98 SCIENTIST 



them select a career suitable to their talents. If good schools 

 are not available locally, they may move to another town 

 or send their children to live with a relative. They may even 

 make a considerable sacrifice to send their children to 

 boarding school. All these measures not only result in a 

 superior educational experience; they do something more 

 valuable. They convince the child that education is some- 

 thing important, something worth working for and making 

 significant sacrifices to achieve. 



The child who grows up in a home that does not place 

 this sort of emphasis on intellectual matters has a much 

 harder time making use of the opportunities society sets 

 before him. At the very least he must make an effort to 

 get extra help and guidance from his teachers, his pastor, 

 or whatever educated people are available to him. He must 

 learn to use the school and public library instead of expect- 

 ing his parents to put the right books in his hands. Further- 

 more, he must learn on his own to compare the kind of 

 schooling he is getting with what is available elsewhere. 

 Finally, he must find out how to select an appropriate 

 college and finance his way through. In many cases he may 

 have to do all this not only without help from his parents 

 but also in the face of their active opposition. The fact of 

 the matter is that many adults have only the vaguest sort 

 of idea about what an intellectual career is like, what its 

 rewards and satisfactions are, and what sort of sacrifices 

 it entails. Until very recently, American culture as a whole 

 has set a lower value on the intellectual life than most other 

 civilized countries do. Scholars, writers, artists, teachers, 

 and scientists have for the most part been underpaid and 

 have often been looked upon as rather oddball and unreli- 

 able types. Perhaps it is no wonder that many parents tend 

 to discourage their children from a long, arduous, and 



