"Literate but Ignorant"

More than ever before, educators and politicians across the nation were using commencement platforms as sounding boards for political and economic remedies for an ailing world. The men who did included George Marshall, William Bullitt, and Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). Only a few were old fashioned enough to avoid the merely topical, and even fewer managed to talk of commencement's traditional theme--the way to an intelligent and useful life--without bogging into platitude.

One who succeeded was Carter Davidson, 41, president of Schenectady's Union College. Said he, at the University of Buffalo: "Americans need to be warned about . . . words and ideas which look much alike but have different effects. For example, Americans often confuse size with importance . . . speed with progress . . . money with wealth . . . authority with wisdom . . . religion with theology . . . excitement with pleasure. . . .

"Music, drama and the other arts . . . have been invaded by sensationalism. Human friendship and love between men & women have been perverted . . . into mere physical excitement. Are we . . . headed for a debauch of excitement which will result in the sickness of disillusionment and the headache of regret? . . ."

Imitating v. Analyzing. . . . "We have been confused about education and training. [Training] is a process by which the pupil is taught to perform an act by imitating. [Education] should acquaint the student with ways of analyzing problems . . . he has never seen before. . . .

"We teachers . . . assume that we have established habits from which the graduate will not depart; and among these, we hope, is the habit of reading worth-while books. The average college graduate is more than likely to limit his reading to the newspaper, the comic books, a picture magazine, a magazine of condensations, and the book elections of a commercial literary club. If college men & women haven't learned to read the originals, to seek out the significant, they are literate but ignorant. Which is better, a nation of illiterate wise men, or of literate ignoramuses? Must we be either? . . ."

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