Student Open Letter

Mon Apr 7 17:33:07 PDT 2008

*"TWO ARE BETTER THAN ONE" MINISTRIES*

*Jim & Marie Watt*

*PO Box **25116 – Federal Way** **WA** **98093-2116***

*Tel: 253.874.4265 – Email: jmbetter at gmail.com*

*Web: www.2rbetter.org – April 2008.04.05  *

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*"AN OPEN LETTER TO **AMERICA**'S STUDENTS"*

By Dwight D. Eisenhower, President of Columbia University

>From The Reader's Digest Assoc., Inc. (October 1948 issue)

*General Dwight D. Eisenhower here writes to young Americans. It will pay
all Americans to "listen in."*

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I receive many letters from young people. Mostly they ask a question that
could be put like this:

            Shall I keep on with school? Or shall I plunge right off into
"life"?

            I try to answer these letters according to the circumstances of
each case. But I sometimes feel that I would like to try to write a general
answer to the whole general problem of "school" versus "life" in the minds
of my correspondents. I think I would say:

DEAR Jack – or Margaret: You say you wonder if it is worth while for you to
go on with high school. You particularly wonder if it is worth while to
enter and finish college. The tedium of study, nose buried in books, seems a
waste of time compared with a job and the stimulus of productive work. You
say you hate to bother me with this "trifling" problem of yours.

It is not a trifling problem at all. Your decision will affect your whole
life; similar decisions by millions of other young Americans will affect the
total life of our country. And I know how deeply it must worry you. It
worried me and a lot of my schoolmates when I was your age.

In a small Kansas town 40 years ago, a reasonably strong case could be put
up in favor of leaving school early. Outside those few who could afford to
pick a profession, most of us knew our lives would be spent on the farm, or
in one of the local stores, or at the creamery or elevator.

We could be good farmers, good storekeepers, good mill hands, without much
book learning. The quickest road to practical knowledge was to *do*. That
was the way we might have argued; and we would have been right if there were
no more to successful living than plowing a straight furrow, wrapping a neat
package, keeping a machine well oiled.

Fortunately, we came of stock that set the school on the same plane as the
home and church. The value of education, above and beyond the immediate
return in dollars and cents, had been bred into us. Our families stinted
themselves to keep us in school a while longer; and most of us worked, and
worked hard, to prolong that while.

Today the business of living is far more complex than it was in my boyhood.
No one of us can hope to comprehend all its complexity in a lifetime of
study. But each day profitably spent in school will help you understand
better your personal relationship to country and world. If your generation
fails to understand that the human individual is still the center of the
universe and is still the sole reason for the existence of all man-made
institutions, then complexity will become chaos.

Consequently, I feel firmly that you should continue your schooling – if you
can – right to the end of high school and right to the end of college. You
say you are "not too good at books." But from books – under the guidance of
your teachers – you can get a grasp on the thing that you most ought to
understand before you go to work.

It is expressed in a moving letter I got the other day from a young girl
halfway through high school. She said that in her studies she seemed to be a
failure all along the line, always trailing everyone else. But then she
ended by saying: "I still think I could learn to be a good American."

That's the vital point. School, of course, should train you in the two great
basic tools of the mind: the use of words and the use of numbers. And school
can properly give you a start toward the special skills you may need in the
trade or business or profession you may plan to enter. But remember:

As soon as you enter it, you will be strongly tempted to fall into the rut
and routine of it. You will be strongly tempted to become just a part of an
occupation which is just one part of America. In school – from books – from
teachers – from fellow students – you can get a view of the whole of America,
how it started, how it grew, what it is, what it means. Each day will add
breadth to your view and a sharper comprehension of your own role as an
American.

I feel sure I am right when I tell you:

            *To develop fully your own character you must know your
country's character.*

A plant partakes of the character of the soil in which it grows. You are a
plant that is *conscious*, that *thinks*. You must study your soil – which
is your country – in order that you may be able to draw its strength up into
your own strength.

It will pay you to do so. You will understand your own problems better and
solve them more easily, if you have studied America's problems and done
something toward their solution.

Never forget that *self-interest and patriotism go together.* You have to
look out for yourself, and you have to look out for your country.
Self-interest and patriotism, rightly considered, are not contradictory
ideas. They are partners.

The very earth of our country is gradually getting lost to us. One third of
the fertile top layer of our soil has already been washed away into rivers
and the sea. This must be stopped, or some day our country will be too
barren to yield us a living. That is one national problem crying for
solution; it affects you directly and decisively.

In our cities there are millions of people who have little between them and
hunger except a daily job, which they may lose. They demand more "security."
If they feel too insecure, their discontent might some day undermine
*your*security, no matter how personally successful you might be in
your own
working life. That's another problem – and there are innumerable others –
whose solution requires the thought and good will of every American.

I cannot put it to you too strongly – or too often – that it is to
your *practical
advantage *to learn America's character and problems, in the broadest
possible way, and to help to bring those problems to their solutions.

It is dangerous to assume that our country's welfare belongs alone to the
mysterious mechanism called "the government." Every time we allow or force
the government, because of our own individual or local failures, to take
over a question that properly belongs to us, by that much we surrender our
individual responsibility, and with it a comparable amount of individual
freedom. But the very core of what we mean by Americanism is individual
liberty founded on individual responsibility, equality before the law, and a
system of private enterprise that aims to reward according to merit.

These things are basic – your years in school will help you to apply these
truths to the business of living in a free democracy.

Yours is a country of free men and women, where personal liberty is
cherished as a fundamental right. But the price of its continued possession
is untiring alertness. Liberty is easily lost. Witness the history of the
past 20 years. Even the natural enthusiasm of warm youthful hearts for a
leader can be a menace to liberty.

It was movements of misguided young people, under the influence of older and
more cynical minds, that provided the physical force to make Mussolini the
tyrant of Italy and Hitler the tyrant of Germany. Mussolini's street song
was "Giovinezza*" *– "Youth." Hitler based his power most firmly on the *Hitler
Jugen* – the Hitler Youth.

Never let yourself be persuaded that any one Great Man, any one leader, is
necessary to the salvation of America. When America consists of one
*leader*and 143,000,000
*followers*, it will no longer be America. Truly American leadership is not
of any one man. It is of multitudes of men – and women.

Our last war was not won by one man or a few men. It was won by hundreds of
thousands and millions of men and women of all ranks. Audacity, initiative,
the will to try greatly and stubbornly characterized them. Great numbers of
them, if for only few minutes in some desperate crisis of battle, were
leaders.

You will find it so in the fields of peace. America at work is not just a
few "Great Men" at the head of government. of corporations, or of labor
unions. It is millions and millions of men and women who on farms and in
factories and in stores and offices and homes are leading this country – and
the world – toward better and better ways of doing and of making things.
America exceeds all other lands – by far – in the number of its leaders. Any
needless concentration of power is a menace to freedom.

We have the world's best machines, because we ourselves are not machines;
because we have embraced the liberty of thinking for ourselves, of imagining
for ourselves, and of acting for ourselves out of our own energies and
inspirations. Our true strength is not in our machines, splendid as they
are, but in the inquisitive, inventive, indomitable souls of our people.

To be that kind of soul is open to every American boy and girl; *and it is
the one kind of career that **America** cannot live without.*

To be a good American—worthy of the heritage that is yours, eager to pass it
on enhanced and enriched – is a lifetime career, stimulating, sometimes
exhausting, always satisfying to those who do their best.

Start on it now; take part in America's affairs while you are still a
student. There are responsibilities about your home, in your neighborhood,
that you can assume. There are activities about your school, on your campus,
that will be more productive of good by your contribution.

Don't think that you are too young. "Let no man despise thy youth," Paul the
Apostle said to Timothy. These words apply to you as an American. Loyalty to
principle, readiness to give of one's talents to the common good, acceptance
of responsibility -- these are the measure of a good American, not his age
in years.

Alexander Hamilton – General Washington's aide in war, President
Washington's Secretary of the Treasury in peace – was speaking before
applauding crowds of his fellow New Yorkers on the political problems of the
American Revolution when he was only 17 years old and still a student in
King's College, now Columbia University. The same stuff of which
Hamiltonwas made is in you and all American youth today.

But above all, while you are still at school, try to learn the "why" of your
country. We Americans know "how" to produce things faster and better – on
the whole – than any other people. But what will it profit us to produce *
things* unless we know what we are producing them *for*, unless we know what
purpose animates America?

To assure each citizen his inalienable right to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness was the "why" behind the establishment of this Republic
and is today the "why" for its continued existence. What that means to you
personally, what you must do toward its fulfillment, cannot be answered
completely in a letter. But I repeat that the answer can be found in your
school, if you seek it deliberately and conscientiously. You need neither
genius nor vast learning for its comprehension.

To be a good American is the most important job that will ever confront you.
But essentially it is nothing more than being a good member of your
community, helping those who need your help, striving for a sympathetic
understanding of those who oppose you, doing each new day's job a little
better than the previous day's, placing the common good before personal
profit. The American Republic was born to assure you the dignity and rights
of a human individual. If the dignity and rights of your fellow men guide
your daily conduct of life, you will be a good American.

* *

* *

*NOTE:*  At least 5 years ago I started to write this up, but didn't finish
at that time. But NOW – after mailing the article on "Abe Lincoln's
Stepmother" – it seemed the right time to link with it this article also.

HOWEVER, as you no doubt noted, it was written 60 years ago. America has
vastly changed. Youth, we need you with High School and College completion
more than ever. Our nation has DRASTICALLY slipped in the last 60 years. No
longer is schooling linked with a strong home and church.

But though the times are desperate, you as youth with the challenge of
"Ike," can make a difference. We can return to the better standards of the
past.

On April 1st I mailed out an article entitled "The Left's Ideological
Unacceptability" by Newt Gingrich, taken from his latest book of this year
entitled "REAL CHANGE." THIS will in the hands of youth and the rest of us
from all political persuasions -- or none – help give direction how to
preserve our nation of "America."

Different? Yes. Possible? – also Yes! For you, young men and women – it is a
time of both crisis and challenge. Your schooling is more than ever
important. Let home and church join this same standard. The principles and
goals set forth by Dwight Eisenhower are still today valid, relevant and
compelling. The choice is yours. I believe a sufficient contingent of you
will hear, respond and triumph. For God and country! Youth, Arise!

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