Telegram to the Chairman of the Foundation for Religious Action in the Social and Civil Order.
[Released September 7, 1956. Dated September 6, 1956]
Dr. Charles Wesley Lowry
Chairman and Executive Director
Foundation for Religious Action
in the Social and Civil Order
Washington, D.C.
Greetings to Professor Elliott and guests of the Foundation for Religious Action in the Social and Civil Order as they discuss the subject of Communism in the Educational Curriculum.
As the new school year opens, with the largest enrollment at every educational level in American history, our teachers are presented with a matchless opportunity to teach the truth freely.
The competition for men's minds begins when they are students. This is when they must be taught to discriminate between truth and falsehood. Specifically, this is when they must be taught to discriminate between the American form of Government and the Soviet form. When they have all the facts, I am confident they will make the correct choice, as they have for the past one hundred eighty-one years.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
Note: Professor William Yandell Elliott, Professor of Government at Harvard University, was Chairman of the Commission on American Education and Communism established by the Foundation.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Telegram to the Chairman of the Foundation for Religious Action in the Social and Civil Order. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/233136