Well Worth Reading
Federalized Education? There is a large and vocal group calling for federal aid to education. It may reasonably be presumed that the arguments advanced by this group as to why the local school should have a pipeline into the national treasury are the best arguments that could be devised while remaining within calling distance of the facts. These arguments are assembled and answered by Roger A. Freeman in a 53-page pamphlet entitled Federal Aid to Education—Boon or Bane?
We are told that there is a teacher shortage. Mr. Freeman demonstrates that the ratio between teachers and pupils has remained stable for the past fifty years. We are told that teachers are leaving for more lucrative and elevating employment, such as driving a truck. Mr. Freeman quotes from the figures of the National Education Association—spear-head of the drive for federal aid which show that in 1954-55 one per cent of the teachers left for other employment. Are teachers’ colleges empty? Mr. Freeman points out that degrees in education increased 14 per cent between 1950 and 1954 while degrees in all other fields decreased by 34 per cent.
This pamphlet is one of a number of significant studies in a variety of fields by competent authors, released by the American Enterprise Association, 1012 14th Street, N.W., Washington 5, D:C. Mr. Freeman’s pamphlet may be obtained by sending a dollar to the Association.
Voice from India: A Bombay philosopher, M. V. Balakrishna Rao, sends us his review of a FEE pamphlet, Students of Liberty. Excerpts follow. “The problem is how to preserve independence in a highly specialized society in which interdependence plays a major role. The fact of interdependence is widely recognized. How to deal with it skillfully is where divergence of opinion in social affairs originates. Recommendations for skillful management of society are analyzed into two diametrically opposed principles of reform—the principle of violence and the principle of love. The principle of love, as stated by Mr. Read, refers to the application of the kindly virtues in human relations such as tolerance, charity, good sportsmanship, the right of another to his views, integrity, the practice of not inconveniencing others, and other modes of conduct which result in mutual trust, voluntary cooperation, and justice. The concluding paragraphs mentioning the qualifications of the Student of Liberty and the Teacher of Liberty remind the student of Indian culture of the Gurukula approach to truth.”
You’re the Boss: A few months ago the president of an eastern railroad found himself out of a job. His commuters fired him; they didn’t like the way he ran their trains. The customer is always boss, and an utterly ruthless boss he is. Moved by mere whim he takes his trade away from one person and gives it to another. No concern of this boss if the first person starves; “Starve away!” he tells him. The consumer is sovereign in his own realm, but for some odd reason he attaches little significance to the sovereignty which he can exercise day in and day out. Of political sovereignty he has little for 864 days, but let him cast a ballot once a year expressing the most limited kind of choice and he feels himself a king.
Fred Clark and Dick Rimanoczy are geniuses when it comes to clarifying the basic facts of economics. Send a nickel to The American Economic Foundation, 295 Madison Avenue, New York 7, for their latest tract entitled “So We Got the Guy Fired.”
Along the Paperback Front: Western civilization is facing a challenge as critical as any in its history. Popular grasp of the central ideas of our culture has weakened; faith in our values has ebbed. This is the heart of the crisis, this leaching away of major portions of our spiritual heritage leaving a devitalized remainder. Communism seeps into the vacuum thus created, expanding more as a response to diminishing external pressure on its creed than by any inner vitality of its own. The only effective resistance on this level of communist expansion is a reinvigoration of the ideals and values of the West; and for this purpose books are effective weapons.
W. G. DeBurgh’s The Legacy of the Ancient World is now available in a two-volume Pelican edition. De-Burgh was a well-known British philosopher, so his survey of western civilization is much more than a mere record of events; it is primarily the story of the living ideas which Europe took from the ancient world and the gradual embodiment of those ideas in custom, institution, and law. The triple legacy of faith, freedom, and law, which came to us severally from Israel, Greece, and Rome, were blended as Christendom. This is a wise and beautifully written book.
A useful companion book to the above is Benedetto Croce’s History as the Story of Liberty just issued by Meridian. This publisher puts out the best specimen of bookmaking of all the paperbacks I have seen. Pages are sewn in, and even the larger volumes are fairly durable and easy to handle.
