tions financed by the people's taxes. The official attitude of the American education establishment is that no one who is not part of the establishment can make a valid criticism of the schools. There is a standard procedure for dealing with critics. They are declared to be ill-intentioned troublemakers and ax grinders, ignorant, uninformed, et cetera. There is no need to reply to their case against the schools except to repeat these deprecations of the critic as a person. This party line reveals on the part of the people to whom we entrust the education of our children a truly appalling misunderstanding of the working of the democratic process.

Criticism by individuals is a vital part of the democratic process. Public action in a democracy comes in response to public demand. Before the people can demand remedial action, they must first discover existence of defects in the status quo. When the defects exist in powerful public agencies the impetus for reform necessarily must come from outside. Such agencies rarely generate self-reform; their hierarchic organization effectively prevents this. Hence democracies depend on individual criticism. This is the reason why freedom of speech and a free press are important. It is through them that the public is made. aware of problems that must be remedied. Otherwise, public agencies would be able forever to hide the truth from the American people by setting up a screen fashioned of slogans, cliches, and illusions designed to project a favorable image of the agency and to bury its shortcomings. This sort of thing has become a fine art with public relations staffs. When the function of the critic is thus hampered by personalizing public issues that ought to be debated on their merit, then democracy itself is weakened. No wonder our schools have so little success in educating American youth for democratic citizenship, in transmitting to young people a deep sense of civic responsibility, a clear understanding of how democratic government works and what is the role of the citizen in a democracy. How can it be otherwise when the democratic process is so little understood by the people who manage our school system.

Now that the American public has awakened to the educational cold war into which we have been drawn, the schools, in fact, have had to submit to much scrutiny and criticism. Recently a booklet prepared for the National Education Association noted that much greater pressure is being exerted on our schools to institute a more rigorous instructional program. Next to Sputnik, the school administrators listed "outside critics" as the "most influential source of this demand."

THE NEED FOR A MORE PROFESSIONAL ATTITUDE TOWARD EDUCATION

To speak against our educational system is not easy, but not to speak at all requires only silence. If I add my voice it is because I think that perhaps I can contribute in a small way by what I might call my "professional" attitude toward education. Professional people are trained to look at a problem as unemotionally as possible. They try to get at fundamentals. They try to separate the essential from the nonessential. In education this means locating the principal task of the school and concentrating on how the school performs this task. If it performs badly, as measured against what society demands of the schools or against what the country must obtain to

remain educationally competitive, then the school must be pronounced a failure. And the fact that it may do other tasks well or may make children happy is irrelevant and offers it no alibi.

A SCHOOL'S TECHNICAL TASK

Mr. CANNON. Admiral Rickover, you say you look at American education "as a professional," that you are therefore concerned only with the manner in which schools do what you call their "technical" task. Just what is meant by that?

Admiral RICKOVER. I think anyone looking at the schools in a professional way would analyze our educational problem as failure of the schools to do their technical task properly. I use the word "technical" which is not a good word but I can't think of a better one. What I want to express is that the school's proper job is something that can be judged on its merit and without reference to the place where the school is located.

This technical job, as I conceive it, consists almost in its entirety of helping every school child make the best possible use of his Godgiven intelligence. The school's major objective should be to send its graduates into the world equipped with the knowledge they will need to live successfully, hence happily. And with as well trained a critical intelligence as can be developed, given their innate talents, their motivation, and the time allowed the school to accomplish this difficult task.

THE VALUE OF EXAMINING "TECHNIQUES" OF OTHER SCHOOL SYSTEMS

Now in all countries the schools are expected to, and do, other things as well. Some of these things we do not like. We don't like the way that Russian schools try to shape young children into what they call "Soviet Man." We don't like the way some private schools abroad deliberately try to shape children into a type they consider ideal as "leader." When I say we should concentrate on the technical task I mean we should disregard these other school activities. Just because we don't want our children to be shaped into replicas of "Soviet Man" is no reason we shouldn't look into the way Russian schools manage to transmit twice as large vocabularies to sixth graders than our schools, or to teach them so much more mathematics, science and languages.

When another school system does a better technical job, it is irrelevant to counter that we enroll more children and that they stay more years in school. Quantity is not a substitute for quality. What I am interested in is the techniques that are used in good school systems. Most professionals take this view because it is the mark of a professional person that he is ready to borrow techniques developed elsewhere. His thinking is not confused by personal likes or dislikes of the people who develop or practice good techniques.

Take police work. The essential task of all police departments is to protect society against criminals. Nations have different ideas how policemen should conduct themselves toward the public and toward persons accused of crime. But when it comes to the technical task of detecting criminals, the police of all countries are only too ready to learn from one another. In consequence, In consequence, modern techniques

such as fingerprinting, blood tests, the whole scientific apparatus used in crime detection, are virtually the same the world over. There is even an international organization, Interpol, through which the police of different nations aid one another in catching criminals.

Or take medicine. Today there exists a gulf in the attitude toward payment for medical care between our country and Europe, including England. Abroad a consensus was reached some time ago that the cost of essential medical care-like the cost of education-should be socialized. In our country no such consensus exists. But though he may dislike socialized medicine, no American physician would hesitate to make use of a successful new surgical technique or drug therapy merely because it had been developed in England's or Sweden's socialized medical service. This is a technical matter, and he judges it on merit. You find the same professional attitude among artists and musicians. Dislike for Soviet communism would never prevent an American orchestra from reacting enthusiastically toward a Soviet soloist or conductor if these were first-rate musicians. The only people I know who call themselves professionals yet who entirely reject what their counterparts abroad are doing are our educators. To them European education is anathema, not on technical grounds but because school systems abroad do not pursue the social or political objectives which our educators appear to consider more important than the technical task of developing the mental capacities of pupils.

EARLIER AMERICAN BORROWING OF EUROPEAN TECHNIQUES

It was not always so. All through the 19th century we were part of the great educational world of the West. In early reports of the U.S. Office of Education you will find educational news from abroad intermingled with domestic news. American educators and educated laymen were fully aware of the merits and deficiencies of American education as compared to that of Europe. Our schools concentrated on the same intellectual task as the schools abroad. Scholastically they were not as good but on the other hand more of them offered tuition-free education. The European Continent had pioneered the concept of public or tax-supported education at all levels, and of free elementary schooling for all children up to age 14 or, as required by the Prussian school regulations of 1763, from the fifth year "until the child is found to possess the knowledge necessary for every rational being," this minimum of education being compulsory. Our great contribution to education was the ideal that all fees, not only elementary school fees, should be abolished. From the United States this splendid ideal moved to Europe where it is now not only well established, but in some ways better realized.

The interchange of educational ideas was thus not a one-way proposition, but being newcomers in education we naturally borrowed more. The Puritans brought with them the parish school which at the time was the "common" school of Protestant Europe; this is the origin of the New England township school. They brought the English liberal arts college and the English grammar school that prepared children for entrance into college and into the higher echelons of government and industry. Later we borrowed from Prussia the teacher seminary, the kindergarten, and the graduate university. Free universal compulsory education was also continental, chiefly German, in origin.

THE REPLACING OF TRADITIONAL METHODS BY THE DEWEY-KILPATRICK

THEORY OF EDUCATION

But when the Dewey-Kilpatrick theory of progressive education replaced traditional educational theories and practices in this country, we turned our back on Europe and withdrew into educational isolation. So isolated are we today that children of Americans living abroad can seldom be fitted into their proper age group in European school systems and European exchange students coming to this country can get no credit at home for their American high school year. By rejecting traditional school objectives, by making of the school primarily an agency for social leveling, by assuming, in the name of "whole" child schooling, responsibilities normally reserved to the family, the progressives have created an artificial gulf between American and European education, to our detriment. They take the parochial view that nothing can be learned from schools abroad, even though Europe has had seven centuries of experience with formal education and commonsense would indicate she might therefore have developed some techniques we might find useful.

In all the comparisons with other school systems I have made, I concentrate on the intellectual content of schooling here and abroad; all my comparisons have been scholastic. When it comes to giving children a marvelous time in beautiful surroundings where they can spend the years before they start to work in a pleasant way, finding mates, making friends and business connections, attending athletic spectacles, and also absorbing a little learning, then nobody can beat American education. I only fear that, delightful as this may seem at the time, it does not prepare our children for the realities of life. Developing intellectual powers and developing youth with agreeable personalities are not interchangeable accomplishments. If a school system is good at developing the intellectual potential of students it does its proper task well. If it fails in this task, the fact that its graduates are pleasant-spoken, nicely group-adjusted young people does not constitute a mitigating factor; the school system is still a failure.

TECHNICAL TASK DONE BETTER IN SCHOOLS OF ADVANCED EUROPEAN

COUNTRIES

Mr. CANNON. Admiral Rickover, I do not believe America would be safe today but for what you have accomplished in the development of nuclear propulsion. It is extraordinary for a man of your distinction and achievement to leave your narrow professional field and tell us, in this great country, which we naturally consider to be the greatest and most enlightened on the face of the earth, that other nations have a better school system. So, with your permission, I shall ask you directly: Is it your contention, Admiral Rickover, that European schools do this technical task better? You say you look at American education as a professional, seeking to locate what is the school's technical task. Is it your contention that European schools do this technical task better than we do?

Admiral RICKOVER. In my opinion most advanced European countries now have public school systems that do a better technical job than our schools. As I said before, I confine myself to the technical task which ought to be judged on its merits and without reference to

the cultural, economic, or political setting in which schools operate. I suggest we try to divest ourselves of the natural chauvinism everyone has about an institution so intimately a part of the national culture as the school. And that we even try to overcome the deep-seated conviction we all have that our children are unique, something quite special. Believe me, when it comes to getting the knowledge they will need into their resistant little heads, they are quite like children the world over. And as to what kind of knowledge they must be induced to absorb, this too, in large part, is the same in all modern industrial nations, especially in all modern democracies.

We are no longer a pioneer country with a vast wilderness to be brought under cultivation; where consequently average men without much education were urgently needed and amply rewarded and where "book learning" wasn't a requisite for success. We are now 70 percent urban and highly industrialized. Life here does not differ much from life in other advanced industrial democracies. Our children need as much formal education to become useful and happy members of society as they need abroad. American families are willing and able to assume the responsibilities Europeans accept for the moral education of their children, for their manners, their social life, their leisuretime activities. American schools-like schools abroad-can and should therefore accept their role as supplementary to, not replacing that of the family.

THE PROPER FUNCTION OF A SCHOOL IN A MODERN INDUSTRIAL

DEMOCRACY

In my opinion our "professional" educators have a wrong idea of what is the proper function of a school in a modern industrial country that is also a democracy. When they engage in "whole" child education they invade the domain of home, church, and community. Besides there just isn't time for the schools themselves to do the whole education job. What the child learns at school can never be more than a part of his education. As I see it, education in the broadest sense of the term means educing or bringing forth a child's innate potentialities; it means adult guidance of his growth toward spiritual, moral, physical, and intellectual maturity. Education, for most of man's history on earth, and even today in many parts of the earth, has been almost wholly an informal kind of apprenticeship with virtually the entire responsibility resting with the family. It is only when societies reach high cultural and technical levels that the untrained parent must relinquish part of the education job—that of training the intellect to professional experts. A school system performs its proper task when it does a first-rate job of equipping children with the requisite knowledge and intellectual skill for successful living in a complex modern society.

It is civilization that makes school a necessity for the continuance of social life. In simpler eras learning was in a sense a luxury, but today learning is so essential that all advanced countries have taxsupported public school systems. I think it is important we keep in mind that the effort children must make to improve their minds and fill them with even larger amounts of systematic knowledge, the expense to which parents and society must go in order to obtain professionally competent teachers and to build and equip modern.