"Education, everybody says, is the bulwark of democracy. And we Americans really want democracy in a way the most radical European never dreamed of. Yet we are content with our schools! Nobody really worries about improving them. We assume that our system is the best in the world, perfect. Final! Damn finality! I’m not sure that our system isn’t the worst. We consistently kill all originality. The minute the kids strike school the process begins. ’This, my child, is what you must believe,’ you say. ’This block,’ the kindergarten teacher says ’is red.’ Of course what she should say is, ’What color is this block?’ The college professor says to his senior seminar, ’Goethe is the greatest German poet; if you prefer Heine, you are a barbarian. Milton’s epics are the pride of English letters; if you prefer L’Allegro, you show your lack of culture. Shelley was undoubtedly a great poet, but, I regret to say, an incendiary. Of course you must read The Ode to the West Wind and the Clouds, but I warn you against the Revolt of Islam.’ From grammar school to university it is all this business of predigested tablets. "Just look at the effect this sort of business has had on our politics! We Americans are dead. New ideas, discussion of fundamental political principles are fomenting everywhere but here. A Paris cab-driver thinks more about the theory of government than our congressman. We Americans sit back—our feet on the table—puff out our chests and say ’complete and absolute liberty for all time was decreed by the fathers in 1789.’ How many men do you know who ever seriously questioned that proposition? How many Americans really believe that it takes ’eternal vigilance’ to be free? No. Our Constitution is the most glorious document penned by man. It’s final—it’s stagnant and stinking! "If we don’t revolutionize our education, we’ll rot or give up democracy. It’s a clear choice. A national Tammany Hall and dizzy Roman decadence or Neo-aristocracy with restricted suffrage and hare-brained experiments in human stock breeding. If we don’t learn to educate in a truer way, if we don’t manage to kill this folly of finality, it’s a choice between physiological decay and eugenics. "I’m getting out of everything else—can’t see anything but education. No more personal charity, no more checks to shoddy philanthropies. All the money I can lay my hands on goes into a trust fund to finance an educational insurrection. It’s the only revolution I’m interested in. "I tried to write about it. But—hell—people won’t take me seriously. I knew somebody would giggle if I talked, so I ground out an article. I found a man in the club laughing over it—said it was ’clever.’ Well—I’ve put what I think about it in my will. Perhaps they won’t laugh when they read that." As I said I am not sure whether Norman gave me my ideas, or whether he voiced conclusions which were forming already in my mind. At least I owe him their concrete shape.