Radio Script #279
Little Talks On Common Things
November 13, 1955
I regard a certain educational situation which confronts our whole nation so serious that I want to solicit your interest in it tonight. The general situation caused by increased enrollments in our schools is bad enough, but it is on the way to adequate solution. The shortage of teachers is alarming, but effective measures are being taken to meet that situation. What I want to talk about for a few minutes is a more particular crisis, the amazing lack of students in the field of science.
This is an astounding contradiction. Here we are~ the leading scientific nation of the world. Our advances in science and technology have outstripped the by no means small advances made in other countries. To train our scientists we have the finest technical schools in the world. Nowhere else on the globe are there institutions that can equal the Massachusetts, Carnegie, and California Institutes of Technology. Yet we can’t turn out from these and hundreds of other fine col leges enough scientists and engineers to meet the needs of our technological age. Many large companies have reported to the National Science Foundation that they have been forced to curtai I much needed increases in their research and development programs because they cannot get the men competent to conduct that research.
What is worse, a situation is rapidly developing where there is nobody competent to train future scientists. Why should any young man or woman, wei I trained in physics, chemistry or mathematics, be wi Iling to take a teaching position when either industry or government wi II pay much higher salaries? In this competition, industry may in the long run turn out to be its own worst enemy. If it continues to drain science teachers from the col leges, who is going to train the future scientists that industry needs?
But the problem goes deeper than competition between industry and teaching. The Troub Ie lies in the nati on’s high schoo Is. Wh i Ie tota I enrol I ment is steadi Iy mounting, the proportion of high school stUdents studying any science is decreasing. In an astounding arTicle in the New York Times last June, the education editor, Ben Fine, told his readers that of al I the boys and girls who graduated from high school in 1955, only one in five had ever studied any algebra, and he then made the astonishing statement that the number of pupi Is study~ ing physics in al I the country’s high schools was actually smaller in 1955 than it had been 25 years ago in 1930.
We are paying a tragic price for the present attitude in our high schools. Too many boys are committed to the belief that the thing to do is just to get by, take the easiest subjects, pay most attention to athletics, and shun what they cal I the tough courses like mathematics, chemistry and physics. As a result, most of the stUdents who enter col lege have come to have an aversion to mathemati cs and sci ence. The ti me has come when a boy who is good, at mathema:… tics is regarded by his companions almost as a freak.
In the past five years since 1950 the men and women graduating from our col leges who are qualified to teach high school science and mathematics has dropped 56 per cent. Unbelievable as it sounds, the U. S. Office of Education te I I s us that in June, 1955 on Iy 249 men and women fu I Iy prepared to teach high school physics graduated from all the colleges and universities in the United States. Of those 249, certainly not more than half wi I I actually enter teaching.
The others wil I take financially more attractive positions in industry or government I aboratori es •
As Mr. Fine put it in another article in the Times on August 28″ :!It is decidedly unpleasant to realize that this country wi II get only 125 new physics teachers th is year for the 25,000 high school s . The res u It is a II too obvi ous. Half trained or untrained men and women wil I be drafted into these positions. Lacking imagination and understanding, bluffing their way along, they may wei I drive thousands of potentially competent young scientists away from this most important field of learning.”
What Mr. Fine tel Is us about physics is happening also in the other scientific subjects. This can have no other result than to reduce the nation’s supply of scientists both in quantity and in quality.
Fi na I Iy, let us see what is at the root of the troub Ie. I t is the i ncreasing aversion of American boys and girls to mathematics. Without decent proficiency in arithmetic, a person cannot mas”ter algebra, and without faci lity in algebra, he stands no chance to master calculus, a fundamental tool of science. Boys dodge physics when they discover that it presents them with problems that can be solved only by algebraic equations. A wei I known professor of chemistry says that every year in his freshman course, he has to spend a lot of time teaching simple propoction, a common subject of the seventh grade.
Beginning in the elementary school, we must see that boys and girls not only learn ariThmetic, but come to understand the importance of al I mathematics in life. Those who show faci lity with numbers must be encouraged to go on. The limitless opportunities of science are the reward.
So I beg my listeners tonight to use their influence with every young person they know. Do your utmost to persuade those boys or girls not to follow the easy, drifting road in school. Urge them to take subjects that their generation calls tough. For it is a truth of history that no people has ever become a nation of idle drifters and survived.
Now let us turn again to old time things. Do you know how Cadi I lac Mounta ingot its name? To Port Roya I, Nova Scoti a, “there came in 1611 the Guyon family, which had earlier sent from France the Jesuit missionaries, FathersBiard and Poutorincourt to the Indian settlement on Somes Sound at Mt. Desert.
In 1671 to a descendant of the Port Royal Guyons, then settled at nearby Beauport, there was born a daughter, Marie Therese Guyon. About 1683 there appeared at Beauport a young Frenchman who had left France because of some scandal.
In Nova Scotia he gave his name as Antoine de Laumet and announced that he wanted to study navigation. He entered the employ of Marie The.rese’s uncle .. Francois Guyon. A strong friendship developed between Francois and his talented emp loyee, who made surpri si ng Iy accurate maps showi ng harbors, rocks; reefs, and other features along the coast. It was inevitable that the niece Marie Therese and the young Antoine should meet. It was natural that they should fall in love, and in June, 1687, they were married. By this time the successful Antoine was cal ling himself Antoine de Laumet de la Mathe Cadi I lac of Toulouse.
How Antoine got the Cadi I lac name we do not know. There is no record of his connection with the seigneurs de Cadi Ilac, large land-owners of Brittany.
The title Seigneur de Cadi I lac had become extinct in 1614 with the death of the last male heir, 73 years before Antoine had married Marie Therese Guyon. However Antoine came by the Cadi Ilac name, he and his bride left Canada directly after their marriage and set up housekeeping at Mount Desert. Marie Therese was the first woman of European origin to visit those mountains of the sea. In 1688 Antoine received a grant of land two leagues long and two wide on the mainland, plus the entire island of Mt. Desert. He was given by the French king the title Seigneur de Douaquet et Mont Deserts.
Cad i II ac stayed at Mt. Desert not more than two years. I n May, 1690 he was in France. On the day be fore Sir rli II i am Ph i pps demanded the surrender of Port Royal, there was drawn up in Paris a project for attacking Poston, using data supplied by Cadi I lac from his intimate knowledge of the coast. Cadi Ilac, then himself on a visit to Versailles, worked out the detai Is for the proposed attack.
The attack was not made, because before Cadi I lac could return to Quebec in 1691, Phipps had captured Port Royal, the Cadi I lac holdings were wiped out, and 16 years later in 1707 the Treaty of Utrecht ended Cadi I lac’s claims to Mt. Desert.
So it was that the impoverished seigneur turned west. Sensing future possibi lities for the site where the city of Detroit now stands, he persuaded the French government to let him have 50 soldiers, 50 traders, and a Jesuit priest, to start a settlement there. Within a year Cadi Ilac’s Michigan vi I lage had become a flourishing trading post. So it came about that Cadi I lac Mountain on Maine’s Mt. Desert and the Cadi I lac motor car of Detroit were both named for the same man, the French fugi ti ve from Justi ce who married the Guyon gi rl at the citadel of Quebec in 1687.
The story has an i nteresti ng seque I. In 1732 Joseph, a son of Antoine and Marie Cadi I lac, married Marguerite de Gregoire, and their daughter, given her grandmother’s name of Marie Therese, married in 1761 her cousin, Bartholemy de Gregoire. In 1786 this grandaughter of the Siegneur de Cadi I lac, petitioned the General Court of Massachusetts for possession of her grandfather’s lands at Mt. Desert. As a result she finally won legal possession of more than half of the original grant which Louis XIV had bestowed upon her grandfather. Dispossession had reduced Antoine to poverty and had forced him to go west. Repossession made the Gregoires one of the weaithiest fami lies in the District of Ma i ne.
Now let us pick up a few more stories from Charles Hathaway’s newspaper of a hundred years ago~ the Waterv; I Ie Union. One of the important fami lies of Watervi lIe at that time was the Moor fami Iy. Traders, shipbui Iders and moneylenders, they did a big business locally and far away. In June~ 1847 they published this notice in Hathaway’s paper:
“Farmers attenti on! Two hundred tons of p I aster, of the best qua Ii ty, just received for sale by W. & D. Moor, at their mi I I near the steamboat landing, where a good supply of fresh ground wi II be kept constantly on hand.”
Now it would take the smal I community of Watervi lie and its outlying farms a long time to use up 200 tons of plaster for the walls of houses. Obviously that was not its principal use. The words in the ad “a good supply_of:fresh ground!! gives us·the clue. The plaster was used as lime for the crop lands. In 1847 the Watervi lie region was predomi-nantly agricultural. Down the river in Moor’s boats went regularly tons of oats and barley, and even of wheat. Maine soi f has constantly needed I i me, and that is what the Moors’ 200 tons of p I aster were for.
A hundred years ago apprentices, usually cal led Hbound boysll, frequently ran away. So we are not surprised to find in the Watervi lie Union this ad:
“Noti ce is hereby gi ven that 25 cents wi II be pai d for the return of my worthless runaway app renti ce, Wi I I i am Sawye r As I have po i nted out in “Kennebec Yesterdays t!, a father had c I aim to a son’s wages unti I the I atter reached the age of 21, and it was customa’ry then for the father to pub Ii sh lega I noti ces like th i sane wh i ch Tay lor Smi th of Fa i rf i e I d put in the Watervi I Ie Un ion: “Noti ce is hereby given that I re lin.;.. quish to my son, Benjamin F. Smith, the remainder of his time, to act for himself, that I claim none of his wages nor wi I I I pay any debts of his contracting after th i s date.”
By 1850 special ized shops had begun to appear on Watervi lie’s Main Street:_ but the largest ad in the Union’s July 10th issue was for what we would call a general store. In the flowery language of the time it says:
“Ora Doolittle & Co. would inform their friends of Waterville and vicinity that they have taken the store formerly occup ied by Esty & Kimba II, where they have just received an assortment of goods, such as we usually kept in a country store, together with a supply of pork, lard, codfish, mackerel, and halibut.: also Genessee, Baltimore and Buckwheat flour; mi II saws, nai Is, etc., and other articles too numerous to mention — all of which they offer at reduced prices for cash or produce, as they intend to sell for small profits and ready pay. Special notice: They have a new article cal led Chemical Olive Soap, superior for common household purposes and for removing oil and grease from woolen, si Ik, or cotton goods. n
Year: 1955