LETTER TO WILLIAM BENTON FROM ALLEN W. DULLES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80R01731R000400620024-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 18
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 16, 2002
• Sequence Number: 24
• Publication Date: May 2, 1957
• Content Type: LETTER

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ER-9-29144/a
Mr. William Benton
Publisher & Chairman
Encyclopeddia Britannica
3142 Madison Avenue
New York 17j, New York
2 May 1957
Dear Bill,
I appreciated your good letter of April 23
advising that you are sending a copy of the "1957
Britannica Book of the Year."
This is very thoughtful of you and I am
looking forward to receiving it.
I also want to thank you for the copy of
your address, "A Challenge to Catholic Educators"
which your assistant, iVir. Howe, forwarded under
date of April 214th. I read it with considerable
interest and appreciate your kind reference to
me.
Allen W. Dulles,
Director
O/DCI/FMC : jt.f
Distribution:
Orig - Addressee
1 - DCI
1 - FMC
1-- ER w/basic
1 - Reading
Faithfully,
DATE REVIEWER:
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STAT
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ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA
342 MADISON AVENUE
SUITE 702
NEW YORK 17, N.Y.
WILLIAM BENTON
PUBLISHER B CHAIRMAN
April 23, 1957
I've asked my Chicago office to send you our "1957 Britannica
Book of the Year", which is just off the press. It is the record
of an eventful year which included the U. S. presidential election.
The 1957 printing of the 24-volume Encyclopaedia Britannica -
the "parent" of the Year Book - has four million new words in its
total of forty million, and this may help show the speed at which
the world changes in our time. As Publisher of Britannica, I like
to think the annual Book of the Year, with its one million words,
is the best quick summary of changes in any one year.
Two events of tremendous potential significance, internation-
ally, interested me especially in 1956 - Khrushchev's speech at the
February Communist Congress "downgrading" Stalin, and the revolt in
Eastern Europe in the autumn; to me personally, both events had
more significance because of what I had learned in my recent trip
to Russia and in the preparation of my feature article in the 1956
Year Book ("The Voice of the Kremlin").
I hope you may find many reasons during 1957 to refer to the
Britannica Year Book. But if you don't like it, or can't find what
you are seeking, I hopd you will blame the Editor rather than the
Publisher. This year,, I'm not an author.
Very sincerely yours,
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ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA
342 MADISON AVENUE
SUITE 702
NEW YORK 17, N.Y.
April 2,4, 1957
Dear Mr. Dulles:
Senator Benton is giving the principal talk
tomorrow night at the buperintendentst Dinner
during the annual convention of the National
Catholic Education Association in Milwaukee.
He refers to you on page 11.
Sincerely yours,
john Howe
Assistant to William Benton
The Honorable
Allen Dulles
Central Intelligence Agency
Washington, D.C.
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Address by Hon. William Benton
Publisher, Encyclopaedia Britannica
National Catholic Educational Assn.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, April 25, 1957
A CHALLENGE TO CATHOLIC EDUCATORS
I am honored to have been asked to talk to you tonight about
one of the most urgent subjects in today's world. The last time
I spoke in Wisconsin I was cast as the keynoter of the 1952
Democratic state convention. It was a moment when Wisconsin
Democrats were worried by their state's junior Senator much more
than they appear to be today. I am happy to be here again - and
under today's auspices.
Monsignor McManus said recently that the Catholic schools
are "the most flourishing and fastest-growing educational enterprise
in the United States." Dramatic proof of this growth is the size
and scope of your convention here in Milwaukee.
I am here with you because Father Donnelly, the President
of Loyola University of New Orleans, read an article I wrote for
the 1956 Britannica Year Book. This grew out. of a visit by
Mrs. Benton and me to the U.S.S.R. about eighteen months ago.
Father Donnelly suggested to Monsignor Hochwalt that I talk to
you about Soviet education and what it means for America and for
Catholic education in America. The rest was easy. Msgr.Hochwalt
and I have been friends since we served together in Paris in 19+6
on the United States delegation to the first General Conference
of UNESCO. I well recall how Monsignor Hochwalt thrilled our
entire delegation - on our first Sunday in Paris - when he delivered
the sermon at High Mass in the Cathedral of Notre Dame.
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My interest in Soviet education dates from that Paris con-
ference. The cold war hadn't yet been declared for all to see, and
the Soviets had given no clear answer on their intentions toward
UNESCO. Would the U.S.S.R. sabotage the Western world in educa-
tional and cultural matters? I was then serving as Assistant
Secretary of State. I decided to go to Moscow to make inquiries.
Gen. Bedell Smith, our Ambassador to Moscow, sent his plane to Paris
to fetch me. My wife and I flew a first leg as far as Berlin.
There we drew a stony-faced blank from the Russians. The Iron
Curtain was riveted down. We weren't wanted. We couldn't get
clearance. Back we went to Paris.
Because you here work in the field of primary and secondary
education I shall limit myself tonight to three quick points about
the higher Soviet institutions, and then I shall o on - or back -
to the lower schools. I am going to stress three positive points
and deliberately. The positive points have the most to teach us.
I never believe in underestimating an opponent, and this particular
opponent - the Communist hierarchy - boasts of the anticipated
annihilation of the west. The teaching of the communist dogma is
neatly embalmed in an apocryphal anecdote from the Yalta Conference
of 1945. One morning as Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin assembled
for the daily round of conferences, Churchill removed his cigar
from his mouth and said, "Gentlemen, I want to tell you of a momen-
tous dream I had last night. I dreamt that God approached my bed
in a blazing halo and anointed my forehead, saying, 'Winston, I
hereby proclaim you Prime Minister of the World.'" Roosevelt there-
upon jauntily tilted his cigarette holder and said, "How odd! I
had a similar experience, except that in my dream God anointed me
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saying, 'Franklin, I hereby declare you President of the world.'"
Whereupon Stalin puffed on his pipe and said, "This is strange, for
I too had a similar dream; but I don't remember having anointed
either of you!"
My first point deals with the dimensions of the higher Soviet
system. We Americans are rroud that our college and university
enrollment recently passed the 3 million mark. But the comparable
Soviet figure is 3,775,000, and it is growing faster than ours.
The Soviets boast 1,825,000 students in 33 Soviet universities and
800 higher institutes, and another 1,950,000 in 3,70G tekhnikums.
(The tekhnikum in full flower as it exists today is a uniquely
Russian institution - best described as a vocational college.) In
addition to these full-time students millions take correspondence
and evening classes. The current figures that seem most to upset
Americans are for engineering. A year or so ago the Soviets gradu-
ated 63,000 new engineers to our 23,000.
My second point concerns the quality of Soviet higher educa-
tion. Within their specialties, Soviet graduates measure up well
with our own. Except for 10% of their time which all must devote
to Marxism-Leninism, they concentrate narrowly on their specialties.
As specialists, they are competent. We Americans will delude our-
selves if we attribute Russian advances in science and technology -
for example in atomic physics and aeronautics - mainly, or even
largely, to imitation, or to espionage, or to the work of captured
German scientists.
My third quick point concerns the talent of Soviet students.
Here in the United States we have been jolted by a series of recent
studies. These studies show that, of the top 20% of our high school
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population in intelligence, not more than one in three is graduated
from college. Every year 200,000 exceptionally promising American
youngsters fail to make the jump from high school into college - half
of them because their families can't afford it.
This particular kind of wastage of a national asset isn't in-
dulged in by the U.S.S.R. No people in the world today, with such
possible exceptions as the Scots and the Jews, give more attention
to developing talented young people. By the use of persuasion, and
by incentives and pressures - in a combination that gives the
individual very little real choice - the Soviet state steers its
promising students into fields it decides are important and then
holds them in the educational system up to the highest point of
training they can absorb.
Money isn't a problem for a Soviet student. There is now no
tuition charge at any level. Above the secondary school, every
student gets a cash stipend of about half a worker's wages. In
fields the government is emphasizing, pay is higher; for example, it
is higher in aeronautical engineering than in history. Its size
also depends on how well the student performs in examinations.
Further, if he does well, he is deferred from the draft; in some
fields he is exempted permanently.
Most important of all, the Soviets make the life of the pro-
fessional man, the scientist, the scholar and the engineer - the
most desirable, or perhaps I should say the least undesirable, in
the U.S.S.R. Such groups are treated and rewarded as counterparts
to our American corporation presidents. In the U.S.S.R. it is they
who get the cars and chauffeurs, the vineyards and the dachas in the
country. This helps explain why Russian youngsters work their hearts
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out, and often wash their brains out, to climb the educational ladder.
A few weeks ago Professor Edward Teller of the University of
California, called "the father of the hydrogen bomb", made a state-
ment that should have rocked this country. He says we Americans
have already lost the cold war of science to the Russians. Because
it takes a dozen or more years to produce a scientist, and because
the Russians have more young people in training than we do, and
because they have kept their talented students in the educational
system, there is now no conceivable way, says Dr. Teller, to prevent
the Soviets within the next few years from overtaking and surpassing
us in numbers and quality of scientists. If we Americans are to
regain our scientific lead, our target date must be in the '70's or
the '80's. The '60's, says Dr. Teller, are already lost.
To help us combat this crisis, a year ago I proposed that
the federal government annually grant 100,000 competitive four-year
college scholarships, plus 20,000 graduate fellowships. As in the
G.I. Bill, the successful candidate should choose his own institution.
In addition to tuition and living expenses, each scholarship
would provide a "cost of education" bonus to the institution.
Now I shall move on to Soviet primary and secondary education;
first with a brief description and second, with some of the
implications for our own educational system here in America
and particularly for Catholic education.
The Soviet system draws much of its quality from its Czarist
precursors. But prior to 1914 no more than one-half of Russian
children of primary school age were ever enrolled in school; at
least half of all Russians remained illiterate throughout their lives.
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Probably the greatest single Soviet achievement has been the gigantic
program to bring every child into school. If the Communists have
given up butter for guns, they have given up meat for education.
Obviously they didn't invent universal education; We americans
were the pioneers. Universal education has been part of the
American Dream for more than a century. But it is now a fact of life
that the communists are attempting to pilfer our American Dream of
universal education and in broad daylight.
The core of the Soviet system is the so-called Ten-Year School.
This is roughly comparable with our 12-year elementary and high
school system. Please believe me when I tell you that the Russians
pack far more facts, and alleged facts, into their children's heads
in those ten years than we do in our twelve. I do not suggest,
however, that facts are the sole aim or even the primary objective
of education.
All children enter the ten-year school at age 7. The first
four grades, devoted to reading, writing and arithmetic, were made
compulsory for all in 1930. The next three grades, the so-called
"incomplete secondary" years, were made compulsory in 1947. The
big decision to make the full 10 years universal and obligatory was
taken in 1951. The target date is 1960 for all children from 7 to
17 and the goal had been 70% realized by 1955.
In the last six years of the Ten-Year school the academic
pressure mounts progressively. History, geography and literature
enter the curriculum. Each student must devote six years to one
foreign language. In the Federated Republic, which embraces three-
fifths of the population of the U.S.S.R. and extends from the Baltic
to the Pacific, every student, in every grade, is studying the same
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subjects at the same time, and with the same textbooks, with the
single exception of his choice of a foreign language. English, as
the new language of science, is now the favorite. John Gunther
recently reported that there are 41,000 teachers of English in the
U.S.S.R. My wife met one of them in the famous Moscow subway. Her
Russian chauffeur was unable to explain its marvels except by gesticu-
lation. A young man introduced himself and in excellent English
took over as guide. After five or six minutes, as he turned to leave,
he hesitantly queried my wife, "Madam, may I ask you a question? How
is my English?" She replied, "Your English is fine; indeed it's
perfect." He insisted, "Please be frank with me because I am an
English teacher." She repeated,"I assure you your accent is perfect."
He turned away and again came back, "Madam," he said gravely, "you
are the first foreigner to whom I have ever spoken in my life."
Then he vanished into the crowd.
The most striking feature of the ten year curriculum is its
emphasis on mathematics and science. Every graduate must complete
mathematics through trigonometry. Each must take five years of
physics, four years of chemistry, four years of biology, and one of
astronomy. Some of our American experts have recently obtained
copies of the science examinations used for the Ten Year Certificate.
These examinations approximate the level required for admission to
our American university graduate departments of science.
Admiral Lewis Strauss, chairman of our Atomic Energy Com-
mission, comparing Soviet secondary education with our own, has
stated: "I can learn of no public high school in our country where
a student obtains so thorough a preparation in science and mathe-
matics, even if he seeks it -- even if he should be a potential
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Einstein, Edison, Fermi, or Bell."
Soviet boys and girls, like their west European counterparts,
work far harder than do our American youngsters. Wearing their
military-looking uniforms, they attend classes for long hours each
8.
day, six days a week, ten months a year. Discipline is strict.
Examinations are severe. Beginning with the fourth year, pupils
take examinations each spring covering an entire year's work. Ex-
aminations are oral as well as written, and are conducted in the
presence of visiting inspectors.
One facet of the Soviet school system which dramatizes its
growing efficiency, and which was of particular interest to me as
Chairman of Encyclopaedia Britannica Films, the largest producer of
classroom films in the free world, was the rapid strides in the
development of audio-visual education. Mr. Ivan Kairov, Minister
of Education of the Federated Republic, said to me, "the use of
films is of tremendous importance."
In the Soviet Union, if a Minister of Education decides that
200 new films are to be produced and used, the 200 are produced and
used. Here in the United States, more than a quarter century of .
patient work has gone into demonstrating the value of this new tool
to individual teachers, principals, and school boards. We are still
ahead of the Soviets in the quality of our films. Most of their
films are of the documentary type, not integrated into the curriculum
as are ours. But the Soviets seem to be surging ahead of us in their
use of films.
In Kiev I visited a studio that produces educational films.
Four pictures were screened for me. One was titled, "The Story of
the Note Book." The film opens with a teacher -- a very attractive
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woman teacher -- talking to a class of 8 or 9-year olds. She holds
up examples of the children's note books. Some have smudges. Some
have fingerprints. Some have sloppy writing. She tells the children
she wants them to appreciate the work that goes into producing a
note book. She turns to a still picture of lumbermen felling great
pine trees, a still picture hanging right there on the classroom
wall. Suddenly this picture begins to move and there we are -- off
on a very creditable movie showing the making of paper from the pine
tree right through to the note book -- with the teacher's voice
narrating throughout. At the end we go back into the classroom, with
the pupils standing up and swearing to the teacher that henceforward
they will treat their note books with'the respect they deserve.
I was shown a new catalogue published by the Ministry of
Culture, listing nearly 1,000 educational films. Under the section
on astronomy, for example, there was a film on solar and lunar
eclipses; another on the changing of the seasons; one on the sun,
another on the universe. One astronomy film was entitled "Heavenly
Guests." I couldn't quite figure out what this meant - perhaps
comets.
David Johnston, an audio-visual expert at the University of
London, visited the U.S.S.R. last year. In one Ten-Year School near
Moscow, which seemed to him fairly typical, he found movie projectors
in the biology room and the chemistry room. For physics, there were
two film projectors, two film-strip projectors and two epidiascopes.
The school library had over 200 physics films, and over 200 geography
films. An assistant sets up the equipment, but the teacher controls
the actual projection from a switch panel at his desk. Even the
lowering and raising of the window-blinds was motorized in this school.
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In another school, Mr. Johnston counted ten movie projectors.
So you will see that the Soviets are moving swiftly in this
new and major area of educational technology. I fear they are
likely to reach the goal of a projector in every classroom before
we reach the goal of a projector in every school building. I warned
you I would stress the strong points of Soviet education. Another
good quick example is that in the U.S.S.R. there need be no shortage
of physics teachers; draft exemption as an incentive should see to
that.
Most obviously Soviet education also has its serious problems.
With new millions to enroll, it faces a shortage of school rooms
even more acute than ours. The new millions may also force on the
system some lowering of standards. In the Ten-Year schools, poly-
technical courses are beginning to replace logic and psychology,
and some examinations are being abandoned.
But the Soviet system has weaknesses deeper and far more
tragic, by our standards, than these. Fundamentally, it is a
system of training rather than education. It is aimed wholly at
service to the Soviet state. It is designed to sharpen human tools
for coming Five Year Plans. Because the end is narrow, the students
concentrate narrowly. Because the end is specific, teachers and
examiners place heavy emphasis on rote memorization.
For forty years the Soviets have been trying to abolish moral
absolutes, and to establish in their stead materialistic absolutism.
The Soviet constitution promises freedom of religion. In practice
this means freedom from religion. All religion is systematically
combatted in the schools and through the youth organizations. But,
ironically, the Soviets have reared a strange "religion" of their
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own, complete with an elaborate theology of atheism, embracing the
dialectical trinity as expounded in the gospel according to Marx,
Lenin and Stalin. They even have seminaries and missionaries to dis-
seminate their mystique of materialism. Although Stalin has now been
de-deified by his successors, we must not forget the divinity that
still surrounds the Communist Party in the minds of its votaries.
And of course all of us know that many Communists have been known to
go to confession - and never come back!
Mr. Allen Dulles, the director of the Central Intelligence
Agency in Washington, has suggested that education may prove to be
the Achilles' heel of communism. Can the Communists educate young
people to think about chemistry and engineering without also teaching
them to think? If students think clearly about medicine and aero-
nautics, won't they be apt to think about politics, economics and
philosophy - and about religion? That simple question may prove to
be the central issue of our time. We can hope and pray that the
answer is favorable, but we dare not assume that it will be, or base
our national policy on such an assumption. The example of Germany
in the 30's, with its advanced science and technology, is all too
vivid. The only prudent policy for the United States is to seek to
multiply its own best efforts.
Educating the whole man, rather than training the prototype
of the specialist, the technician or the functionary, must remain
our American goal. Yes, our young people need more mathematics and
more science. But not because they must operate a technocratic
society. They need mathematics and science because these disciplines
are essentials of a liberal education.
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Communism flings a sharp challenge to American educators in
general, and to Catholic educators in particular. The challenge is
this: to be our own best selves. Catholic education has its own
unique intellectual tradition. At its purest it is a tradition of
liberal education.
Twenty years ago, Dr. Robert M. Hutchins, then president of
the University of Chicago, reminded the midwest division of your
Association that the Catholic church has "the longest intellectual--..-
tradition of any institution in the contemporary world." He then
levelled against Catholic education in the United States what he
called a "scandalous accusation", that it had failed to emphasize its
age-old tradition of cultivating the intellect and instead had
imitated the worse features of secular education, among which he
listed athleticism, collegiatism, vocationalism, and anti-intellectu-
alism. In brief, the trouble with Catholic education was that it was
not Catholic enough.
Father John Courtney Murray, the distinguished theologian
who serves as the advisor on articles pertaining to Roman Catholicism
in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, spoke here in Milwaukee last spring.
He referred to the Roman Catholic population of the United States as
"a segment of our society, fully integrated into the pluralistic
structure, which has now become so large that its educational needs
and interests have become public needs and interests, at the same
time that they remain special to the particular community''. Today,
with over 4 million students enrolled - llo of all school and college
enrollments in the United States - the Catholic schools have numbers
enough not only to carry weight but to provide leadership in every
community.
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Must not our Catholic schools strive increasingly to become
citadels of intellectual as well as moral excellence? They have the
tradition. They have the organization. Already, on one great moral
issue, they have given leadership to the entire nation. That issue
is segregation.
The moral case for desegregation is of course manifest, but
today there are two powerful new arguments, arguments of prudence,
rising out of the international strains of competitive coexistence.
The first is that a billion dark-skinned human beings in the under-
developed areas who are now deciding whether to follow the leadership
of the free world, look with grave misgiving at the spectacle of racial
discrimination in the United States. The second is that we can no
longer afford to waste the talent of our Negro youth.
Long before the Supreme Court decision of May, 1954, Catholic
elementary and high schools in area after area where segregation had
been firmly entrenched by law and custom, quietly opened their doors
to Negroes. Before 1954 twenty-five Catholic colleges, universities
and seminaries had desegregated - including institutions in Mississippi,
Louisiana, and the District of Columbia. They have thus provided a
stirring example for the public institutions.
Because they hold to a common acceptance of first princi-
ples and objectives, Catholic schools and colleges have a special
opportunity to work toward what must be established as the primary
aim of American education: producing not highly trained technicians
on the Soviet model but educated individuals on the American model -
men and women who possess wisdom as well as knowledge; compassion as
well as high personal standards; convictions as well as disciplined
reasoning; sensitivity to beauty as well as tough-minded ability to
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distinguish between the genuine and the counterfeit; individuality as
well as willingness to work together with others toward a common goal.
Because teachers in Catholic schools are for the most part dedicated
on the basis of religious vocation, their training can be more care-
fully supervised, their professional careers more systematically
organized. Curriculum reforms can be achieved more readily than in
public education -- provided there is a will among Catholic educators
to make such reforms.
There are increasing indications that such a will not only
exists but is strengthening. Catholic schools and colleges through-
out the country are trying imaginative new approaches. The Sisters
of Mercy in Chicago, for example, are experimenting with the idea
that education should be regarded as a continuous process. They are
developing an integrated education -- from kindergarten through the
fourth year of college -- in which each part is related to all the
others, and through which the student can proceed at his own best
pace.
The University of Notre Dame is reorganizing the entire
curriculum of its College of Arts and Letters - to give greater unity
and purpose to undergraduate studies. Too often in American higher
education these are nothing but a hodge-podge of unrelated tidbits.
One of the most interesting new developments in Catholic
education -- one that grew out of your 1952 convention in Kansas
City -- is the Sister Formation Conference. This remarkable venture
undertaken by the major orders of teaching nuns in the United States
has won the support of the Fund for the Advancement of Education of
the Ford Foundation. It aims at noticing 'Less than a complete revolu-
tion in the recruit t a t inn of religious teachers for the
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Catholic schools.
A ferment is indeed stirring Catholic education in the
United States at this midpoint of the Twentieth Century. It rises
out of what seems to me - as a non-Catholic layman - a most remarkable
capacity for constructive self-criticism. This in turn springs from
newly-strengthened confidence. With boldness, imagination, and a
willingness to change -- Catholic schools and colleges may well
realize in the decades ahead the full potential of their matchless
tradition.
I leave you, as I began, with a quotation from Monsignor
McManus: "Our Catholic schools are going places. Those who staff
and direct them have talent, ambition, energy, capacity for hard work,
boundless enthusiasm and the priceless asset of an assurance of
God's benevolent help." And I add to Monsignor McManus: What a
magnificent moment to be alive - to be here at this great convention
and to be at such a work!
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