveled to deserts and ice caps; they have seen what a symphony orchestra is and heard what it sounds like; those so inclined have seen and heard grand opera; they have seen the outstanding sports figures, and they have watched more high-level entertainment of all kinds than I was able to enjoy in my pre-electronic youth. I recognize the possibility that we may be in the process of developing a new kind of person, a pragmatist who ignores books and reading but who nevertheless acquires real learning through the television screen. I think it quite possible that some of our political leaders or generals or the controllers of big
If America consisted only of the very bright at the top and the least intelligent at the bottom, our nation could exist much as Mexico has existed, with its very rich allowing just enough of the nation’s wealth to trickle down to the least fortunate to forestall revolution. Fortunately for us, our nation has been able to create and nurture a large middle class on which our strength has depended. In my childhood days, my village of four thousand consisted of perhaps four hundred members of the elite at the top, six hundred disadvantaged at the bottom and three thousand of the finest middle-class people the nation has ever had—the storekeepers,the secretaries, the people who worked as farmers cultivating the land, the schoolteachers, the lawyers, the salesmen and the large contingent who traveled each morning by train into Philadelphia to fill mid-level jobs there.
At the age of fourteen, primarily because of my athletic ability but augmented by my scholastic record, I leapfrogged from the bottom group right into the center of the middle group, which turned out to be decent and congenial. In those years, we students in the middle group were supposed to prepare ourselves for employment in the businesses of the community. Girls learned typing, boys were expected to master the rudiments of learning, including a proficiency in mathematics; all were expected to learn good manners. In 1925 in my high school graduation class of about seventy, only three or four went on to college; almost all the others were sufficiently well trained to find employment.
How different is the fate of the middle group of students today. Their level of education and mastery of skills are so deplorably low that they constitute a national crisis.
The nation has a vital concern in the failure of the public school system to provide a constant supply of young people adequately trained in language, mathematics, history and the social sciences. Industries large and small are experiencing an inadequately educated supply of workers. I am worried about the future of our nation. A complex democracy cannot be operated by a citizenry increasingly unable to compete in the world marketplace against the people of better-educated nations.
If our military capacities were in as much peril as are our intellectual capabilities, the nation would be taking gigantic and immediate steps to repair the deficiencies. It is scandalous that we are not taking equally huge steps to reverse the decline in our basic educational adequacy.
I am frightened by this descent toward incompetence within the middle group, a decline that stems primarily, I believe, from the many unfavorable social changes I detect in the nation. When the average child of school age is allowed to spend seven or eight hours a day watching television, there is no time left for reading. Children who do not read the important books when young fail to learn the great lessons of history, and will become illiterates wedded to television.
I should say here that I recognize the positive aspects of television and what it can contribute to an education. High school students today have a much larger base of general knowledge than I had at their age. Via the electronic marvel of television they have viewed foreign countries and traveled to deserts and ice caps; they have seen what a symphony orchestra is and heard what it sounds like; those so inclined have seen and heard grand opera; they have seen the outstanding sports figures, and they have watched more high-level entertainment of all kinds than I was able to enjoy in my pre-electronic youth. I recognize the possibility that we may be in the process of developing a new kind of person, a pragmatist who ignores books and reading but who nevertheless acquires real learning through the television screen. I think it quite possible that some of our political leaders or generals or the controllers of big
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