Education in Crisis

Educational Policies: "From World-Mindedness to Cold War-Mindedness"

"Teachers carry a larger responsibility than many of their fellow citizens for contributing to the maintenance of enduring peace."

-Education for International Understanding

In the beginning of the Cold War, schools were seen as the "first line of defense against attacks from within or without."

The Education Policies Commission released a pamphlet entitled "American Education and International Tensions" which exemplified the shift towards anticommunist rhetoric in negotiations of educational policies, from "education for world-mindedness to education for Cold War-mindedness" (Hartman, Education and the Cold War, 140). The pamphlet suggested four strategies to protect American education from the "totalitarian threat":

 

1. Young citizens should have an opportunity to learn about the principles and practices of totalitarianism, including those represented by the Soviet Union and the Communist Party in the U.S.

2. Teaching about communism or any other form of dictatorship does not mean advocacy of those doctrines. Such advocacy should not be permitted in American schools."

3. The schools should continue with vigor their programs for giving young citizens a clear understanding of the principles of the American way of life. . . .

4. Members of the Communist Party of the U.S. should not be employed as teachers.

"Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever.“
(100 Things You Should Know About Communism and Education)

5. If Communism should conquer America, what would happen
to the schools?
Real education would stop. Only training would be allowed.

6. What's the difference?
All the difference there is between freedom and jail.

7. What is “education"?
People are "educated" when they learn to go after facts and to think for themselves.

8. What is ''training"?
People are "trained" when they learn how to do a particular thing well and can be depended
on to do it.

9. Which is better?
A monkey can be "trained" but only a human being can be "educated." A man can
very well improve himself by training in some specialty but only if he adds that
training to independent thinking power, the hall-mark of education.