Address at the Centennial Celebration Banquet of the National Education Association.

Miss Shaw, President of this Association, Secretary Folsom, Members of this distinguished audience:

It is a privilege to take part in this Centennial Anniversary of the National Education Association. Like all citizens, I am proud of the progress American education has made over the past 100 years. Like all citizens, I am indebted to the generations who built our schools, and I am glad to pay tribute to the schoolteachers of America who give their lives in the service of our children. And for the work the National Education Association has done to promote the goals of popular education, I am happy to express on behalf of the citizens of all the United States the appreciation of each of us.

Now, not always did the provisions of educational opportunity for all seem vitally important to most Americans. A hundred years ago, when Abraham Lincoln spoke of his boyhood, he said "there was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education." At one time Lincoln even decided to give up trying to study for a public career because he felt that his preparatory education was woefully inadequate. What a tragic loss it would have been if Lincoln's lack of early education had prevented him from the full realization of the great powers of his heart and mind! One wonders how many young Americans have been handicapped by a similar lack of education. How many potential Lincolns have been lost to us because there were no schools for them to attend-no good teachers to excite their ambitions!

Incidentally, a good teacher has been defined as an individual who can understand those who are not very good at explaining, and explain to those who are not very good at understanding.

Now here is another question that we might ponder. I know there is no use going over past mistakes, but perhaps in this question there is a lesson for the future. It is this: Might this country not have been spared the senseless grief of the War Between the States and a just and peaceable solution to its causes reached, if there had been more men of education, more men of wisdom, in positions of leadership and among our people just a hundred years ago?

The hope of the world is that wisdom can arrest conflict between brothers. I believe that war is the deadly harvest of arrogant and unreasoning minds. And I find grounds for this belief in the wisdom literature of Proverbs. It says in effect this: Panic strikes like a storm and calamity comes like a whirlwind to those who hate knowledge and ignore their God.

Now because Lincoln had such a hunger for education, and because he saw our country endure such a tragic experience with the deadly fruits of ignorance and of prejudice, he exalted the ideals of education. In the very beginning of his political career, Lincoln made clear to his constituents how he stood on this important matter. He said: "Upon the subject of education, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in." "For my part," he said, "I desire to see the time when education, and by its means, morality, sobriety, industry and enterprise, shall become much more general than at present, and I should be gratified to have it in my power to contribute something to the advancement of any measure which might have a tendency to accelerate"--the wider education of our people.

In the year the National Education Association was formed there was introduced into the Congress the first College Land Grant Bill, a bill donating certain Federal lands to the states and territories to provide a perpetual fund for the purpose of increasing the facilities of higher education across the country. The Bill did not pass in 1857, but when Mr. Lincoln became President he was pledged to its support, and during his administration it was passed.

Lincoln signed that bill at a critical moment in the Nation's history--at a time when hopes for an early end of the War Between the States were broken by the costly and indecisive battles of the Peninsular Campaign. It is significant that at the moment when Lincoln's military hopes were at their lowest ebb, he signed a bill providing for the rapid increase in our educational resources.

The two events can be closely related. The strength of our arms is always related to the strength of our minds. Our schools are strong points in our national defense. Our schools are more important than our Nike batteries, more necessary than our radar warning nets, and more powerful even than the energy of the atom. This is true, if for no other reason than that modern weapons must be manned by highly educated personnel if they are to be effective, and the energy of the atom can only be understood and developed by the most highly trained minds in the country.

But far more important than this our defense must always rest on clear comprehension of the basic values we seek to protect-the true nature of the contest between human dignity and regimentation.

Thus, the education of our children is of prime importance to each of us. Moreover, to maintain the common defense and to guarantee the progress of our Nation, each of us must discharge his own rightful and proper role in developing the intellectual capacities of all children living in every corner of our land. Each individual, each community has a vital function to perform.

For I remind you that the great colleges and universities that sprang up under Lincoln's College Land Grant Bill were not Federal projects. By no means! Most of the capital and organization for these institutions was provided by the States themselves. In this, as in all other things, Lincoln believed that government should do for people only what they could not well do for themselves. The Land Grant Bill furnished the stimulus for greater local effort. At present, the Land Grant colleges and universities receive most of their support and all of their direction from local citizens. Also, a healthy proportion of support comes from the students themselves. I add this because it is unwise to make education too cheap. If everything is provided freely, there is a tendency to put no value on anything. Education must always have a certain price on it; even as the very process of learning itself must always require individual effort and initiative. Education is a matter of discipline--and more, it is a matter of self-discipline.

Lincoln's faith in education is part of America's faith in the ability of people to govern themselves. When men and women know the facts and are concerned about them, we believe they will make the correct decisions. Prejudice and unreasoning opposition will more and more give way before the clean flood of knowledge.

This has always been my faith in democracy. Lincoln and education are closely associated in the memories of my boyhood. Indeed, the first school I attended, sixty years ago, was called the Lincoln Grade School. It was located across the street from my home in Abilene, Kansas. Nowadays, they refer to it as the "Old" Lincoln School because, old and dilapidated, it happily was replaced some years ago by a larger and stronger school.

And so each generation must build better schools for its children. Especially in today's complex and challenging world, we need stronger and bigger schools in which to train our children to accept their magnificent opportunities and grave responsibilities--opportunities for life even richer than ours, responsibilities for the defense of their homeland and strengthening of the free world. This puts a greater burden on education than ever before--a greater burden on our teachers, classrooms and curriculum.

The school building program of America suffered three grievous setbacks in this generation: the Depression of the 30's, the War of the 40's, and the Korean crisis of the 50's. These three periods caused a drying up of normal schoolroom replacement and expansion--almost like three successive droughts. During the Depression we were unable to build schools for lack of money; during the war we were unable to build schools for the lack of men and materials because most of these resources were diverted into the war effort. The same applied to the war in Korea and to very much of the cold war of later years.

So now our educational plant is not ample to cope with the enormous burden of present and future enrollments. Therefore, it is my firm belief that there should be Federal help to provide stimulus to correct an emergency situation; that help does not imply a permanent acceptance of responsibility which belongs, not to Washington, but to the local governments and to the local communities and to the people themselves.

Federal help in building schools will not mean federal control. After these new schools are built, after the bricks are laid and the mortar is dry, the federal mission will be completed. All control and use of those schools will be in the hands of the states and of the localities.

Every phase of the educational process, especially in our system of public schools, is important to all.

Teachers need our active support and encouragement. They are doing one of the most necessary and exacting jobs in the land. They are developing our most precious national resource: our children, our future citizens. They can do their best only as we show them our appreciation and offer them our individual help. We hear a lot about the deficiencies and woeful conditions of education in America, a criticism that suggests a few questions. How many parents visited their children's schools? How many parents have offered to relieve some of the routine burdens of the teachers, or invited them to a friendly supper at home? How many parents have tried to make the teacher a real partner in the responsibility and the priceless privilege of educating our children?

My friends, I have asked these questions often to groups with whom I have met across the land--business leaders, professional leaders, people of all walks and types. I have been astonished that when I ask these questions and for a raising of hands that the answer is "Yes." How many fathers in our land cannot say they ever saw their sons' or their daughters' teachers--and this whether they are in private or public schools?

Moreover, they have looked at me like I was a little bit off my rocker for asking the question. But before my mind is always this picture: I had to go into Germany immediately after the shooting was over, indeed, before it was, and I learned then that one of the practices of dictatorship is to allow no interference on the part of the parents with the schooling of their children. The children are taken over. It was Hitler's trick to get these youngsters and teach them what he wanted them to know and to live that life. Parents were not even allowed in the rooms.

I submit that the parent's duty of helping and making a partner of the teacher in the education of his or her child is one of the greatest privileges of free government.

Lincoln had a great respect for his teachers, that is, for the few he was able to find on the American frontier. But these few pioneer teachers must have had a great influence upon him, because in later life Lincoln was able to recall each by name. Just before he came to Washington as President-elect, Lincoln wrote a short account of his life. In this autobiography, directly following a description of his immediate family, Lincoln wrote about his schoolteachers. He was still able to recall, thirty years later, their full names and recorded his sentiments in gratitude and affection.

With this example before me, I was proud to take part in the first White House Conference on Education two years ago. This was a nationwide conference of educators, school administrators and citizens concerned with the school problems of our day. All of them were devoted to the advancement of education across the land. From these White House Conferences--held in Washington, and more appropriately, in 4,000 local communities in every State from coast to coast--from these White House Conferences came some new ideas for strengthening the educational system of America. I trust those ideas will be useful to you of the National Education Association.

Using the words of Lincoln, I believe education is "the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in," and I join you in the hope that we in our generation may continue to accelerate the wider education of our people. In doing so, we shall be discharging one of the greatest of responsibilities and participating in one of the greatest privileges of an American citizen.

Thank you very much indeed, and Good Night.