Education: Anvil or Hammer?

For the 14-year-old struggling with French and algebra, the college professor caught up in academic trivia, the parent getting a loan to pay tuition, even for a nation that would think clearly through threat and danger, education’s main goals frequently get obscured by education’s trappings. Last week John Kennedy, at his best in grace and spontaneous eloquence, defined the educated man’s duties to his country as the President sees them.

Warmed by a docile sun, pensive in cap and gown, Kennedy rose to speak before 40,000 students and townspeople in the University of North Carolina’s football stadium at Chapel Hill. He was there to get an honorary doctor of laws degree; at his side was the university’s President William C. Friday; Kennedy’s speech—something about Berlin—lay before him. The President put it unobtrusively aside, and then for a quarter of an hour mulled aloud from a few notes on “how much we still need the men and women educated in the liberal tradition, willing to take the long look, undisturbed by prejudices and slogans of the moment, who attempt to make an honest judgment on difficult events.”

Great Leaders & Scholars. “Our nation’s first great leaders,” said the present leader, “were also our first great scholars.” A contemporary described Thomas Jefferson as a ‘gentleman of 32 who could calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, dance the minuet and play the violin.’ John Quincy Adams, after being summarily dismissed by the Massachusetts legislature from the United States Senate for supporting Thomas Jefferson, then became Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University, and then became a great Secretary of State. And Senator Daniel Webster could stroll down the corridors of the Congress a few steps after making some of the greatest speeches in the history of this country and dominate the Supreme Court as the foremost lawyer of the day.

“This versatility, this vitality, this intellectual energy, put to the service of our country, represents our great resource. I would urge you, therefore, to recognize the contribution which you can make as educated men and women to intellectual and political leadership in these difficult days, when the problems are infinitely more complicated and come with increasing speed, with increasing significance in our lives than they were a century ago when so many gifted men dominated our political life.

“The United States Senate had more able men serving in it, from the period of 1830 to 1850, than probably any time in our history, and yet they dealt with three or four problems which they had dealt with for over a generation. Now they come day by day, from all parts of the world. Even the experts find themselves confused; and therefore in a free society such as this, where the people must make an educated judgment, they depend upon those of you who have had the advantage of the scholar’s education. “1 ask you to give to the service of our country the critical faculties which society has helped develop in you here. I ask you to decide, as Goethe put it, ‘whether you will be an anvil or a hammer,’ whether you will give the United States, in which you were educated, the broadest benefits of that education.”

Criticism Is Not Enough. It is not enough, said the President, for the college-educated to lend their talents to deploring present solutions. “Was John Milton to conjugate Greek verbs in his library when the liberty of Englishmen was in peril?” Prince Bismarck found, the President recalled, that ‘one-third of the students of German universities broke down from overwork. Another third broke down from dissipation, and the other third ruled Germany.’ ” Kennedy left it for each student to choose his third.

Shunning the suggestion that “our political and public life should be turned over to college-trained experts,” the President appealed to scholars to look with favor on politics. Said he dryly: “Those of you who regard my profession of political life with some disdain should remember that it made it possible for me to move from being an obscure lieutenant in the United States Navy to Commander in Chief in 14 years, with very little technical competence.”