When Newpapers Ruled the World

When Newpapers Ruled the World

What is the purpose of a newspaper?

Do newspapers cover current issues that involve more than a difference of philosophy, or political viewpoints?

And are the financial powers behind them control national governments and multinational corporations; promote world government through control of media, foundation grants, and education; and controls and guides the issues of the day?

If this so, then they control most print news options available to the public, thus having done all these things to promote the "New World Order" have controlled public thought for over seventy years.

Baron M.A. Rothschild wrote, "Give me control over a nation's currency and I care not who makes its laws."

Thomas Jefferson wrote: "The Central Bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the principles and form of our Constitution...if the American people allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

Georgetown professor Dr. Carroll Quigley (Bill Clinton's mentor while at Georgetown) wrote about the goals of the investment bankers who control central banks: "... nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole... controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences."

Can this also be said of newspapers?

Martin Demgen: “For the first decade of this century I represented newspaper workers who were members of the Minnesota Newspaper Guild - primarily editorial (newsroom) employees at Minnesota's two largest papers. Thus, I was an intimate witness to the demise of large, metro papers across the country. Along with the loss of tens of thousands of well paying, professional jobs, there is an even greater tragedy for the common welfare of our people.”

“Content has been lost as well as accountable sourcing. For most of our lives we could turn on the CBS evening news and hear "as reported today in the Toledo Blade" or "according to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer" as the lead in to countless stories. When those reporters, photographers and columnists go away, including many that work for the major networks, then the remaining sources; Fox, Drudge and the legions of reporters who matter on the internet can say anything with impunity to a public without the time or the where with all or the inclination to find the truth if, indeed, it is actually available. Of course newspapers tended to have a political slant but this bias tended to be kept on the op/ed page and you could trust the double sourced, fact checked stories that you read. The current trend has and will continue to diminish our democracy.”

Kevin Magnuson: “Remember, there's more to a newspaper than what the ink put on the paper. Newspapers are a part of American history. if we should down size or get rid of a local paper all together we've not only gotten rid of a part of America but also a part of all of us.”

Mark Curtis: “The problem with newspapers is that they are slow.

Although I still have my paper delivered every day at 11 am, I find myself reading versions of news stories that I know have already been updated three or four times on the internet. And, sadly, this is especially true of some of the most critical news. For instance, a natural disaster, a breaking human interest story, political and armed conflict... all have usually evolved beyond the ability of the newspaper to keep up.

Newspapers are now filling the role of an archive rather than a source of new information. They are good for stories that have a perceived ending like sports scores, decisions at local meetings, local event summaries, who was honored at such-and-such gathering.

In addition, newspapers' traditional proprietary product, the long-term, investigative reporting to produce a hard-hitting expose' has been usurped by the internet as well. Instead of one reporter slogging through facts and following up on leads, hundreds of online readers, bloggers, etc. can contribute to the development of a story in real time.

Finally, a major problem with the newspaper is the physical constraints of the product itself. Printed media are governed by an advertising-to-content ratio. Look at any media kit and you will almost always find a statement from the publisher stating that they follow a formula. In addition, if all of the advertising and content that needs to get out to the public happens to fill five pages of print, something important must be cut or edited so that everything fits into four pages. I can assure you that the ads will never be cut for they are the lifeblood.

In electronic media, there is no such thing as a "page". Therefore stories can be as long or short as they need to be to tell the news in its entirety.

While I mourn the decline of the newspapers as a romantic concept like the family farm and surreys with fringes on top, the torch is surely passing.”

Lori Linder: “Newspapers are slow as Mark says, but if you want a more in-depth account, it serves the purpose. TV news, in my opinion, is like reading the headlines of a newspaper. And much, much too often TV is WRONG! I've been at an event numerous times only to watch the news anchors or reporters tell about the event and it's not even close. I like holding a newspaper in my hands. I like that it's always laid out the same - major news on the front and world news inside the first section (Star Tribune), editorial page on the left side, obituaries, a separate Business section, Sports, and my favorite - Variety. It's much harder to find all those stories online. If I want lots of opinions or perspectives of a particular story, I'll look online at a variety of sources, but overall, give me a newspaper to hold in my hand.”

Newspapers are the voice of local society and neighborhoods

J. Edward Grimsley retired in 1995 as chairman of the Richmond Times-Dispatch's Editorial Board; “Today the public needs the services of alert and aggressive newspapers more than ever. Governments have become so large, so complex and so intrusive that even the most intelligent citizen will need help in comprehending their scope, their policies and their actions. But comprehend citizens must if they are to use the most powerful governing tool they possess — their right to vote — constructively and effectively. If Jefferson considered newspapers indispensable in his simpler era, what would he think of their role today?”

“In addition to the thoroughness of its coverage, the newspaper has another asset of supreme importance. It coveys a reassuring sense of responsibility. It is a highly visible community institution that clearly identifies the people responsible for its content — its owners, its publisher, its editors and its reporters. That their own personal reputations can be affected by their performances is a compelling reason for them to maintain the integrity of the newspaper's operations.”

“Consider the justification for this viewpoint. Through the years, newspapers have served as the eyes and ears and often the voice and conscience of the people. They do for average citizens what it is impractical for average citizens to do for themselves: monitor the intricate activities of local, state and national governments; search the nooks and crannies of city hall, courthouses, state houses, Congress and the White House for evidence of corruption, misconduct and egregious incompetence; evaluate the complexities of powerful businesses and cultural institutions and analyze social and economic conditions that can profoundly affect the commonweal. Through their editorials and opinion columns they participate in public debates on issues of the day. Most will invite their readers to become involved by, among other ways, writing letters to the editor.”

Read J. Edward Grimsley’s entire article http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/oped/2012/jun/29/tdopin02-grimsley-jeffersonian-ideals-necessitate--ar-2021212

America's Greece By Ben Shapiro

America's Greece By Ben Shapiro

June 14, 2012

Subscribe to Ben Shapiro's posts "Right Views, Right Now" blogs.

In California, the mayor of a major city has decided that it's time to renegotiate union pensions, which are bankrupting the municipality; more specifically, he wants to raise the retirement age. The governor of the state wants to revamp the welfare system, forcing people to get back to work within two years rather than four. The state government has worked with the California Highway Patrol to implement furloughs amounting to a 5 percent pay cut. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Unified School District has forced teachers unions to accept 10 furlough days, amounting to a 5 percent pay cut.

Here's the crazy thing: All of the governmental officials are Democrats.

Reality has smashed the Golden State across the face with an iron fist. In fact, all of the measures that Democrats are taking in California will surely fail — they're half-measures. The state suffers from a $16 billion deficit and has over $500 billion in unfunded pension liabilities. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's pension reform wouldn't even make a dent. Gov. Jerry Brown's welfare reform would save just $880 million — and meanwhile, recent studies show that $69 million in welfare cash is spent in casinos, cruise ships and Hawaii every year. The new deal with the CHP won't touch the CHP pension problem, which amounts to more than $3 billion per year. The LAUSD's furloughing will save a few bucks but won't touch its $390 million deficit.

California, in short, is royally screwed. But this is what happens when a state Californicates itself.

For several decades, the state of California has ignored all calls to fiscal responsibility. Instead, its voters have elected big-spending liberal after big-spending liberal to the state legislature. Even now, Gov. Brown enjoys an approval rating of approximately 43 percent, and a huge majority of California voters support Brown's proposed massive tax hikes.

But the state's economy is upside-down.

Businesses have been fleeing in droves. There's nobody left to pay the taxes anymore. And so California is left in a peculiar political situation: The folks who elect politicians aren't the folks who pay the taxes. And the folks who pay the taxes will soon be headed to Texas. What happens when a bankrupt state tries to hand out nonexistent money from absent taxpayers?

Utter chaos.

We've already seen what happens when major American cities such as Detroit collapse. The earners take off; the moochers stay and vote themselves benefits. With a smaller and smaller group of people paying for those benefits, the burden becomes too much to bear; soon, there's no money left at all. The city dies.

California is dying. Even Democrats recognize it, which is why they're trying European-style, tepid austerity measures.

And yet, on a national level, Democrats continue to lie to the American public. They suggest that if the federal government pursues the same policies that got California into this mess — all the way down to California's new $68 billion idiotic high- speed rail — the country will somehow perform precisely contrary to California.

It's nonsense. But it does suggest one thing: The Democrats, on a national level, don't have America's best interests at heart. Democrats in California never had California's best interests at heart; they merely had their own political interests at heart. The results show it: a bankrupt state, utterly dominated by Democrats. Democratic legislators are fat and happy; citizens are told to eat cake.

President Obama and his Democratic cronies now want to follow California's lead. The rest of the country, however, can look at California and see a domestic Greece at hand. A few more states like it and there won't be anyone left to pay the freight. The United States becomes the European Union.

Ben Franklin " When people find they can vote themselves money, it will be the end of our Republic"

ANYTHING WRONG WITH CAPITALISM?

ANYTHING WRONG WITH CAPITALISM?

We may ask, then, what specifically is wrong with our capitalistic system of private enterprise?

What is wrong with production or with trying to improve our standard of living?

What is wrong with a profit, or with private ownership of capital, or with competition?

Is this not the true American way of life?

Nothing is necessarily wrong with these values. There are certainly worse motives than the profit motive. A refugee from communism is reported to have observed: "What a delight to be in the United States where things are produced and sold with such a nice clean motive as making a profit."

I am not an economist, and it is beyond the scope of this article to attempt a revision of our economic theory. I am tempted, however, to make a couple of observations about these traditional economic concepts: For example, the concept of economic man as being motivated by self-interest not only is outmoded by the best current facts of the social sciences, but also fails to appeal to the true nobility of spirit of which we are capable.

The concept of the free and competitive market is a far cry from the highly controlled and regulated economy in which business must operate today. General Motors did not appear to want to put Chrysler out of business, and apparently the union also decided to take the heat off Chrysler rather than to press its economic advantage to the logical conclusion.

The assumption that everyone is out to destroy his competitors does not explain the sharing of technology through trade associations and journals. No, we also have tremendous capacity for cooperation when challenged by larger visions. We are daily denying the Darwinian notion of the "survival of the fittest" which, incidentally, William Graham Sumner, one of the nineteenth-century apologists for our economic system, used for justifying unbridled self-interest and competition.

Certainly the traditional concept of private ownership of capital does not quite correspond to the realities of today's control of large blocks of capital by insurance companies and trusteed funds.

The notion of individual security through the accumulation of savings has largely given way to the collectivist means of group insurance, company annuities, and Social Security.

The concept that all profits belong to the stockholders is no longer enthusiastically supported by either the government or the unions since both are claiming an increasing cut.

And so, while we may argue that the system of private enterprise is self-regulatory and therefore offers maximum individual freedom, the simple, cold fact is that it is in ever-increasing degree a managed or controlled economy-partly at the insistence of the voters, but largely as the result of the inevitable economic pressures and the continued trend toward bigness.

Some call this globalism and some imperialism.

Anyone who became a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford was educated one year in their own discipline and one year in Cecil John Rhodes concept of imperialism.  Two thirds of the third world Rhodes Scholars are now in charge of their countries financial system.

Regardless of the rightness or wrongness of these changes in our system of enterprise, the changes have been considerable, and I doubt that classical economic theory can be used as an adequate rationale of its virtues.

I am therefore not particularly optimistic about the efficacy of the current campaign to have businessmen "save the private enterprise system and the American way of life" by engaging in wholesale economic education.

What is wrong is more a matter of goals and purposes-of our assumptions about what we are trying to do and how we can dignify and improve ourselves in the doing.

There is nothing wrong with production, but we should ask ourselves: "Production for what?" Do we use people for production or production for people? How can production be justified if it destroys personality and human values both in the process of its manufacture and by its end use?

Clarence B. Randall of Inland Steel in his book, A Creed for Free Enterprise, says: “We have come to worship production as an end in itself, which of course it is not. It is precisely there that the honest critic of our way of life makes his attack and finds us vulnerable. Surely there must be for each person some ultimate value, some purpose, some mode of self-expression that makes the experience we call life richer and deepens.”

So far, so good, Mr. Randall-

But now notice how he visualizes industry making its contribution to this worthy objective: To produce more and more with less and less effort is merely treading water unless we thereby release time and energy for the cultivation of the mind and the spirit and for the achievement of those ends for which Providence placed us on this earth.

Perhaps we should ask; what is the really important difference between what was the Russian system of communism- that now the rules China and the Western economic system?

Both worship production and are determined to produce more efficiently, and do. Both worship science. Both have tremendously improved the standard of living of their people. Both share the wealth. Both develop considerable loyalties for their system.

True, in China capital is controlled by the state while in the West it is theoretically controlled by individuals, although in actual practice, through absentee ownership, it is controlled to a considerable extent by central planning agencies and bureaus, both public and private.

No, the real difference is in the philosophy about people and how they may be used as means to ends. It is a difference in the assumptions made about the origin of rights-whether the individual is endowed with rights by his Creator as Thomas Jefferson believed or yields these only voluntarily to civil authority designated by him, or whether rights originate in force and in the will of the government.

Is God a myth, or is He the final and absolute judge to whom we are ultimately responsible?

Are all standards of conduct merely man-made and relative, or absolute and eternal?

Is man a meaningless happenstance of protoplasm, or is he a divine creation with a purpose, with potential for improvement, and with a special destiny in the over-all scheme of things?

Mr. Martin Chekel, a noted international businessman and author of the thought provoking “Managing America” six book series and the retrospective eight book series “The Diary of American Foreign Policy 1938 – 1945” that laid the foundation for US foreign policy the past seventy-four years.

Thomas Jefferson’s Crusade against Ignorance

A Series of interviews with Thomas Jefferson and his crusade against ignorance

Mr. President, your time in France helped frame your commitment to educate the common people; can you explain your thoughts?

President Jefferson: “Our act for freedom of religion is extremely applauded. The ambassadors & ministers of the several of Europe resident at this court have asked of me copies to send to their sovereigns, and it is inserted at full length in several books now in the press; among others, in the new Encyopedie. I think it will produce consider-able good even in these countries where ignorance, superstition, poverty, & oppression of body & mind in every form, are so firmly settled on the mass of the people, that their redemption from can never be hoped.”

“If the Almighty had begotten a thousand sons, instead of one, they would not have sufficed for this task. If all the sovereigns of Europe were to set themselves to work to emancipate the minds of their subjects from present ignorance & prejudices, & that as zealously as now endeavor the contrary, a thousand years would not them on that high ground on which our common people now setting out.”

“Ours could not have been so fairly into the hands of their own common sense had they not separated from their parent stock & kept from contamination, either from them, or the other people of the old world by the intervention of so wide an ocean”

“To know the worth of this, one must see the want of it here. I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised, for the preservation of freedom and happiness. If anybody thinks that kings, nobles, or priests are conservators of the public happiness send them here. It best school in the universe to cure them of that folly.”

“They will see here with their own cues that these descriptions en are an abandoned confederacy against the happiness of the mass of the people. The omnipotence of their effect cannot be better proved than in this country particularly, where notwithstanding the finest soil upon earth, the finest to under heaven, and a people of the most benevolent, the most gay and amiable character of which the human form is susceptible, where such a people I say, surrounded by so many blessings from nature, are yet loaded with misery by kings, nobles and priests, and by them alone”

“Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish & improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils, and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the  thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests ales who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance”

"When government ceases to regulate and begins to manage, ceases to be an impartial umpire in the economic game and becomes a player, it attempts to use the vast financial power of blank check government, uses the prestige of the executive office to purge truth from the undesired representatives of the people, and uses an excess of law is despotism”   Sir Francis Bacon

Mr. Martin Chekel, a noted international businessman and author of the thought provoking “Managing America” six book series and the retrospective eight book series “The Diary of American Foreign Policy 1938 – 1945” that laid the foundation for US foreign policy the past seventy-four years.

Education for Freedom Interviews with Robert Hutchins

Education for Freedom Interviews with Robert Hutchins

To be free a man must understand the tradition in which he lives. A great book is one which yields up through the liberal arts a clear and important understanding of our tradition. An education which consisted of the liberal arts as understood through great books and of great books understood through the liberal arts would be one and the only one which would enable us to comprehend the tradition in which we live. 

It must follow that if we want to educate our students for freedom, we must educate them in the liberal arts and in the great books. And this education we must give them, not by the age of forty, but by the time they are eighteen, or at the latest twenty.

Robert Maynard Hutchins was educated at Oberlin and Yale, and his speaking abilities were already recognized when he addressed the annual alumni dinner during his senior year. After teaching for a year and a half at a private school in Lake Placid, New York, Hutchins was invited by Yale president James R. Angell to return as secretary of the university. While working fulltime, Hutchins completed law school, and upon receiving his degree in 1925 was appointed a lecturer. He was made a full professor, and received the additional responsibilities as the appointed Dean of the Law School. There he helped organize the Institute of Human Relations and promoted the use of modern psychological studies to evaluate rules of evidence. Hutchins’s views on education and public issues appeared in No Friendly Voice, The Higher Learning in America, and others. Later books include The University of Utopia , Some Observations on American Education, and The Learning Society.

Mr. Hutchins, as a social issue- what is wrong with the American educational system?

Robert Hutchins: “The answer is nothing.”

Mr. Hutchins, well then, what can be done about what is wrong with American society?

Robert Hutchins: “The answer is very difficult.”

Robert Hutchins: “But all these things are as nothing compared with the menace of metaphysics. I had mildly suggested that metaphysics might unify the modern university. I knew it was a long word, but I thought my audience of learned reviewers would know what it meant. I was somewhat surprised to find that to them metaphysics was a series of balloons, floating far above the surface of the earth, which could be pulled down by vicious or weak-minded people when they wanted to win an argument. The explosion of one of these balloons or the release of the gases it contained might silence, but never convince, a wise man. The wise man would go away muttering, "Words, words, words," or "Anti-scientific," "Reactionary," or even "Fascist." Knowing that there is nothing true unless experimental science makes it so, the wise man knows that metaphysics is simply a technical name for superstition.

Mr. Hutchins, do you really believe that nothing is wrong with the education system in America?

Robert Hutchins: “Now I might as well make a clean breast of it all. I am interested in education, in morals, in intellect, and in metaphysics. I even go so far as to hold that there is a necessary relation among all these things. I am willing to assert that without one we cannot have the others and that without the others we cannot have the one with which I am primarily concerned, namely education.”

“I insist, moreover, that everything that is happening in the world today confirms the immediate and pressing necessity of pulling ourselves together and getting ourselves straight on these matters. The world is probably closer to disintegration now than at any time since the fall of the Roman Empire. If there are any forces of clarification and unification left, however slight and ineffectual they may appear, they had better be mobilized instantly, or all that we have known as Western Civilization may vanish.”

Robert Hutchins: “Though apparently insoluble, must be solved if this nation is to be preserved or to be worth preserving. These problems are not material problems. We may have faith that the vast resources of our land and the technological genius of our people will produce a supply of material goods adequate for the maintenance of that interesting fiction, the American Standard of Living.”

“We have been so preoccupied with trying to find out how to teach everybody to read anything that we have forgotten the importance of what is read. Yet it is obvious that if we succeeded in teaching everybody to read, and everybody read nothing but pulp magazines and obscene literature the last state of the nation would be no worse than the first. Literacy is not enough.”

“The common answer is that the great books are too difficult for the modern pupil. All I can say is that it is amazing how the number of too difficult books has increased in recent years. The books that are now too difficult for candidates for the doctorate were the regular fare of grammar-school boys in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Most of the great books of the world were written for ordinary people, not for professors alone. Mr. Adler and I have found that the books are more rather than less effective the younger the students are.”

Robert Hutchins ended: “No, our problems are moral, intellectual, and spiritual. The paradox of starvation in the midst of plenty illustrates the nature of our difficulties. This paradox will not be resolved by technical skill or scientific data. It will be resolved, if it is resolved at all, by wisdom and goodness.”

Mr. Hutchins, you made some observations concerning vocational education can you tell me your thoughts or your interest in the subject?

Robert Hutchins: “As a result of our interest in vocational training and current information, there is today nothing to be taught except things obviously not worth teaching. Therefore, the general conclusion of anti-intellectuals is that we must have great men and women do the teaching. Only they can make the insignificant significant. If the student learns no subject matter, his life will at least be illuminated by the radiance of these great personalities. Pay no attention to what you should teach. Get Solomon in all his glory to sit behind the desk and your pupils will get an education.”

“I think they would. The trouble is that there is only one Solomon, and he has been a long time dead. What chance have ordinary teachers like us to light up the dark recesses of the cosmetic industry or enliven the reports of the Census Bureau? We have here in truth the formula of educational futilitarianism.”

Robert Hutchins: “If the question is, then, education provides the great peaceful means of improving society; and yet, as we have seen, the character of education is determined by the character of society. Still we must not assume a defeatist attitude. The alternative to a spiritual revolution is a political revolution. I rather prefer the former. The only way to secure a spiritual revolution is through education. We must therefore attempt the reconstruction of the educational system, even if the attempt seems unrealistic or almost silly.”

“We must first determine what ideals we wish to propose for our country. I would remind you that what is honored in a country will be cultivated there. I suggest that the ideal that we should propose for the United States is the common good as determined in the light of reason."

“If we set this ideal before us, what are the consequences to the educational system? It is clear that the cultivation of the intellect becomes the first duty of the system. And the question, then, is how can the system go about its task?”

“The only way in which the ideal proposed could ever be accepted by our fellow-citizens and by the educational system would be by the gradual infiltration of this notion throughout the country. This can be accomplished only by beginning. If one college and one university-and only one-are willing to take a position contrary to the prevailing American ideology and suffer the consequences, then conceivably, over a long period of time, the character of our civilization may change.”

                                   Passage from Martin's new book

What is the Economic Value of Education?

© Copyright 2010 Martin J. Chekel

Mr. Martin Chekel, a noted international businessman and author of the thought provoking “Managing America” six book series and the retrospective eight book series “The Diary of American Foreign Policy 1938 – 1945” that laid the foundation for US foreign policy the past seventy-four years.

Chapter Five: The Education of Man

Jacques Maritain was born in Paris, France, in 1882.A graduate of the Sorbonne, he lectured at many universities in Europe and the United States before retiring from Princeton University This interview is from his book Education at the Crossroads, published in 1943.

Mr. Maritain; how do define the education of man?

Jacques Maritain:  “The Education of Man, though such a title may unintentionally seem provocative: for many of our contemporaries know primitive man, or Western man, or the man of the Renaissance, or the man of the industrial era, or the criminal man, or the bourgeois man, or the working man, but they wonder what is meant when we speak of man.”

“Of course the job of education is not to shape man-in himself, but to shape a particular child belonging to a given nation, a given social environment, a given historical age. Yet before being a child of the twentieth century, an American-born or European-born child, a gifted or a retarded child, this child is a child of man. “

“Before being a civilized man-at least I hope I am-and a Frenchman nurtured in Parisian intellectual circles, I am a man. If it is true, moreover, that our chief duty consists, according to the profound saying of the Greek poet, Pindar, in becoming who we are, nothing is more important for each of us, or more difficult, than to become a man.”

“Thus the chief task of education is above all to shape man, or to guide the evolving dynamism through which man forms himself as a man. That is why I might have taken for my title The Education of Man. We shall not forget that the word education has a triple yet intermingled connotation, and refers either to any process whatsoever by means of which man is shaped and led toward fulfillment (education in its broadest sense), or to the task of formation which adults intentionally undertake with regard to youth, or, in its strictest sense, to the special task of schools and universities."

Mr. Maritain; as to man, how do define man?

Jacques Maritain:  “Man is not merely an animal of nature, like a skylark or a bear. Due to the very fact that he is endowed with a knowing power which is unlimited and which nonetheless only advances step by step, man cannot progress in his own specific life, both intellectually and morally, without being helped by collective experience previously accumulated and preserved, and by a regular transmission of acquired knowledge. In order to reach self-determination, for which he is made, he needs discipline and tradition, which will both weigh heavily on him and strengthen him so as to enable him to struggle against them-which will enrich that very tradition-and the enriched tradition will make possible new struggles, and so forth.”

“From childhood on, man's condition is to suffer from and defend himself against the most worthy and indispensable supports which nature has provided for his life, and thus to grow amidst and through conflict, if only energy, love, and good will quicken his heart.”

“In answer to our question, "What is man?" we may give the Greek, Jewish, and Christian idea of man: man as an animal endowed with reason, whose supreme dignity is in the intellect; and man as a free individual in personal relation with God, whose supreme righteousness consists in voluntarily obeying the law of God; and man as a sinful and wounded creature called to divine life and to the freedom of grace, whose supreme perfection consists of love.”

Mr. Maritain; how can the child be directed toward such a goal?

Jacques Maritain: If the nature and spirit of the child are the principal agent in education, then obviously, the fundamental dispositions to be fostered in this principal agent are the very basis of the task of education. Without pretending to a complete enumeration, I should say that the fundamental dispositions to be fostered are the five following ones:

“First; the love of truth, which is the primary tendency of any intellectual nature. That children tell lies is obvious, yet most often the lies of children are not lies but only a spontaneous mythology of the imagination. Besides I am not thinking now of a love of telling the truth, but of the love for knowing the truth.”

“Second; the love of good and justice, and even the love of heroic feats, and this too is natural to the children of man.”

“Third; that disposition which might be called simplicity and openness with regard to existence. A disposition which is natural, though often thwarted by egotism or pride or unhappy experiences, and which is so elemental that we cannot easily express it in terms of psychology. For nothing is more basic and elemental than that to which it refers, that is, existence. I would describe this disposition as the attitude of a being who exists gladly, is unashamed of existing, stands upright in existence, and for whom to be and to accept the natural limitations of existence are matters of equally simple assent."

"Trees and animals are like this, though only in a physical way. In man this has to pass over and be drawn into the sphere of psychic life. We can interpret in this way the saying of Emerson: "Be first a good animal." Such a disposition is still far from the human virtues of magnanimity and humility, but it constitutes their natural soil; and it is so deeply and elementarily vital that the wounds it happens to undergo in many children, often very early, from family life and social life spoken of today as an inferiority complex with its manifold morbid "compensations"-are especially grievous and difficult to cure. "Fear and trembling," undoubtedly, are part of the great experiences of the human soul when it has become mature and enters the mysterious avenues of the spirit, but they are bad beginnings in education.”

“Fourth; the fundamental disposition concerns the sense of a job well done, for next to the attitude toward existence there is nothing more basic in man's psychic life than the attitude toward work. I do not mean by this the habit of being hard working. I am aware that laziness in children is often not real laziness but only an absorption of the mind with the workings of vegetative growth or psychophysical hardships. I am speaking of something deeper and more human, a respect for the job to be done, a feeling of faithfulness and responsibility regarding it. A lazy man, a poet if you will, may display, when he happens to work, the most passionate attachment to the inner requirements of his work. I am convinced that when this fundamental disposition, which is the first natural move toward self-discipline, this probity in regard to work is marred, an essential basis of human morality is, lacking.”

“The fifth fundamental disposition is the sense of cooperation, which is as natural in us, and as thwarted too, as the tendency to social and political life. We are confronted today with the notion of mental training and with the opposition so frequently aired between knowledge-value and training-value.”

“Does the liberation of the mind mean that what essentially matters is not the possession of knowledge but only the development of the strength, skill, and accuracy of man's mental powers, whatever the thing to be learned may be? This question is of tremendous significance, and the wrong answer has probably gone a long way to water down contemporary education.”

“Herbert Spencer long ago pointed out that if we give our pupils the knowledge which is "of most worth," as he put it, it is incredible that the pursuit of the best kind of knowledge should not also afford the best mental discipline. From quite another philosophical point of view than that of Spencer's, I think his statement to be a golden one.”

“The opposition between knowledge-value and training-value comes from an ignorance of what knowledge is, from the assumption that knowledge is a cramming of materials into a bag, and not the most vital action by means of which things are spiritualized in order to become one with the spirit. In the knowledge which is "of most worth," notably in the liberal arts, to give the upper hand to mental training, over beauty to be delighted in* or the truth to be apprehended and assented to, would be to turn upside down the natural and vital tendency of the mind.”

“Truth is not a set of ready-made formulas to be passively recorded, so as to have the mind closed and enclosed by them. Truth does not depend on us but on what is.”

Mr. Martin Chekel, a noted international businessman and author of the thought provoking “Managing America” six book series and the retrospective eight book series “The Diary of American Foreign Policy 1938 – 1945” that laid the foundation for US foreign policy the past seventy-four years.

Managing America- What is the Economic Value of Education?

The education of man, in terms of practical value remains in doubt, like other values about which men have disputed since the birth of Cain and Abel; the practical value of the educational universe, both public and private has never been stated in dollars.

This economic problem concerning the value of education, started in England in 1838, has continued for years, unconsciously, as a vegetable, the outside world working as it never had worked before.

In the history of education, the most striking phenomenon is that schools of learning, which at one epoch are alive with a ferment of genius, in a succeeding generation exhibit merely pedantry and routine.

The reason is; they are overladen with inert ideas. Education with inert ideas is not only useless: it is, above all things, harmful. From the very beginning of education, the child should experience the joy of discovery. 

The discovery which they make, is that general ideas, give an understanding of that stream of events which pours through there life. 

By understanding I mean more than a mere logical analysis, though that is included.

Of course, education should be useful, whatever your aim in life.

In our system of education we are to guard against this mental dryrot. The result of teaching small parts of a large number of subjects is the passive reception of disconnected ideas, not illumined with any spark of vitality.

But if education is not useful, what is it?

Education was useful to Saint Augustine, Thomas Jefferson, and it was useful to Napoleon. It is useful, because understanding is useful, if only the use of knowledge of the past helps equip us for use in the present.

We have to ask the question; what knowledge best fits a man for the discharge of present daily functions and are these functions wholly overlooked in education?

What is the need for school courses which, bear upon economic, political and social duties?

And are these the only ones that occupy a prominent place in History?

Mr. Martin Chekel, a noted international businessman and author of the thought provoking “Managing America” six book series and the retrospective eight book series “The Diary of American Foreign Policy 1938 – 1945” that laid the foundation for US foreign policy the past seventy-four years.