LETTER TO ALLEN DULLES FROM WILLIAM BENTON

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80R01731R000400620030-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 22
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 16, 2002
• Sequence Number: 30
• Publication Date: February 14, 1956
• Content Type: LETTER

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ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA
342 MADISON AVENUE
SUITE 702
NEW YORK 177 N.Y.
WILLIAM BENTON
PUBLISHER 8 CHAIRMAN
Dear Allen:
1 141-f9B1tfvonc7idEr
February 14, 1956
The attached speech which I gave to the National
Women's Democratic Club in Washington yesterday is a some-
what pallid version of what actually happened. I didn't
follow the text too closely. But I repeated the idea which
I advanced earlier at the Robert Patterson Memorial luncheon
here in New York. I am attaching the release on the latter
add I am marking some key paragraphs in Itny speech of yester-
day.
How do we get these technical assistance academies
under way? How do we get launched immediately a great program
of federal scholarships, which is the fastest and quickest way
we can bring the federal government power to bear in this-Airgently
needed field?
I only have one difference with you. I see no evidence
whatsoever that the terrifying advances which Communism has made
in the field of scientific education--are turning up an "Achilles
heel". I wish I could find such evidence. I argue with you
gently in illy Britannica Year Book article. I was pleased On
Friday when my secretary reported that one of your representatives
here in New York had come into my office and asked for ten more
copies of this article.
I am attaching a letter to Marion Folsom. I am sure
that it is wholly inadequate. Indeed I may be wholly wrong in
it. Perhaps the best way to get this done is throggh the Defense
or State Departments. But in my letter I am trying to stimulate
Marion._
I am not giving out partisan statements on this subject,
as you must have observed.
Mr. Allen Dulles
Director
Central Intelligence Agency
Washington, D.C.
wB/mh
Very sincerely yours,
Wil
n-V-.S1`,311
mc--7.
.w
ton/?
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STAT
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February t4, 1956
The Honorable
Marlon 4. Folsom
leoretary of Health, Rduo tion
and Welfsro
Waahington D. C.
!hoar Mariam
I haven"
be very pleas
publishod ifl t
you will at least read
and the ?losing section.
tin and I consider my observations on this subject the most
important or owI brought baok from Russia.
Zr you got a chance to read the artiols then please ignore
the enclosed satmeograpbed manuscript on the apeoch I gave Mondsy
to the Woman's BitionsI Democratie Club in Washington, ***opt
for the few paragraphs will& I hairs marked
As an urgent matter of high national interest,how do we
get a eat scholarship program started i?diat.ly in the field
of to cal ednqation.and how de we *et up the toshnisai
aaadsmias whish I have suggestodt Shouldn't sponsorship of such
a project Immo under the mapless of your department, rothar than
the Deans* or State Dopartments, And ihouldnot 4/T, cal Tech
and *thin' top technical institutions be amPlayod to follow thrautk
laa aro in the front trenches of the now cold war with the
Russians, if we do not enormously improve our odueational system
in the United States, I am inclined to think that we may be running
a losing moo. Our national problems of education cannot remain
a matter of local concern. They are too vital to the Mum, wol-
faro of all of so.
a couainly branch or the
a memorandum from my score tar.
o whieh this memorandum refers.
ding material in years. I *mild
ad this article which will be
Book on Kareh,ittkand I hope
d ***Um dealing With education
S the article deals with *duos
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t wi I be tragic if we appropriate of
the federal averment in support otAbilosation,
? vigorous effort to set up suitablo standirds snd to
try, through its fedora governmsnt, the leader-
s* desperately needs
Very simeroLy yews
William Banton
Publisher
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1 .......a..-t/ dE2 \
Executwe Pegistry
Dear Atan:
February k1 1956
The attached speech which I gave to the National
Women's Democratic Club in Washington yesterday is a some-
what pallid version of what actually happened. I didn't
follow the text too closely. But I repeated the idea which
I advanced earlier at the Robert Patterbon Memorial luncheon
here in New York. I am attaching the release on the latter
add I am marking some key paragraphs in vy speech Of yester-
day.
How do we get these technical assistance academies
under way! How do we get launched immediately a great program
of federal scholarships, which is the fastest and quickest way
we can bring the federal government power to bear in thtsturgently
needed SIAM?
I only have one difference with you. X see no evidence
whatsoever that the terrifying advances which Communism has made
in the field of scientific education--are turning up an "Achilles
heel". I wish I could find such evidence. I argue with pou
gently in by Britannica Year Book article. I was pleased *n
Friday when my secretary reported that one of your representative
here in New York had come into my office and asked for ten more
copies of this article.
I am attaching a letter to Marion Folsom. I am sure
that it is wholly inadequate. Indeed I may be wholly wrong in
it. Perhaps the best way to get this done is theoggh the Defense
or State Departments. But in my latter I am trying to stimulate
Marion.
I am not giving out partisan statements on this subject,
as you must have observed.
Very _sincerely yours,
Mr. Allen Dulles
Director
Central Intelligence Agency
Washington, D.C.
WB/mh
William Benton
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, FROM: Kay Hart
Office of Wm. Benton
342 Madison Avenue
New York 17, N. Y.
OXford 7-1750
FOR RELEASE
at 1:00 PM Tuesday
Jan. 24, 1956.
NEW YORK, JAN. 24. . .Creation by the U. S. government of "Technical Assistance
Academies," comparable with the U. S. Military, Naval and Air Force Academies
but designed to prouce foreign-aid specialists, was proposed today (Tuesday)
by William Benton at the annual luncheon forum in memory of Robert P. Patterson
at the Hotel Warwick. These should be supplemented,and this should be commenced
at once, by a program of federal scholarship under the auspices of an appropriate
interdepartmental government committee.
Benton, who served as Assistant Secretary of State in Washington at the
same time Mr. Patterson was Secretary of War, 1945-47, suggested that one of the
new institutions be named for Secretary Patterson.
Adolf A. Berle, also a former Assistant Secretary of State, joined
Mr. Benton in a discussion of "After the Geneva Spirit, what?"
The phrase, "Geneva spirit," whatever its origin, has become a major
slogan of communist propaganda throughout the world, Benton said. It signalizes
a change in Red tactics, but not in Red objectives, said Benton, reporting on his
recent monthlong trip behind the Iron Curtain.
The new tactics call for stepped-up emphasis on economic and technical
competition with the West.
"The Soviets are today turning out 50% more engineers, and more experts
in certain technical specialties, than is the U. S., though our industrial plant
is still more than twice the size of theirs," Benton said.
"Manifestly, they mean to export thousands of specialists to under-
developed areas - competent specialists thoroughly indoctrinated with communism.
....more....
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' Office of Wm. Benton - 2 - Tues. Jan. 24 release
"At the same time the United States, according to my information, is
finding it increasingly difficult to get qualified people to go abroad on technical
aid missions. Khrushchev claims communism will win the world - the uncommitted
billion of the world's population who represent the balance of power - without a
war. It is absolutely clear that the USSR intends to try. That doesn't mean we
Americans can relax our military posture. But it does mean our Point 4 objectives
may be outmatched."
Benton, who concentrated while in the Soviet Union on the educational
system, reported that the Russians today have 4,3000000 enrolled in educational
institutions above the secondary-school level, compared with 2,700,000 in the
U. S. Ne Americans have known for years that they have given up butter for guns
and for heavy industry, but few have realized they have also given it up for educa-
tion. Their goal is to train every Soviet citizen up to his full capacity - for
the service of the state. By a combination of pressure and inducements - scholar-
ships, well-paid jobs, prestige and draft exemption - the Soviets avoid the
situation we are in, where half of the top 20% of our high school graduates
don't go on to college."
Of the 4,300,000 Russians now in higher institutions, 2,500,000 are in
tekhnikums, which Benton described as a kind of "vocational junior college."
The remainder are in 33 universities and 800-odd "institutes." Over half are
graduated in the sciences and advanced mathematics. They attend classes six days
a week and ten months a year. When they graduate, the government assigns them to
jobs which they must work at for at least three years, under penalty of prosecu-
tion - and these jobs can just as well be abroad as in the Soviet Union.
"Here in the U. S. we are losing something between 200,000 and
250,000 young people every year, who have the ability to complete a college educa-
tion but who, for one reason or another, fail to do so. I do not propose that
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7 Office of William Benton =3- Tues. Jan. 24, release
we copy Soviet methods and we shall never do so. But in our own interest, and
I also like to hope this can prove in the interest of the American ideal of
maximum opportunity for all, we must learn how to cope with this new situation."
Benton proposed that the projected technical academies or institutes
be established by the government, but preferably in conjunction with the exist-
ing high-level institutions, such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology
and California Institute of Technology; that the entire student body be fully
supported while in school, and be given a special status under the draft; that
their teaching be not only in engineering, but in the recognition of human
resources, including the use of educational techniques; that the academies
contain high emphasis on the liberal arts and their graduates be given reserve
commissions; and that, just as in the armed services, those who enter the program
agree in advance to serve abroad for a limited term of years.
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ADDRESS BY WILLIAM BENTON, PUBLISHER ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA,
FORMER U.S. SENATOR FROM CONNECTICUT, BEFORE THE WOMAN'S NATIONAL
DEMOCRATIC CLUB, WASHINGTON, D.C., FEBRUARY 13, 1956.
Fellow Democrats: A few weeks ago, in my role as a Trustee of the
University of Chicago, I was pleased and somewhat startled to learn
that the University is about to receive a bequest of between $16
million and $18 million for advanced training and research in the
physical and biological sciences. The bequest comes from Louis Block
an industrialist of Joliet, Illinois, who was virtually unknown to
the University administration until a few months before his death
late last year.
The more I have learned about this bequest the more fascinat-
ed I have become by Mr. Block and his views. Mr. Block feared that
the United States may be losing the leadership in the race for
scientific manpower to the Soviet Union. But he had faith that free
science, and free learning, would prevail in the end. Here is a
paragraph from Mr. Block's will:
"Productive basic research and advanced study
require persons with independent minds who
are capable of contemplating and exploring
uncharted areas. Such persons may or may not
conform to the accepted pattern of economic
and political thinking. Therefore the maximum
intellectual freedom must be encouraged if
basic research and advanced study are to make
the contribution to the welfare of mankind of
which they are capable."
Mr. Block's bequest, imaginative and munificent though it
is -- bigger than the total endowment of many an independent college
is but a symbol, measured against the dimensions of the problem
he saw, the race between communism and freedom for the intellectual
and scientific mastery of the world.
What I saw in the Soviet Union in October and November does
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ADDRESS BY WILLIAM BENTON, BEFORE THE WOMAN'S NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC
CLUB, WASHINGTON, D.C., FEBRUARY 13, 1956. PAGE 2
not suggest that we of the west are winning this contest. My purpose
today is to report briefly on some of my observations.I discovered
that Soviet achievements in the training of her young people are
indeed remarkable, and that Soviet training goals are far in advance
of our own. Russia's classrooms, libraries, laboratories and teach-
ing methods may threaten us more than her hydrogen bombs, or her
rockets to deliver them.
While' Secretary Dulles concentrates on political and military
crises, on expeditions to the brink of war which may prove in the
end to have been diversionary, the Soviet Union has a longer range
plan. It has a fixed plan for ideological and economic conquest.
Am I unfair to Mr. Dulles when I suggest that he seems to have
developed no adequate counter-measures?
For example the Soviet Union is schooling for export tens of
thousands of capable engineers, scientists, schoolmasters and
technicians. These specialists are being trained to help develop
the economic resources of many countries outside the present Soviet
orbit. They will be used to win the confidence of the un-
committed billion men and women in Asia, Africa and the Middle East,
they who hold the world balance of power. The U.S.S.R. seeks
economic and political control over them. The Soviet leaders are
preparing programs of infiltration which will be staffed with enough
experts to exceed greatly the combined efforts of our present U. S.
International Cooperation Administration, the British Commonwealth
Colombo Plan and the United Nations Technical Assistance Administra-
tion.
The Soviet leaders have no intention of trying to match,
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ADDRESS BY WILLIAM BENTON, BEFORE THE WOMAN'S NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC
CLUB, WASHINGTON, D.C., FEBRUARY 13, 1956. PAGE 3
over the next ten years, the 50 billions we spent on foreign aid in
the past ten years. They will develop a few "economic spectaculars"
which have dramatic propaganda value, and political value. The
Indian steel mill is an example. This, I am told, is to be wholly
financed by Russia. It will have a productive capacity of a million
tons annually -- equal to one-quarter of the steel production of
Italy or of Poland. In Egypt, the Russians offered to pay one-third
of the cost of the High Dam at Aswan. This dam is expected to
generate ten billion kilowatt hours of hydro-electric power per
year. It will step up Egypt's electric power 10 or 12-fold. It
will add 30% to the arable land. It will multiply the production of
cotton, which the Soviet bloc is prepared to absorb.
Coupled with such "economic spectaculars" is the major new
Soviet threat in the field of foreign policy, the export of
battalions and regiments and divisions of engineers and technolo-
gists, first to service their projects, and then in a Sovietized
version of our Point Four.
Thus the Soviets are now challenging us frontally at what
have historically been two of our strongest points, -- technology
and mass education. The present rate of Russian educational advance
is faster than our own, just as their growth-rate in industrial
production surpasses ours. The gap in total performance is cltIsing.
It is closing rapidly.
In less than thirty years the Soviets have created a primary
school system rivalling our own in universality, with nearly 100%
enrollment. Their secondary school system is mushrooming amazingly;
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ADDRESS BY WILLIAM BENTON, BEFORE THE WOMAN'S NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC
CLUB, WASHINGTON, D.C., FEBRUARY 13, 1956. PAGE 4
by 1960 every Russian youngster is to be given an education at least
comparable to a better high school diploma; our figure stands today
at 80% enrolled. They have already surpassed us in both the number
and percentage of students enrolled in institutions above the second-
ary level -- with 4,300,000 to our 2,700,000.
These Soviet attendance figures were given me by Red
officials in Moscow and Kiev. Thus they may be suspect. They
naturally want the underdeveloped nations of the world -- anxious,
like the Russians to pull themselves up by the bootstraps -- to
pattern themselves on the Soviet model. The officials may exagger-
ate. But maybe they don't. I suggest we would be wise to take
the figures at face value. Americans have for years scoffed at
Soviet claims - only to find that the Soviets have indeed outstripped
all nations but ourselves in industrial production, only to find
that they do indeed have the hydrogen bomb, and jet planes, and
radar, and guided missiles, only to discover that Stalin's "visions"
have become industrial realities, with the achievement actually
surpassing the seemingly fantastic predictions.
Here in the field of education is one area where we have
nothing to lose if we accept the Russian claims. If we are now
stimulated to do a better educational job ourselves, then we shall
only be doing what our own best tradition calls for. But if we are
complacent, and fall behind, we may find ourselves outwitted, out-
maneuvered, out-thought and outbuilt throughout the world.
There is more to the story of Russian educational advances
than attendance statistics. Russian youngsters go to school six
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ADDRESS BY WILLIAM BENTON, BEFORE THE WOMAN'S NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC
CLUB, WASHINGTON, D.C., FEBRUARY 13, 1956. PAGE 5
days a week and ten months a year. Discipline is strict. At all
levels, Soviet students work much harder than our students do. There
are few "student activities" as we know them and almost no elec-
tive subjects.
In the last years of secondary school Soviet students must
take four years of mathematics, including algebra, geometry and
trigonometry. Four or five years study of physics is required of
all before completion of the tenth grade. Four years of chemistry
is cempulsory, as are six years of a foreign language.
This contrast with our American standards is startling.
Lewis Strauss, Chairman of the U. S. Atomic Energy Commission, re-
cently told the Thomas Alva Edison Foundation: "In Russian high
schools, of the study courses which every student must take, 40
per cent are in science and mathematics. I can learn of no public
high school in our country where a student obtains so thorough a
preparation in science and mathematics, even if he seeks it -- even
if he should be a potential Einstein, Edison, Fermi or Bell." Indeed,
53% ef our high schools don't even offer physics; and only one
student in 22 takes it at all.
Above the secondary school there are more than 2,000
"tekhnikums" in the U.S.S.R., according to the estimate given me by
Pro-Rector Voirchenko of the University of Moscow. These boast an
enrollment of two and a half million students. Tekhnikums are a
kind of vocational junior college, giving two or 2-1/2 year courses
to produce what the Russians call "middle trained" specialists.
Then there are 760 institutions of higher Soviet education, uni-
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ADDRESS BY WILLIAM BENTON, BEFORE THE WOMAN'S NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC
CLUB, WASHINGTON, D.C., FEBRUARY 13, 1956. PAGE 6
versities and institutes giving five year programs, with an estimated
enrollment of 1,825,000 students. Total Soviet post-high school
enrollment is about 70 per cent higher than ours.
The University of Moscow, with its gleaming new 33-story
central tower, dominating the city, enrolls 23,000 students. At
the lowest estimated unofficial exchange rate, twenty rubles to the
dollar, the recent capital investment of three billion rubles for
the new scientific building of the University is astonishing. The
equivalent of at least 150 million dollars, this is more than has
been spent for the total physical plant of all but a very few of
American universities. This great new building symbolizes to all
Russia what lies ahead in the fulfillment of Soviet ambitions for
their youth. The teaching faculty of the University numbers 2,000,
all of whom must do research. Another 500 faculty members do not
teach, devoting themselves exclusively to research.
Eighty to ninety per cent of all students at the universi-
ties, institutes and tekhnikums are on state scholarships. The
number and size of scholarships are determined by the fields the
Soviet government deems most urgent. Stipends increase slightly
each year the student passes his examinations. These scholarships
largely remove from Soviet education the factor of the economic
status of parents, which all too often is decisive in the United
States. A student can keep going upward in the Communist world at
the state's expense so long as he can make the grades. Weighed
against our practices, these policies give the Kremlin obvious ad-
vantages for controlling and exploiting the development of its
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ADDRESS BY WILLIAM BENTON, BEFORE THE WOMAN'S NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC
CLUB, WASHINGTON, D.C., FEBRUARY 13, 1956. PAGE 7
When a Soviet student is accepted for graduate work, his
future is virtually assured. The average professor in the U.S.S.R.
earns perhaps ten times what an ordinary Russian worker gets. Out-
standing professors
president of one of
earn the equivalent of the annual income of a
our important industrial corporations, supple-
menting their salaries with outside consulting jobs and royalties
from textbooks.
This was John D. Rockefeller's idea back in 1891 and we
have forgotten it. He sent Dr. William Rainey Harper from Yale
to found his new University of Chicago. Dr. Harper reported back
to him, "Mr. Rockefeller, I cannot persuade the top scholars of
the East and of Europe to move
"What, is the top salary in the
or?" The answer: "$3,500.00."
that in a decade developed one
to Chicago." Mr. Rockefeller asked,
world paid to a University profess-
Mr. Rockefeller issued the order
of the greatest universities of
the world, "Pay your top men $7,000.00." This was the salary in
1891 of the President of the First National Bank of Chicago. Per-
haps this order explains why, as Arthur Page once said to me, the
University of Chicago advanced the cultural and educational develop-
ment of the West by a full generation.
The most talented young people in Russia are being lured
into scientific research and engineering because of the privileged
social and economic status given scientists and engineers. They
skip military service. They swell the new plutocracy. They are
the persons most sheltered 'from the grimmer realities of Soviet life.
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ADDRESS BY WILLIAM BENTON, BEFORE THE WOMAN'S NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC
CLUB, WASHINGTON, D.C., FEBRUARY 13, 1956. PAGE 8
One sees youngsters in their mid-teens and young Russian
married couples in the bookstores, browsing at the sections
featuring scientific works; they buy books on nuclear physics in
preference to novels or handbooks on interior decoration, in order
to get ahead. In the huge Lenin Library in Leningrad, whose
director claims 12 million volumes, every desk and chair in the
great reading rooms adjacent to the scientific stacks was occupied;
the silence was absolute; the concentrated zeal of hundreds upon
hundreds of earnest-looking students was to me a bit breathtaking.
I said to my librarian-guide, "Are these students from the Univers-
ity?" "Oh, no," he replied, "the University has its van library;
these are workers from the night shifts of the factories, and by
night our reading rooms are crowded with those from the day shifts.
We operate day and night. This is how the workers prepare for ex-
aminations for advance training in the universities and the
institutes."
There are no girls with dowries in Russia; few marriages
with the boss's daughter; no Henry Ford III's. The way to get
ahead is to study, and to master your physics and your calculus
and your English, the new dominant language of science and the
most widely studied foreign language in Russia. When Mrs. Benton
visited the metro, she was picked up by a good-looking young man
who offered to assist her chauffeur as a guide. His English was
excellent. When he left, he asked her to comment on his accent.
She reassured him. He said it was important, that he was an
English teacher. She was emphatic. He walked away, then returned.
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ADDRESS BY WILLIAM BENTON, BEFORE THE WOMAN'S NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC
CLUB, WASHINGTON, D.C., FEBRUARY 13, 1956. PAGE 9
He said, "You know, you are the first foreigner I've ever spoken to
in my life."
There are grave weaknesses in the Soviet educational system.
There is of course no academic freedom, and no permanent tenure for
professors. Above the level of the ten-year school, every student's
program is narrowly specialized: he devotes his full time to his
specialty, except for the 1O% of his time which every student must
devote to study of Marxism-Leninism. Heavy emphasis is given to
rote memorization of texts. The student can't change his mind about
his profession in midstream; he can't shift. Every graduate must
work for three years on an assigned job in his specialty, under
penalty of prosecution. This is a system of training, rather than
education -- training for the service of the state, and not for
the happiness or fulfillment of the individual.
Soviet policies are directed to ends totally opposite from
the concept of the common welfare as Pope Pius XI described it 26
years ago: "that peace and security in which families and individu-
al citizens have the free exercise of their rights, and at the same
time enjoy the greatest spiritual and temporal prosperity possible
in this life, by the mutual union and coordination of the work of
all."
But I fear the Communists may have found a formula for com-
bining on the one hand high quality in scientific and technological
training and research, including production of original and creative
work, and on the other unquestioning acceptance and obedience in
political, economic and moral matters. Whether this will prove to
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ADDRESS BY WILLIAM BENTON, BEFORE THE WOMAN'S NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC
CLUB, WASHINGTON, D.C., FEBRUARY 13, 1956. PAGE 10
be true may turn out to be the crucial question of our historical
epoch.
Recently Mr. Khrushchev said: "We don't have to fight.
Let us have peaceful competition and we will show you where the
truth lies." On another occasion he said, "We shall see who has
more engineers, the Soviet Union or the United States."
We
wage peace
a struggle
even go so
are entering into a struggle of a new type. We must
ever more energetically with the new weapons. This is
for
far
which the Western world is little prepared. I shall
as to suggest, to this most impartial audience, that
the Republicans are even less prepared for it. They are fighting
the new cold war with the blunted weapons of the old one.
We became a nation with the help of foreign aid, from the
French. We Democrats originated latter-day foreign aid, first in
war time under the leadership of Roosevelt and Lend-Lease. We
moved ahead to the great peacetime advances under President Truman
-- with the Marshall Plan and his bold new Point Four program.
What is needed now is not just more money for the military
and diplomatic bargaining tables -- though we may indeed need more
money exactly there. But over and above this we must seek a whole
new concept, a whole new thinking-through, and I am prepared to
suggest today that it must begin with our own educational system.
To start with one example: our present economy requires a
minimum of 45,000 to 50,000 new trained engineers every year. We
are now getting half the new engineers we need. The N. Y. Times is
featuring front page stories on the excesses of the competitive
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ADDRESS BY WILLIAM BENTON, BEFORE THE WOMAN'S NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC
CLUB, WASHINGTON, D.C., FEBRUARY 13, 1956. PAGE 11
efforts of our industries to lure, seduce, bribe and buy the
engineers for which they thirst. Russia produced 53,000 new
engineers last year. We produced 23,000, and why should any of
these 23,000 serve overseas? Why indeed? The jobs in Fargo or
Topeka are far better than those in Rangoon. Now remember
that when Bulganin and Khrushchev left Burma they made a
gift, from the Russian people to the Burmese people, of a techno-
logical institute in Rangoon -- to be staffed, of course, by
Russian experts.
Here's another example: At the rate we are going, this
country is expected to have shortages of at least 22,000 doctors
and 100,000 nurses by 1960.
Here's another: Professor Fletcher Watson of Harvard esti-
mates that by 1966 our deficit of teachers may well exceed half a
million. Right now, recruiting agents from California are said to
be scouring the mid-west and south so that blessed California, at
least, won't feel the shortage.
I am talking of course only about the trained people we
shall need just to maintain the services required within the con-
tinental United States. Yet our security demands new emphasis on
trained manpower for the underdeveloped and newly-free nations of
the earth.
America has always drawn renewed strength from handling
her problems as challenges, her unmet needs as opportunities. Per-
haps the most tragic waste in the U.S. today is the number of
talented students who drop out of the educational system for one
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ADDRESS BY WILLIAM BENTON, BEFORE THE WOMAN'S NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC
CLUB, WASHINGTON, D.C., FEBRUARY 13, 1956. PAGE 12
reason or another. Between two-thirds and three-fourths of our
best high school students do not finish college. Only two per cent
of those who are capable of earning doctorate degrees do so. A
recent College Entrance Examination Board survey, financed by the
National Science Foundation, showed that "between 60,000 and 100,000
high ability high school boys and girls in 1955 would like to have
gone to college but were prevented by financial reasons from doing
so. There is still another group of 100,000 able high school
seniors who appear to be uninterested in a higher education."
How can we summon up the conviction needed to meet education
al needs so vast and complex? These are needs which should demand
answers even if there were no Soviet Union shrewdly tooling up to
fill the vacuum created by the legitimate desires and aspirations
of the "uncommitted" people in the world today.
I made a modest proposal three weeks ago. From the tele-
phone calls, conversations, and correspondence which followed its
mere mention at a luncheon held in memory of the late Secretary of
War Robert Patterson, this proposal evidently has some merit and
interest. I suggested that our government create Technical Assist-
ance Academies, equal in status to the United States Military, Naval
and Air Force Academies-to educate picked young men and women in
the requirements, experience and opportunities for service over-
seas as technical specialists. Someone called my suggested
Academies "West Points of Point Four." I emphasized, in my pro-
posal, that such Academies -- and I apply this to all technical or
scientific education in our country -- should have a curriculum
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ADDRESS BY WILLIAM BENTON, BEFORE THE WOMAN'S NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC
CLUB, WASHINGTON, D.C., FEBRUARY 13, 1956. PAGE 13
with a liberal infusion of the liberal arts, so that our young
engineers and scientists, as they serve their apprenticeship
overseas, will be well grounded in the principles of freedom and
Justice for which our democracy stands.
I advanced this idea as an example of the kind of thinking
that is urgently needed. There must and will be many other proposal
to meet the fundamental problem I have partially outlined. We
should at once inaugurate a system of national merit scholarships.
The exciting experience of the GI Bill of Rights is still fresh in
our minds. Further, we should at once seek forms of inducement
which will make teaching a more attractive career. And, as we
seek ways to give federal help to education, we must courageously
give leadership through standards set by the federal government,
without undue invasion of our cherished control by local communities
The White House Conference on Education held this past
autumn was seemingly a success -- at least politically. There is
even talk about arranging another conference this year. But I have
not discovered precisely what specific program the conference recom-
mended. You here in Washington know -- at least, if there are any
Republicans here,theylelovi-- that conferences sometimes are held for
the purpose of postponing decision and action.
If we cannot get faster action through the leadership of
the Administration, through the State or Defense Departments, or
the new Department of Education and Welfare, the time has surely
come for the creation of a Presidential Commission to review our
acute problems in the field of education, with emphasis on how
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ADDRESS BY WILLIAM BENTON, BEFORE THE WOMAN'S NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC
CLUB, WASHINGTON, D.C., FEBRUARY 13, 1956. PAGE 14
these affect the national security.
If we win the cold war, if we emerge successfully from the
era of competitive co-existenhich may last the balance of this
century, it will be because we have learned to develop to the full
our spiritual and intellectual resources as well as our material
resources. Specialized robots are no match for human beings, if
the human beings are at their best. If we offer to our young
people the chance for their full development, we need not then
fear "the Bear that walks with a slide rule," casting his shadow
across America's and the world's future. And it may even be that
if Communism thus inspires or stimulates or forces us to rise to
our own best efforts as free men -- as Professor Toynbee suggests
Communism will, after all, and in the long view of history, have
done some good in the world.
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MO from Kay Hart
At Mr. Benton's request we've previously
sent you a mimeographed copy of his
forthcoming article for the 1956
Britannica Book of the Year. I am now
happy to attach the "preprint" of the
article. This will be published on
March. 5
'
MEMO from Kay Hart
Perhaps you will recall that Senator
and Mrs. Benton and their son John
visited Russia, Poland, Hungary, and
Czechoslovakia last fall. The
purpose of the trip was to prepare
the feature article for the 1956
Britannica Book of the Year.
Attached is a "preprint" of the
article - scheduled for publication
on March,5-:
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