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ADDRESS BY
HONORABLE FARRIS BRYANT
DIRECTOR
OFFICE OF EMERGENCY PLANNING
BEFORE THE
ANNUAL MEETING OF THE
EDUCATION COMWSSION OF THE STATES
DENVER, COLORADO
May 9, 1967
REMARKS TO EDUCATION COMMISSION OF THE
STATES
Denver, Colorado, May 9
I am glad to be in Denver -- or. to put it more candidly -- I am
glad to be away from Washington. Eating breakfast with eyes and ears
tuned to a TV newscast; reading three or bur newspapers 8. day; watch-
ing the news ticker; reading endless government reports; talking with
others in the same articial environment -- one begins to wonder where
wishful thinking ends and reality begins.
President Johnson was joking the other day about his desire that
his appointees get away from Washington. "You need," he said. to
walk into a barbershop in some small town and discover that no one
there ever heard of you -- and is still getting along pretty well. "
Everyone in authority needs to get back to the source of his power.
It is a shame that everyone in government cannot know the humbling
experience of an election campaign. As a matter of fact, it is a shame
educators can't know that experience. Just as a government official needs
to be reminded that government exists to serve the people ~- not peOple the
government -- so educators need to be reminded that man does not live to
learn, but learns to live -- and that more abundantly.
Basically, we are all about the same business: Freedom. The young
men who have died today in Viet Nam did not do so in the cause of education,
nor urban renewal, nor of the 7% investment credit. They died for
freedom, and it is so important that we remember that.
None of us has much claim on their lives, apart from freedom.
The best thing that can be said about learning and knowledge is that it
frees man from the shackles of ignorance. The learned man has choices
the ignorant man doesn't even know exist, and it is the power to choose
which is the substance of freedom.
An editorial in a Florida newspaper suggested recently that I may
have forgotten about freedom -- may have gone to Washington and lost
my principles in that rarefied atmosphere. I hope not! That would be
too great a loss to endure.
To me, still, freedom is the supreme quality of a society; liberty
the value most to be desired.
To me. stil. God is the author of liberty and service to God the
supreme exercise of freedom.
To me, still, the least government consistent with freedom is the
best government. Mind you. I did not say just "The least government,
but "The least government consistent with freedom" And that is so vastly
different!
But to say that these principles are eternal is not to say that their
application is unchanging. Knowledge grows, means of communicating
knowledge improve, transportation broadens horizons, economic growth
changes social choices. technOIOgy changes environment, and old principles
require new applications.
For the past three months I have been on an odyssey to thirty-one of Our
sovereign states endeavoring to solve one part of the freedom equation: the
relationship between the Federal and State governments, largely in the context
of grants-in-aid.
It has been an exhilarating and exciting experience:
Exhilarating because it reminds one anew oi the
great diversity in our land, a diversity which is seen
most dramatically in our educational systems. Each
is unique; each has different ways of approaching the
educational process; each has something to contribute
to the systems of other states.
Exciting because the meetings have increased the
communication between the states, as well as between
the States and the Federal Governmnnt.
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Someone said at one of our meetings that the three greatest inventions
or discoveries, in history. were fire. the wheel, and the Federal grants-in-aid.
That may be an overstatement, but it does not overstate the challenge which is
posed by the grant in aid.
I suppose the challenge in Federal-State relations is more difficult in
the field of education than in any other area, because we deal with such valuable
material.
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Ten years ago our high schools were graduating l. 3 million youngsters
each year. and our colleges were turning out 400. 000 young men and women.
Last year high schools turned out more than 2. 5 million graduates. almost two
for every one in 1956. and our colleges 750.000 -- 85% more than a decade ago.
Merely keeping up with the demand is a vast challenge. As Governor of
Florida. I said. "In the early morning hours of the space age. we are recognizing
the need to adjust our social. economic and political institutions to new demands
being made upon them; and it is not difficult to detect that there are deep seated
resistances to some of the adjustments that may need to be made. "
All here assembled know what those differences involve. The theme of this
conference, "The Power Play for Control of Education, reects that debate. We
know how important is the discussion in the field of education. We know that this
is a traditional state role. We know that even today. with the infusion of federal
assistance. the States still carry -- and should carry -- the lion's share of the
responsibility.
We also know that in the perspective of history, we stand, not simply on
the threshold of a rearranged society. but on the threshold of a new civilization.
A wise old friend of mine, now passed on, made a speech some 20 years ago that
I have never forgotten for its symbolism. He held a string that was 50 inches
long, each inch representing 100 years. and he placed on the string a colored
button for every major significant step in the progress of man. A head for
understanding the use of fire; a head for the invention of the wheel: a bead for
the invention of gunpowder. Even at that time. a score of years ago, the end of
that string representing 1946 was so crowded with beads that they could not all
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be placed in their proper position. That congestion was as nothing compared with
the congestion we would observe il we tried thus to symbolize the last decade.
But when I speak of a new civilization it is not in the sense that rockets
will be a common moide of individual transportation. or plankton from the sea a
major source of food, or hospitals automated -- though these may come to pass;
not new in the sense that the major characteristic of the new civilization will be
some exotic thing it produces. or uses, or develops -- though these also may be
true; but new in the rate of change which has become the common denominator of
life, and new in that the key to productive living will be the ability to comprehend.
perhaps anticipate, and make use of the rapid rate of change.
Einstein. applying this thought to the physical world, conceived that the
rate of change within apparently inanimate bodies created a 4th dimension. To
the static, three-dimensional qualities of the physical world he predicted the
addition of a fourth. What I say to you now is that there is such a rate of change,
sell-sustaining and and reproductive. in the world today that there has been added
a new dimenstion to living, a fourth dimension to society.
I submit that it is that fourth dimension which is the great challenge to
education today. By our mastery of the physical world we have started a chain
reaction more pregnant with consequences for good and evil than all nuclear
reaction. We may have started it before we have built intellectual fall -out shelters.
Medical libraries are being adapted for electronic data storage and retrieval.
So rapid is the growth of medical knowledge that we may learn to remake man
before we learn what to make him.
A rise in living standards. advances in medical science and public
health administration, will control of infectious diseases, have caused
spectacular rises in longevity. One hundred years ago. one-fourth of the
new-born died before reaching 5: today they reach 45 before one -fourth die.
One -fourth can expect to live to be 83. But our economic practices and social
laws have not adapted to this change, and as of today no satisfactory provision has
been made for the beneficial use of this bonus of years, either by the individual
or society. The conquest of all communicable diseases is a foreseeable
prospect. and that combined with the development of new weapons br overcoming
the degenerative diseases will cause. is causing, change of staggering potential.
at an accelerating rate.
The multiplication of populatim, of which Florida is an example, has
assumed such proportions as to defy accommodation. The rights of individuals,
which seemed properly absolute in a day when the population had a density of
one per square mile, or ten per square mile, must be viewed in the light of the
combined rights of others when the pOpulation becomes, as it has, 100 per square
mile. The right to dig a well, to hunt game. to allow cows to roam at will, to
build a house. or to dump refuse into a river, could be unrestricted when their
exercise had no discernible effect on others. Today these rights, and all others,
can only be exercised with regard for the combined rights of the rest of the
population. Florida had a leisurely 130 years in which to accommodate to the
growth of the first 100 people per square mile. It has less than 20 years to pre-
pare for the next 100 people per square mile. The rate of change is six times as
great. and will undoubtedly increase.
Progress begets progress. Growth in education does not satisfy -- it
increases the demand for education. Expanding knowledge increases demands
for consumption, increases skills in production, a by-product of which is
increased knowledge, and increased capacity to consume.
In a world of three dimensions, with its leisurely and comfortable evolu-
tion from one stage to the next, there was time to gather around the pot-bellied
stove to discuss the few changes that the next several years would bring, time
to debate the pros and cons of different courses of action, time to adjust to
changes in life in the way one adjusted to an occasional new pair of shoes which
were basically the same as the old pair. But in this day of which the intercontinental
missile is but a symbol, in which the great antagonist is changing conditions for
which we are not prepared, leisurely adjustment is no longer compatible with
progress. or even with survival. We need not just a hot line to Moscow, to deal
with the changes in the mind of one man or the actions of one nation; we need a hot
line to tomorrow. In a world of our dimensions, where today is yesterday's
tomorrow, and tomorrow has dawned before the sun has set today, the fourth
dimension can be mastered only by the mind. Muscle will not perform the task;
natural: resources are of no sure value; a strategic advantage can be wiped out by
one invention; a stockpile can become obsolete overnight.
England ruled the world with a powerful navy for a hundred years. The
nation today that is all-powerful because of its atomic power, its jet planes or its
missiles, can be a second-rate power, or vassal, tomorrow.
The one sure resource, other than the love of God, which need never fail
us, is the educated mind stimulated by dedicated leadership and committed to enabling
man to live abundantly in this new environment.
Some months ago, Columbia University created a new institute to
examine the impact of the scientific revolution on human affairs. But you must go
beyond the examination of that impact -- you must prepare your students to live
in a world the outlines of which cannot be discerned -- a world that sustains the
impact of a continuing revolution.
The Columbia Institute hopes not only to be able to cepe with change. but
to anticipate its consequences and suggest future responses to it. That is the new
challenge to education today.
Our students must not only understand and master what is. but also what
may be, in this world of geometric change.
Man lives today on an escalator. He goes to sleep in one world and wakes
in another. He graduates from college in one world. but he must deal with, and
live in. and succeed in. another and always it is changing.
Life's targets are no longer bulls' eyes. but birds' eyes, and the birds
are in flight.
For today is yesterday's tomorrow, and tomorrow has already dawned.
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3NORABLE FARRIS BRYAb DIRECTOR CEOFEMERGENCY PLAS BF'FORE THE NNUAL MEETING OF THE [ON COMMISSION OF THE 2 DENVER, COLORADO May 9, 1967
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