A production of the South Carolina Educational Television Network.

♪ ♪ ♪ >> Good evening.

Retired Admiral Hyman G. Rickover served in the active Navy longer than any other American, reluctantly retiring past his 80th birthday.

Special presidential orders periodically extended his service.

Three presidents trying to get him to retire earlier, and did not succeed.

More than any other single person, the son of a Jewish immigrant born in part of Poland occupied by Russia sculpted The shape of the American nuclear Navy.

His determination and ferocity pursuing his goals won him lifelong supporters and overwhelmed his opponents.

Part of Rickover's philosophy is a sharp idea of what constitutes education and what does not.

This afternoon, Admiral Rickover spoke of the Strom Thurmond Institute of Clemson, Clemson University, in Tillman Hall.

His topic, education.

Adm Rickover> You and it isn't up to other people to push it into you.

Ever since the ancient Greeks, men have affirmed that to be educated is to be made better.

The Emerald , a book first compiled by a 14th century Russian from Greek materials, argued that ignorance is worse than sin, and I believe that the papal Charter, of the University of Basel in Switzerland, founded in 1450, speaks of the hard and persistent labor by which students may obtain the pearl of scientific knowledge, and with it one of the greatest happiness is accorded mortal man by the grace of God.

This pearl is the key to a good and happy life.

It bestows its favors on the young thought and raises to the heights men born in the lowliest circumstances.

For as learned men, they are placed far above all who are unlearned indeed made a light unto God.

Now that's something that was said in the Middle Ages, and is just as appropriate today as it was then.

What does it mean to be educated?

First, it means to have knowledge of the world around us, to know history, literature, philosophy, science.

Second, it means to possess skills such as the ability to read, to write clearly, to calculate.

These make a person a useful member of society.

Third, and most important, it means to be able to think critically and logically.

The purpose of education is to instill these attributes in people.

To accomplish this, the overwhelming concern of the school must be with the intellect and with nothing else, including football.

(applause) When are you going to abolish your football team here?

Preoccupation with anything else increases the probability that the goal will not be met.

Education consists of a triad of professions teachers, receptive students, concerned parents.

If any of these, default, the system fails.

Unfortunately, our educational system is not up to the task.

I have interviewed several thousand applicants from the Naval Academy, from Officer candidate schools, and from most of our better colleges and universities.

These interviews over a period of many years, gave me an insight into the kind of education our better students have received in 16 years of schooling.

Educated people are needed to develop and work with nuclear power.

But I know from these interviews and from student performance in our nuclear power schools that few graduates of American schools and colleges are well-educated.

From this experience, I became convinced that the American educational system is doing a poor job of training young minds to think clearly, logically, and independently.

By now, we should all have become familiar with our educational shortcomings.

It is true that the average achievement of high school students on most standardized tests is now lower than it was 25 years ago.

Here in South Carolina, despite some recent improvements, students ranked lower than the national average in SAT scores.

Math and verbal SAT scores remain unacceptably low, about, about 415 in math and about 380 in general.

This is 75 points lower than the national SAT math average scores, and almost 50 points lower in verbal.

That's what your state is producing.

It's nothing to be proud of.

It is true that as many as half of all our math and science teachers in the United States elementary and high schools are not certified to teach these subjects.

So you have the ignorant teaching, the ignorant.

It is true that over half of our gifted students do not match their tested ability with comparable achievements in school.

It is true that the number and proportion of students demonstrating superior achievement on the SATs status 650 or higher, have almost dramatically declined.

It is true that there has been a steady decline in the science achievement scores of our 17 year olds, as measured by the National Assessment of Science examination.

It is true that the lack of math and science teachers will execrably lead to a lack of the skilled workers that our economy and our defense effort require.

It is true that the president of the Texas Classroom Teachers Association testified in 1983 that not even one chemistry teacher has been graduated from one state college in two years.

Only 20 new math teachers earned a degree in Texas last year, and 13 of these accepted high paying jobs in private industry.

It is true that remedial mathematics courses in public, four year colleges now make up one quarter of all mathematical courses taught.

The question is, what are we going to do about it?

It is time to stop pointing the finger at any one party responsible for education, rather than continuing to make the scapegoat, the beleaguered teacher.

Let the finger point at the one who looks into the mirror, and that includes each parent and each youth.

Students must be convinced that they are ultimately responsible for their own education, that there is no easy way to excellence.

No shortcut.

No magic wand that can produce the trained, disciplined minds they will need as adults.

The world is upheld by children who study says a passage in the Talmud.

There are no gadgets or quick fixes that will repair our education system.

Our schools cannot make students virtuous.

Or stupid students wise.

My suggestions today are the same, I proposed 25 years ago.

The following are four, but not the only basic changes necessary on which to focus our educational attention.

First, we must realize that ensuring adequate education for our children will require more academically solid courses for all students from elementary schools onward.

These courses must emphasize the verbal and mathematical competence which is increasingly required of all working adults.

In Tennessee, one quarter of all ninth grade students cannot pass the sixth grade examination in both math and language tests.

In the state of Virginia where I reside, the basic academic areas are still not much above the low national norms except in mathematics, where it is above average compared with other states.

The National Education Association, however, that's the teacher's union, believes that nuclear war should be taught to youngsters in school.

At a time when our youth are increasingly found deficient in basic subject matter, it is not comforting to know that our education tax dollars are being spent to teach our young students about nuclear warfare.

When such things are being taught in our elementary schools, is it any wonder that later on the performance and higher order skills, inference, analysis, interpretation, and problem solving show a decline?

The typical elementary school week has 25 instructional hours, 25 instructional hours for teaching our children.

Of these 25, only one hour of science and less than four hours of arithmetic are taught.

And then we despair that half our high school graduates take no mathematics or science beyond the 10th grade.

In the Soviet Union, West Germany, and Japan, over 90% of the students take three years of math and three years of science.

In contrast, less than 40% of American high school students take three years of science and just over 20% take three years of math.

It is therefore not surprising that much remedial teaching in mathematics and science is required at our institutions of higher learning.

Our educational system allows too much hit and miss education, replete with too many electives, rather than academic solids.

Much must be done to improve the largely wastes of 12th grade, which is especially devoted to electives.

I recommend that we immediately require more academically solid courses, and I mean immediately because we're in a very dangerous situation.

Second, we must ensure the opportunity for all talented students to achieve their intellectual potential by directing our efforts solely to raising average scores of school populations, rather than encouraging excellence in talented students, we have sold our intellectual birthright for a mess of mediocre pottage.

We must produce our own homegrown, creative practicing scholars, scientists, and engineers.

It has been estimated that we as a nation need but 50,000 or so highly skilled scientists per year, but we are already falling short of producing even this modest number.

It is imperative to modify radically our system of recruiting, training, and compensating our teachers.

We must pay them more, much more if we expect intellectually capable and motivated men and women to choose teaching as a life's work and remain committed to it.

For example, in the Washington, D.C.

metropolitan area, a liquor store clerk with a high school diploma and two years experience earns $12,479 a year, 12 and a half thousand.

A schoolteacher, however, with a college degree, special training and teaching, and the same amount of experience earns only $12,300.

Nationwide, teachers average $20,531.

In Tennessee, the best teachers, those with 20 years experience average only 18,000.

But the best Tennessee teachers are paid no more than the worst.

Excuse me.

In South Carolina, despite an 8% pay raise last year, teachers average $16,380.

Small wonder that 25% of the nation's teachers have stated their intention to leave teaching.

Our thoughts concerning the importance of teachers for today and for the future is only an extension of those very same thoughts hundreds of years ago.

Plato in 320 BC said, quote, "every one of us should seek out the best teachers we can find, first for ourselves and then for the youth, regardless of the expense.

", unquote.

I agree with that.

Given the low levels of pay and esteem we accord teachers, it is not surprising to find in the 1982 SAT scores for students preparing to be teachers were 80 points below the national average.

In South Carolina, things are just a bit better.

The combined math and verbal SAT scores of South Carolina high school students intending to become teachers are only 50 points below the average for all college bound high school seniors.

Too many teachers are failing the simple, standardized test of our rudimentary mathematical and verbal skills, which are in dispensable for effective teaching.

Half the newly employed mathematics, science and English teachers are not qualified to teach these subjects.

In 1983, it is reported that six of elementary school teachers 51% of elementary school teachers had received no undergraduate training in science.

In the 1981, 50% of high school mathematics and science teachers were not certified to teach these subjects.

In 1980, South Carolina reported shortages of secondary school teachers in biology and general science and critical shortages in chemistry, physics, earth science, and mathematics.

Third, I have recommended that we quickly abandon our reliance on teachers, colleges and on educational degrees as the basis for teachers selection.

Higher pay for teachers in a resulting buyer's market will enable recruitment of the intellectually best students, not those with low IQs or minimal qualifications.

There is no better way to guarantee mediocre students than to have mediocre teachers teaching them.

That should be pretty obvious.

We must at once and drastically increase teacher salaries.

However, any additional money spent for education must be accompanied by a clear commitment to get better results.

I agree with Tennessee Governor Lamar, Lamar Alexander's master teacher plan for Tennessee, which ties increased teacher pay to their performance.

I congratulate South Carolina for requiring identification tests in basic skills, content and performance for all teachers.

Moreover, I believe that merit pay should not be judged by their fellow teachers.

That's like incest.

(laughing) Instead, re-certification and merit pay increases should be based on reexamination of all teachers by competent outsiders.

The National Institute of Education reported that in 1979, 80 year, state governments spent over $45 billion, nearly triple the amount spent by state governments ten years ago.

Over that same ten year period, expenditures for education by local governments doubled.

Even accounting for inflation, we are spending a lot and not getting our money's worth.

Fourth, educational reform must begin at home.

The primary purpose of parents is to bear and to develop their children to the greatest extent possible.

But the present trend in American life games, sports, and worst of all, television has diverted parents from their fundamental purpose and responsibility, which is to pass on our heritage and our culture to their children.

Parents must spend time making sure that teachers assign meaningful homework.

Then they must make sure that their children complete that homework instead of watching television.

According to a recent Nielsen survey, the average child aged eight, age 3 to 5 spends almost 30 hours each week watching television.

Moreover, once children are in school, there is little decline in TV viewing.

Nielsen reports an average of over 25 hours per week at age 6 to 11.

And only slightly less television viewing by teenagers.

Television has become a plug in drug.

Few parents today read what... read with their children or are system, in selecting good books to enrich their inquisitive minds.

A home without books is like a room without windows.

The success of children of Asian backgrounds in the United States public schools provides vivid testimony that study hard work, respect for teachers, and heavy parental involvement will pay off.

Many of these children come from low income families and many from families in which English is a second language or not spoken at all.

But their educational achievements are extraordinary.

On average, Asian American students score higher than any other group on standardized tests.

They are making... They are winning top honors at high schools across the country and are being admitted to the leading universities at rates far out of proportion to their presence in the population.

In Harvard's class of 1985, for instance, 9% of the students are Asian Americans, six times their representation in the United States population.

This extraordinary success is definitely related to the high value placed on scholarship in Asian societies, and to a strong family structure that not only transmits this value, but also requires performance.

and that's the parent's job.

We must make possible the best education for our youth that they are, they are our future.

The time has come when it is imperative to act on my suggestions, not to, in the words of Davy Crockett, "don't even make good sound nonsense."

We must remember that the concern for acquisition of abstract, formal knowledge must be complemented by a concern for the object of education, namely the application of one's knowledge.

We would do well to heed Thomas Huxley's words, the great end of life is not knowledge but action.

No generation can confer wisdom upon its children.

Each generation must first work to earn its own wisdom.

I have repeatedly spoken and written and for many years about education.

Nevertheless, I am reminded of the ancient philosopher who came to his city.

He was determined to save its inhabitants from sin and wickedness.

Night and day he walked the streets and haunted the marketplaces.

He preached against greed and envy, against falsehood and indifference.

At first the people listened and smiled.

Later they turned away.

He no longer amused them.

Finally a child, moved by compassion, compassion asked, why do you go on?

Do you not see it as hopeless?

The man answered, In the beginning I thought I could change men.

If I still shout, it is to prevent men from changing me.

I feel like that man, as I talk to you today.

I have fought for reform in education for years.

If I still shout, it is because I am afraid that no one listens, and that our nation will not be able to meet the demands which will inevitably be placed upon it in the future.

Thank you.

(applause) (applause) The first question is what chance, nuclear war.

What would be the results?

That's a very simple question.

I don't know what chance there is for a nuclear war.

I hope it's avoided, but so far, humanity has never been able to avert the worst of wars.

So if I look at it from a historical standpoint, and since the American public is not much smarter than you guys are here, I think it might come.

What would be the results in a nuclear war?

I hope it never comes.

But if it comes to a real all out nuclear war with both two, two or more countries fighting, it'll cause not only a great deal of devastation, but far worse than that, it'll cause a great deal of radiation, which may last for hundreds of thousands or millions of years and may affect, ultimately, life on Earth.

What's the next?

Can you read that?

Okay.

What's this?

>> Do you think there's a future for nuclear power in the United States?

Adm.

Rickover> Do you think there's a future for a nuclear power in the United States?

What will it take to create a... What's this?

Come here... You understand these characters.

You read it.

I'm not going to read this.

(Audience laughs) >> Let's see if I can read that.

Adm.

Rickover> You taught them how to write.

>> No, I can't take credit for that.

(Audience laughs) What will it take to create a positive social attitude toward nuclear power, especially its use in generating electricity?

Adm.

Rickover> Well, that's the first question is...?

>> Do you think there's a future for nuclear power?

Adm.

Rickover> Yes.

I think there's a future for a nuclear power.

Nuclear power is dangerous, but it can be controlled.

All forms of power or energy create waste.

Every time you burn a piece of wood, smoke goes up into the atmosphere.

You're increasing the density of the atmosphere about 250 miles up.

Nuclear power or any other form of energy does that too.

You don't get anything for nothing in this world.

You kids here are going to college, where it's free.

But in real life, there's nothing free.

So if you want a lot of energy to be used in the United States, somebody else is going to have to pay for it.

The climate, the temperature, the climate will increase and something is going to happen.

So you being some of you are sophomores who you're very, that's the smartest time you have in college.

You ought to try to figure this out.

You get, you get nothing for nothing.

That's the point.

If you want to live the good life, as we call it now, where we're using up all our nat... all natural resources, including irreplaceable natural sources, somebody is going to have to pay for it some day because it took 2 billion years to create these the, these things.

What's the next part of the question?

What will it take to create a positive social attitude?

Do way with all people.

(audience laughs) That's the best way of creating positivity.

(audience laughs) >> Oh.

Not sure I can.

Not sure I can get through this one.

It's, Please comment on decommissioned defuel submarines.

I suppose this is, referring to a C disposal of waste.

Nuclear waste is that C disposal, land disposal.

Adm.

Rickover> Please comment on decommissioning submarines.

He's talking obviously only about nuclear powered ships.

Well, we when we decommission and we generally close the plant up and let it stay as is.

No, there's no way, no radioactivity gets out, but outside the submarine.

One way to do it is to sink in the middle of the ocean.

But when you do that, then you create a great amount of radiation for the ocean.

There's life down there.

The chain of life goes from fish all the way up, ultimately to man.

So you cannot introduce radiation without having it ultimately affect mankind.

You may take a great deal of precautions, but ultimately it's bound to have an impact.

All right.

>> I have one more admiral, I'll paraphrase this one, if I may, due to its length.

An engineer writes saying that he's been dismayed by reading about, things that engineers in industry have complained about, newly graduated engineers not knowing anything.

He says, I had just wasted four years and $50,000.

Adm.

Rickover> In what school?

Here?

Yeah.

>> From here.

Yeah.

Adm.

Rickover> If he went to a college for four years and wasted the four years, don't you think there might have been something wrong with that character?

That is the only option, only thing I can say.

Is there anyone in this audience that's gone here for four years and hasn't learned anything?

Hey, raise your hand.

Let me see.

(audience laughs) >> Thank you.

That's it.

Adm.

Rickover> See, I'm protecting you now And I put him on the spot.

>> Thank you very much.

We appreciate it.

Thank you sir.

Thank you.

(applause) A captain interviewed for Rickover's unauthorized biography said Rickover infused into the Navy the idea of excellence.

He had to.

The captain continued, you don't just fool around with nuclear energy.

He said that the standard would be accident.

Rickover did, and Rickover made that happen.

Our thanks to the Clemson Communications Center for their support and the remote feed of Admiral Rickover's address.

Thanks to you for watching.

Good night.

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