The times-news., 1937-05-08
NEWSPAPERS OPINIONS
EDUCATION AND DEMOCRACY


Within these late controversial and embttereC
months, we have been regaled with all manner OF
speculative literature flooding from political TO-
runs to what jefferson would think were he still
living, to what Lincoln would say were ne still
speaking as to what Washington would advise if
he were still creating governments. 4, -,
We wonder at times what the educational Found
ing Fathers Of North Carolina would c0unseleitheI
as to the procedures the purposes of education
in the commonwealth the.' loved and for whose des-
tiny they sacrifcingly labored through days i'm
measurably more clouded than ours, through epochs
of travail and economic mserieS more anguishng
than we have ever experienced!
What would they have to say, these men of our
yesterdays into whose labors North Carolina has
entered and whose rich legacies people con-
stantly enjoying?
That is a question for educators, of course, but
it also intrigues the imagination of all who are in
any wise affiliated, even by no more than the ties
of goodwill with the educational tradition.
Uniquely common to the PHILOSOPHERS of all these
frontiersmen in education in North Carolina and In
the nation was this single basic objective ideal
individually educate, democratically degenerate.
Mass-ignorance and mass-freedom would even
tually devour one another if left to their inherent
trends.
Clearly in all of their minds, the constant threat
to self-government in this republic would be the
spread of unenghtenment The uniformed mind
would always be the dangerous mind The un-
trained brain is the public hazard The uneducated
child the social parasite. The unschooled citizen
the drag upon the wheels of the progress of a free
people.
In every crisis of state or nation through which
they passed, they pointed to the little red school
house set in it's sylvan and SOLDERING retreats the
lighthouse beckoning with its beacon to the harbor
of safety.
In every social and economic problem which flew
in their faces, they relied upon education as the
solvent. Never did they question the enterprise
Never did they allow their critics to force them
into compromise with their faith. Never did
they suggest an alternative.
The best informed historical minds of our gen
Grafton quite sure that the new decisions which
must be made in America basicaly have to do with
the principle of human liberty which concerned
these educational forbears. '.
We must have it all out again with identically
the same issues that kept the Founding Fathers of
1877 in a constant fever and fret while they were
trying to give conception and form to our new
world
Some of us recall how it used to be that the
late and so widely beloved DR.. Edward kidder
Graham, both while professor and president of the
University kept constantly saying in private speech
and public address that the ultimate fight is over
the question of whether men can discipline them
selves
That fight is at our doors anew today.
1t has been negatively decided almost every
where else.
Democracy is on the wing away.
Wherever one sees the sinister shadows OF Fas-
cism or of Communism, the dictatorship of the
lower or the upper classes, one sees where it has
been decided that men are incompetent to discip-
line themselves.
The major aim of public education is to give an
emphatic affirmative to democracy as being both
moral and workable regimen of life.
Free schools represent the last bulwark and bar
rier against the threatening tides of Old World
tyranies lashing the shores of our own America.
More so today than ever before, both for our own
day and for day after tomorrow, for the decisions
which we must make and which we must equip our
children to sustain, it is education and bet
ter, or less democracy and worse.-Char!otte OBJ
server.