THE CHALLENGE TO EDUCATION

Thomas, A. Bailey

Ignorance is still perhaps the most formidable roadblock in the path of far-visioned foreign policies. The statesmen in Washington, as well as the great mass of better-informed citizens, know that America is no longer living in the era of William McKinley. But a dangerous minority of voters do not know this. Many do not realize that rigid isolationism is both dead and dangerous; that the workaday American must learn to put himself in the sandals of other people and view their problems through their colored spectacles; that he must cultivate understanding and tolerance; that he must sublimate suspicion and ill will; that he must meet the other fellow at least halfway; and that he must continue to invest some of his precious sovereignty in what mankind hopes will be an effective world organization.

But the confused citizen cannot see all these basic truths clearly. All too often he is indifferent, ignorant, or misled by ill-informed, biased, and sometimes unscrupulous editors, columnists, radio commentators, and politicians. If the American people, through their Congress, insist on economic nonco-operation, ruinous tariff barriers, and other impediments to international intercourse, they will have their way -- with the risk of disaster. America cannot exist forever as an island of prosperity in a world of poverty.

The level of American foreign policy, which sooner or later feels the impact of public opinion, cannot rise substantially higher than the masses will let it. Various polls have consistently shown that the lower one goes down the educational scale into the sub-eighth-grade group, one finds more provincialism, more isolationism, more militarism, more jingoism, more indifference to foreign affairs, more preoccupation with the World Series and other domestic trivia, more race prejudice, more distrust of
foreigners, more desire for superpatriotic text books, more demand for high tariff barriers and other instruments of economic nonco-operation, more insistence on harsh terms for international debtors, more reluctance to pay foreign service officers and other public servants adequate salaries, more shortsightedness in foreign affairs, more unwillingness to see that there are at least two sides to most complicated disputes, more blind attachment to the concept of sovereignty, and more opposition to even a moderate amount of international cooperation.

A tremendous job in public education needs to be done. Narrowness, intolerance, bigotry, witch-hunting, and demagoguery fatten on ignorance. American educational institutions must receive more generous support from the taxpayers, because the proper kind of education is a relatively cheap form of international life insurance. If the people control foreign policy, as broadly they do, they should know something about the complicated mechanism they are controlling. The schools and colleges must offer more and better work in foreign languages, history, geography, foreign affairs, comparative government, international economics, international law, and international organization. The press, the radio, the public forums, and other informational agencies must rise to their responsibilities to present sound and enlightening information about the outside world. Events in strange and faraway places may hatch troubles that will come to roost in the United States.

Upon every citizen in this democracy rests a solemn obligation to, inform himself, so that he may shape American foreign policy -- his foreign policy -- along constructive and far-visioned lines.

A Diplomatic History of the American People 10th edition, Prentice Hall, 1890.

What action is occuring in the picture? Is this different than what it "means" to you? Emotionize?