Show Is the lommon aaen ht to rule P population opu lation may backslide to low intelligence level by BAUKHAGE news analyst and commentator washington when the henry wallace for president movement was launched in california it made a lot of laicans happy just to think about it although they never really believed that a third party was possible when I 1 was in col lege a friend of mine wrote an essay entitled why a third party Is immoss impossible ible in america this was just before teddy roosevelt came out with his bull moosers in 1912 it if wallace were to become president of the united states it is unlikely that the common man whom he champions would have any more to say about running the country than he does now however when wallace says this is the century of the common man he isn t far tl TI e ons which have swept the world in the past decade ta aly would not have been poss ble if they had not had the sup port of the peo pie this support was not I 1 ily the result of free choice intel decision or popular vote in fact for the most part under mus soini franco ditl hitler r and stalin 1 it was the opposite nevertie Ne less they were Bauk baukhage hase not revolutions of the upper classes even in the case of great brit ains am s very mid m id revolution which was the result of popular vote and a free choice the traditional political and intellectual leaders were swept out of office americans are committed to the idea that the majority should rule and the theory al ways has been that the people would be wise enough to select a person ol 01 sufficient antell gence experience and integrity to represent them at the job of ruling of late however a number of persons approaching the problem from qu te different angles have expressed concern about the aduca tion and training of the men avail able for the responsibility ty ot of car crying on the business of govern ment I 1 have been assured by old t mers here who have been familiar with I 1 the personnel of congress over a number of years that we perhaps have as high type of men mentally and morally in congress today as we have ever had in fact I 1 am told they are making excellent use of the greatly expanded sources of information on the issues they have to consider and are therefore bet ter informed than any congress has ever been nevertheless we hear from edu cahors from economists and statis ticiano all sorts of dire warnings one that has recently stirred up the press considerably was by guy irving burch head of the tion reference bureau it seems burch read a survey made in eng land by sir cyril burt at the re quest of the royal commission on population As a result of his survey sir cyril suggests that in 50 years the number of students of scholarship ability in britain will be halved and the number of feeble minded almost doubled this conclusion was based on psycho logical tests and size of families in britain nation of dullards seen in future burch has studied population sta aist cs for the united states from the standpoint of psychological tests educational attainment eco status and type of occupy tion he says we may reach the general conclusion that the lowest third of our people in each one of these four our categories has families about twice as large as those of the highest third and he concludes As a voting participant in helping to solve the many tn in problems of our complex civilization a dull and backward individual is almost as helpless as an idiot in fact he ma may y be more dangerous to democratic institutions because he is easily commanded by demagogues and dictators this gives us quite a different pic pie ture of the century of the common man dr francis brown staff assoni ate of the american council on education and the executive secre tary of the president presidents s commission doesn doean t quarrel with burch s figures but he says this population intel report does not give enough importance to the possibility of im proving intelligence by education in other words if we broaden the base of our teaching we can ca regain a lot of the potential waste ma tenal that burch has discovered what the burch report over looks is this says dr brown human intelligence never has been developed to its fullest among the great masses of people ale no way has been found accurately to measure the ul dimate capabilities of the human N mind af there are others however who while they may agree with wit brown s on question the methods now being used to develop these innate ab 1 ties A very dim view of the situation is taken by canon bernard iddings bell educator pastor author and consultant on education to the epis copal bishop of chicago he th tb aks henry wallace Is cor in his description of the cur rent century but he says it 1 does clue not follow because the common man has suddenly been lifted into control that he is thereby automatically made competent properly to exert control he thinks wallace wallaces s definition ought to be expanded he says ours is the century of the perpetually adolescent comm common on man of the common man un skilled in the art of living un taught in the wisdom of the race he is incompetent either to rule or to be ruled need education for common man the canon isn t snobbish he Is not looking down his canonical nose at anybody As a member of so clety he takes his share of the blame by say ng that society has played the common man a low trick for wh vh ch those who control education are ch eh efly chargeable bell quales the late dr william rainey harper s deficit on of an ed man A man who by the I 1 j canon bernard iddings bell unskilled untaught time he is 25 has a clear theory formed in the light of human ex peri ence down the ages of what constitutes a satisfying afe 1 te a sig ant life and who by the tl ie age of SO 30 has a moral philosophy consonant with racial experience bell thinks that what we do not do and what we ought to do to educate is first to give caldren ch idren a krow knowledge ledge of the race s wisdom imparting to them what they ought to know rather than teach them what they would ike 1 ke to study sec see ond to teach children how to read write listen to and speak the engi engl sh language third they must be taught decent manners the rights of others fourth they must learn that honest and crafts manlike achievement is the only door to so cial approval fifth teachers must re reverence tor for the un seen and impart some objective knowledge of what the various faiths about us are to do and teach I 1 wish that some smart stalls statis bician would try to figure out if the kind of 0 education which would give a man a high income likewise makes him fit to run a country as complicated as ours in a world as complicated as ours |