published by the Christian Anti-Communists Crusade
124 E. First Street
Long Beach, California
and Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1960
By a tremendous concentration on education, the
Communists are today graduating in Russia alone
three times as many engineers and scientists as the
United States. When their China program matures,
they will graduate ten times as many. They are
graduating, at a rough estimate, one hundred times as
many language specialists. When their China program
matures, their linguistic superiority will be astronomical.
A common reaction to this information is to draw comfort from the fact
that in Communist countries there is no academic freedom. One of the
great delusions of American educators has been that academic freedom is
necessary for the achievement of material results. If a
child is trained in habits of study, and then forced to
study mathematics, science, and foreign languages, he
will learn a lot whether the system is free or not.
Regimentation and tyranny have always been able to
achieve great things. The pharaohs built the pyramids;
the Chinese built the Great Wall of China; Hitler
achieved miracles in Germany, and there is no evidence
whatsoever that he had any trouble controlling his
educated classes. Under an authoritarian system of regimented
education, the Germans made tremendous progress in the
science of rocketry and electronics, and in the development of
the jet aircraft. In a similar way, the Communists with their
emphasis on science, foreign languages, and mathematics, are
making tremendous progress. It is not a question of which
system of education develops better balanced personalities.
The question is: Which system of education will win this
universal war?
I was visiting an American college. Before I had been there
ten minutes, the president told me with great pride of a young
man who had brought glory and honor to their school.
Wherever I went on the campus, I heard his praises sung. At
last I met him, and a fine young man he was. His body was
lithe and slender, and he stood some six, feet two inches tall.
He was their leading basketball player. His skill at the game
was so great that he had been chosen to go to Melbourne,
Australia, to represent the United States in the Olympic
Games in 1956. What an honor for the school!
Frequently I asked, "Who is your leading science student?"
He looked at me in wonder and amazement. He could not
answer the question. To find out information like that a
careful study of the records would be required.
I want to make it quite clear that I have nothing against
basketball. I think it is a splendid sport. The ability to project
accurately an inflated spherical ball through an iron hoop is a
remarkable gift indeed. However, it is difficult to envisage
how ballistic missiles can be effectively stopped with
basketballs. Faced as we are with a struggle for survival
against an enemy who spares no effort to educate the young
in those fields which will help to secure victory, it would
seem that the scale of values in the American educational
system might well be revised.
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