What was it about the community’s educators on Fidalgo Island that inspired students to grapple with weighty subjects like democracy and world peace? The discovery of Harry’s essay on civic duty was not so shocking to me, having been previously surprised to learn of my own mother’s valedictory address, “Education and World Peace;” it surfaced in her stuff after she passed away in 1999.
During Harry Smith’s boyhood in Anacortes he must have crossed paths with my mom and uncles at Apex Beach, or Sackett’s grocery, or walking to Whitney School.
Frances Maricich was born at home on May 22, 1929 and grew up six blocks from Harry’s home at the Apex Cannery. She graduated four years after Harry and participated in debate as he did. I like to assume that AHS teacher Kirvin Smith had an influence on both of them, considering some of Kirvin’s published statements like: “Seek the truth with a mind that is not guided by dogma or prejudice.”
Teenagers in 1940s Anacortes were not afraid … even encouraged … to think big and advocate for equity, mutual understanding and objective truth.
Education and World Peace
By Frances Maricich
Anacortes High School Valedictorian, Class of 1947
Fellow classmates, ladies and gentlemen and friends:
When the League of Nations was organized in 1919, education in its international aspect was not altogether overlooked, but it was treated as of little importance. An International Commission of Intellectual Co-operation was founded but it was given very little financial support, few functions, and no power.
Education after the First World War was being used in most countries as an instrument of nationalistic policy. Patriotism had been aroused through teaching history which usually concerned itself mostly with the glories of the battlefield.
In Germany education became pure propaganda to realize the objectives put forward by the state. Through this type of education a new generation arose with fantastic ideas concerning race, the over-all place of the state in life, and the complete subordination of the individual to the will of the state.
Meanwhile, the democracies of the world continued to maintain their views as to the supreme importance of the individual. The war that finally broke out as World War II was as much a conflict of those ideologies as of political and economic considerations.
In our present confused world it is of the utmost urgency that education be made as effective as possible. The war was a physical expression of an intellectual conflict that has not been settled. We must learn to rely upon intelligence and cooperation rather than force. And it is only through real education that all people can be taught to overcome their prejudices and superstitions. Peace rests upon the will and desires of peoples and nations. Education develops a mind that works, that thinks, that can analyze situations and make decisions.
All nations of the world, and all people of the world must learn to understand each other and each other’s problems, ambitions, and philosophies. This fact has been recognized for centuries. Aristotle, in his teachings, wrote: “All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on education.”
Recognizing this fact today, educators urged the United Nations to start an international office of education. As a result the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization has been organized. This organization opens the way for the world to educate for peace. It forms a channel for the flow of mutual understanding, goodwill, and trust. In the Educational Organization’s charter is stated: “ Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.” This statement can be also read: “Since wars are put into the minds of children in school, it is in the school that the defenses of peace must be constructed.”
If World War II was the result of an education deliberately planned for that purpose, we can, through educational means, make peace inevitable also.
Three things that are necessary for peace through education are:
Full and equal opportunities for education for all.
Unrestricted pursuit of objective truth
Free exchange of ideas and knowledge between people throughout the world.
These things must be insured by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization to bring about lasting world peace.
To prevent future wars we must teach children not what to think, but how to think. Through education we must impress upon the younger generation the wastefulness, the weariness, and absolute futility of war.
In conclusion, I’d like to repeat quotations of two famous men.
Emerson said : “Efficient universal education is the mother of national prosperity.”
Henry Broughman, British Lord Chancellor, writer and statesman of the last century told the role of education in human relations by saying: “ Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.”