Education and the Cold War

Lt.-Col. W. H. Montague, First Vice-president of the Empire Club, introduced the speaker.

LT.-COL. MONTAGUE: Certainly this is the occasion when no one present can contradict the statement "Our speaker today, Mr. James S. Duncan, needs no introduction to this audience."

To date, the James S. Duncan story of progress is in its 47th year and it began when, following his father's example, he entered the agricultural implement business here in Toronto. Taking time out to serve with the gunners during World War I, he is one of Canada's esteemed war veterans. He returned to Massey-Harris on demobilization and, after world-wide experience with that company, he became its president early in World War II.

His efforts, during that anxious period, in connection with the creation of the Commonwealth Air Training Plan won him the honorary rank of Air Commodore in the R.C.A.F. and, when victory brought an end to hostilities, his many activities in the Allied cause brought him grateful recognition from our Sovereign and from France and Norway. He is now a Companion of The Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George, he belongs to the French Legion of Honour and, on appropriate occasions, he wears the Norwegian Cross of Liberation.

Turning his attention to the problems of peace, he continued to render public service of the highest order when he formed the Dollar-Sterling Board and founded the Australian-Canadian Association.

Meanwhile, he expanded his company's interests in the international field and, by the acquisition and erection of strategically located companies and plants on this continent and abroad, he guided Massey-Harris-Ferguson Ltd. to its pre-eminent position amongst world leaders in the agricultural implement industry.

A few months ago, on medical advice, he resigned as Chairman of the Board, President and Director of Massey Harris-Ferguson Ltd.--following a period of indifferent health.

Very recently, Premier Frost announced that Mr. Duncan had accepted appointment as Chairman of the Hydro Electric Power Commission of Ontario and thus was again assuming active responsibilities in the field of public service.

Last spring, in Chicago, the National Sales Executive Organization named Mr. Duncan "the Canadian Businessman of the Year". Early this fall he directed a searching study of the current and anticipated available supply of scientific and engineering personnel in Canada which was initiated by the National Conference on Engineering, Scientific and Technical Manpower held at St. Andrews-by-the-Sea.

Today he will address us on:--"Education and the Cold War".

Gentlemen--I have the honour of introducing: Honorary Air Commodore James Stuart Duncan, C.M.G., Chairman, The Hydro Electric Power Commission of Ontario--and Canadian businessman extraordinary.

MR. DUNCAN: Probably never since Confederation has so much interest been taken in education as during the past eighteen months.

The explanation is, of course, a simple one. The public, with its customary insight into such matters, has suddenly realized--and many educationalists have known for a long time--that Canada is facing an educational crisis, and because education is the foundation upon which our national strength and well-being are built, something must be done about it--and done quickly.

The unpalatable facts which we are facing are basically no different to those being experienced by the rest of the Western World, and particularly by the United States. This doesn't simplify the situation, of course, but makes it all the more serious.

It is obvious that all of us in varying degrees have been slow to appraise the impact of a rapidly growing population and an increasing desire for a college education upon enrolment in our schools and universities. We have also failed to realize in time that greatly increased numbers of scientifically trained men and women are required in this new technological age to man our industries, our mines, our research laboratories, our public utilities, and to meet our defense requirements.

Although there are few large industries or educational institutions in Canada that are not suffering from a deficiency in qualified scientists and engineers, we have not yet felt the full impact of this shortage. This is because a large number of returned men at the end of World War II temporarily swelled the enrolment in the engineering courses of our universities and, more important still, because we have been able to attract qualified men from England, the Continent and the U.S.A.

This latter source of supply is rapidly drying up, however, for the simple reason that the countries upon which we have been drawing are also short of qualified men.

At all events, we should look at the problem as one belonging to the Western World and not to Canada alone. To help ourselves by weakening our neighbours is merely to rob Peter in order to pay Paul.

Fortunately, the problem is not an insoluble one. In the simplest of terms it is one of money, of vast quantities of money, of buildings to house our rapidly expanding requirements for more schools, more teachers' colleges, more and larger universities, more technical colleges and particularly more qualified teachers. Of all these, the last is the most important.

This is a challenge which is not beyond the strength or the resources of Canada--indeed it is one which we cannot reject or back away from because education is the raw material out of which our progress, our prosperity, and our national well-being are built. It is not, however, a small problem. Over the next twenty-five years the cost of enlarging and equipping our university buildings alone, it is estimated, will be in the neighbourhood of $l,750,000,000 and their annual maintenance will increase from $80,000,000 to $600,000,000.

The Federal Government's generous proposal of a grant of $50,000,000 towards capital expenditures for university buildings--to be made provided Parliamentary approval is obtained and through the Canada Council if and when established--is a most welcome step in the right direction.

It is but a step, however, and the overwhelming proportion of the monies required to finance immediate and long-term expansion of our universities must still be raised from corporations and other sources which are the chief beneficiaries from the education given to our young people by our universities.

Other countries have faced more difficult educational problems, however, and have solved them with success. What they have done we can do also providing we make up our minds to it and all segments of our society play their part with vision, with foresight and with determination. As I know my fellow citizens, they will not fail in this.

In addressing ourselves to this problem I hope that we will be imbued with the fact that important as is the problem of our educational facilities, that of training the required number of teachers is more challenging still.

This crucial problem will not be solved until the teaching profession is established on a higher basis of consideration, of prestige, of public recognition and of earning power.

So long as the best brains among our graduates can obtain greater rewards for their services in industry or in commerce, the teaching profession will continue to be undermanned.

It was in this atmosphere of educational crisis that an investigation was started which led to the National Conference on Engineering, Scientific and Technical Manpower, of which I had the honour of being Chairman and which assembled at St. Andrews in the early part of September under the auspices of A. V. Roe Canada Limited, to whose breadth of vision and generosity we are all indebted.

The scope of the Conference was indeed far wider than its title implied and many of the broader aspects of education were probed and examined.

In many respects, the St. Andrews Conference broke new ground. It was the first time that such an important group of distinguished educationalists and industrialists had gathered to discuss their mutual problems.

Out of this memorable Conference emerged not only a better understanding of the point of view of both parties, but a further realization on behalf of industry that being the largest employers of the product of our universities, they have an inescapable financial responsibility to the other party.

Two resolutions were proposed to the Conference and unanimously carried.

The first was that an Industrial Foundation on Education should be established, with Mr. Crawford Gordon, Jr., as its Chairman, and financed entirely by industry. The general objectives of the Foundation were that it should be a fact-finding organization which would perform broad functions on behalf of industry in the field of education.

It was felt, however, by all concerned that these objectives, desirable and indeed necessary as they are in themselves, were too narrow to make the kind of contribution to which Industry aspired. It was also thought that to function fruitfully the Industrial Foundation should be but a unit in a larger National Committee which could be composed of all the national entities responsible for, or having a direct interest in, education, such as the professional societies, industry and commerce, Federal Government agencies and the whole field of educational organizations.

The second resolution of the St. Andrews Conference was, therefore, to set up an Exploratory Committee to examine the feasibility of establishing a National Advisory Committee on the Advancement of Education, and I was appointed its Chairman.

Without wearying you with unnecessary details, suffice it to say that after discussing the situation with some of Canada's most distinguished educationalists drawn from various provinces, we came to the conclusion that largely because of provincial autonomy in matters of education, a national educational body along the lines which we were exploring would not be acceptable. The opposition to it was not confined to any one province.

Being desirous, however, of translating into action the basic wishes of the St. Andrews Conference, the following decisions have been arrived at. They carry the approval of all educational leaders from various parts of the country with whom we have discussed them in detail.

The Industrial Foundation on Education, in place of being a unit in a larger organization, would become the senior body. Its scope would be enlarged. It would be a fact-finding body, a clearing house for educational information, the service arm for educational authorities if they wished to make use of it, but it would be strictly without executive functions.

It would be expected among many other activities to

(a) Establish and review yearly the probable ten-year projection of enrolment in our institutions of learning, from our elementary schools through to our post-graduate courses and including our technical schools.
(b) Gather together figures representing the requirements for buildings, equipment, teaching staff, and capital and yearly maintenance costs based upon these projected enrolments.
(c) Investigate the basic reasons for the shortage of teachers, making careful comparisons of salaries paid to those employed in other walks of life and performing tasks requiring comparable preparation and effort.
(d) Undertake public relations functions to acquaint the public, labour unions, corporations, Dominion, Provincial and Municipal authorities with the problems involved in education and their cost if Canada is to keep abreast, educationally, with her growing population, her responsibilities for defence and her opportunities for development.
(e) Undertake a continuous campaign to educate the public, but mainly the Corporations, concerning not only their obligations to support education but how this can best be done.

In order to implement these functions, the Foundation would have to be enlarged beyond that originally intended and its staff increased so that it could keep in constant contact with the main groups representing labour, professional societies, industry, governmental agencies and educational organizations.

It would be assisted and guided in its work by an Advisory Council on Education which would be composed of, say ten prominent educationalists chosen for their geographical location and their recognized qualifications and prominence.

As previously stated, one of the principal functions of the Foundation would be to acquaint the public with the necessity of supporting education. With certain notable exceptions, the public and Corporations which have generously supported charities have withheld their support from educational institutions. A similar condition existed in the U.S.A. until very recently. Today American Corporations have progressively come to appreciate their responsibilities as regards education and, in the case of a representative group of corporations, have been supporting it on the basis of approximately 0.40% of their net taxable income.

If industry and commerce in Canada and the general public could be brought to realize that their future, their earning power and the standard of living of our nation are in no small degree dependent upon our educational system, and could they be brought to support it on a basis similar to that practised across the border, a surprisingly large proportion of the total capital expenditure anticipated over the next twenty-five years could be financed from this source.

The Foundation, gentlemen, represents our industrialists' very real and very urgent desire to make an important contribution to what they have come to believe to be Canada's No. 1 problem.

They have no ulterior motives, no special interest to serve. They propose to exert no pressure on any educational authority and will confine themselves to gathering information and expressing a point of view which can be accepted or rejected at will. It is important at this juncture to bring out in the open the following point. Every time that it is suggested that the science courses in our universities should be enlarged so as to infuse into our economic system a greatly increased number of engineers and scientists, someone immediately rushes to the support of the humanities, arguing that we must not be stampeded into copying Russia's specialization, that our science courses must not be increased at the expense of our arts courses, that the best engineers are those who have been exposed to a broad classical education, that one cannot live by bread alone, and so on.

Let me assure the critics that their fears are groundless. No one to my knowledge, and certainly not the body of industrialists who gathered together at St. Andrews to launch the Industrial Foundation, nor its Executive Director, Mr. S. H. Deeks, who made such a brilliant analysis of the national educational problem, would favour such a programme.

Too many of our leaders in business and industry are arts graduates to find such sentiments prevalent among them.

What we are saying, however, is that we consider it to be of the highest national priority that our educational institutions produce a considerably greater number of scientists, engineers and technicians. The two former categories at least should continue to receive a well rounded education. Meanwhile, our arts and other non-scientific courses should be enlarged also to provide for the increasing number of applicants which year by year will be knocking at the doors of our universities.

We believe profoundly that our engineers should not be overly specialized. Technology is changing so rapidly that on this ground alone it would not be desirable.

We believe also that those who are going to be responsible for our technological progress should have an understanding of the human values which stand behind it.

It must be fully realized by all, however, that the U.S.S.R. and now China are taking a short cut to their technological achievements and doing so successfully.

We are not recommending that we follow in their footsteps but there must be a full understanding of the fact that to keep a balance between the Arts and the Science courses, and in the Science courses themselves a balance between the cultural and the technical, adds greatly to the magnitude of the educational task which we are facing at a time when the Western World, and particularly the U.S.A., is being challenged in the area of technological progress which we have come to regard as the source of our greatest strength.

None will deny that the Western World's quickened interest in education and the training of larger numbers of scientists, of engineers and of technicians was sparked by the information which filtered through to us during the last two years from behind the Iron Curtain. Particularly when some of its folds were lifted at Geneva, that highly farcical conference at which the Russian Bear took on the traits of the friendly St. Bernard.

We learned of the surprising size and remarkable acceleration of their educational system which within one generation, from almost a dead start, was now turning out highly qualified scientists and engineers so rapidly that they had not only drawn up alongside the U.S.A., but last year in 1955 graduated 120,000 scientists and engineers against the U.S.A.'s 70,000.

We learned also that our views concerning the quantitative rather than the qualitative basis of their educational system were incorrect and that, although less roundly educated than our students, their graduates were just as qualified in their fields as ours. Graduates in U.S.S.R. have over 50% more study hours to their credit than have North-American students.

We learned of the upward surge of their industrial production which jumped in the five years ending in 1955 by 89% and that their present five-year plan ending in 1960 called for a further 65% increase.

We listened to one of their leaders at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party in February of this year state with perhaps somewhat more boastfulness than brevity, that "We now enjoy all the prerequisites for accomplishing within an historically brief space of time the basic economic task of the U.S.S.R. to catch up and surpass the most highly developed capitalistic countries in production per head of population."

We learned also that Russia was adopting the most advanced scientific and mass production procedures known to industry anywhere in the world, that their designs of automation equipment, computing machines, electronics, and application of nuclear energy for industrial purposes paralleled that of the U.S.A. or Great Britain.

For those of us who know something of the U.S.S.R.'s capacity for hard work, of the ruthless determination of her leaders to make this her century, these results are less surprising.

Under the Soviet system, where the Trade Union leader joins hands with management to drive the men and women workers to ever higher levels of productivity, where the attainment of the monthly objective is sacrosanct and the human material relatively unimportant, they have always had an advantage over the more leisurely and individualistic effort of the West. When to this is added an ever-increasing flow of highly trained specialists, who are introducing into the Soviet industrial structure the most advanced techniques known to the world for increasing productivity, Russia's surprising industrial progress becomes even more explainable.

There is no doubt in my mind that Russia, with her strictly materialistic point of view, with her objective of world domination strongly outlined before her, has shown a clear appreciation of the value of the scientist and the engineer in developing the economic and military power of the state. But more important than that, 15 or 20 years ago she displayed a greater understanding than did the West that the technological revolution, which is still in its early stages, would require a vastly greater body of highly skilled scientists and engineers than was ever required before--and that the nation which could hold the lead in the field of technology would bid fair to hold the lead in world affairs.

It is true that the Russia of today requires more engineers per capita than North America because she has to construct more roads, more sewers, more bridges, more railroads, more power plants and more homes than we do. We must also remember that her economy is still smaller than that of the U.S.A. I have no doubt in my own mind, however, that with this vast outpouring of highly trained men and women, the U.S.S.R. is preparing to become the world centre of technical "know-how" and scientific enlightenment for the underdeveloped nations of Asia and Africa.

In every Russian factory which I visited last year I found important groups of Chinese engineers and technicians in training.

The United States policy of non-recognition of a rapidly developing China, with its 600 to 650 million people, was truly a regal gift to the U.S.S.R.! We Canadians probably would not have initiated such a narrow policy, but we did go along with it, which to my mind is just about as bad.

By following this policy, we not only handed exclusively to Russia the industrialization and education of that great Asiatic nation, but we locked and barred the door so that no one else could get in on the process.

And what have been the results? China is presently engaged in her first five-year plan for industrialization. It is based upon some 150 major projects, all of them blueprinted in Russia and under the supervision of Russian engineers.

Russia's system of education is essentially the master pattern upon which China's vast programme of higher education is based. All classes of Chinese society have embarked upon this programme with a vigour and a determination to learn equalled only by what is taking place in Russia itself.

All engineering studies are carried out with translated Russian text books, and because this process is too slow and is holding up their programme, Russian has become a compulsory subject in all Chinese Universities, along with the history and philosophy of the Chinese and Russian Revolutions.

The teeming millions of Chinese are still illiterate, but vast efforts are being made under the guidance of Russia to educate the masses, and 51 million children are already enrolled in the primary schools. At the other end of the educational scale, 10,000 students, of whom 30% will be women, are expected to be enrolled in the science courses of the C'ing Hua University in Peking in 1957.

It is confidently expected by some of those who have made a close study of the situation that this country, which we refuse to recognize, will reach a level of industrialization within 20 years which will make it one of the most powerful nations on earth. In addition, with the decline in the infant mortality rate and the notable advance in hygiene and living conditions, the Chinese population is increasing by leaps and bounds. Within 30 to 35 years, in fact, it may reach 1,000 million, a figure which would exceed the population of Russia, Europe and North, Central and South America with the West Indies thrown in for good measure. At least, history will not say of us that when we refused to recognize a nation we chose a small one.

And now that I have come to the end of my talk, let me repeat what I have said on many platforms. The danger of a third world war, present appearances notwithstanding, is not imminent. The West obviously will not start it and neither will the U.S.S.R., because she is satisfied that she is winning the cold war and has, therefore, according to her own thinking, more to lose by world conflict than we have.

The important question is: What is the West going to do about all this?

It is not that we must do one thing, but many things. Above all, we must not let down our guard, we must match Russia's growing military strength, and particularly her economic progress, with our own. The development of our educational system is at the very core of this problem.

But if any measures are to be effective the time has come for all leaders of goodwill in the Western World to find once again a common ground for unity of policy. The issues which separate us are important in themselves, but they shrink into insignificance when offset against the Western World's main objective of holding in check the aggressive purpose of the U.S.S.R.

United, the Western World has still the resources and the manpower to check the U.S.S.R. Disunited, it will fall an easy prey to their aggressive designs.

But alas! Unity alone is not sufficient. Unity must be served by courage, by discipline, by loyalty, by backbone and by determination, to be effective.

Since the end of World War 11, the western democracies have lost control of many of their vital spheres of influence because their fear of starting a world conflict has caused them to run for cover before the rattling of Russian armour.

Concession has followed upon concession, compromise upon compromise, and appeasement upon appeasement. As I read my history, the slippery path of concessions has never led the world to enduring peace. When Neville Chamberlain, returning from Munich, announced that he was bringing with him "peace in our time," listen to what Winston Churchill said in the House of Commons on the subject of appeasement on that fateful Monday in October, 1938:

"And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning, this is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless, by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in olden time."

Eighteen years later we are faced with the same issues. The question which we must ask ourselves today is: Have we the moral health and courage to rise again and take a stand for freedom?

In my own opinion, the day we do, the day we say "Thus far, but no farther," we will have taken the first real step towards the establishment of lasting peace.

THANKS OF THE MEETING were expressed by Mr. A. J. Little, President of the Toronto Board of Trade.