Winston Churchill on Education and What It Means for All of Us

On this episode of Our American Stories, Dr. Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale College and a Churchill scholar, tells the story of Winston Churchill on Education.

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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 Biorn, 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, all that right, but
nobody like him, he writes of Hitler. You see these
dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their

(00:44):
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 hearts. There is unspoken fear. They
are afraid of words, words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home,

(01:13):
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 the

(01:36):
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 this library is We

(01:57):
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.

(02:17):
But because of him, I met Penelope, my wife. 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
never been abroad before. And I said, I'm looking for
Martin Gilbert and they knew immediately who that was. And

(02:41):
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. I 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 is

(05:15):
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 war

(05:38):
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 education is. She wants

(06:01):
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,

(06:21):
and so he says, I have to only paraphrase this.
I don't have the 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

(06:48):
are ends, not means. That's why he saw Hitler for
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

(07:11):
a governing system that 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

(07:37):
does that mean? 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

(07:59):
the ones who know.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
And you're listening to doctor Larry Arn 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 classic sense,

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

Speaker 2 (09:22):
Hi