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Show SounderEducationNeeded 'r To Maintain Free World , ; ; l : : Economics and Geography Among Studies 4 : j? Required to Ground Students in the . Problems at Home and Abroad. t ' ' 1 l: By BAUKHACE j lttuj Analyst and Commentator. I WNU Service, 1GI6 Eye Street, N.W. Washington, U. C. (This In the first of two articles 01 the Huhjeet of the "new reconver ion.") In the last tvo months the publk has learned a lot about the Jmpor tance of industrial reconversion. Foi many more months, business men with the help of the best technica advice they could obtain, have beer preparing to shift from wartime tc peacetime production. Government has shared the knowledge of its ex ports and proiTered its co-operation. Labor has contributed Its suggestions. sugges-tions. All three know what they want. Together they hope to obtain a successful synthesis. But what many people do not realize real-ize Is that the nation, the whole world, for that matter, Is facing another an-other reconversion problem, equally as difTlcult to solve, equally as Important Im-portant to achieve. It is the reconversion recon-version of our whole educational system, sys-tem, and upon its success depends the political future of democracy and Its economic future as well, as embodied In the theory and outworking out-working of free enterprise. It is no exaggeration to say that our current educational system, which along with our wartime industrial in-dustrial system made Allied victory possible, is no more adapted to meet the new and startling problems ol the postwar world than the Japanese defense could meet the atomic bomb. Enlightened educators everywhere realize this. In a short time experts will meet In London to work out a program outlined In San Francisco by the men and women who planned the educational and cultural council coun-cil of the United Nations. Here at home and in other democratic countries, coun-tries, domestic educational policies are being reshaped to meet the new conditions. Education for world freedom is an Important objective; education for freedom in the land of the free is equally important, for it is the foundation foun-dation stone of world democracy. We have the task of reconverting our own antiquated machinery so that it will be geared to produce and maintain freedom. The United Nations' task is to build new machinery ma-chinery which will evolve a product prod-uct which must displace the Nazi-Fascist Nazi-Fascist teachings which still have their hold on a large segment of the population. Our own product must be both a weapon of offense and of defense. We have a powerful example In the need for this in the demonstrated demonstrat-ed strength of the Nazi ideology and the weakness of what we have so far produced to combat it. Nazi Propaganda . Remains Strong A report made public only a week Or two ago reveals how "Naziism at Its blackest," as the report describes It, is being kept alive in a series of "resistance clubs" In Germany scattered scat-tered from the North sea to the Bavarian Ba-varian mountains. Allied investigators investiga-tors have pieced together an appalling appal-ling picture of a widespread activity based upon race hatred, and other Nazi principles with which the German Ger-man youth has been so thoroughly Indoctrinated in a manner pointed out in these columns some time ago and which I then said must be dealt with eventually. The offense is powerful, and the weakness of our defense is Illustrated Illustrat-ed in recent dispatches telling us how Nazi propaganda is affecting the viewpoint of the American army of occupation. A major is reported as doubting the truth of the atrocity stories in the concentration camp of Dachau located only a few miles from where he was stationed. American Amer-ican soldiers are heard parroting the familiar Goebbels' fabrication that Germany was forced into the war; that Hitler had his faults but was really great in many respects, or if Hitler's glory Is found to be too strong a goat he is used as a scapegoat scape-goat to excuse German war guilt. I have just come from a long talk with one of America's great educators. educa-tors. John Studebaker, United States Commissioner of Education. It was he who introduced me to the phrase, "the new reconversion." "Our democratic system is threatened threat-ened from within and without," he said to me earnestly. "The Amer- , ican school gave our polyglot natior i the solidarity to carry on the war . j successfully. But," he added, "we ( . have severe tests ahead. We must educate for freedom, and educate for existence in a newly integrated world of which we are an integral j part. We must understand our own j problem and the problems of oth- ! ers." ' I couldn't help applying this the-1 the-1 ory .o the stories from Germany. A thorough understanding of democ-' democ-' racy is proof against Nazi propaganda. propagan-da. An understanding of other peoples peo-ples and events beyond our borders which altect us as the rise of Hitler and Mussolini affected us would 1 make us deaf to German prevarications prevarica-tions and excuses. In order to meet the threats ! against democracy from within and from without, Mr. Studebaker believes, be-lieves, with most of his colleagues, that our present educational system ' will have to be thoroughly renovated. renovat-ed. "Both the plant and the product 1 must be remodeled," he says. He chose two subjects geography and economics as examples of how the product must be altered. Knowledge of Conditions Vital Geography is important because It Is a study of the world in which we live. It is a study of the peoples who live in the world of our very near, thanks to jet propulsion and atomic energy, if not always very dear neighbors. Geography is also the study of the pursuits, the industries indus-tries of the people of the world. Its grasp is essential if we are to bring intelligent thought to judgment of events and the conditions at home and abroad and their effect upon I each other and upon us. "And yet, geogrnphy was never taught to our people," Mr. Studebaker Studebak-er says. "We stop teaching it at the eighth grade. The younger children, from three to eight, are taught by teachers who themselves never had more than eighth grade instruction in the subject." And his second example of one of our educational products which must be strengthened, economics, "belongs still less to the people." Only 5 per cent of the high school pupils ever studied economics, he informed in-formed me, and only 5 per cent of these ever learned anything about international trade. "How can we possibly meet the problems arising now if we do not understand this subject? How can we possibly maintain free enterprise if we cannot pass a considered Judgment Judg-ment on the questions that the papers pa-pers are full of every day? How can a person say whether a wage increase in-crease is fair if he has never studied the simplest theories of supply and demand, or the more complicated relations of wages, costs, profits?" And in the international field, ,h continued, how could a person who had never learned the fundamentals of international trade know whether a tariff was justified, whether a cartel car-tel was dangerous, whether certain foreign business activities benefitted the people as a whole, whether free competition or government subsidy was a better policy? How could they advise their congressman to vote on the Bretton Woods agreement, agree-ment, or the policy of foreign loans? Just as geography suffers because its teaching ends before maturity is reached (maturity in this sense is the 15-16 year group, roughly high school age), economics is begun too late. It is offered as a one-year, high school course and boiled down into such a concentrated potion that not only are vital elements omitted (such as international trade) but it becomes a dry and highly abstruse subject. Furthermore, since it is often an elective (a subject I'll touch on in a later article), it may be omitted omit-ted entirely because it is "hard." These two subjects are only two examples of those which should. In Mr. Studebaker's opinion, ake up a solid "core" of education available avail-able to all. "This sore." he says, "is essential if we are to build solidarity in V. democratic society. A certain group of vital, basic subjects which will help us understand the problems that threaten democracy, the down-to-earth facts necessary to give us the basis for a sound faith in our way of life." BARBS . . . by Baukhage They've just made a film about teachers for the children's sake let's hope they don't get a film about pupils. It might result in more spankings than a bad report card. A new process of canning in aluminum alu-minum for highly sensitive machines ma-chines and parts saves warehousing and we hope it will make more new jobs than will be lost by displaced dis-placed warehousemen. There won't be enough oysters this year to supply the demand. Probably Prob-ably the war took too many shells. An eye-bank is being established, the purpose of which is to make available healthy corneal tissue to restore sight to those who are blind through an aflliction of the cornea. The system is similar to the blood-banks blood-banks and no less valuable. I wish they would establish a hair-bank. |
