Education: Change the Thinking

It was National Education Week, but from President Eisenhower on down, most Americans were in no mood for applauding the nation's schools and colleges. Stunned into sudden—and at times, hysterical—awe of Soviet science, they could scarcely find words harsh enough to say about themselves or their campuses. "Throughout the entire country," noted Columbia University's President Grayson Kirk, "the subject of education has moved out of the quiet of the classroom into the arena of bitter controversy."

"For the long haul," said Astrophysicist J. Allen Hynek, director of the nation's satellite-optical-tracking program, "this country must change its way of thinking about education—clear back...