I hold that the aim of life is to find happiness, which means to
find interest. Education should be a preparation for life. Our
culture has not been very successful. Our education, politics,
and economics lead to war. Our medicines have not done away
with disease. Our religion has not abolished usury and robbery.
Our boasted humanitarianism still allows public opinion to ap-
prove of the barbaric sport of hunting. The advances of the age
are advances in mechanism--in radio and television, in electron-
ics, in jet planes. New world wars threaten, for the world's so-
cial conscience is still primitive.

If we feel like questioning today, we can pose a few awkward
questions. Why does man seem to have many more diseases
than animals have? Why does man hate and kill in war when
animals do not? Why does cancer increase? Why are there so
many suicides? So many insane sex crimes? Why the hate that
is anti-Semitism? Why Negro hating and lynching? Why back-
biting and spite? Why is sex obscene and a leering joke? Why is
being a bastard a social disgrace? Why the continuance of reli-
gions that have long ago lost their love and hope and charity?
Why, a thousand whys about our vaunted state of civilized emi-
nence!

I ask these questions because I am by profession a teacher, one
who deals with the young. I ask these questions because those so
often asked by teachers are the unimportant ones, the ones about
school subjects. I ask what earthly good can come out of discus-
sions about French or ancient history or what not when these
subjects don't matter a jot compared to the larger question of
life's natural fulfillment--of man's inner happiness.

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