5.   An Educated Citizenry Is A Vital Requisite For Our Survival As A Free People

Writing from Monticello to Colonel Yancey, after his retirement from the Presidency in 1816, Thomas Jefferson made this significant statement: "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

The most convincing proof of this statement is the complete collapse of the Congo State in July 1960, only a few days after its independence from Belgium. At that time the whole Congolese nation of 14 million had only 16 university graduates, and not a lawyer or doctor or scientist among them. The rest of the people were totally ignorant.  Democracy is incompatible with illiteracy.

The great German statesman of the last century, Chancellor Bismarck, once declared that "the nation that has the schools has the future." To prepare our voters of tomorrow well or ill for the responsibilities of citizenship and government rests almost entirely with the schools and colleges of our nation. "The great bulwark of republican government is the cultivation of education," said De Witt Clinton, first governor of New York, "for the right of suffrage cannot be exercised in a salutary manner without intelligence."

In a democracy, responsibility for the conduct of society and government rests on every member of society. Education thus becomes imperative, to enable the individual citizen, and society as a whole, to meet this responsibility of citizenship.

Today our western world is engaged in a life and death struggle with the communist world - for the minds of men. It is a war of ideologies - between democracy with freedom and justice, and communism with slavery and its brutal injustice. Only an educated citizenry can discern the fraud and consequences of communism, and understand and appreciate the great benefits and responsibilities of our democratic way of life. It is an unending struggle - vital to this and all future generations, for good and evil will battle forever for the conquest of men's minds and souls.

Senator John William Fulbright, Chairman of the important and powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has said that "The most serious and difficult challenge offered by the Russians is not in the military field, but in their determined and successful drive to cultivate to the utmost the intellectual powers of their people."

Frank M. Porter, President of American Petroleum Institute, has summed up this threat to America with compelling eloquence:   "They said the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. Let us hope it need never be said that the battle for the Free World was lost in the high schools and colleges of America . . . that failed to train enough young people to hold our leadership in research, engineering and scientific discovery."

"The way out of the never-ending armed truce in which we live," said Samuel B. Gould, Chancellor, University of California, Santa Barbara, "lies in the disposition on our part to be just as concerned about the state of men's minds as we are about the state of their weapons. It lies in a return to education for the strengthening of the basic values of human life, values we seem to be losing sight of in preoccupation with material things. And it is the kind of education which should permeate not only the schools but also the homes and indeed the entire pattern in America."

With the constantly growing complexities of life, both for individuals and nations, the need for better and broader education is increasing with leaps and bounds with each new generation. No longer can any nation neglect education and expect to remain free.

• The Brain
• The Power Of The Mind
• The Importance Of Formal Education
• Five Reasons For A College Education
  
  
  1. A College Education Brings A Fuller Life...
  2. A College Education Opens The Door To Distinction
  3. A College Education Brings Job Security....
  4. A College Education Enhances Earning Power
  
  
• Learning - A Continuous Process
• Never Too Old To Learn
• Business And Education - 1
• Business And Education - 2
• Business And Education - 3