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# V - THE CONTINUING SEARCH FOR TALENT

## A. The Composition of our Human Material

The identification of talent, the training of it and the development of a striving for quality can only be first steps. The ultimate test for the individual is the nature of the life he leads and for the society the extent to which it succeeds in utilizing and fulfilling its ablest representatives. To a considerable extent these goals parallel each other. Unused talents lead to personal frustration but they also deprive a society of the mainstream of its vitality. To grow as a society, to realize our ideal of maximum personal development, it is essential that we inspire our people to the best which is in them and also to give them an opportunity to exercise these abilities.

Any discussion of our utilization of talent must begin with an examination of the American population and some of its pertinent characteristics. For this is our supply of talent as a "resource."

The population of the United States is today over 170 million -- and increasing rapidly. On an average day there is a net rise of 7,400; over the year, a rise of some 2.5 million. This will very likely give us a population of nearly 225 million by 1975.

We can also make reasonably firm estimates of the age composition of the population in 1975. Since everyone who will be twenty or more years old in 1975 has already been born, we know with accuracy the age composition of

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the older portion of the population in 1975. And by extending present birth rates we can arrive at estimates for the younger age groups.

Here are the estimates:

POPULATION OF THE U.S. BY AGE: 1955 AND PROJECTED FOR 1975*

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>1955</th><th>1975</th><th>1955-1975<br>Per Cent Change</th></tr><tr><th></th><th colspan="2">(millions)</th><th></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>All ages</td><td>166.0</td><td>222.3</td><td>34</td></tr><tr><td>0-4 years</td><td>19.1</td><td>25.4</td><td>33</td></tr><tr><td>5-14 years</td><td>30.5</td><td>41.9</td><td>37</td></tr><tr><td>15-19 years</td><td>11.2</td><td>18.7</td><td>67</td></tr><tr><td>20-24 years</td><td>10.8</td><td>19.3</td><td>79</td></tr><tr><td>25-44 years</td><td>46.9</td><td>53.2</td><td>13</td></tr><tr><td>45-64 years</td><td>33.4</td><td>43.1</td><td>29</td></tr><tr><td>65 years and over</td><td>14.1</td><td>20.7</td><td>46</td></tr></tbody></table>

*Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, p. 25, No. 123, "A" Projections.

As the table shows, the age composition of the population in 1975 will differ markedly from that of 1955. In recent years, as a consequence of the low birth rates of the twenties, we have been short on young adults; while the high birth rates of the late forties and fifties has made children plentiful. In 1975 the situation will be radically changed. The recent baby boom will have resulted in an enormous increase in age groups 15 to 24; and as our present middle ages attain the later brackets, there will be a large increase in the age group 65 and over.

This pattern of future population points up two problems. One concerns the flood of young people who will place an immense pressure on educa-

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tional institutions in the next twenty years, and on the labor market shortly thereafter, and on the labor market shortly thereafter. The other involves the social and individual problems posed by a rapidly expanding older group.

In addition to these changes in age composition, the American popula-
tion will also change in other ways which bear on the quality of skills and
talents it contains. For one thing, it will be a more homogeneous population.
One main homogenizing influence is migration. We are a people on the move --
20 per cent of us change our address each year, and there are great slow cur-
rents, northward and westward, which describe the drift of our people. Twenty
years hence California will in all probability be the most populous state and
Nevada no longer the least populous. Hence regional differences will tend
to diminish. Twenty years hence, for example, the Negro will have shed, to
a greater extent than he has already, his southern regional character, as a
consequence of his steady migration to northern and midwestern cities. Mean-
while the farmer is disappearing as a distinct group; not only are successful
farms increasingly "businesslike" in their operation, but a million of our less
successful rural population leaves the farms each year. As a consequence of
all this social movement we are becoming an ever more national community in
which regional loyalties and sharp regional differences are year by year
diminishing.

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Another homogenizing trend of American society manifests itself as a change in the *kind*, as well as the locale, of our habitat: we are becoming metropolitanized. In 1900, the average American lived in the countryside; by 1930, he lived in a small town of from five to ten thousand population. Today, he lives in a big city or its satellites; by 1975, he will live in its suburban outgrowths. Four-fifths of the nation's growth between 1950 and 1955 was concentrated in the urban fringe that rings each of great cities and extends far in the countryside. Thus in a sense the typical American is again on his way back to the country town. However, he is no longer a rural person. The tempo of his life and his work typically centers on the great metropolitan areas to which he commutes and toward which is is culturally orientated.

Hence, we may expect for 1975, a more uniform America -- a nation both less regionally diverse and more alike as to living environment. If this suggests a loss of some of the richness of variety which a culturally more diverse people may possess, it should also bring into being, by virtue of the possibilities for a more uniformly good education, a higher common denomina- tor of capacities from which to draw.

What of the quality of our human resources? The progress of science in combatting diseases need little documentation. It is an astonishing fact that our death rate from natural causes between age one week and age forty years is approaching -- although it can of course never reach -- statistical

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zero. We may expect that within 20 years, our life expectancy will be lifted from its present 70 years to 75 or 80. It is certainly reasonable to assume that the number of workdays which illness costs the nation should show a per capita decline, and that our physical energies will be at least as robust as today.

Whether our mental health will show a similar improvement is a graver question.

There is at least the possibility that an older and more urbanized society will be increasingly vulnerable to emotional disorders. The importance of psychiatric counseling and guidance, for youths at the commencement of career-choices as well as for older people at the termination of life careers, will be correspondingly enhanced.

## B. Human Resources Inadequately Used

In looking over this spectrum we find the most obvious shortcomings in our use of our human material in four major categories: our underprivileged minorities, the position of women, the use of older workers and certain economically depressed areas of the nation and of segments of the population.

**The fuller use of our underprivileged minorities.** Primary among these groups is, of course, the Negro, who has been disadvantaged economically as well as politically and socially in the United States. Occasionally one hears it said that "the talented Negro will always make out all right." But this misses the point. The smothering of talent under such circumstances is not an explicit, direct, observable act; it is a cumulative process. It is not so much that

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developed talent is rejected but that talent is not allowed to develop. It withers
under the cumulative impact of poverty and ignorance at home, degraded neighbor-
hoods, poor educational facilities, limited job opportunities, and the ever-
present fear of rebuff.

What has until recently been thought of solely in terms of an abrogation
of moral principle takes on a second meaning in an economy in need of talent.
The denial of opportunity to the Negro results in the loss of potentially creative
and skillful manpower. It is tantamount to a 5 per cent crippling of our human
resources.

The end of segregation, with all the difficult adjustment it imposes, is of
course the necessary step in the right direction. Legislation such as fair
employment practices acts will add a necessary stimulus to private reorientation
of attitudes. The migration trends which are distributing the Negro population
throughout the nation will contribute to the alleviation of the problem. The
Negro athletes, teachers, airline hostesses, diplomats, government officials
not only symbolize the fact that the problem is already on its way to being
solved, but will serve to accelerate the trend. Yet all these are only first steps.
Until the Negro has been offered equal opportunity with the non-Negro to develop
and use his individual talents to the utmost, and until he can be encouraged to
make the most of his opportunity, we shall have failed in a critical area to
achieve our moral and material goals. Whether the Negro will in fact profit from
expanding opportunities will of course in some measure depend on the effort that
he himself puts forth.

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**The opportunity for better use of womanpower.** As a recent report of the National Manpower Council made clear, women are playing an increasingly important role in the American economy: one out of every three workers in our regular labor force of nearly 70 million is a woman. To this already large con- tribution, we can expect a substantial increase over the next decades due to the age composition of our population. The average American woman today is married before she reaches voting age, and frequently completes her family of two or three by her late twenties. Thus by her early or mid-thirties her children are in school and she may be in search of meaningful activity outside the home. Some women may find satisfaction in volunteer work, but many others will prefer or need a paid job on a part-time or full-time basis.

However, the availability will go to naught -- despite the eagerness of many married women to work -- if we do not take active steps to utilize this "potential resource." In the educational, nursing and welfare fields -- all characterized by shortages -- rigid training and licensing requirements make it difficult for able women to qualify for available openings. Outside of these professions women are faced with other handicaps of a less formal but more prejudicial nature. There are still relatively few professional fields in which women participate extensively. Many firms still hesitate to use women in executive capacities or to include in executive training programs even those women who expect to remain in employment.

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Finally, it is still true that women are typically less well prepared for careers than men. To a degree this reflects the continuance of nineteenth century attitudes; to a degree it reflects a still ambivalent attitude toward "work" on the part of women themselves. Whatever the reason for the inadequate preparation no improvement is likely to occur until there are substantially better opportunities for the gifted woman to find an occupation suitable to her capacities. This is a situation which must be remedied if we are not to lose a valuable source of creative effort. There is a growing need to provide educational opportunities for mature women on a part-time basis to help them qualify themselves for professional employment when their child-rearing responsibilities begin to ease.

**The rehabilitation of economically depressed areas of the country and segments of the population.** When President Eisenhower asked Congress for legislation to assist the depressed areas of the country, he stressed the need for action on grounds of equity: why should a child born in the backwoods of Tennessee be deprived of opportunities available to children whose parents are fortunate enough to be living in more prosperous regions?

The nation is paying a high price for its depressed areas in terms of the wastage of human abilities. Children who grow up under conditions that do not stimulate development not only suffer personal deprivation but are all to apt to be social liabilities. During the first year of the Korean conflict the national failure rate on the Armed Forces Qualification Test was 19.2 per cent, but the failure rate for men from nine states where incomes and educational expenditures

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are relatively low ranged from 34 to 58 per cent. This illustrates the truth that poor education in any one area of the nation should be of serious concern to the whole nation. The constant movement of population from one part of the country to another makes the problem even more obviously one of national concern.

**Our older workers.** This problem has gained prominence because of the changing age composition of our population, but it is not a new problem in our society. In our society the role of the older person is difficult, perhaps more for psychological than for material reasons. The grandparent is not a figure of authority as in some cultures, but is relegated to the periphery of family life. Part of the problem is that health and longevity standards have improved so markedly that the 65 years old has far higher potentialities than was the case even a generation ago. Neither our houses nor our values are such as to accommodate the old. They must largely fend for themselves.

These facts have had consequences that are not negligible. The spectre of dependent old age has surely been a powerful influence in the development of and the stress on pensioned retirement as a goal of American life. Retirement security in all its various forms has made enormous gains in recent decades. But as these gains were achieved, the problem has unexpectedly shifted in focus. It was not foreseen in the thirties, when many of our retirement ideas became widely accepted, that the man facing economically secure retirement at 65 would fear boredom as intensely as an earlier generation had feared want. Nor was it foreseen that the enterprise, public or private, which had lost

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his services, might find itself not rid of a burden but deprived of a still active
personality.

The truth is that only for a portion of older people has retirement with
economic security become a treasured period of leisure when one can do "what
one always wanted to." For others it is a dreaded break in the texture and tempo
of life, leading to personal dissatisfaction on the one hand, and to wasted
ability on the other.

To a certain extent this is unavoidable: in a highly organized society
there must be compulsory retirement, not only to provide security for the indi-
vidual, but to assure a steady turnover of opportunity at the top. Yet the waste
of human talent in the premature retirement of still vigorous people clearly calls
for remedial action. In some instances this action might take the form of a
later retirement age. Or it might involve the extension of special job opportuni-
ties for people over 65. Such opportunities have already been developed in
college teaching: The professor retiring from one campus may be hired on
special status by some other college.

The underutilized talent in many of our great organizations. An imagina-
tive policy for the nature of talent would include not only an effort to identify
talent at all age levels, but what one might think of as a continuous "salvage"
operation designed to rescue able people -- at whatever age level -- from
those situations which stifle the full expression of individual potentialities.

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Such "talent salvage" should become a settled policy of every organization.
Every corporation, union, government agency, military service and professional
group should -- in its own best interest -- conduct a never-ending search for
talent within its own staff.

This sort of operation is likely to test severely our imagination and
ingenuity and wisdom. For part of the problem of rescuing talent is to recognize
talent. Any organization or society is all too likely to get trapped in its own
stereotyped notions of what constitutes talent. As a result a shortage of talent
may often be only a shortage of vision.

Improved opportunities for advanced education within employing organi-
zations and under community auspices could contribute significantly to helping
mature people to test their own unexplored interests and abilities and to develop
their potentialities more fully. Education is not something which is ever
finished. It is something to which one must be continually exposed if one does
not wish to stagnate. A degree is not an education, and the confusion on this
point is perhaps the gravest weakness in American thinking about education
beyond high school.

In this connection one cannot overlook the significant costs that elab-
orate pension and benefit plans exact by weakening the incentives of men and
women to move to positions where better use could be made of their capacities,
and experience. There is urgent need for more vesting of pension rights, so
that the employee who moves to another job need not leave behind years of
accumulated benefits.

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Another problem is the large organization itself. The traits commonly associated with a high level of creativity (e.g., in the best scientists) are not always such as to make for success or even happiness in a large organization. Since many large organizations today cannot function without men of these gifts, a good deal of effort has been expended to resolve this dilemma. Some industrial concerns, particularly those that depend on a high level of technological innovation, have learned much about how to attract and hold such individuals. The military, bound by many rigidities in the treatment of its personnel, has learned less. And labor unions still have far to go if they are to develop a humane and forward-looking policy for the nurture of talent within their ranks.

One consequence of the scarcity of professional skills is the hoarding of talent -- a practice visible in a good many areas of government, business and academic life. In its most blatant form hoarding involves the stockpiling of personnel in scarce categories. Thus a number of industrial firms have hired large numbers of engineers for whom they had no immediate need. The damage done to other organizations which might use such talent more constructively is appreciable but less disturbing than the damage to the able individuals who are thus deprived of constructive assignments.

There are many less obvious, less malicious forms of talent hoarding. Scientific personnel is jealously sought by different branches of the Armed Forces and the results of scientific research are not properly shared. Every government department now has its own staff of economists. Corporations

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bid indiscriminately for high talent on the campus without careful consideration as to the long-term prospects which they can offer to those talents. Universities, often within the same community, vie with one another for personnel to build up carbon copies of one another's offerings.

One obvious need is to broaden the mechanisms for sharing of personnel. Certainly there is little excuse for the absence of such sharing among government agencies. Competitive corporations may be understandably reluctant to share their scientific or technical personnel, but an increased movement of able people back and forth between government and business be a helpful step. Tours of duty of several years' duration in the government might well be recognized by some corporations as a regular stage in the development of a man's career, and experience in private business might enhance the value of a career civil servant. In academic life the sharing of intellectual talents, along lines already begun by a number of smaller colleges, and an attempt to dovetail rather than duplicate one anothers' offerings might yield important benefits. And a healthy traffic between the academic world and government is highly desirable.

### C. The Social Ceilings on Individual Performance

One of the prime sources of concern with respect to the full development of individual talent is the nature of modern society itself. In a complex, intricately organized society, there are powerful forces at work to another talent, to force individuals into unproductive ruts, to trap them in situations that do not permit exercise of the talents they possess.

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Of the innumerable changes that have occurred in our social environment, one of the most far-reaching has been the increasing prominence of _organization_ in our lives. In every area of activity -- government, business, science, education, military affairs -- activity is typically more formally structured, more bureaucratic, more "administered," than in the past. This is neither surprising nor in itself harmful. Delicately interdependent social activities cannot exist without synchronization and order. It is the purpose of organization to inject continuity, dependability and orderliness into what would otherwise be unmanageable chaos. The functioning of a modern city or a modern factory is a miracle of voluntary cooperation that can only be accomplished by people who have developed a deeply ingrained habit of playing by the rules, of self-discipline, and of internalized restraints. The same is true for the less spectacular functions of a mass society.

But while the complex organization of modern society is necessary, it may induce a conformity that becomes a threat to the society's vitality. Intricately-meshed organization is often a stifling atmosphere for the exercise of individual creativity. In the organizational atmosphere of regularity and order, the individual is under considerable pressure to conform to the group and, therefore, to gear his personal performance to an acceptable common denominator. This may yield clear benefits in smoothness of organizational functioning but is hardly conducive to the kind of originality and brilliant performance on which society now so importantly depends.

In short, the complexity of our social organization presents problems as well as opportunities for the cultivation of human capabilities. It tends

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to encourage effort -- but often only up to a level of average acceptability.

It opens avenues of advance, but these avenues converge on the citadels of a routine where the individual pace must conform to fixed traffic patterns. It stimulates self-development but threatens to define its goal as mere competence. Meanwhile the very contribution that a modern, complex, highly organized society most requires -- original thought and effort -- is precisely that which it unconsciously discourages.

Let us make no mistake about the alternatives. The notion that we might escape the organizational complexities of modern life by returning to some simpler form of existence is sheer romancing. Walden does not represent a live option for the overwhelming majority of us. The interlocking complexities of a modern, highly organized technological society are an inescapable part of our future: if we are to nourish individual freedom we shall have to nourish it under these circumstances. If we are to maintain some measure of individual creativity, we shall have to learn to preserve it in a context of organization. It is the predicament of Christian, in Pilgrim's Progress, facing the temptations of Vanity Fair: "The way to the Celestial City lies just through this town, where this lusty fair is kept; and he that will go to the City and yet not go through this town, must needs go out of the world."

The relevant questions then become: What organizational patterns and practices may be devised that are least destructive of individual initiative and autonomy? How is it that with all our oppressive intricacy of social mechanism, a good many astonishingly free, flexible, creative and independent individuals exist -- some of them in the very heart of the great

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bureaucracies? How may we best prepare our young people to keep their
individuality, initiative, creativity in a highly organized, intricately-meshed
society? How may we rescue talented individuals from the lowered aspirations,
the boredom, and the habit of mediocrity so often induced by life in a large and
complex organization? How do we shatter the informal "ceilings" placed upon
performance in an organizational setting in which order, harmony and predicta-
bility are more important than individual achievement?

When we arrive at questions of this profundity, we are no longer
simply talking about the cultivation of talent. We are talking about some
of the gravest issues in the future of our society. A continuing tension
between the needs of the organization and the integrity of the person, between
the effectiveness of the group and the creativity of the individual may well be
one of the most fateful and bitterly contested struggles in our future.

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VI. MOTIVATION AND VALUES

We approach the subject of motivation and values with diffidence.
There exists little precise knowledge of human motives, though men have
been interested in them for thousands of years. And it is hard to deal with
the subject of values simply and briefly.

But it is not a subject we can avoid. All high performance takes
place in a context of values. Excellent performance is an amalgam of
talent and motive, a product of ability fused with zeal. Aptitude without
aspiration is lifeless and inert.

That is only part of the story. When ability is brought to life by
aspiration, there is the further question of the ends to which these gifts
are applied. We do not wish to nurture the man of great talent and evil
purpose. Not only does high performance take place in a context of values,
but if it is to be worth fostering, the values must be worthy of our allegiance.

Some of our more discerning critics are uneasy about the current
aspirations and values of Americans. They see evidence that security,
conformity, and comfort are idols of the day; and they fear that our young
people have lost youth's immemorial fondness for adventure, far horizons,
and the challenge of the unpredictable.

The critics point to the extraordinary difficulty we are having in
persuading young people to enter some fields of work that are vital to our
future as a nation. We cannot fill innumerable important assignments in
the overseas activities of our government.

There

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are not enough able people in basic research. There are not enough able people in teaching. The difficulty -- the critics argue -- is that these jobs require a measure of sacrifice or dedication, and some deviation from the standard formulas of American life.

The critics are no easier on their adult contemporaries. They see Americans caught in a deep-rooted habit of conformity, and dedicated to little more than acquiring those consumer goods which constitute the American Way of Life as pictured by Madison Avenue.

One may wish to apply a slight discount to these alarms and anxieties. Such self-criticism of our society is something of a national tradition. It is unlikely that we shall ever improve to the point where our social critics are silenced. But one would be foolish to discount altogether the penetrating observations made by so many qualified observers.

We do not need to decide whether the situation is seriously deplorable or only mildly so. It is possible to identify a posture more constructive than handwringing in connection with the problem.

One hopeful fact on which we may be able to build is that there appears to be a rising proportion of the population who are motivated by what one may term the pursuit of excellence. The rise is perhaps no more than a rise in the proportion of the population devoted to the professions and to similar careers involving prolonged training and highly developed skills. But it is worthy of study and reflection.

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The whole background of the professional person -- whether doctor, lawyer, artist, teacher, scientist, clergyman or other -- conduces to such motivation. The pursuit of such callings is conducted in a strong ethical framework. It involves long and often arduous preparation. And it involves a powerful commitment to the achievement of craftmanship in one's work. The result is -- in these fields -- a greater dedication to work and a greater self-realization in work than is true for the population as a whole.

This is not to say that persons so motivated are unmoved by the more familiar incentives of wealth or prestige. These incentives are rarely absent; but they are distinctly less prominent. Nor do we wish to imply that the pursuit of excellence is solely the property of the professions. It would be more accurate to say that certain ideals and standards and values which have characterized the best of the professional professions appear to be spreading into a variety of other fields. Indeed, some observers have argued that every complex and demanding activity in our society is in process of becoming professionalized.

A wider devotion to the pursuit of excellence as it is observable in the best professional people would be an unqualified good. The cultivation of excellence would make possible the resolution of some of our more difficult social paradoxes. The striving for achievement for its own sake would come as a valuable counterforce to bureaucratic inertia. The estimation of work in terms of its inner satisfactions would offset the sometimes distorting effect of economic incentives. The dedication to self-realization would serve to

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give a new meaning and impetus to the ideal of individualism in a world
of growing collectivist complexion.

Those who despise our material progress and fear the growing
complexity of our society must reflect on the fact that it is precisely these
circumstances that have increased the possibility of such motivations. For
the proliferation of new professions and skills is directly traceable to
technological advances on the one hand, and the complexity of social
organization on the other. Hard and dull toil, and the routine chore are
slowly giving way to a new, more exacting, and more imaginative level of
work. And those who must still engage in tasks too cramping for the exercise
of self-expression have much increased leisure and resources to pursue
avocations of a more self-fulfilling variety. The demands of society and
the desire of the individual for self-realization are in this particular dimension
more compatible than ever before.

The cultivation of excellence, the pursuit of achievement for its
own sake is a latent force in any society. Every society has had its fine
craftsmen. Now with the changing nature of work needs and the social
demanded demand for skill and talent, the opportunity exists to bring that
latent force to fuller expression.

And it bears saying that among the many kinds of excellence of
which the human is capable, intellectual and moral excellence has come
to play a uniquely important role. Intellectual excellence has not always
ranked high in the scale of values of Americans generally; but with our rising

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educational level and increasing prominence of intellectual pursuits, there
are signs that this evaluation is changing. The desirability of such a change
cannot be too strongly stressed. As we shall have occasion to note later,
a nation only achieves the kind of greatness it asks for and understands.
Only if we value intellectual excellence shall we have it.

It is clear then, that a substantial part of our task is to insure
that the individual may be exposed to a context of values in which high
performance is encouraged. This is not wholly a problem for philosophers,
though their aid is needed. It is partly a problem of educational strategy.
It is essential, for example, that we enable young people to see themselves
as participants in one of the most exciting eras in history. It is essential
that we enable them to see that they are living out in their own lives -- in
their own convictions and fears and tensions -- one of the gravest crises
that has ever occurred in man's relationship to man.

Another matter of educational strategy is to insure that young
people are exposed to sufficient variety and challenge in their lives --
to insure that they not be placed too early on a deadening treadmill of
education, career preparation and job. Occasionally some enthusiast
predicts that vocational guidance will eventually achieve such perfection
that in early adolescence the youngster may be told precisely where his
abilities lie, and may then be routed unerringly through high school and
college, and into the one perfect job for the rest of his life. That will be
a sad day. Certainly for the most talented segment of our population,

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we must leave ample room for the sort of lesson one learns when one goes
down a blind alley of one's own choice, for the sense of adventure involved
in doing something unpredictable, for the zest generated by pursuing one's
own inner urge rather than doing what is sensible.

Still another problem of educational strategy is that of providing
"models" for young people. The life goals of young people are in some
measure determined by the fact that they identify themselves with admired
figures in the adult world. A society is fortunate if the adults who enjoy
the most prominent position in the public eye, who are most applauded and
admired and respected are also the most suitable models for young people to
follow if the society is to meet the challenge of its own future. It is fair to
ask whether our young people can find in our gallery of national heroes enough
models of, let us say, the gifted scientist, the dedicated foreign service
officer, or the inspired teacher.

With rare exceptions, it is probably true that a society only produces
great men in those fields in which it understands greatness. Spain in the
sixteenth century produced Cortez and Pizarro, and a dozen more who rank
with the most extraordinary explorer-conquerors who ever strode the pages of
history. It is unthinkable that the same society at the same time would have
produced a Jefferson. The society that produced Jefferson produced Franklin,
Monroe, Benjamin Rush, John Adams, and other philosopher-statesmen of
breadth and brilliance. It is less easy to believe that it could have produced
a Mozart.

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The kinds of greatness which our society produces over the years
ahead will be the kinds of greatness we invite. But it cannot be a contrived
invitation. It will have to be securely rooted in our values.

If we ask what our society invites in the way of high performance
we are led to some curious reflections. We are led to the conclusion that
we may have, to a startling degree, lost the gift for demanding high performance
of ourselves. It is a point worth exploring.

One thing that is never mentioned by the critics who bemoan our
loss of dedication and high motivation is that our daily life still provides
plentiful examples of individuals who have acted with spirit and dedication
in the service of society's highest values. Everyone knows a parent, a
teacher, a doctor, a friend whose life is a living denial of the picture which
our critics have drawn.

In short, there is no good reason to believe that the American people
are any less capable of devotion or courage or response to challenge than they
ever were. But there is some reason to believe that American life today is not
such as to call forth these qualities on a wide scale and in their highest form.
There is reason to believe that we have lost some of our talent for evoking
these qualities.

The characteristic picture of the citizen-as-consumer has taken a
firm grip on the national imagination; and the consumer is, almost by definition,
a devotedly self-gratifying creature. He must be constantly and ingeniously
served milder cigarettes, softer mattresses, and easier-driving <u>safe</u> cars. If

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his dollars are to continue flowing, he must be endlessly catered to,
soothed, anointed, protected, healed, cajoled, and generally babied. Add
to this the fact that we get on with our national life through the mediation of
representatives, agents, or delegates of various sorts; and that whether these
are congressmen serving their constituents, corporation executives repre-
senting their stockholders, labor leaders serving union members, or lobbyists
representing their various employers, they are all committed to protecting and
nourishing the interests of those by whose sufferance they hold their posts.
It is their professional role to be selfish for their constituents, to prevent
incursions on the comfort and convenience of their constituents.

We would certainly not wish to have businessmen who cared nothing
for the wishes of the consumer, nor representatives who cared nothing for
the advantage of their constituents. The only point to be made is that the
images of citizen-as-consumer and citizen-as-constituent may have led us
to think of the man in the street as guided only by his self-gratifying impulses.
We may have fallen into the habit of thinking as that the citizen's resources
of devotion are slight indeed, and that to seek to tap these resources would
be, if not indecent, then politically dangerous, or at the very least futile.
The result may be a national habit -- shared by political leaders, teachers,
social and cultural leaders -- of underrating the capacity of the American people
for devotion to anything but the more and more luxurious furnishing of their
private worlds.

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This cult of easiness is a wholly inadequate guide to understanding
the springs of human action. What most people, young or old, want is not
merely security or comfort or luxury -- although they are glad enough to have
these. They want meaning in their lives. If their era and their culture and
their leaders do not or cannot offer them great meanings, great objectives,
great convictions, then they will settle for shallow and trivial meanings.
"our chief want in life," said Emerson, "is someone who will make us do
what we can." People who live aimlessly, who allow the search for meaning
in their lives to be satisfied by shoddy and meretricious experiences have
simply not been stirred by any alternative meanings -- religious meanings,
ethical values, ideals of social and civic responsibility, high standards of
self-realization.

This is a deficiency for which we all bear a responsibility. It is a
failure of home, church, school, government -- a failure of all of us. In the
context of the present discussion, there should be a general recognition that
development of the individual's potentialities occurs in a context of values.
Education is not just a mechanical process for communication to the young of
certain skills and information. It springs from our most deeply rooted convictions.
And if it is to have vitality both teachers and students will be infused with the
values which shaped the system/

No inspired and inspiring education can go forward without powerful
undergirding by the deepest values of our society. The students are there
in the first place because generations of Americans have been profoundly

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committed to a republican form of government and to equality of opportunity.
They benefit by a tradition of intellectual freedom because generations of
ardent and stubborn men and women nourished that tradition in Western
Civilization. Their education is based upon the notion of the dignity and worth
of the individual because those values are rooted in our religious and philoso-
phical heritage. They are preparing themselves for a world in which, as
Thornton Wilder said, "every good and excellent thing ... stands moment by
moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for." They are preparing
themselves for a world which has always been shaped and always will be shaped
by societies which have placed at the service of their most cherished values
a firmness of purpose, discipline, energy, and devotion.

In our pluralistic society, we would not wish to impose upon students a rigidly defined set of values. Each student is free to vary the nature of his commitment. But it is proper to assume that all will share a commitment to the fundamental values on which our society is based. It is a mistake to suppose that education may be purged of all values as one might clear an operating room of bacteria. We will wish to allow wide latitude in the choice of values. But we must assume that education is a process that should be infused with meaning and purpose; that everyone will have deeply held beliefs; that every young American will wish to serve the values which have nurtured him and made possible his education and his freedom as an individual.