Yeshiva University High School For Boys - Elchanite Yearbook (New York, NY)

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uEdZlCflfi07Z lfegim to fail-except education to i1zdividuulize and to 511777771071 forth the p0z'e11tial i1ztellige1zce of the y0zmge1' ge1fze1'ati01z. V. L. Pa11i11gt011 The political institutions of a free, democratic society rest on three basic assumptions. First, that a state is the expression of the agreement of a people to arrange their political and legal relationships according to some particular patterns. The tangible evidence of that agreement is a constitution which defines the basis of those relationships. Since all states ultimately must rest, if they are to survive, on the allegiance of their peoples, two characteristics distinguish free democratic states: the active, voluntary nature of the support of its people, and the carefully circumscribed areas of human activity in which the authority of the state can be exercised. A second assumption is that governments are actually operating agencies, carrying on the practical affairs necessary to maintain those relationships among peoples as prescribed in the constitution. In a complex society like the United States, government has a dual education responsibility. It must establish such school systems and conditions of schooling as are authorized by the constitution. Furthermore, it must provide a climate in which people can on their own initiative develop adequate and congenial relationships in a host of areas which lie outside the jurisdiction of the government. The constant necessity of explaining to. the people at large the importance of their own voluntary participation in the resolution of these social and personal problems in the community is indeed an essential characteristic of a free and democratic society. Governments to continue must be effective. Such an effec- tiveness, at least for a short time, can be secured by stifling differences among people, or by denying disagreeable and awkward alternatives in the realm of action. Such procedures are the antithesis of the democratic society. On this point the third assumption is pertinent.

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The school building' has a peculiar vitality. Walking down the hall, one can feel a certain throbbing. Knowl- edge flows from teacher to pupil. A human being is learn- ing, in the 1nost wondrous of living transmissions. In each classroom education bursts forth. On each floor, in each building, in each city the processof educating .the human race goes on incessantly, insuring the advance of civiliza- tion. Peer into a room. See hands raised, her questions, answers, sense minds struggling to understand. See heads bent over books, pencils Hitting over endless scraps of paper, puzzled expressions, satisfied smiles, all absorbing, brains soaking up the fruithof thousands of years of human labor. Knowledge is being given over from teacher to pupil, and the Socratic image of learning shimmers over yet another enactment of the highest achievement of man. I Hear a bell. See young people streaming from their classrooms, elevated by their own small meeting with wis- dom, carrying their tools of learning in their hands. See animation,psee life, see the light of intelligence in their eyes. Then ponder ba moment, and know intuitively that this is worthwhile. Man is forging for himself his greatest monument-that of ideas-in this place. Here human beings are being shown how to utilize their God-given insight to add upon theawe-inspiring pyramid of truth a few more stones., Walk further. See a stately man with his finger on a page of a thick book, a large class with their chairs grouped in a semi-circle around him, straining to catch every word. This is the Torah, living in a classroom, expounded by the master, a chain of tradition back to Sinai, the word of God as understood by men. Walk from this place of learning into the streets. See a child examining his little toy, see there a vendor selling hot chestnuts to a young couple. See in their eyes another sort of knowledge. These, too, comprise the education of man. Walk by a park. See two old men playing an endless game of checkers beneath the trees, see children on the swings. Walk into a field. See a poet wander through the grass. Learning is everywhere. Education, lifting man above the animal, making ofhim what only he can be, bringing man to God, teaching him toknow the universe, to understand his fellow man, to abstract him from the world of the senses, to free his mind. To education, to learning, to the spread of human intel- lectual values, we of ELCHANITE '60 dedicate this book, for who, indeed, is fit to deliver a paean to learning more than we? We are. learning youth, at the peak of our .intel- ligence, but far away from the.achievement of our true potential. We are graduates. We have learned. We will learn-on past these walls, past these times, and into the ever- enlightening future. 5

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A free, democratic society, seeking no uniformity, relies on the open methods of popular discussion and persuasion in the areas of both official government activity and that lying beyond the limits to which constitutional government can go. This process, almost always time consuming, and often frustrating as well, can hardly ever have the immediate efliciency of totalitarian institutions. It does gain, however, an effectiveness of decisive importance in the long run, since it capitalizes on the universal tendency of man to want to support vigorously decisions in the making in which he feels he has participated. A democratic state is the product of-a paradox. It can perpetuate itself only by recognizing that the individual human beings who have made its existence possible take precedence over, and are more important than, the state itself. To circumscribe the purposes and thoughts of human beings as individuals by asserting that the individual exists for the state is to stultify the force most essential to the state's entire existence, namely the creative power of the human spirit. To cut itself off from this productive potential is to lay the basis of its own eventual destruction. In its desire to achieve mass education, America is destroying this very element. The school in a democracy may be likened to a melting pot. VValter Lippman describes a Fourth of july pageant in the course of which individuals representing many nationalities and dressed in native costume entered a huge wooden and canvas pot under the guidance of an elementary school principal. At the call of the latter they emerged from the opposite side of the pot, each uniformly dressed in derby, coat, pants, vest, stiff collar and polka-dot tie, and probably with an Eversharp pencil in the pocket. Let us remember that the equality of man entitles the individual to no more than equal opportunity and that unless every person is allowed to achieve his potential, American education will produced a mass of stereotyped mediocrity. Daniel Kapustin