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## II. FLIGHT PLAN --
### SOME GENERAL OBSERVATIONS

Ambassador James B. Conant, while President of Harvard, attempted to deal with the policies of that University upon the outbreak of World War II. He observed that under such circumstances wise men did not try to foresee the future--rather they put themselves in the best possible condition to meet all contingencies. Twenty years from now, we, and others who are then struggling with affairs will probably indulge hindsight just as we have, concluding that their predecessors were no fortune-tellers. Reliance would not be as much on the complete understanding of conditions and possibilities, as on the capacity of men to influence according to their will, and on philosophical preparation enabling them to use that capacity in the soundest, broadest and most generous mood. Included in the capacity must be the abilities and techniques by which they can lead and canalize the capacities of multitudes of other men. Included in their philosophical preparation must be a complete faith in certain premises which give almost instinctive choice in any given situation of generous and constructive action.

# #

A clear distinction must be made between two different types of work.

There are those situations in which ample knowledge exists of an undesirable condition and ample resources exist to remedy it. This is the case with the diminishing sectors of poverty in the United States; the case, too, with

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slum areas. In these cases there are plenty of plans readily available to end the condition. The lack is community will to devote the necessary resources and end the condition. Action now to produce a result later consists chiefly in educating and persuading a necessary majority of the community to do what it knows, in its viscera, ought to be done.

Action in the nature of discover is quite different. There, one seeks to stimulate the creative instincts of men in any particular field, realizing perfectly that the result may be success or failure. Community pressures, or desires (or recognition in case of success) may have something to do with it, but not much. I imagine the long search for the source and control of yellow fever and malaria was motivated much more by the drive of individuals than by hope of profit or recognition. The pure scientist using his equations and his elaborate research may have some sense that the community wishes his success, but more probably he is driven by some inner daimon. The painter and the poet obviously hope to communicate with their contemporaries--that is part of the operation--but essentially they paint or write what is in themselves. Our second category of action, then, consists of setting up matrices within which creative work of one kind or another (ideally, of all kinds) can be done. It has already been noted that in certain sectors of intellectual and esthetic endeavor the United States is singularly sterile in this regard.

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### III. FOREIGN PROBLEMS

Foreign problems are of all kinds. But one group is plainly discernible. We are meeting conditions in the second half of the twentieth century with institutions and conceptions held over from the nineteenth.

Basically the affairs of the world are carried on by sovereign national States. These States are comprised within boundaries determined by the strangest accidents of history. They set up areas within which social, cultural, administrative and similar areas of endeavor can be carried on by the national community. There is also an attempt to construct economic life, and systems of defense, on the same basis.

As to economics, it is almost self-evident that no present existing national State can construct an effective national economy. It is familiar doctrine that national self-sufficiency, "autarky," is inefficient, and must be discarded in favor of commerce and exchange with other countries. It has now become clear that a national economy is not merely economy primarily self-sufficient but supplemented by suitable amount of exchange, though this is still probably true in the case of very large countries like the United States. Smaller units exist as integral parts of an international system; they are parts--perhaps large parts--of an enormous economic machine comprising a large area. The politics of the area seem to have little to do with the economics of the area. Today, for example, the Middle East which supplies 80% of petroleum to Western Europe is having the merriest of times

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struggling with its principal market and the source of its wealth. There is,
literally, no recognized way of pulling together an institutional recognition of
economics; the results can be disastrous.

This is a job that has to be done; and it will be powerfully influenced
by the first clear statement of the problem and the first reasonable hypothesis
of its solution. The fact of the matter is that many large non-statist corpora-
tions of which Standard Oil Company of New Jersey is notable, are better
geared and organized as institutions of international economy (we had better
say "economy" because there is no such thing as "national" economy) than
any government.

# #

Gunnard Myrdal, perhaps the most capable economic analyst in the
Western world, has summarized the problem in a pithy phrase. He says
international economy must choose between the alternatives of integration
and catastrophe. By "integration," he means that we have to construct and
more or less unify the economic system which will include all the area
necessary to its functioning, although that area comprises more than one
sovereign State. Ideally, in an integrated international economy the
component countries should work within a system as unified as that which
prevails between the States of the United States. This would mean no tariff
barriers, a single currency-credit system, an uninterrupted system of trans-
port, and, eventually, more or less standards of social security, working

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conditions and pay. It would likewise mean free access within the area to raw materials and more or less uninterrupted distribution of consumer products.

Construction of such an area is obviously an enormous project and every kind of emotional and political difficulty will be encountered. At best, such a system will be the result of a generation of evolution--unless it is imposed by some cataclym and the resultant construction of an empire.

Our task immediately is to discover how a center of integration can be created and how forces can be liberated which will lead to its steady growth.

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IV. SYMPTOMS

To underline the importance of stating the problem and suggesting solu-
tions, we can take at random a few areas where trouble exists and is growing:
Latin America, for instance, an area we know well.

This is a continent and a half, with huge resources and rapidly growing
population, plunging from the eighteenth century to the twentieth century at a
bound. This is the time when it needs capital, and must either make it or
harrow it. Yet the United Nations, according to Woytinsky ("World Commerce
and Government," p. 244), reports net inflow sufficient to keep balance of
payments approximately steady or from 100 to 300 million a year--this for a
continent and a half. Obviously present movements of capital are not satisfy-
ing the pounding necessities of 170 million people if they are to progress.
This does not suggest that international movements of capital were a solution.
It does suggest that the problem of capital formation in that area must be
tackled urgently and at once.

In the world generally, the reports of the International Monetary Fund
and of students of it offer little basis for prediction that an economy run on
the basis of 50 or 60 separate currency systems can make much headway.
"It seems probable, therefore, that in the years to come the balances of pay-
ments of many nations will remain precarious, with an unstable equilibrium,"
Woytinsky concludes. But he believes that there will probably be (indeed he
has demonstrated there has to be) "more direct intervention of governments

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and international institutions in economic processes than in the nineteenth
century," adding that neither London nor Washington and New York can qualify
in the future as controlling centers of international transactions. The British
cannot. The structure of the United States "does not call for the huge import
balance in merchandise trade which it should absorb in order to play the role
of the mainspring in world trade and the flywheel in the world capital
market;" and even if they did, there is political resistance.

One of the first symptoms of our difficulty is the precariousness of
supra-national trade built on a multiplicity of national currency systems.
Monetary difficulties are commonly a symptom of something else; so we have
to go deeper.

A second system is the sheer blazing anarchy of regional or perhaps
world, supply systems, except where they have been organized, often by
non-governmental bodies, sometimes by extra-legal means. Again one thinks
of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, and its alleged participation in the
Achnacarry Agreements of 1928. Now those agreements, as far as they went,
constituted the most rational approach which had been made towards a major
problem of world supply. They were "absolutist" in the sense that the public
was not represented, and no protection was offered against extortionate use
of the mechanism said to have been constructed and so forth. They provided,
among other things, that oil should flow first to the nearest market--though
the market might be held by European distributors, and the supply might be

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owned by an American. They provided for an obviously same pooling of the
tanker fleet and for full use of processing, storage and like facilities. They
provided against competition. This, in some circles, was thought to be a
crime, and there is something to be said for the idea. But it is no less a
crime to have an essential source of supply, a distribution of a product on
which all modern countries depend, left at naked hazard to the sport of huge
competitive forces. In blunt fact, if the Federal Trade Commission account
is anywhere near right, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey made a treaty
of cooperation with its rival empire in Britain, and having stabilized its
frontier, thereupon went to work to develop its area. Now when it plays
its part in the economy of the United States (its market), of Venezuela (a
principal supplier), of Canada (destined to become a major supplier) and of
half a dozen countries in the Middle East, the thinking that has to go on there
more nearly conforms to idealistic modern foreign relations thinking than
anything else in my acquaintance. Ultimately the Board of Directors on the
basis of information supplied by its technical and economic staffs must so
handle affairs that its obligations towards the American market are ful-
filled, so that its obligations to take from the Venezuelan and other markets
are kept in balance, and the population of those areas given tools to develop
themselves; and so forth. Nobody designed Standard Oil Company of New
Jersey for that purpose. Nobody even thought about it until the last twenty
years. The mechanism is literally so supra-national that it cannot be

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destroyed. No one government, even, could take it over. If the United States
were to nationalize oil distribution, this would not result in nationalizing the
supply. If Venezuela were, like Mexico, to seize the oil fields, it would have
no access to the market. An untutored Arab sheik might try the experiment
but the result would doom his country to primitivism, as Iranian Mossadegh
found out when he tried it.

The blunt fact is that these huge international corporations are there
because they are needed. They are big because they have to be big. They
survive because they fulfill a function not otherwise discharged.

Now, merely to stimulate thinking, let us put these two symptoms
together. Here is a region--Latin America. Here a thermometer--trouble
with exchange rates. Here a typical twentieth century operation in the form
of an international corporation. (In the Communist world you would find the
same situation--but it would call itself--probably--"The Soviet Petroleum
Commissariat," or "State Trust for Fuel", or some such thing). Here in our
region is an obviously inadequate flow of capital from outside; and we know
that Latin American countries are not making capital fast enough to meet
economic obligations either to themselves or to the region.

Suppose, now, the large corporations which account for most of the
business in Latin America were to join together to study the region, as well
as their own businesses. They are forming capital by the minute out of a
combination of selling, chiefly in the United States, and producing, considerably

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in Latin America. They also have unexampled facilities for engineering,
development and all sorts of similar operations. Within a reasonable time,
a moderately satisfactory plan of the commercially "possible" for the
region could be blocked out--a prophecy, if you like, on which a forward
looking though flexible, policy could be predicated. They could assemble
it--a larger percentage of the tools needed to take care of the economic
job in the region, and put them to work with more intelligence than anyone
has yet attempted to do. And the prospects offered would probably be so
attractive that few politicians would care not to cooperate--unless, of course,
they were already cooperating with some other supranational system such
as that of the Soviets. This, of course, is not designed as a proposal--
rather, an illustration of the kind of study looking toward eventual action
that can be readily done.

Twenty years from now, we might have forged a living instrument
which met the needs of a "regional economic" community--instead of
merely talking about them which is mostly what goes on.

# #

The philosophical and idealogical field--our other great branch--
offers an equal if not more disquieting array of symptoms. I once pro-
pounded the theory that any organization with power is composed of two
elements in balance: the keepers of ideals and conscience--the Lords
Spiritual. Again take our beloved Latin America as an illustration.

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There, we are finding the wildest division of opinion about what Walter Lippman calls, "public morals"--or, more essentially, value systems. A Dominican Republic claims to build its thinking around the personal myth of its "benefactor." Mexican intellectual and artistic circles are dominated by the aging Marxist symbols--a mural at the University of Mexico loudly calls (in an appropriate red paint) for some sort of new revolution--details not specified by the artist. In that atmosphere revolution *per se* is a "good thing" though the common sense of the population which had eighteen years of it seems to discard the idea at least for now. Only yesterday s substantial sectors actually took the gibberish which Peron called "Justicialism" seriously. Honest and thoroughly well-meaning young men beating against the gates of impossible systems as in Bolivia, Chile and to some extent, Brazil, talked respectively of Fascism and Communism--not that the ideals or practices of either satisfy them but because they were dynamic and offered some means of action.

Now Latin America, for all its violent diversity, for some strange reason thinks together, and would like to think together with the United States; and has had only the most haphazard chance to do this.

It should be possible to parallel the political conferences representing governments--our periodic interAmerican meetings and Consultations of Foreign Ministers--with non-governmental meetings of Latin and American intellectuals. Some attempt is made to do this in the United States, as witness

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the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Association of Universities. We might study the possibility of bringing into being a regular Congress of free scholars giving philosophical and intellectual stimulus to the hemisphere analogous to the political stimuli derived from the Conferences of Lima, Chapultepec and Bogota. Such Conferences have solid meaning in the Western hemisphere. Over and over I run into the results of a somewhat similar Conference held in Havana in 1950.

The existence of such Convocations, especially a series of three of them at four year intervals, could be used likewise as a powerful incentive to develop both in the United States and in other Western hemisphere countries small to influential groups of intellectuals who would keep under continual study the various phases of the social, political, esthetic and philosophical developments in the New World. The word "intellectual" is here used advisedly, with full recognition of its temporary unpopularity. Yet the fact is that very little in this world has ever been done that is not conceived of by some "intellectual" before it was attempted by some speculator in events, later reduced to significance by businessmen and politicians. In the United States the fashion is to make-believe in intellectual currents that do not exist or are unimportant. In the Latin world the fashion is to escape into intellectualism, avoiding the tough problems of all practical implication. Somewhere here a balance must be found and the best way of doing that is to highlight, for intellectuals, their obligation of intellectual responsibility--

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and incidentally to highlight for the Lords Temporal their complete dependence
on some sort of spiritual and intellectual philosophy.

Almost perfectly, the United States has learned this lesson so far as
concerns physical scientists at least so far as they are working in the field
of scientific application. Our life is still dubious of pure science. At date of
writing it is uncertain whether the single-handed campaign of the Dean of
California Tech to secure funds for pure scientific research--exploration
entirely without relevance to practical application--will succeed. Yet I pre-
sume the most spectacular scientific application of our age, the harnessing
of atomic energy, is primarily due to a mathematician, Einstein, and a
mathematical philosopher, Niels Bohr, than to any other two men. In the
field of human relations and social organization, of course, the intellectual
has such limited honors as he gets chiefly in American academic circles.

To the contrary in Latin America and Latin countries generally
(and to some extent in Great Britain), the intellectual is almost over-valued.
In Latin America this is understandable: their luck with politicians and men
of affairs has not been good, so that they place confidence in their men of
ideas. This is an ideal combination of circumstances in which "matrix"
groups can be encouraged from which may come men of broad gauge and
vision. Of these some will be fatally drawn into affairs as you and I have
been; some will prefer to be guardians of the conception of truth, justice and
infinite appreciation--Lords Spiritual, in fact. One can imagine half-a-dozen

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such matrix groups set up throughout the Western hemisphere, probably grouped around some of the stronger universities, and provided with access to each other. Quite likely we shall disagree with the ideas developed in such centers: this is the essence of any creation, but the result will add both to the truth and depth of thought and the thought itself will fertilize and also hold in check the strictly temporal developments.

# #

In both of the foregoing topics for exploration, the Western hemisphere has been mentioned. This was not due to the accident that it is a region familiar to both of us. The possibilities of the hemispheric area are greatest because these political governments and their peoples have spent more time thinking about solidarity of nations than any similar group elsewhere in the world.

Anyone can point out, of course, that the boundaries of the Western hemisphere do not delimit the true economic community any more than the borders of Great Britain; they are accident of geology just as the boundaries of Luxembourg are the accident of history. But taken together the Western hemisphere for the moment more nearly embraces an economic community than any other area we are likely to find. Care must be taken in thinking of the hemisphere; it should be regarded as a core of something greater to come rather than as a unit to be set over against the rest of the world. Twenty years hence (at the rate things are going) even a two-continent

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combination may seem miserably inadequate. But it nevertheless will be core
or nucleus, with a then population of well over 400 millions, rivalling
demographically and geopolitically even huger Asian combinations dreamed of
by Communist agitators. If, morally, politically and economically the Western
hemisphere can evolve into a powerful and dynamic community of nations,
capable of taking care of its own and of extending the hand of example and
assistance to other parts of the world (for example, Africa), we shall have
played a modest part in liberating new and positive force in world affairs.

Solid advantage will be that this combination has less past to forget, less blood
to atone for, less history to overcome than Eurasia. Further, the United States
as a member of the American family of nations has a recognized and legitimate
standing to offer ideas as part of the common body of activity which makes up
the New World. Europe and Asia are not so willing to accord that standing
as to them--save in occasional moments of bitter necessity.

Immodesty is implicit in the line of thought here canvassed. For,
when we think it through, we are suggesting nothing less than a sort of moral
imperium comprising two continents. We are considering the slow grouping
of realistic economic forces which support the life and physical development
of that area. We are considering also the clustering of moral and intellectual
forces and the setting up of a mechanism enhancing their influence as a com-
bined complement of and offset to the economic forces. Inevitably, use could
and would be made of the present political organization--the Organization of

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American States under which is thus built the true foundation of an international
community. But there is no reason to apologize for thinking largely--Excuses
will be in order only if we do not think largely enough. One remembers old
Otto of Germany (in 962) confronting a new Mohammedan sweep which threatened
to engulf Europe as it already had engulfed great parts of Asia and Africa. His
counsellors were not modest either. They suggest that he declare the re-
establishment of the Holy Roman Empire and have him crowned Emperor
thereof. The Pope agreed and as a result the Holy Roman Empire came into
being. Considering it lasted 900 years, the idea may be said to have been
successful. We are not thinking of empire, but of a modern organization which
will do the useful things empires did in terms of economics and philosophy
without the oppressive and often brutal tyranny which empires used--a tyranny
tolerated probably because it was less than the tyranny of the unchecked local
despots of preimperial times.

# #

It will be noticed that tangible suggestions are not in terms of specific
projects (these can come later) but in terms combining institutions with con-
ceptions. This is not accident. You and I have drawn projects enough, and
carried enough of them through to do that with relative ease. But government,
public or private, does not achieve its greatest triumphs by "doing" specific
things. It serves best by liberating constructive forces--a quite different task.
We did well for Brazil when we got the Volta Redonda steel plant going. You

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did well for the immediate situation when the Venezuelan accord on oil
revenues was worked out. But, like both achievements, the thing done is
merely yesterday's history. The enduring significance was that both opera-
tions liberated constructive force. Venezuela came to discover that the
economic habilitation of her country was possible if Venezuelan thought and
youth had ambitions to tackle the job--as has proved to be the case though
they are making heavy weather of it in some respects now. Brazil gained
a measure of that confidence from Volta Redonda. There will be, someday,
forty Volta Redondas in Brazil, and the prototype will seem like a puny effort.
But it did contribute towards Brazilian knowledge that Brazil could materially
produce part, at least, of her economic necessities, and could look forward
to making a contribution to South America, and to the world.

So we have been thinking of bringing together those matrix groups
that could not only plan specific achievement but imagine a long line of
achievement for the morrow.

CARNEGIE CORPORATION OF NEW YORK

589 FIFTH AVENUE
NEW YORK 17, N. Y.

MIT Commencement Speech
by John W. Gardner -

June 7, 1957

(c)J

## Equality and Excellence

In the years ahead those of you receiving degrees today are going to hear increasingly lively public discussion of higher education. As products of one of our greatest universities you will be presumed to have some views on the aims and consequences of higher education in America.

One of the most persistent questions you will encounter will be variously phrased "Who should go to college?", "How shall we resolve the conflict between quality and quantity?", "How shall we serve the ideals of both equality and excellence?"

As with so many other things, it will be far less important that you have pat answers than that you know how to think about the questions.

William James once said, "Democracy is on trial, and no one knows how it will stand the ordeal. . . . What its critics now affirm is that its preferences are inveterately for the inferior. So it was in the beginning, they say, and so it will be world without end. Vulgarity enthroned and institutionalized, elbowing everything superior from the highway, this, they tell us, is our irremediable destiny. . . ."

Many would agree that the point of William James' words has not diminished in the fifty years since he uttered them, and some would argue that they have particular relevance to the American educational system today.

Even those who are deeply impressed--as I am--by the great positive achievements of our schools and colleges over the

- 2 -

past century must agree that we have worried all too little about
the individual of unusual talent or potentialities.

To make such an assertion, however, is not to deplore
the unprecedented time and money we have devoted to the average
youngster. Our kind of society demands the maximum development
of individual potentialities at every level of ability; and it
will serve no purpose to replace our neglect of the gifted by a
neglect of the generality. We are all too prone to such wild
swings of the pendulum in our national life. Martin Luther said
that humanity was like a drunken peasant who is always ready to
fall from his horse on one side or the other; and in that respect
we Americans are all too human. We must learn to see the achieve-
ments and shortcomings of our educational system in some sort of
embracing perspective which will permit us to repair one omission
without creating others.

In order to achieve this perspective, nothing is more
important than to understand the complex ways in which our higher
education deals with individual differences in ability. Let us
look at one or two concrete examples and then try to understand
what is behind them.

Even the most casual glance at our educational system
will reveal one important national characteristic: our great
reluctance to put labels on individual differences in general
capacity. An example of this is to be found in the broad inter-
pretation which we give to the phrase "college education." When

- 3 -

youngsters are graduated from high school we discuss those going
on to college as though they were a homogeneous lot, all headed
for a similar experience. Actually, a behind-the-scenes view of
the process will reveal that they are quietly but fairly effectively
"sorted out."

At the key point in the sorting process is the high school
dean. The students need not listen to his advice but usually do.
He sends his college-bound students out along widely-diverging
pathways--to colleges of the highest possible standards, to
colleges of moderate difficulty, and so on down to colleges which
may actually be lower academically than the high school from which
the youngster is being graduated. But although the essence of his
job is to arrive at clear appraisals of the relative standings of
colleges and the relative capacities of students, the high school
dean will ordinarily take considerable care not to make these
appraisals explicit in his talks with students and parents.

One point of view to take toward this national reluctance
to label individual differences is that it is nonsensical and that
we have developed a ridiculous squeamishness about such matters.
Critics trace it to our desire to make young people "happy," to
our concern for psychological adjustment. But such critics are
barking up the wrong tree. The reason we are reluctant to label
individual differences in native capacity is that native capacity
holds a uniquely important place in our scheme of things.

It must never be forgotten that ours is one of the
relatively few societies in the history of the world in which

- 4 -

performance is a primary determinant of status. In a stratified society, performance is not an important factor in establishing the individual's status so he can afford to be less deeply concerned about his native capacity. For every step that a society takes away from a system of traditionally determined status and toward a system in which performance is the chief determinant of status, the individual will be increasingly concerned about his native capacity. In our society the individual's future depends to an unprecedented degree upon his native gifts.

Of course, we are oversimplifying matters greatly in using such general terms as "native capacity." There are all kinds of native capacity. That is a point to which we shall return later. But for complex reasons, Americans see appraisals of "intelligence," however defined, as total judgments on the individual and as central to his self-esteem. Some critics note that we discriminate nicely between excellence and mediocrity in athletics, but refuse to be similarly precise about differences in intelligence; and they attribute this to the fact that we are more seriously concerned with athletic ability than with intelligence. Nothing could be further from the truth. We can afford, emotionally speaking, to be candid and coldly objective in judgments of athletic ability precisely because we do not take these as total judgments on the individual and not necessarily central to his self-esteem.

Another feature of our educational system is what might be termed the principle of multiple chances. The European system

- 5 -

separates youngsters at ten or eleven years of age, on the basis
of ability, into two radically different school systems, one
college preparatory and the other not.

This is, in many respects, an efficient procedure. It
solves many problems which plague our comprehensive high schools.
But in the American view, it presents a host of difficulties, only
one of which need be noted here: early separation of the very
gifted and the less gifted violates our principle of multiple
chances.

We believe that the youngster should have many successive
opportunities to discover himself. We postpone as long as possible
any final closing of the door on the individual's chances. It is
a unique feature of our system that the "late bloomer" may dawdle
or occupy himself with other than educational objectives until as
late as 18 or 19 years of age (roughly, first or second year of
college) and still (provided that he is bright) not only obtain a
college education but go on to become a professional man.

I have given you two examples of the way our system deals
with individual differences in ability--our reluctance to label
differences in capacity, and our principle of multiple chances.
Any educational system is, among other things, a great sorting out
process. The examples I have given reflect a determination on the
part of the American people that this sorting out process be
carried out mercifully and generously rather than ruthlessly,
rigidly, or mechanically.

So far so good. But I have selected moderate examples.
Any one of us could produce more extreme examples in which

- 6 -

generosity and the quality of mercy has produced confusion in educational objectives and just about nullified the sorting-out process. Such examples, whether rare or frequent, are a legitimate cause for concern.

These considerations lead into the very core of our political philosophy and have the most profound implications for our future.

At the heart of the matter is a seeming paradox in democracy as we know it. On the one hand it is the form of society which says most convincingly, "Let the best man win," and rewards winners regardless of origin. On the other hand it is the form of society which gives losers the widest latitude in rewriting the rules of the contest. No one who has not thought long and hard about these paradoxical facts is in a position to understand the tug of war between equality and excellence in a democracy. When the rewriting of the rules is prompted by the standards of fair play, by elementary considerations of justice, by basic value judgments as to what sort of a "best man" the society wants, democracy can have no quarrel with it. Indeed, it is the core process of a democracy. But when the rewriting of the rules is designed to banish excellence, to rule out distinguished attainment, to inhibit spirited individuals, then all who pray for the continued vitality of democracy must protest.

Every democracy must encourage high individual performance. If it does not then it closes itself off from the mainsprings of its dynamism and talent and imagination; and the

- 7 -

traditional democratic invitation to the individual to realize
his full potentialities becomes meaningless. Because of the
leveling influences which are inevitable in popular government,
a democracy must, more than any other form of government, maintain
what Ralph Barton Perry has called "an express insistence upon
quality and distinction." When it does not do so, the consequences
are all too familiar: the deterioration of standards, the debase-
ment of taste, shoddy education, vulgar art, cheap politics, and
the tyranny of the lowest common denominator.

We have seen enough of these excesses to understand
what Kierkegaard meant when he warned us of the danger of an
equalitarianism so extreme as to be "unrelieved by even the
smallest eminence."

We have seen enough to know what Flexner meant when he
said, "We have to defend the country against mediocrity,
mediocrity of soul, mediocrity of ideas, mediocrity of action.
We must also fight against it in ourselves."

But those in a democracy who are most deeply concerned
with precisely these dangers, those who are most seriously con-
cerned to foster excellence and the full realization of individual
potentialities must be the first to comprehend the problem facing
society as a whole. A society which accepts performance as the
chief determinant of status--as ours does--has great charm for
those whose ability, drive, aggressiveness or luck enable them
to come out on top. It may have notably less charm for those who do
not come out on top. These latter may be individuals of lesser

-8-

ability or lower motivation. Or they may be individuals whose
excellences do not add up to the sort of performance that society
at any given moment chooses to reward. Or they may simply lack
a temperament that takes kindly to the knife edge of competition.
There are many individuals of great gifts in the latter group.

At any rate, for whatever reason, there are large
numbers of individuals who will not necessarily find unrelieved
exhilaration in a system that emphasizes high performance. If
these large numbers come to believe that the system exposes them
unnecessarily to frustration and defeat, and if they enjoy the
freedom of social action characteristic of a democracy they will
create elaborate institutional defenses to diminish the emphasis
upon performance as a determinant of status. We can observe such
institutional defenses not only in education but in every aspect
of our national life.

Trade union practices are a veritable coral reef of
accumulated defenses against extreme emphasis upon performance.
One can discover in any civil service manual innumerable rules
designed to blunt the edge of excessive emphasis on performance.
Rules governing seniority and tenure, although they serve other
important purposes, also serve this purpose. The academic lock-
step in which all youngsters are advanced a grade per year regard-
less of IQ and performance is among other things a device for
preventing invidious comparisons between individuals. The pro-
visions in many of our states that the state university must
accept every graduate of a high school within the state serves a

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similar purpose. Our society is full of such institutional
defenses against excessive emphasis upon individual performance.
Among these defenses are some of the most powerful and effective
restraints upon high performance ever devised.

Such defenses--in one form or another--will always be
with us. In their origin they are often healthy reactions to
excessive or exclusive emphasis upon performance. But carried
far enough these defenses too can constitute excesses and can
contribute a fatal rigidity to the society.

Anyone interested in the quality of higher education
over the years ahead might well ask, "What can be done to foster
excellence and to encourage high performance without stirring
these counter-movements?" Actually the question posed in that
way leaves us in an essentially unconstructive stance. We would
do better to ask, "How can we foster excellence and at the same
time provide at every level of ability constructive opportunities
and rewards so that every level realizes its full potentialities,
performs at its best, and harbors no resentment toward any other
level?"

There is no single answer.

A part of any final answer would certainly be some
revision of an altogether false emphasis which the American people
are coming to place on college education. This false emphasis is
the source of great difficulties for us and can only be regarded
as regrettable.

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Properly understood, the college or university is the instrument for one kind of further education of those whose capacities fit them for that kind of further education. It should not be regarded as the only passport to a meaningful life or the sole means of establishing one's human worth. And we have come perilously close to that. No wonder our colleges are crowded.

The crowding in our colleges is less regrettable than the confusion in our values. Human dignity and worth should only be assessed in terms of those qualities of mind and spirit that are within the reach of every human being.

This is not to say that we should not value achievement. We should value it exceedingly. It is simply to say that achievement should not be confused with human worth.

The more we allow the impression to get abroad that only the college man or woman is worthy of respect in our society, the more we contribute to a fatal confusion, which works to the injury of all concerned. If we permit the faulty assumption that college is the sole cradle of human dignity, need we be surprised that every citizen demands to be rocked in that cradle?

But a scaling down of our exaggerated emphasis on college education is only part of the answer. Another important part of the answer will surely be a greatly increased emphasis upon individual differences, upon the many kinds of human talent, and upon the immensely varied ways in which individual potentialities may be realized. If we are really serious about equality of

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opportunity, we should be infinitely serious about individual
differences; because what constitutes opportunity for one man is
a stone wall for the next man. Individuals differ vastly from
one another, and they differ in innumerable ways. If we are to
do justice to the individual, we must seek the kind of education
which will open his eyes, stimulate his mind, and unlock his
potentialities. There is no formula for this, and it may or may
not involve what we now think of as a college education.

If we did develop such an indomitable concern for
individual differences, then we would learn to laugh at the
assumption that a college education is the only avenue to human
dignity and social worth. We would educate some youngsters by
sending them on to college. We would educate others in other
ways. We would develop an enormous variety of patterns to fit
the enormous variety of individuals. And no pattern would be
regarded as socially superior or involving greater human dignity
than any other pattern.

As long as the present heterogeneity of the college
population exists--and it is most unlikely to diminish--then the
only path open to us is to achieve even greater diversity in our
higher educational system than now exists--to correspond to the
diversity of the clientele. There is no other way to handle
within one system the enormously disparate human capacities,
levels of preparedness, and motivations which flow into our
colleges and universities.

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And such diversity has more than raw necessity to commend it. The diversity within and among institutions which will permit individuals of differing gifts and differing bents to realize their varied potentialities can be a positively constructive attribute of our system. Specifically, it can aid us in the important business of stressing the many kinds of achievement of which the human is capable.

In seeking to promote such stress upon varied forms of achievement, we shall be abetted by a natural tendency in human beings to discriminate many kinds of abilities and to exploit many diverse sources of self-esteem. This should be encouraged. The sort of capacity measured by the conventional college aptitude test is very important, but instead of putting a more and more monolithic emphasis upon this sort of talent, we should encourage all kinds of individuals to run on all kinds of tracks. In this way we can distribute very widely the rewards of self-esteem and self-respect which are the healthiest preventives of leveling reactions and can encourage on the broadest scale the release of energy and positive motivation on the part of the individual which have been the great strength of our society.

Then, unhampered by popular attitudes disparaging excellence, we can dedicate ourselves to the cultivation of distinction and a sense of quality. We can demand the best of our most gifted, most talented, most spirited youngsters. And we can render appropriate honor to that striving for excellence which has produced so many of mankind's greatest achievements.

JWG:jc

6/3/57