212 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1957 



shortage of scientists and engineers? Since the world managed 

 to survive for some centuries before the advent of scientists or engi- 

 neers, the attitudes expressed would be quite understandable if the 

 students were or proposed to become mystics and lead the contempla- 

 tive life, which certainly has its advantages. But these were normal 

 American boys and girls demanding and getting 100-horsepower 

 cars for transportation, radios, television, movies, juke boxes, and all 

 the other paraphernalia of our modern civilization. How could they 

 have grown to high-school or college age without learning the simple 

 facts of cause and effect with respect to the technological civilization 

 in which they are clearly planning to live ? 



EDUCATORS AND HUMANISTS 



I 



SCIENTISTS STANDARD 



AND —■* OF 



ENGINEERS I ■ LIVING 



TIME—* 



Figure 1. 



In this respect our school system is quite inadequate, in my opinion. 

 The shortage of scientists and engineers is bad enough, but with some 

 effort these immediate shortages can be corrected since the total 

 numbers needed are not really large in proportion to the population. 

 What is more serious (and more dangerous in the long run) is that 

 the mass of our population, who, in a society dedicated to the greatest 

 good for the greater number, must in the end control it, remains 

 in ignorance of the foundations on which that society is based. 



The contrast between the studied complacency of the educators and 

 the concern of scientists and engineers with regard to this situation 

 can perhaps be emphasized or dramatized by Koestler's device of using 

 a staircase to show the effects of different points of view bearing on 

 the same problem. In figure 1 the humanist or so-called progressive 



