on the threshold of meeting the responsibilities of work and citizenship.

II. Principles of analysis and presentation

"Two Ways of Life" is based on the following principles of presentation and analysis.

(1) The struggle between communism and democracy is not one among many issues in the contemporary world, but the overriding issue of our time. Free government under law will vanish from the earth unless we are willing to pledge for its preservation "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." This thought at the end of "Two Ways of Life" reminds the high school youngster that today, as at the time our Republic was founded, the supreme sacrifice is the price of liberty.

(2) The Communist offensive is not aimed at one particular aspect of democracy such as constitutional government, the freemarket economy, or the personal freedom of speech and religion. The target is the whole free way of life. This way-of-life concept is also applied to the analysis of Communist totalitarianism: it is presented as being more than a specific political or economic system. It seeks to possess all of man, his body and soul, and allows no human sentiment or activity-religious, political, economic, or educationalto escape its control.

(3) Two Ways of Life" is based on the conviction that, if the young American is to be fully aware of the scope of the Communist menace, he must first understand the deeper meaning of democracy, what it stands for in terms of ultimate beliefs and values, and how it has worked out in the reality of American life. For this reason, the first half of "Two Ways of Life" presents the guiding tenets of American democracy, with particular emphasis on the American system of constitutional government and on American capitalism as the economic system of free enterprise.

(4) In its general emphasis and illustrative materials, "Two Ways of Life" is focused on the United States as the leader of the free world and on the Soviet Union as the leader of the Communist bloc. Such a treatment shifts the material from the abstract to the concrete, thus enabling the student to understand the issues at stake more easily and intelligently. Moreover, the choice of the United States as the representative nation of the free world is designed to heighten in the high school youngster an awareness of the importance of the United States to the survival of freedom not only in our own Nation but throughout the whole world. Such an awareness should strengthen an attitude of greater effort and sacrifice on the part of each and every American.

(5) In presenting the nature of the Communist challenge, "Two Ways of Life" emphasizes not only the challenge of Communist imperialism (propaganda, infiltration, subversion, revolution, and aggressive war), but also of Soviet economic power and science and education. The purpose of stressing the latter two aspects of the Communist challenge is to impress the high school youngster that, in the areas of economic activity and education, he can make a personal contribution to the national effort of making America as strong as possible. The discussion of Soviet economic growth and technological progress also sharpens in the high school reader an awareness that the

struggle with communism may be of long duration, and that its outcome may well be decided by protracted effort rather than by a few dramatic strokes.

III. The responsibility of high schools for instruction on communism

Although communism threatens not only the liberty of America, but its very survival, our educational institutions, private and public, have paid little attention to the treatment of communism in a coherent fashion. The grade school is too early a level for proper instruction on communism. In college, the tendency toward specialization combined with individual traditions and approaches makes a general program of instruction on communism difficult. Moreover, only about one-quarter to a third of American youth ever attends college. This leaves the high school as the crucial type of institution for the realization of such a program. Until now, instruction on communism in American high schools has been given too little attention. This was revealed during the Korean war, when many American prisoners of war proved ideologically ill equipped to withstand the propaganda barrage of their Communist captors.

So far, the insufficient attention given to instruction on communism in the high school curriculum has been due to several factors. First, such instruction on a comprehensive scale was, until recently, not required in any State of the Union. In the last 2 years, several States (such as Virginia and Florida) have made full-fledged courses of instruction on communism mandatory in the high school curriculum. Other States (such as California and New York) now require the teaching of communism, without, however, prescribing, as yet, a special course program in that area. Methods and techniques of integrating the instruction on communism will, of course, vary in line with local circumstances. The important educational issue is the recognition of the need to give substantial attention to the subject of communism. Another factor which has obstructed a more coherent and detailed program of instruction on communism in high schools has been the scarcity of teaching materials. Admittedly, the proper understanding of communism and of democracy is not always an easy matter for a youngster of high school age. Yet in recent years public opinion in the United States, both among professional educators and community leaders, has developed a remarkable degree of consensus that the American high school must give more to, and demand more from the high school student than it has done in the past. Such changes of attitude cannot be reflected in institutional changes overnight; but it is not too much to suggest that the high school student of today and tomorrow will be expected to develop more intellectual self-dicipline and independence than the high school student of yesterday. A systematic program of instruction in the fundamentals of communism and democracy, based on facts and sober evaluation rather than on wishful thinking and propaganda, can significantly contribute to the growing trend in American high schools toward greater intellectual toughness and responsibility. It is hoped that "Two Ways of Life: The Communist Challenge to Democracy" will help to fill the existing gap in scholarly materials of instruction, thus showing that America's safety and welfare have nothing to fear, and everything to gain, from an objective study of communism and democracy.

PHILOSOPHICAL CONSIDERATIONS BEHIND

ANTI-COMMUNIST EDUCATION

(By Kazimierz Grzybowski, consultant with the Rand Corporation) I. The state of our moral and intellectual defenses in the face of Communist aggressive designs is causing a good deal of uneasiness. Many aspects of American life are coming under scrutiny. Our affluent economy, the softness and comforts of our existence, the tempo of our life, and finally our schools, all receive a fair share of criticism and are pointed out as the cause of our weakness on the ideological front. It is not the purpose of this paper to identify the source of our ideological shortcomings. Instead, the writer of these lines prefers to point out the method by which our defenses could be strengthened, and the best method seems to be to proceed with the broadly discussed school reform in our country, also for the purpose of bolstering up our strength in ideological weapons. This places the problem of anti-Communist education squarely within the complex of issues which, alone, would permit it to be treated in a systematic manner. Although educational activities encompass a great deal which is not included in any of the formal curriculums of instruction, with roughly one-fourth of our population enrolled in our schools, from childhood well into the years approaching maturity, the school population represents the most important social group for which to design a program of anti-Communist education. The timeliness of this approach is further indicated by the fact that for some time, and most actively since the orbiting of the first Soviet sputnik, the state of American education has been the subject of soul-searching discussion, with this particular object in view, and important changes are taking place in various aspects of education.

Critics point out the failure of our schools to prepare our youth for the grim contest in which we, as a nation, are actively engaged, and for the tests that may lie ahead, as a result of the nature, purposes, and methods of American education. Since the turn of the century, under the impact of John Dewey, our educational institutions, and particularly the public school system, which represents one of the finest achievements of American civilization, have concentrated on the social aspects of education. The purpose of education has been declared to be to bring about an adjustment of the individual to his place in the social environment. With this end in view, school curricula and methods of instruction have been reorganized and modernized. The emphasis is no longer on acquiring knowledge, with a constant testing of individual performance, and former college-preparatory emphasis has given way either to the comprehensive high school, with its multiple curriculum, or to a system of specialized high schools in which each school adjusts the pupil to a particular profession, thus leading to a narrow specialization providing little in the nature of a general education. In due course the public schools in a number of States began to devote many years of primary and secondary educa

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tion to programs which have almost completely abandoned traditional subjects of instruction. Some educators even went so far as to advocate the total removal of such subjects as mathematics, science, English, history, and geography, and their replacement by courses in vocations, health, moral conduct, home life, leisure occupations, educational opportunities, and social communications.

However justified the criticism of these exaggerated tendencies may be, it cannot be said that progressive education had no idea behind it. There are at least two good reasons for the modernization of American schools. In the first place, the growth of industrial centers has created great cities with their problems of life in mass communities. Secondly, there was the traumatic experience of the depression in the thirties. Both called for reexamination of the moral premises on which our society relied. It seemed to many that the depression should be credited to the egotism of the capitalist economic and social order. It was claimed that education for acquisitive individualism was a proper aim in the earlier part of the history of our country, when the expansion of American society, both geographically and economically, called for bold initiative, the ability to take risks, and the attitude of mind known as rugged individualism. But these times are gone, and in the new social and economic conditions the emphasis must be on the social aims of education, and on teamwork and the development of the cooperative attitude.

The program of progressive education was not without its merits. In the first place it provided the framework for the enormous task of reorganizing public education in order to open public schools to all children. It also provided a driving force for the expansion of the school system in the years of the depression. It also had serious shortcomings which seriously affected the general level of our education, and put an unnecessary strain on the institutions of higher learning. Progressive education contributed to the lowering of our education in science at the time when the progress of science and technology became one of the most important forces of social and economic progress. The emphasis on social adjustment was achieved by deemphasizing the quest for individual excellence. The effects of education were no longer measured in terms of individual intellectual, moral, and spiritual growth, which can only be obtained by high standards of required performance and a system of tests. Instead, a facile and easygoing attitude became prevalent in our schools. Both the professional qualifications of teachers and the grading system suffered in the school environment which was guided by the performance of the least gifted and industrious.

Perhaps the high sounding nomenclature under which the general lowering of educational standards was presented to the public was most detrimental to public morale. It was claimed that the new trend in schools represented the realization of the Jacksonian ideals of democracy, and that quantity takes precedence over quality which, for some reason, was thought to embody aristocratic principles in education, ignoring the fact that in education it is not so much the breadth of the curriculum as the quality of the instruction that

counts.

In the final analysis, the climate of progressive education became unhistorical and dangerously unrealistic. It anticipated no challenge to American society or to the American Nation, no crisis in interna

tional relations. Its weaknesses were visibly demonstrated in times of national danger, when the quality of education proved to be inadequate for the training of personnel for the various trades needed for national defense. The curricula of progressive schools had to be adjusted in order to train students in traditional subjects.

The impetus toward a general reexamination of the school system in this country came from the realization that our society was facing a new historical epoch which would call for an ever greater supply of skills and talent, as the progress of science and technology became a steady and permanent factor in the life of modern society. The position of a leading nation can be maintained only through a planned drive toward a higher degree of excellence, away from narrow specialization.

In this day of technologies that become antiquated overnight, it is hazardous to predict a favorable future for any narrow occupational category. There will be economic advantage to the individual in acquiring the kind of fundamental training that will enable him to move back and forth over several occupational categories. Individuals so trained will find market for their talents under most circumstances. * * *

According to the Rockefeller report, from which these words were quoted,

It is not a shortage, now of engineers, now of economists, that lies at the roots of the problem. It is the constant pressure of an ever complex society against the total creative capacity of its people.

Thus, in order to save American education from the doldrums of progressive education it is indispensable to abolish the myth of the conflict between quantity and quality, and to provide both for a broad program of education for all American children, with an opportunity to identify talent and ability, and to stimulate individual students to make the most of their potentialities. We must rediscover the disciplinary qualities of hard study, and social adjustment through solid work in school. The development of talent where it is found has no relation to the aristocratic principle in the social order. Rather it is democratic as, fortunately, there is, as yet, no biological formula for the systematic production of gifted individuals except through the challenge of education.

II. It is easy to see that the new trend is toward intellectualism in American schools which, when finally established under conditions of universal education, may produce a genuine curiosity which will stimulate the exploration of the broader problems facing modern man and our polity. Furthermore, young men and women, even before reaching college age, must acquire a solid education, an indispensable precondition for a proper understanding by the coming generations of the great issues of the struggle between free societies and regimented communism. One cannot accuse our youth of a lack of ideological fervor, but one cannot fail to see that, on the whole, they are ill equipped to see ideological problems in their real dimensions. Our education is not designed to introduce young people to the world of controversial ideas and of facts by which to judge them.

In contrast, the student of the Communist world will be struck by the fact that their education is extremely broad, highly ideological, and organized in detail. It embraces the entire cultural apparatus. It includes all the agencies involved in the molding and informing of the minds of both young and old. In a truly totalitarian fashion the