EN6
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I'd like to emphasize here: "A government continually at a
distance and out of sight can hardly be expected to interest the
sensations of the people." I happen to be one who believes that
education, per se, might for a time be better done as a national
function (of that I'd like to speak later), but I question what
will happen to the people of America who support education, if
education should become a function of the federal government. We
are not unmindful of those who used to write about the efficiency
of German agencies, "their cities were so well run", they said.
The same people told us about how Mussolini saw to it that the
trains always were on time and they they told us about how in
France one could learn just what was going on in every schoolroom
at ten o'clock in the morning on a certain day. There was an
appeal in all those things, indicative of efficiency, which
sounded well one day. But now we see that all that wasn't
important after all. Something went out of the German people,
out of the Italian people, out of the French people, -- a something
which national standards and national efficiency seem to kill.
In all discussions about federal money going to states to
aid education there is a fundamental line of thinking which dare
not be neglected. It isn't so much a question of what goes into
a state under federal help as it is what goes out of the people
of a state which takes federal money. When Mr. Roosevelt was
in charge of the New York State government, -- now I quote an
excerpt from Henry Wriston's brilliant book, CHALLENGE TO FREEDOM,
Mr. Roosevelt said: "The preservation of home rule by the state
is not a cry of jealous commonwealths seeking their own aggrandize-
ment at the expense of sister states, it is a fundamental necessity
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