Winston Churchill on Success, Failure, and the Role of Education

On this episode of Our American Stories, Winston Churchill is remembered for his leadership during World War II, but his views on education reveal a different side of the man. Dr. Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale College and a Churchill scholar, shares how Churchill’s schooling shaped his belief that education is about more than facts and rather preparing people to face both success and failure.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Up next, a
story on education and Sir Winston Churchill, told by doctor
Larry Barn, a Churchill scholar and president of Hillsdale College.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Winston Churchill, do you know was a very great man.
It's a breathtaking He had flaws and all that right,
but nobody like him, he writes of Hitler. You see
these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of

(00:44):
their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. On all
sides they are guarded by masses of armed men, and
cannons and airplanes and forts, and they vaunt themselves before
the world get in their march. There is unspoken fear.
They were afraid of words, words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring

(01:12):
at home, all the more powerful because forbidden these terrify them.
A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and
even the mightiest potentates are thrown into a panic. A
tyrant is the enemy of learning any high thing. That's

(01:35):
the worst thing about them. And Winston Churchill knew that.
Didn't go to college. I met Sir Martin Gilbert, through
whom I met Penelope Arn in a little library in
North London called the Wiener Library, and now this library is.

(01:56):
We were to meet there and then I was to
walk with him to the London School of Economics, where
I was supposed to be a student, although I hardly
ever went there. Moved to Oxford right away because he
gave me a job. And I had to chase him
down the stairs and say where should I live? And
he said Oxford. I said, okay, So I moved over
the weekend. But because of him, I met Penelope, my wife.

(02:20):
Right there's a big day for me. But I walk
in this library and it's this quiet little library and
there's these two Jewish ladies running it, older ladies, and
I'm kind of shy. I'm from Arkansas, you know, and
I've never been abroad before. And I said, I'm looking
for Martin Gilbert and they knew immediately who that was.

(02:41):
And they walked me over and he's looking at a book.
It's a primary school reader and it's got the kind
of primary colors in it, and he said, hello, nice
to meet you. Look at this book. You know what
it was. It was a textbook from Hitler's Germany. And

(03:02):
the story in the textbook it's a little storybook pictures
and turned the page in a few words on each page.
And what was happening was some German children with blonde
hair and blue eyes and brown uniforms and backpacks went
into a butcher shop. And the butcher was a Jewish butcher.
He actually looked rather like blue do in the Popeye cartoons.

(03:26):
And the plot of the story is that he was
tempting these German children into the back and he was
butchering them primary school little kids. And Martin Gilbert said,
notice this, and he pointed, because there are sides of
pork hanging everywhere, and he says, notice that the color,

(03:49):
the hue of the sides of pork is the same
as the hue of the skin of the butcher. And
nobody else is like that. That's education under a tyrant.
You know what Churchill said, education is he didn't go

(04:09):
to college today. If you hear a politician, Republican or
Democrat describe education, it's a little better recently. But if
you hear them describe it, they never know what it is. Right.
They think it's success, they think it's you know. Whereas
what Zach needs to know and what Carly needs to
know is they need to know how to be, They

(04:31):
need to know how to live their lives, because their
whole lives are in front of them, and everything turns
on how they choose. And we don't know that today. See,
and that means that we're going down the road where
you find Hitler at the end. Right In nineteen forty six,

(04:54):
the war's over, Churchill has become the greatest man in
the world, and he goes to the University of Miami
and gets an honorary degree. He always made the same
joke when he got one. I've been so much better
at receiving degrees than I was at taking exams. But
I'll read you what he want. What he wrote, this

(05:15):
is an age of machinery and specialization. I hope, nonetheless
or all the more, that the purely vocational aspect of
university study will not be allowed to dominate or monopolize
the attention of the returning servicemen soldiers coming back from

(05:36):
war in nineteen fifty three, I've known this for about
a year. And as you know, I'm old now, and
I've been studying Winston Churchill for a long time. In
nineteen fifty three, he's the Prime Minister of the country
for the second time, and they're having a fight because
they're starting adult education and he won't let them bring
the bill forth. The Secretary of Education doesn't understand what

(05:59):
education it's about. She wants it all to be vocational,
just training for a job. Do you see how ungenerous
that is, because all you're going to teach him to
do is to do what you teach him to do,
instead of teaching them to be human, helping them to
learn to be fully human. Right, and so he says,

(06:25):
I have to only paraphrase this. I don't have a
quote right here, but he says, for adult people to
address themselves to the greatest books in their age, what
a satisfaction. I was a late starter myself, he says.
You see, he thinks human beings are ends, not means.

(06:52):
That's why he saw Hitler form what he was. He
goes on, engines were made for men, not men for engines.
It ought to be part of our religion to see
that our country is well governed. Well governed means by
the way an education system and a governing system that

(07:12):
treats you is the point of it all. The purpose.
Expert knowledge, however indispensable, is no substitute for a generous
and comprehending outlook upon the human story, with all its
sadness and all its unquenchable hope. What does that mean?

(07:38):
That means that the stakes in politics are everything, and
you can only play for the stakes in the right
way if you understand that politics is not everything. And
the great statesmen who save everything are the ones who

(07:59):
know that.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
And you're listening to doctor Larry Arne and an extraordinary
teacher who truly understands what education is, what its value is,
and how it makes us all more human if done right.
Human beings are ends, not means. Churchill understood that engines

(08:24):
were made for men, not men for engines. It applies
today like it did when Churchill uttered those lines in
the nineteen fifties. The story of education and what Churchill
thought about education, what doctor arn one of America's great
educators in the classical sense and in the classical sense,

(08:48):
and a story of so much more here on our
American Stories.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
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