WOI: News Clip 349

I do not believe that either our country or the USSR is likely deliberately to precipitate a strategic nuclear crisis the consequences could be too overwhelmingly final for life on this planet and while China's nuclear strategy is relatively unknown nevertheless their strategic moves have so far been marked by caution there is however a serious danger of a new round of escalation in the strategic arms race that lends great urgency to moving forward with the strategic arms limitation talks I am certain however that the 1970s will see a decade of turmoil revolution and small Wars the rising tide of expectations in the developing areas frustrated by scarce capital resources and expanding populations will force recurring political instability as the pressures mount for overnight modernization and we cannot expect long continuing national animosities some of them over ill-defined boundaries to vanish quickly nor can we expect internal insurrections insurgencies or civil wars to cease the shifting balances of political economic and technological power among 128 different nations will not always be contained within the framework of peaceful settlements many of you are already familiar with the recommendations of the recent UNA policy panel on this subject I had the privilege of serving as a member of that panel under the distinguished leadership of President Brewster of Yale as you know this report was entitled controlling conflicts in the 1970s after reviewing recent unilateral and multilateral experience in peacekeeping the report concluded that it would be in the United States' national interest to take the following steps first to give the United Nations what it should have had from the beginning armed forces available on call when they are needed to keep the peace second the establishment of a peace fund to finance the initial months of a peacekeeping operation and third a vigorous upgrading of mediation and conciliation capabilities to prevent conflicts from breaking out and to resolve them when they do these are not dramatic steps but they are essential first steps there is a growing conviction in the international community that UN peacekeeping efforts must be linked more directly with the effort at peaceful settlement of the issues underlying the dispute peacekeeping must not paper over the dispute nor should it be a device for suppressing legitimate pressures for social economic or political change we must always keep in mind that the purpose of un peacekeeping is not to impose or oppose any ideological system it's job is to insulate the processes of inner internal politics from outside interference which may threaten international peace and security in no event should UN peacekeeping be used to freeze a situation in such a way that social and political change cannot take place this principle was exemplified in the UN peacekeeping operation in West (area?) where the United Nations was the means through which political responsibility passed from the Netherlands to Indonesia the problem in this area of peacemaking has been well stated by our Chairman ambassador Goldberg when he said and I quote we cannot be content simply to keep what peace we have and restore it when it is broken we must devote our highest statesmanship to building the peace we do not yet have until the necessary effort is made to develop this capacity the world community and all its members strong and weak alike will remain dangerously insecure as the end of the quotation I would not presume today to suggest a program as to how this can be done I believe however a program to prepare the UN for a larger role in 1970s must include the following a concerted effort to make available to the UN the most experienced personnel of UN members for UN peacekeeping assignments a streamlining of the work of the two UN political organs the Security Council and the General Assembly in addition I would suggest that a good hard look needs to be taken at the organizational structure of the United Nations to see how it can be shaped better to meet the requirements of the decade which lies ahead in conclusion I believe that nations can and must construct a better system for preserving peace than that which exists today this belief rests heavily upon the development of a stronger and more effective United Nations I have tried to outline several of the first steps which I believed should be taken to this end we must face the reality that until we succeed in developing a stronger UN the world community and all its members strong and weak alike will remain dangerously insecure thank you very much could you pretend for a moment that somewhere someone is singing the star-spangled banner one stanza might be enough ladies and gentlemen you and I and thousands of others across the country like us were involved in giving our life's blood to the facilitation of the coming of other human beings live each day with three very brutal facts the first of these is that no human being is becoming what he might become I'm not becoming what I might become you're not becoming what you might become and this is so very true of the children and youth in our culture at this time the second fact is that the potential for human becoming is only dimly seen only dimly seen in our culture and perhaps less well seen and many other cultures of the world and perhaps the most brutal of the facts is the third one and that is that not enough people care entirely too many people are entirely too complacent about the lack of human becoming in our culture and any and in any other cultures of the world in my study (inaudible) we have 50,000 mothers with three children each under 6 years of age working full-time outside their home in my city we have 35,000 fathers heads of families unemployed at the moment this is not a good picture and yet this is a slice this is a sample of the American culture at this time we are told that we now have 15 million American children between the ages of 3 and 6 who are doomed to failure in our public schools as they now exist we're told that the number and the proportion of young students in their preteens who commit suicide has more than doubled in the last 10 years that the number of adolescents and the proportion of adolescents committing suicide has almost doubled in the last 10 years and look at our successful ones the ones who are in college or the ones coming through college we use a textbook on our campus that says that one out of every six of our present-day college students are seriously psychologically impaired and the clinical impressions of our staff members would support this on our own campus we are told that 6% of our college students have experienced marijuana we're told that 1% have experienced LSD or some other form of an hallucinatory drug we're told that a study of 175,000 people in the heart of New York City revealed only 18.6% of them to be psychologically well that more than 30 percent were seriously psychologically impaired we live with the fact that one out of every ten of us can expect to experience serious emotional and psychological breakdown in the course of our living and we're told that this figure is really one out of every 12 for the adult one out of every eight for children and if this is true this is a serious change in this ratio you can find statements like these figures like these you can discover all kinds of disturbing things we're told for example that we had entirely too many high achieving children in the elementary schools who are experiencing ulcers on strong programs of drugs experiencing nightmares and so on it isn't difficult to find these statements to find these figures but you know and I know that it's extremely difficult to come by these figures with any great degree of accuracy and so for our purposes let's just assume they're half true but if they're half true they are still most disturbing and they are still sound reflectors are the conditions of our culture the conditions that are influencing the becoming of human beings the conditions that are determining what will happen to human potential in our culture and perhaps in other cultures of the world and these conditions are serious enough to say to us that someone must go to work someone must do something about these conditions and the ideal persons to do this are those persons we call our educators the educator is the key person in our culture particularly at this moment in this time the educator is the man of the hour and he's the man of the hour for a number of specific reasons first of all he's located at the community level he is the only professionally prepared person who reaches all children all youth all families all parents at the community level is the only professional person that has a day-by-day contact at the community level and is the only person who is professionally prepared for this contact this includes this relationship on a day-by-day basis at the community level and then in addition to that the educator is the expert in learning you know you learn everything that you become you even learn your problems your disturbances your maladaptations these are learned and the teacher the educator the professional person at the community level is the community's expert in learning and therefore he's the community's expert in human becoming because human becoming and learning are synonymous processes and therefore each of us is in a spot to be very productive in assisting others in becoming more of what is possible for them to become each of us has a very important role to play in helping others to become full of cells more complete cells through time but we start where we are you see the human being does not develop like a plant we have many textbooks that tell us that this is so we have textbooks telling us what a human being is like in three weeks that's six weeks it's six months at one year at two years we have people arguing on the difference between a child at four and a child at five or four years six months five years six months and these things are nice neat orderly convenient beautiful unfortunately they just don't seem to be true and you start applying them to individuals that you know you see we've said that a human being develops like a seed and a sprout and this stage and this stage and at this stage the human being is like this and therefore we should do so and so this is fundamentally a theory that a human being becomes what he becomes through the processes of unfolding