Education in the Age of Atomic Energy

Fordham University/May 11, 1946

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Ignorance and its handmaidens, prejudice, intolerance, suspicion of our fellow men, breed dictators. And they breed wars. Civilization cannot survive an atomic war. Nothing would be left but a world reduced to rubble. Gone would be man’s hope for decency. Gone would be our hope for the greatest age in the history of mankind—an age which I know can harness atomic energy for the welfare of man and not for his destruction.

And so we must look to education in the long run to wipe out that ignorance which threatens catastrophe. Intelligent men do not hate other men just because their religion may be different, or because their habits and language may be different, or because their national origin or color may be different. It is up to education to bring about that deeper international understanding which is so vital to world peace.

Intelligent Americans no longer think that merely because a man is born outside the boundaries of the United States, he is no concem of ours. They know that in such thinking lie the seeds of dictatorship and tyranny. And they know from sad experience that dictatorship and tyranny are too ruthless to stop at the borders of the United States and conveniently leave us alone. They know what World War II and the atomic bomb have taught them—that we must work and live with all our fellow men if we are to work and live at all. They know that those without economic hope, those to whom education has been forcibly denied, willingly turn to dictators. They know that in a nation where teachers are free to teach, and young men and women are free to learn, there is a strong bulwark against dictatorship.

That was the last message from President Roosevelt. In a speech which he wrote just before he died, but which he never delivered, he said:

“We are faced with the preeminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships—the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live and work together, in the same world, at peace.”

Until citizens of America, and citizens of the other nations of the world learn this “science of human relationships” of which President Roosevelt spoke, the atomic bomb will remain a frightful weapon which threatens to destroy all of us.

But there is at least one defense against that bomb. That defense lies in our mastering this science of human relationships all over the world. It is the defense of tolerance and of understanding, of intelligence and thoughtfulness.

When we have learned these things, we shall be able to prove that Hiroshima was not the end of civilization, but the beginning of a new and better would.

That is the task which confronts education. The veterans who attend the colleges and schools of today, and the children of the veterans who will go to school tomorrow, have a right to expect that the training offered to them will fulfill that task. It is not an easy task. It is a most difficult one. It is one which places burdens without precedent, both upon those who teach and upon those who come to be taught. There must be new inspiration, new meaning, new energies. There must be a rebirth of education if this new and urgent task is to be met.