Expanding Our World
"The Challenge of World Affairs to American Higher Education" speech by Chancellor Caldwell in February 1968
Caldwell was a fairly open-minded man and treated the role of education with that same frame of mind. He, like other educators of the time, believed that higher education needed to be more aware of the outside world. Although some members of the education community were willing to wait for funding from President Johnson’s 1966 International Education Act before expanding their focuses, Caldwell refused to wait. He claimed that the country and its youths were starting to become aware of the fact that “world affairs [were] not the concern of the diplomat and soldier alone. They involve[d]…every citizen.” For this reason, Caldwell attempted to convince his fellow educators to incorporate more world views into their curricula. While he understood the reasoning behind wanting to cling to the old traditions of teaching, he knew that universities needed to adapt to the dynamic changing world outside their walls. This dynamic world offered more and different competitions for students’ time and attention than any other time in the country’s history, and Caldwell thought that universities had to stay relevant in order to “[gear] up the university to the full dimensions of education for the new world.” [1]
Caldwell’s thought process aligned with what many educators started believing during the 1960s; education had “…changed from that of producing a literate society to that of producing a learning society.”[2] Several years later, some, like Edward D. Eddy, would question the evolution of education, claiming that it had stopped being about dispensing wisdom and turned more towards dispensing facts; however, today’s education looks similar to the ideal that Caldwell and his contemporaries pushed forth.[3] The majority of today’s educators agree with Caldwell’s philosophy that students should be taught how to be well-rounded, civically-active members of American society while they are attending classes and learning about history, math, English, and science.[4]
[1] John T. Caldwell at Southeastern Regional Conference on the Professional School and World Affairs, “The Challenge of World Affairs to American Higher Education,” February 1968, box 27, folder 1, John Tyler Caldwell Papers, North Carolina State University Special Collections.
[2] Margaret Ammons, as quoted in Willona M. Sloan, “What Is the Purpose of Education,” 54, no. 7 (July 2012) Education Update, http://www.ascd.org/publications/newsletters/education-update/jul12/vol54/num07/What-Is-the-Purpose-of-Education%C2%A2.aspx, accessed November 10, 2014.
[3] Edward D. Eddy, “What Happened to Student Values,” (Winter 1977) Educational Record, box 30, folder 12, John Tyler Caldwell Papers, North Carolina State University Special Collections.