our young people once understand in depth this contrast between the Marxist and the traditional non-Marxist concept of the human enterprise, they are not likely to be taken in by the everlasting efforts of the Communists to make young minds identify the party line 2 with their own social ideals.

When the spirit and letter of Marxism have been thus absorbed, Lenin comes next-with his structuring of a hard-core party to take the place of a proletariat that did not stage a revolution; and with his elaborate "science of conspiracy" to force an overthrow that history failed to deliver. If students could be helped to explore the long-range human significarce of the methods set forth by Lenin in "What Is To Be Done?," published in 1902, and if they could similarly be helped to explore his design for the Comintern-the Third Communist International-set forth for parties around the world, after the take-over in Russia, they would be prepared for the Communists' Iron Curtain stratagems of penetrating without being penetrated.

From Lenin to Stalin to Khrushchev the line of development goes on-with division treated at every point as the indispensable predecessor to total control. Our students should learn, for example, the character of the "shotgun wedding" that Stalin brought to pass between Communist internationalism and Russian nationalismunder the label of "socialism in one country." They should learn how variously Stalin exemplified in his foreign policy the Marxist edict that good faith should not extend across class lines, and the Leninist "science of conspiracy"-building, in the process, the Soviet empire. They should learn the role which Stalin assigned-in behalf of Soviet power-to the Cominform, cold-war sucessor to the prewar Comintern. Not least, they should learn how and why Stalin, in the mid-1930's, ordained for the parties around the world that tactic of the "united front"-against war, colonialism, racial discrimination, unemployment, and the rest-which has, ever since that time, been the Communists' chief tool for the exploitation of non-Communist idealists, and most particularly of young idealists.

When it comes to the Khrushchev era, they will need to work into the interminable pattern of dividing to conquer his tactics for avoiding genuine give-and-take while exploiting processes-from those of negotiation to those of tourism and cultural exchange that must be infused with the spirit of give-and-take to be legitimate. They will need, further, to look through his phrases about "peaceful coexistence" and "peaceful competition" to the point where these make ideological contact with his statements to his own fellow Communists about the fact that there can be no permanent peace until "capitalist imperialism" is wiped from the face of the earth.3

It is of supreme importance, in brief, for our students to know that, in Communist theory and practice, no truly binding force is permitted to extend from Communist to non-Communist orbit or from Communist to non-Communist mind. In this connection, they should study communism's "class morality"; its inverted "class" use of such words as "peace," "internationalism," "nonintervention," et cetera ; and

See "The Communist Party Line," a treatise by J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, published by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. (5 cents a copy at Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.

* See "Wordsmanship" by Stefan T. Possony, of the Hoover Institution, published by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee.

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its exploitative use both of such international machinery as that of the United Nations and the legal defenses and civil liberties established in free nations. When they have really got the hang of communism's ideologically sanctified double standard of word and action, they will be well prepared to study the specific current programs of the party that are designed to exploit youth and to alienate it from the institutions that are its birthright.

But this is not the only thing that our students should learn. In this Khrushchev era, it is vitally important for them to learn what the party can do to the lives and minds of the people of the sealed-off orbit that it could not do in an "open" world, without the benefit of the Iron Curtain.

That the barbed wire and the wall in Berlin are designed to prevent people's escape from the orbit is obvious. Even Ulbricht has admitted as much with respect to the wall in Berlin; and the whole system of border guards and barricades is an admission of this fact. But many people who can recognize this function of the Iron Curtain do not push through to any understanding in depth of how the corralled condition of human beings within the orbit fits into long-range party planning. What must be understood is the whole pattern of party control over life, livelihood, thought process, and human association where there is a calculated ruling out of those two essentials of human dignity: the right to choose between alternatives and the right to compare and evaluate.

A multitude of forces, today, are trying to persuade our young people that the Soviet economy is a kind of eighth wonder on the face of the earth; that Soviet education is far more advanced than our own; and that the "collective" experiences established within the orbit are a happy contrast to the isolated experiences of the lonely, aimless, alienated individual in the Western World. It would do much to safeguard the future of freedom if young people in multitude would read such books as, for example, Joseph Novak's "The Future Is Ours, Comrade," and "No Third Path." In these books, they meet face to face the human product of Soviet communism: what Khrushchev proudly calls Communist man. As they become acquainted with this "highest" product of the system, they know why the Iron Curtain exists: without it, the party could never provide for its own interminable exercise of total power in an industrialized society; and it could never keep up that colossal misrepresentation of everything outside the orbit without which the drive for international communism would have no meaning.

It is impossible for us to detail here the full study plan for an Iron Curtain approach to the subject of communism. But in brief summary, we would say that this approach should begin with a study of the curtain itself and the elements of steel and censorship that have gone into the making of it. It should then return to Marx, and should proceed through Lenin, Stalin, and Khrushchev-with emphasis at every point on the theory and practice of divide and control. It should explore the telling contrast between what the Communists say about civil liberties, for example, and colonialismin propaganda directed at non-Communists and what they do within their sealed-off orbit. It should take account of their "class morality" and their "class language.' It should take account, no less, of

the "class" use to which they put all the machinery designed to promote international accord and good will. Not least, it should involve a journey of the mind into the orbit: for a study of Communist man in the making.

In the end, we believe, against this background of fact and implication, our young people should be given a chance to weigh, one after another, the major propaganda appeals currently being directed at young non-Communist minds. They should also be invited to become acquainted with themselves as targets: to estimate their own vulnerabilities to one type of propaganda and another; to see what discontents and restlessnesses in their own minds are estimated by the Communists to be exploitable; and, most important of all, to see how their own best wishes for the human future can be turned aside from their natural path and diverted to one of Communist choice, without they themselves being aware of what is taking place.

Almost before we know it, these students in our classes will be parents and teachers, members of the business community and of voluntary organizations, citizens and officeholders. As they try to preserve and extend our hard-won human freedoms, they will have to cope with all the problems of an age of vast and unpredictable change. These alone would be enough to test the capacities of any generation. All along the line, however, they will also have to cope with Communist efforts to make their efforts fail. A decent respect, we might say, for our students and for the human future impels us to do what we can to help them get ready for the task of being free in an age like this and of making freedom the heritage of the future.

SOME PROBLEMS INVOLVED IN TEACHING ABOUT
COMMUNISM IN THE SCHOOLS

(By Rev. Stanley Parry, C.S.C., head, Political Science Department, University of Notre Dame)

Since every purposeful action involves the exercise of prudence in the use of means, it is a matter of elementary wisdom that one considers the means carefully. In the case of the attempt to inform future American citizens of the nature and characteristics of communism this counsel of wisdom requires that the process of education involved be carefully analyzed. The object of the analysis attempted here is limited in its scope primarily by the competence of the writer. But such limits as are set may be justified rather than rationalized on the ground that the problems examined are viewed with the intent of avoiding predictable opportunities for error. It lies in the province of the skilled educationalist to determine the specific content and procedures of the educational process.

While there can be little debate over the desirability of having a citizenry accurately informed concerning the menace of communism, some may question whether an already overburdened school system should undertake this additional task. A fairly good argument may be made for this point. As a result of a growing tendency to solve all our problems of order through the educational system, the grade and high school curriculum of the average school is bloated with courses of questionable educational value. The waste of time involved is the least of the evils. Far more substantial is the distraction of the system from its primary function: the transfer of skills and culture from one generation to the next. To add still another subject to this crowded curriculum in any manner, burdens and further inhibits the proper functioning of the system. Moreover, little positive value can be derived from the study of an essentially erroneous set of ideas by youngsters too immature to benefit from the process of dialectic among ideas.

The cogency of this argument demands, in response, a close analysis indeed of the reasons why schools should inform students of the true nature of communism. The value of such analysis is that it gives important guidelines for the manner in which a course on communism should be offered.

We take it, as a first principle of the early stages of education, that nothing should be included in the curriculum that interferes with the main task of imparting culture and skills to young people. Such a principle immediately raises doubts about the desirability of courses, for example in traffic safety, dancing, and the like. But this same principle becomes, in our day, the basic reason why a course on communism should be offered. Culture, the human content of a civilization, cannot be transferred from generation to generation in a vacuum. For the process of transfer is deeply involved in the very process of living. When the transfer of culture is static, formal,

purely historical and unrelated to the conditions surrounding the transfer, then the culture begins to die. It is transferred without the capacity itself for survival. Each age has its particular problems of transfer. And these problems derive from the conditions of the age. It is essential therefore to any effective transfer of culture that the transfer be related vitally to the major constitutive factors of the age. It is only on this condition that the culture has a capacity, not only for survival, but also for further development.

It should be obvious that whatever other characteristics of our age one may identify, communism is a major one. It should also be obvious that the question of the survival of Western culture, with its exalted conceptions of freedom and human dignity, will be answered in large part by the manner in which the West confronts communism. It would seem then, that any effective transfer of Western culture in our age must have, built into it, the capacity to cope successfully with communism. The issue here is not whether children should be indoctrinated with specific policies against communism. Such an approach would violate, in the seed, the freedom of the future citizens to live their own national life, to make their own policy when that grave duty falls to them. We should let our children alone on the policy level. Our history of success has not indicated any particular or exceptional capacity for policy in the present generation. Nor is the issue here whether the youth of the country should be taught to hate persons who subscribe to a doctrine like communism. The youngters would be gravely injured by such a process, for personal hatred corrodes the life of the one hating. The issue here is precisely that Communist ideology should be understood accurately. This means that an organized set of ideas should be perceived in their unity as the negation of the principles on which Western civilization rests. The perception should be the result of real understanding, not of indoctrination. Moreover this means that the future citizen should know that this set of ideas is backed by organized power capable of turning the negation inherent in them into historical reality. The objective of such a course on communism should be to turn out a citizenry who can think about communism calmly and realistically, without succumbing to a false fear or to an even more false security before this threat.

The examination of communism in the schools can be made an integral part of the educational objective by approaching communism as the survival aspect of the positive transfer of a vital culture. Handled in this way, teaching about communism becomes not only desirable in our schools but even necessary. Its presence in the curriculum involves no sacrifice of essential objectives in the teaching process. For this is not simply an addition to the program. Rather it appears as an inward adjustment of education to the realities of the contemporary world. This adjustment is the price of survival of the culture that is being transferred.

From this justification of a course about communism we have already identified a few guidelines for method. The course must be taught in such a way as to be, in fact, the survival aspect of culturation. The course, therefore, will not be anti-Russian nor anti-Chinese, but anti-Communist. The course must focus on ideas and their consequences. The course, finally, should not constitute a brainwashing operation in favor of any particular foreign policy. Policy consists