Commencement Address at St. Bonaventure College by Commissioner of Education Earl McGrath, At The Workbench of Citizenship
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OCR Page 1 of 11AT THE WORKBENCH OF CITIZENSHIP*
Members of the Class of 1950: I should like to spend a few moments with
you today taking an inventory. Before beginning a job, a competent workman
surveys his workbench and assesses his tools. He takes careful note of each
instrument, running his thumb along an edge here, wielding a piece of apparatus
there-appraising the utility of his equipment. In a sense you, as new graduates,
are about to step up to your workbenches, to assume your responsibilities in
American society. I do not think it would be amiss, therefore, if we consider
some of the tools which your education has made available to you to shape your
own destiny and that of your country in the years ahead.
But before we begin the inventory, let us focus our attention for a
moment on the world in which these intellectual tools are to be used. For t aking
stock of the implements on our workbench can have little meaning, it seems to
me, unless we first understand the complex, ever-changing world of the mid-
twentieth century in which our lives will be lived.
Today we face the prospect that for many years we will be living in a
world in which democracy is in a global struggle against totalitarian concepts
dedicated to the destruction of the Christian ideals of justice, brotherhood,
and freedom. Insofar as the history of the United States is concerned, there
is no precedent for this situation. Sheltered throughout the past century and
a half by a fortunate geographical position and the absence of rapacious
neighbors, we low are inadequately prepared for the world leadership that has
been thrust upon us.
Our country is being challenged to prove itself capable of leading the
*By Earl James McGrath, U.S. Commissioner of Education, Federal Security Agency,
Washington, D. C. at 1950 Commencement exercises, St. Bonaventure College,
St. Bonaventure, New York, Sunday, June 4, 1950.
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