The Climate of Mediocrity

Perhaps my education can be of some use to your own. The first experience I had of commencement exercises came in 1948 at my high school graduation. I then heard that the world was newly safe for democracy; that education was the one sure hope for human progress; and that the innocent young would avoid the mistakes of all previous generations. This was pleasing and I believed it. Almost immediately the Iron Curtain was drawn and Korea began a generation of brushfire wars. Four years later, at my own baccalaureate exercises, I was treated to more of the same with additions: that the United Nations was the guarantee of world peace; that depressions and recessions were things of the past; and that all problems were soluble to technology. Almost with the delivery of these lines the McCarthy hearings began; Asia and Africa began to dissolve in revolution; and the problems of affluence crept abreast of its solutions. When I got my master’s degree the assurances from the podium were still repeated, with these additions: that crime and disease were only stages en route to universal perfection; that anti-Communism was no longer a necessary political attitude; and that the right distribution of taxes would solve most human problems. With the utterance, the Soviet Union invaded Hungary, and the British, exhausted by Suez, handed themselves and the world over to the class of 1956. When, a short time later, I attended my doctoral ceremonies all the above promises were tendered along with the assurance that anxieties of race, aging, and personal morality were temporary; and that a new relationship with the rest of the world was now to begin. In close sequence came the news of the overthrow of new democracies in Asia, Africa, and South America and the perfection of the infamous wall around East Berlin. And of some American advisers’ being dispatched to Cochinchina, soon to be known as Vietnam. I suppose the commencements I have attended have been on the whole bad news for modern times.

I would like to spare you some of the humbug offered to my own generation.

RB

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Ronald Berman

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Perhaps my education can be of some use to your own. The first experience I had of commencement exercises came in 1948 at my high school graduation. I then heard that the world was newly safe for democracy; that education was the one sure hope for human progress; and that the innocent young would avoid the mistakes of all previous generations. This was pleasing and I believed it. Almost immediately the Iron Curtain was drawn and Korea began a generation of brushfire wars. Four years later, at my own baccalaureate exercises, I was treated to more of the same with additions: that the United Nations was the guarantee of world peace; that depressions and recessions were things of the past; and that all problems were soluble to technology. Almost with the delivery of these lines the McCarthy hearings began; Asia and Africa began to dissolve in revolution; and the problems of affluence crept abreast of its solutions. When I got my master’s degree the assurances from the podium were still repeated, with these additions: that crime and disease were only stages en route to universal perfection; that anti-Communism was no longer a necessary political attitude; and that the right distribution of taxes would solve most human problems. With the utterance, the Soviet Union invaded Hungary, and the British, exhausted by Suez, handed themselves and the world over to the class of 1956. When, a short time later, I attended my doctoral ceremonies all the above promises were tendered along with the assurance that anxieties of race, aging, and personal morality were temporary; and that a new relationship with the rest of the world was now to begin. In close sequence came the news of the overthrow of new democracies in Asia, Africa, and South America and the perfection of the infamous wall around East Berlin. And of some American advisers’ being dispatched to Cochinchina, soon to be known as Vietnam. I suppose the commencements I have attended have been on the whole bad news for modern times.

I would like to spare you some of the humbug offered to my own generation.