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Reverie, v. 3, issue 3, whole 10, September 1940
Page 4
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4 Reverie tangential flight from present educational objectives, or at least an extension and a change of emphasis. The stress on specialization in arts, crafts and professions should be supplemented by a stress on certain fundamentals. All education is desirable and most of it useful, but it seems to me that the first and most important function of education is to teach us how to live,--not only as individuals, but more particularly as a nation. If our national life breaks down, our individual lives are of small account. So, I would like to see each generation reared with an ever-expanding sense of personal responsibility to society in general, with a deeper understanding of and sympathy with common aims and common needs. Hoary truisms, to be sure, but how deeply their recognition is buried beneath layer after later of stupidity, selfishness and senseless greed. The problem of education is terrific, but not insoluble. Perhaps it will have to be attacked along the more appealing line of selfish expediency. For example, pedigreed pigs are housed and valeted and fed with the greatest care. Why? Because they are valuable. Are the lives of ten million unemployed and under-nourished people less valuable? Are they not, in fact, a serious menace to our lives, so long as they remain under-nourished and unemployed? Private business succeeds by virtue of its intelligent direction, its economy, efficiency and enterprise. Is it reasonable to expect government,--the greatest, most highly specialized business of this or any country,--to succeed without the aid of these qualities? Do not attempt to pass on the blame to labor, capital or government; it lies at your door, and at mine. If there any monsters at large, we are the Frankensteins who created them.
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4 Reverie tangential flight from present educational objectives, or at least an extension and a change of emphasis. The stress on specialization in arts, crafts and professions should be supplemented by a stress on certain fundamentals. All education is desirable and most of it useful, but it seems to me that the first and most important function of education is to teach us how to live,--not only as individuals, but more particularly as a nation. If our national life breaks down, our individual lives are of small account. So, I would like to see each generation reared with an ever-expanding sense of personal responsibility to society in general, with a deeper understanding of and sympathy with common aims and common needs. Hoary truisms, to be sure, but how deeply their recognition is buried beneath layer after later of stupidity, selfishness and senseless greed. The problem of education is terrific, but not insoluble. Perhaps it will have to be attacked along the more appealing line of selfish expediency. For example, pedigreed pigs are housed and valeted and fed with the greatest care. Why? Because they are valuable. Are the lives of ten million unemployed and under-nourished people less valuable? Are they not, in fact, a serious menace to our lives, so long as they remain under-nourished and unemployed? Private business succeeds by virtue of its intelligent direction, its economy, efficiency and enterprise. Is it reasonable to expect government,--the greatest, most highly specialized business of this or any country,--to succeed without the aid of these qualities? Do not attempt to pass on the blame to labor, capital or government; it lies at your door, and at mine. If there any monsters at large, we are the Frankensteins who created them.
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