Free Listening In by Ted Widmer Page A

officer candidates. One of them, Jimmy Carter, later claimed that Rickover was the greatest influence on him after his parents. Rickover gave President Kennedy a plaque that he displayed on his desk in the Oval Office, featuring the words of an old Breton fisherman’s prayer: “O God, Thy sea is so great and my boat is so small.”
    Unusually, for a Cold Warrior on the front lines, Rickover was fascinated by education and the role it played in bettering society. In 1960, he published Education and Freedom, which announced that “education is the most important problem facing the United States today” and called for a “massive upgrading” of academic standards. Two years later, he published a detailed comparison of American and Swiss schools, arguing that the United States was inferior in nearly every respect. In this conversation with Kennedy, he took advantage of a presidential audience to press his point, dexterously comparing Kennedy’s privileged upbringing with his own as a first-generation immigrant.

    MEETING WITH VICE ADMIRAL HYMAN RICKOVER, FEBRUARY 11, 1963
    JFK: I was just reading this rather good article in the Baltimore Sun this morning about school dropouts, in Baltimore and some of these other cities, what percentage they are, and why. A rather large percentage is lack of interest and so on. Now, why is it that children seem, particularly on television, and having exposure to the affluent society, why is it that it isn’t drilled into them, a sufficient sort of competitive desire … [to this rather rich]?
    RICKOVER: I’ll tell you, you can take two opposite extremes, you can take my case and you can take your case. In your case, you had parents who recognized that money can do you a great deal of harm. And they took care to see, dammit, that it did not. That’s because you had intelligent parents. In my case, I was brought up where, a lot times we didn’t have enough to eat; you had to go out and fight, and so one recognized the importance of school. I think it’s something like that. Now when you get in between, that’s where you have your problems.
    JFK: What I think of, how drilled into my life was the necessity for participating actively and successfully in the struggle. And yet I was brought up in a luxurious atmosphere, where this was a rather hard lesson. And you, from your own life …
    RICKOVER: Your parents were exceptional in this respect. The vast majority of parents who have children now [unclear] are just trying to do everything they can to make everything easy. In that way they are really defeating what they are trying to do.
    JFK: If you think that it’s built into everybody, a survival instinct, which there is, …
    RICKOVER: You know I do! You know it. You know it. Because everything is made easy for them. Some of them get to expect, your parents will take care of you. So you have youngsters going off and getting married. And fully expecting that the parents, you know, will come to their support. And they do. I can give you any number of cases like that, where the parents would have done much better for their children to throw ’em out. There comes a time in every animal life—and human being is a form of animal life—when you have to fend for yourself. This is where the trouble is. Today you can make these arguments today and society will support you. That never used to be the case before. This is the problem we have to face, and we have to try to get around it. Now excuse me if I’m taking up your time, you’re the busiest man in the world.
    JFK: Well.
    RICKOVER: I don’t want to get on all my ideas. But I have thought that if you really wanted to do something for this country, you will [hit on?] education. Because without education, you can’t do it.

SENATOR JOHN F. KENNEDY STOPS TO EAT IN A DINER IN NASHUA, NEW HAMPSHIRE, DURING THE NEW HAMPSHIRE PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY CAMPAIGN, MARCH 5, 1960

 

    A fter losing the nomination for vice president at the 1956 Democratic