THE PERSPECTIVE OF A READER

You can inform yourself about anything in two ways; by personal experience and by studying the experience of others. Personal experience is necessarily limited by the kind of life you lead and the kind of work you do. But study of the experience of others is limited only by the time you can find to study, to read, to correspond or to talk with experts. Now anybody can read books. They are available in public libraries and if your own library hasn't got what you want they will even order it for you-free of charge. When he was a young man, Lincoln remarked:

The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read.

We are fortunate that we all have so many friends in our local library. What you get out of books depends, of course, on how well you choose your authors, how reliable they are. I myself get most of my knowledge of education from official sources: from expressions by education authorities as to what objectives they believe the schools should pursue; writings of educators which give one a good clue to how well or how badly they are educated, and how informed they are on their subject; also school curricula, examination questions and answers, the value given by outsiders to particular school diplomas and higher degrees, and so on. I am fortunate to be in contact by correspondence with eminent scholars and educators here and abroad who are kind enough to give me the benefit of their own wide practical experience and of a reasoned judgment in educational matters that ultimately rests upon their high intelligence and broad general and professional education.

THE VALUE OF OUTSIDERS' JUDGMENT

All this, I know, has no value whatsoever in the eyes of educational officialdom. Like most bureaucracies, this huge organization would like to escape lay criticism and tries to do so by constantly using the stereotyped argument that only "professionals" or "inside" critics can judge the performance of other professionals and anyway, nobody can judge the schools unless he has personally inspected every school in the country, sat in every classroom of every school and listened to every child in every classroom of every school.

Now these are splendid gimmicks if all that the educators want is to save themselves the trouble to answer criticism of the schools. The most effective critics have almost always been outsiders-individuals working on their own, individuals who have no access to public funds that finance junkets of educators around the world. These days they rarely obtain even a foundation grant.

DEWEY VERSUS "BOOKLEARNING"

But I wonder sometimes whether this is merely a gimmick or whether the educators really mean it. I would feel much better if I thought it was only a gimmick, but what I am afraid of is that they actually believe what they say. This is what worries me so much, because if they do believe it, then they are denying the validity of our entire educational system, because all education is based on what humanity has learned throughout history. If you can only learn from what is going on today, then obviously we should do away with our

educational system and just have our children make field trips to the firehouse and city hall.

It seems to me that the educators are in their own adult lives following the precepts Dewey used for elementary school children in his Chicago Laboratory School. He felt that children learned more by practical experience than out of books. Hence his dogma that children should be "learning by doing." For instance, he had 10- and 11-year-olds spend endless hours reinventing such things as how to make cotton, flax and wool cloth, how to card wool, and so on. "You can concentrate the history of all mankind into the evolution of flax, cotton, and wool fibers into clothing," said Dewey. But would this not give you an utterly materialistic, worm's eye view of history and of man? And can modern children afford to devote so much time to learning the primitive origins of a manufacturing process that is unlikely to be important in their lives unless they all become managers of textile mills? At that, a manager could grasp the principle of primitive looms in half an hour from a book.

Ordinarily, mistrust of "booklearning" is to be found only among uneducated people who do not themselves read books and whose schooling has not carried them from concrete things to abstract concepts. And so, quite naturally, they feel that to know, a person should have personally seen, heard, and touched the things he talks about; and before he can criticize anything, he must prove he can do the things he criticizes better himself.

Many people believe that unless a critic can demonstrate a better way, his criticism isn't "constructive." Doesn't the person who reports a fire perform a valuable service, even though the fire department puts it out? You sometimes hear people remark disparagingly of an art or literary critic-to take just one example-that they'd like to see this critic paint a better picture or write a better book. This way of thinking confuses ability to judge art with artistic talent, but the two are different. If it were not so, no layman could discriminate between good and bad art, or for that matter between a good and a bad doctor, lawyer, or teacher. The "professionals" would then have it all their own way. Many an administrator uses this strategem of requiring his subordinates never to criticize unless it is "constructive," the administrator himself, of course, being the one who decides what is and what is not "constructive" criticism.

JUDGING SCHOOLS BY THEIR GRADUATES

For myself, besides study and reading, correspondence and discussion, I have learned much about education through experience gained on my job with novel engineering development projects. Also, my many years in Washington have given me a unique opportunity to observe how greatly the United States is handicapped because we simply do not have enough people with the educational qualifications essential to keep us progressing satisfactorily. The lack is both in general or liberal education, and in the specialized education needed by professionals and technicians.

As a practical man I am not much interested in the mystique or esoterics of education which fascinate so many of our professional educators. I freely admit I judge schools by their products. Literally thousands of these products pass through my hands and those of my

leading scientists and engineers when we interview young people who apply for positions as designers and builders of nuclear reactors or as officers and men to operate our nuclear ships. I find the percentage so qualified to be deplorably small. Those selected we must send to special schools set up and run by our own naval reactors group. These schools do not teach reactor technology alone; they also have to teach many basic subjects which abroad have already been taught in the regular schools. My "school system" of six schools enrolls about 2,500 students at different levels from high school to graduate university. So I can claim some personal experience with educating young Americans.

Mr. CANNON. If I may be frank with you, Admiral Rickover.

Isn't nuclear propulsion a narrowly specialized field? Can you judge American education solely by the educational qualifications of persons who want to work in this field?

Admiral RICKOVER. How can I, who am engaged in a specialtynuclear propulsion-qualify as a critic of education? It so happens that this specialty has in it all the elements that go into modern technology. When you find out what it takes to accomplish an engineering project for developing atomic energy you know what it takes to do almost any other new development job. The educational qualifications of the people who do the technical work and of those who direct it as administrators are roughly the same. In fact, our nuclear project is a pretty good touchstone of the effectiveness of our schools. It calls for flexibility and toughness of mind, for understanding the basic principles in physics, chemistry, and all types of engineering. Also for what I'd like to call an impersonal "scientific" attitude toward the work that must be done. This means, first of all, a readiness to go back to fundamental principles, for it is these that must be applied in a novel way to develop a new item such as a nuclear reactor. It requires readiness to shed accustomed routines-nothing new can be created by routine methods. It means on the part of nontechnical administrators, who are set above the technical people doing the actual development work, that they must forget their organizational "status" when it comes to dealing with technical problems. Because here they are inferior in knowledge to the experts who are organizationally their subordinates. It isn't easy for people whose jobs give them power, not to use this power but to respect the imperatives of science and engineering and to bow to the judgment of technical subordinates in all technical matters.

BUREAUCRACY, CONFORMITY, AND AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL

PHILOSOPHY

Unlike basic scientific research, engineering projects are not selfcontained group efforts. By choosing and training the technical people in my organization with utmost care, I have been able to assemble and train an engineering group with high competence in reactor technology. But the country does not obtain full benefit of their broad and long experience, of their spirit of cooperative endeavor and their ability to produce nuclear ships that are ready to go to war immediately after their sea trials. Much of their time is frittered away "educating" a constantly changing stream of administrators and doing the needless paperwork these people order. Once, when a par

ticularly useless report was requested, one that would have tied up a considerable number of engineers for weeks, I demanded to know how thick the report should be, 9 inches, 13 inches, or 17 inches. The 9-inch thick report would require 4 weeks full-time work, the others correspondingly more. As you know, many people judge the value of a report by its thickness. It so happened that right at the time we were having many technical difficulties and not one engineer was available to take care of these they were all busily writing useless reports.

It is too bad that the "personality cult" and the desire to "manipulate" people rather than to produce useful practical products so permeates our powerful administrators that, instead of helping new projects, they often hinder them. I have never had any technical help from nontechnical administrators. Their human deficiencies are, I believe, a result of the educational philosophy that has permeated the American public school system since Dewey and his followers diverted our schools from traditional objectives and methods into the dead end of life, adjustment, permissiveness, and the use of the schools as social levelers instead of developers of our children's intellectual powers.

The schoolmen could not have thought up a more inappropriate concept of education for this day and age. They could not have dreamed up a worse way to educate young Americans for the tough days ahead. Particularly bad is the excessive emphasis laid in our schools on making oneself popular by conforming to the ways of the "peer" group, on assiduously cultivating an "image" of oneself that will enhance one's status, on personalizing human contacts even when these involve accomplishing tasks which must depend on knowledge and intellectual competence. A generation has grown up that puts "getting along" above competence on the job and above the intellectual courage of sticking by one's considered judgment; especially when it means objecting to orders by superiors whose own judgment may be ill considered since they lack the necessary technical knowledge. There is no surer way to become unpopular than to set oneself against a technically incompetent superior bent on using the power of his position to enforce his will. And though one may do this from the most sincere motives, he will be castigated by everyone as a "controversial nonconformer," and today in this country there is no worse term of opprobrium.

Here is the sort of thing I mean: One day one of my superiors asked that I reduce the amount of radiation shielding in our nuclear ships. He said I was using civilian radiation safety standards but that in military units, personnel casualties of 20 to 30 percent were sometimes accepted. I told him I was sorry I could not do what he asked. I couldn't ignore the fact that where radiation is involved we are dealing not just with the health of the men aboard one ship, but with the genetic future of mankind. The official replied that no one knew much about evolution anyway, and if we raised radiation exposures we might find that the resultant mutations were helpful rather than harmful and that mankind might "learn to live with radiation." You can see what utter nonsense this was. Yet this man had authority. Had I not been obstreperous, had I been a good "organization man," I would have gone along and reduced the shielding and gained favor with him at the expense of some unlucky Navy men and their descendants.

I mention this merely to illustrate how important it is today that we educate our youth to respect the imperatives of science, and to insist on their superiors likewise respecting these imperatives-even at the risk of losing one's job.

I have a legitimate concern with American education simply because I am a citizen of this country and would be derelict in my duties if I did not express my worries over what will happen to our badly educated young people in a world where the United States finds iteself increasingly in competition with other nations-politically, militarily, scientifically, economically, culturally; in fact, in every area of human activity. Besides this, I have a personal concern with American education because my own engineering projects are representative of many that simply must be carried through if our Nation is to remain in top position. These projects are often being harassed and delayed by human deficiencies which a good school system could have done much to prevent.

CURRENT EVIDENCE OF THE NATION'S EDUCATIONAL INADEQUACIES

Naturally, I am aware that many types of human competencies are needed in a complex society. But among these ability to translate new scientific discoveries into useful products is surely one that is of crucial importance at the present time. I have often spoken of the danger in our lengthening lead times, especially since leadtime in the Soviet Union has been contracting and in some important items now seems to be shorter than ours. Short leadtimes are a result of skill in planning and carrying through complex new development projects; that is, in recognizing what is needed in personnel, funds, and equipment and providing them in adequate quality and quantity. Essentially, it is a skill that can be deliberately cultivated through proper education, just as the needed personnel can be produced by proper education. Our lengthening leadtimes are therefore an indicator that something is radically wrong in our school system. Whatever other tasks it may have to accomplish, surely a public school system in a country such as ours must develop in youth the kind of intellectual attitudes and abilities that are an absolute necessity if we are to progress technologically, and at a pace at least as rapid as that of competing nations.

That our schools fail in this task has worried me for a long time. As you know, knowledge now doubles every 10 to 15 years; we lack the educated manpower to make full use of the great opportunities this growth of knowledge offers. Also, since we no longer live in geographic isolation from world affairs we suffer in our contacts abroad from a lack of educated manpower to make our national goals effective. We are plagued with serious deficiencies in virtually every class of occupation that makes demands upon a person's general and specialized education, whether it is at the level of the "learned" professional, the semiprofessional, the skilled craftsman, or the technician. Despite our enormous and costly educational establishment, this country has more functional illiterates than most other industrially advanced nations. We have more people who do not possess minimum knowledge of the elements of language, mathematics, history, and geography that are considered part of elementary education in advanced European countries and which every normal person there appears to