The Shortage in Education

by WALTER LIPPMANN

1

WHAT I am going to say is the result, of a prolonged exposure to the continuing crisis of our western society — to the crisis of the democratic governments and of free institutions during the wars and revolutions of the twentieth century. Now it does not come easily to anyone who, like me, has breathed the soft air of the world before the wars that began in 1914 — who has known a world that was not divided and frightened and full of hate — it does not come easily to such a man to see clearly and to measure coolly the times we live in. The scale and scope and the complexity of our needs are without any precedent, in our experience, and indeed, we may fairly say, in all human experience.

In 1900 men everywhere on earth acknowledged, even when they resented, the leadership of the west - ern nations. It was taken for granted that the liberal democracies were showing the way towards the good life in the good society, and few had any doubts of the eventual, but certain, progress of all mankind towards more democracy and a wider freedom.

The only question was when — the question was never whether — the less fortunate and the more backward peoples of the world would have learned to use not only the technology of the West but also the political institutions of the West. All would soon be learning to decide the issues which divided them by free and open and rational discussion; they would soon learn how to conduct free and honest elections, to administer justice. Mankind would come to accept and comprehend the idea that all men are equally under the laws and all men must have the equal protection of the laws.

At the beginning of this century the acknowledged model of a new government, even in Russia, was a liberal democracy in the British or the French or the American style. Think what has happened to the western world and to its ideas and ideals during the forty years since the World Wars began. The hopes that men then took for granted are no longer taken for granted. The institutions and the way of life which we have inherited, and which we cherish, have lost their paramount, their almost undisputed, hold upon the allegiance and the affections and the hopes of the peoples of the earth. They are no longer universally accepted as being the right way towards the good life on this earth. They are fiercely challenged abroad; they are widely doubted and they are dangerously violated even here at home.

During this half century the power of the western democratic nations has been declining. Their influence upon the destiny of the great masses of people has been shrinking. We are the heirs of the proudest tradition of government, in the history of mankind. Yet we no longer find ourselves talking now — as we did before the First World War about the progress of liberal democracy among the awakening multitudes. We are talking now about the defense and the survival of liberal democracy in its contracted area.

We are living in an age of disorder and upheaval. Though the United States has grown powerful and rich, we know in our hearts that we have become, at the same time, insecure and anxious. Our people enjoy an abundance of material things, such as no large community of men has ever known. But our people are not happy about their position or confident about their future. For we are not sure whether our responsibilities are not greater than our power and our wisdom.

We have been raised to the first place in the leadership of the western society at a time when the general civilization of the West has suffered a spectacular decline and is gravely threatened. We, who have become so suddenly the protecting and the leading power of that civilization, are not clear and united among ourselves about where we are going and how we should deal with our unforeseen responsibilities, our unwanted mission, our unexpected duties.

It is an awe-inspiring burden that we find ourselves compelled to bear. We have suddenly acquired responsibilities for which we were not prepared — for which we are not now prepared — for which, I am very much afraid, we are not now preparing ourselves.

We have had, and probably we must expect for a long time to have, dangerous and implacable enemies. But if we are to revive and recover, and are to go forward again, we must not look for the root of the trouble in our adversaries. We must look for it in ourselves. We must rid ourselves of the poison of self-pity. We must have done with the falsehood that all would be well were it not that we are the victims of wicked and designing men.

In 1914, when the decline of the West began, no one had heard of Lenin, Trotsky, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Tse-tung. We have not fallen from our pre-eminence because we have been attacked. It would be much truer to say, and it is nobler to say it, that we have been at tacked because our capacity to cope with our tasks had begun to decline.

We shall never have the spirit to revive and to recover so long as we try to console ourselves by shutting our eyes, and by wringing our hands and beating our breasts and filling the air with complaints that we have been weakened because we were attacked, and that we have been making mistakes because we were betrayed.

We must take the manly view, which is that the failure of the western democracies during this catastrophic half of the twentieth century is due to the failings of the democratic peoples. They have been attacked and brought down from their preeminence because they have lacked the clarity of purpose and the resolution of mind and of heart to cope with the accumulating disasters and disorders. They have lacked the clarity of purpose and the resolution of mind and of heart to prevent the wars that have ruined the West, to prepare for these wars they could not prevent, and, having won them at last after exorbitant sacrifice and at a ruinous cost, to settle those wars and to restore law and order upon the face of the globe.

2

I HAVE said all this because it is only in the context of our era that we can truly conceive the problem of educating the American democracy. When we do that, we must, I believe, come to see that the effort we are making to educate ourselves as a people is not nearly equal to our needs and to our responsibilities.

If we compare our total effort — in public and private schools, and from kindergarten through college — with what it was fifty years ago, the quantitative increase is impressive. We are offering much more schooling of a more expensive kind to very many more pupils. By every statistical measure, the United States has made striking quantitative progress during the past century towards the democratic goal of universal education. The typical young American is spending more years in school than his father or grandfather; a much higher proportion of young people are going to high school and beyond: and more dollars — even discounting the depreciation of the dollar — are being spent for each person’s education.

Now, if it were no more difficult to live in the United States today than it was fifty years ago; that is to say, if life were as simple as it was then — if the problems of private and community life were as easily understood — if the task of governing the United States at home and of conducting its foreign relations abroad were as uncomplicated as and no more dangerous than it was fifty years ago — then we could celebrate, we could be happy, we could be congratulating ourselves that we are making great progress in the task of educating ourselves as a democracy.

But we cannot make that comforting comparison without deceiving ourselves seriously. We cannot measure the demands upon our people in the second half of the twentieth century— the demands in terms of trained intelligence, moral discipline, knowledge, and, not least, the wisdom of great affairs — by what was demanded of them at the beginning of the first half of this century. The burden of living in America today and of governing America today is very much heavier than it was fifty years ago, and the crucial question is whether the increase of our effort in education is keeping up with the increase in the burden.

When we use this standard of comparison, we must find, I submit, that the increase in our effort to educate ourselves is of a quite different — and of a very much smaller — order of magnitude than is the increase in what is demanded of us in this divided and dangerous world. Our educational effort and our educational needs are not now anywhere nearly in balance. The supply is not nearly keeping up with the demand. The burden of the task is very much heavier than is the strength of the effort. There is a very serious and dangerous deficit between the output of education and our private and public need to be educated.

How can we measure this discrepancy? I am sorry to say that I shall have to use a few figures, trusting that none of you will think that when I use them, I am implying that all things can be measured in dollars and cents. I am using the figures because there is no other way to illustrate concretely the difference in the two orders of magnitude — the difference between what we do to educate ourselves, on the one hand, and on the other hand, what the kind of world we live in demands of us.

What shall we use as a measure of our educational effort? For the purpose of the comparison, I think we may take the total expenditure per capita, first in 1900, and then about half a century later, in 1953, on public and private schools from kindergarten through college.

And as a measure of the burden of our task — of the responsibilities and of the commitments to which education has now to be addressed — we might take Federal expenditures per capita, first in 1900, and then in our time, half a century later.

We differ among ourselves, of course, as to whether we are spending too much, too little, or the right amount on defense and on the public services. But these differences do not seriously affect the argument. For all of us, or nearly all of us, are agreed on the general size and the scope of the necessary tasks of the modern Federal government, both in military defense and for civilian purposes. Between the highest and the lowest proposals of responsible and informed men, I doubt that the difference is as much as 20 per cent. That is not a great enough difference to affect the point I am making. That point is that the size of the public expenditure reflects—roughly, of course, but nevertheless fundamentally — the scale and scope of what we are impelled and compelled to do. It registers our judgment on the problems which we must cope with.

Now, in 1900, the educational effort, measured in expenditures per capita, was $3.40. The task, as measured by Federal expenditure per capita, was $6.85. What we must be interested in is, I submit, the ratio between these two figures. We find, then, that in 1900 the nation put out $1 of educational effort against $2 of public task.

How is it now, half a century or so later? In 1953, the educational effort was at I he rate of about $76 per capita. Federal expenditures, including defense, had risen to $467 per capita. The ratio of educational effort to public task, which in 1900 was one to two, had fallen, a half century later, to a ratio of one to six.

Perhaps I should pause at this point for a parenthesis to say, for those who may be thinking how much the value of the dollar has depreciated since 1900, that I am aware of that, but for the purposes of this comparison, it makes no difference. For while the dollar was worth probably three times as much in 1900 as in 1953, we are interested only in the relative effort in 1900 and 1953. The ratio would be the same if we divided the 1953 expenditures by three or if we multiplied the 1900 expenditures by three.

You have now heard all the statistics I shall use. The two ratios — the one at the beginning of our rise to the position of the leading great, power of the world, and the other the ratio a half century later, when we carry the enormous burden abroad and at home—these two ratios show that the effort we are now making to educate ourselves has fallen in relation to our needs.

3

I MUST now remind you that this disparity between the educational effort and the public task is in fact greater than the figures suggest. For in this half century there has been a momentous change in the structure of American society, and it has added greatly to the burden upon the schools.

The responsibility of the schools for educating the new generation has become very much more comprehensive than it used to be. Ever so much more is now demanded of the schools. For they are expected to perform many of the educational functions which used to be performed by the family, the settled community, the church, the family business, the family farm, the family trade.

This is a very big subject in itself—much too big for me here — except to mention it as a reminder that the comparison between our real educational effort and our real public need is less favorable than the figures of one to two in 1900, as against one to six today. For the school today has a much larger role to play in the whole process of education than il needed to play in the older American society.

Can it be denied that the educational effort is inadequate? I think it cannot be denied. I do not mean that we are doing a little too litlle. I mean that, we are doing much too little. We are entering upon an era which will test to the utmost the capacity of our democracy to cope with the gravest problem of modern times, and on a scale never yet attempted in all the history of the world. We are entering upon this difficult and dangerous period with what I believe we must call a growing deficit in the quantity and the quality of American education.

There is compelling proof that we are operating at an educational deficit. It is to be found in many of the controversies within the educational system. I am not myself, of course, a professional educator. But I do some reading about education, and I have been especially interested in the problem of providing education for the men and women who must perform the highest functions in our society — the elucidation and the articulation of its ideals, the advancement of knowledge, the making of high policy in the government., and the leadership of the people.

How are we discussing this problem? Are we, as we ought to be doing, studying what arc the subjects and what are the disciplines which are needed for the education of the gifted children for the leadership of the nation? That is not the main thing we are discussing. We are discussing whether we can afford to educate our leaders when we have so far to go before we have done what we should do to provide equal opportunities for all people.

Most of the argument — indeed the whole issue — of whether to address the effort in education to the average of ability or to the higher capacities derives from the assumption that we have to make that choice. But why do we have to choose? Why are we not planning to educate everybody as much as everybody can be educated, some much more and some less than others?

This alleged choice is forced upon us only because our whole educational effort is too small. If we were not operating at a deficit level, our working ideal would be the fullest opportunity for all—each child according to its capacity. It is the deficit in our educational effort which compels us to deny to the children fitted for leadership of the nation the opportunity to become educated for that task.

So we have come to the point where we must lift ourselves as promptly as we can to a new and much higher level of interest, of attention, of hard work, of care, of concern, of expenditure, and of dedication to the education of the American people.

We have to do in the educational system something very like what we have done in the military establishment during the past fifteen years. We have to make a breakthrough to a radically higher and broader conception of what is needed and of what can be done. Our educational effort today, what we think we can afford, what we think we can do, how we feel entitled to treat our schools and our teachers — all of that—is still in approximately the same position as was the military effort of this country before Pearl Harbor.

In 1940 our armed forces were still at a level designed for a policy of isolation in this hemisphere and of neutrality in any war across the two oceans.

Today, the military establishment has been raised to a different and higher plateau, and the effort that goes into it is enormously greater than it was in 1940.

Our educational effort, on the other hand, has not yet been raised to the plateau of the age we live in. I am not saying, of course, that we should spend 40 billions on education because we spend that much on defense. I am saying that, we must make the same order of radical change in our attitude as we have made in our attitude towards defense. We must measure our educational effort as we do our military effort. That is to say, we must measure it not by what it would be easy and convenient to do, but by what it is necessary to do in order that the nation may survive and flourish. We have learned that we are quite rich enough to defend ourselves, whatever the cost. We must now learn that we are quite rich enough to educate ourselves as we need to be educated.

There is an enormous margin of luxury in this country against which we can draw for our vital needs. We take that for granted when we think of the national defense. Prom the tragedies and the bitter experience of being involved in wars for which we were inadequately prepared, we have acquired the will to defend ourselves. And, having done that, having acquired the will, we have found the way. We know how to find the dollars that are needed to defend ourselves, even if we must do without something else that is less vitally important.

In education we have not yet acquired that kind of will. But we need to acquire it, and we have no time to lose. We must acquire it in this decade. For if, in the crucial years which are coming, our people remain as unprepared as they are for their responsibilities and their mission, they may not be equal to the challenge, and if they do not succeed. they may never have a second chance to try.