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

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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

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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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