Article by Commissioner of Education Earl James McGrath, Education in the United States
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OCR Page 1 of 15Education in the United States
He who would understand education in the United States would do well
to remember the history of the United States. By the Declaration of
Independence of 1776, our people expressed the belief "that all men are created
equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, " including
those of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. "To secure these rights,
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent
of the governed
Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of
these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...." Basic
rights of the people are listed in the Constitutional Bill of Rights, enforced
by judicial processes of courts separate from the legislative and executive
powers
If the citizens of a Nation are to have responsibility in making decisions
about national problems, that Nation is necessarily concerned for the education
of its citizens. As the first President of the United States, George Washington,
said in his Farewell Address:
Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions
for the general diffusion of knowledge In proportion as the
structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is
essential that public opinion should be enlightened.
More recently, representatives of the United States joined representatives
of Yugoslavia and many other nations in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, saying that "Every child has a right to education." The measure of
education of a people is therefore, at least in part, a measure of the success
of a democratic government, as well as a measure of its potentialities for the
future. How far has the United States come toward realization of its belief in
education?
* By Earl James McGrath, U.S. Commissioner of Education, Federal Security
Agency, Washington, D. C., to the Yugoslav Magazine in August 1952 for publication.
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