Education Quote by Sargent Shriver

Shriver is arguing for a kind of principled paternalism that sounds impolite in a democracy: education can’t be a mirror held up to local appetites, because the mirror is usually fogged by fear, habit, and short-term self-interest. The line is bluntly constructed - “I do not think” softens the blow just enough to pass as deliberation, then “should be determined” lands like policy, not opinion. It’s a refusal to let schooling become a customer-service desk.

The subtext is a warning about “community” as an alibi. Invoking what “the community thinks it needs” often means ceding curriculum to the loudest voters, the most organized church group, the angriest taxpayers, or the dominant racial and class interests. In that frame, “needs” becomes code for compliance: teach the basics, skip the controversial, track kids into jobs that keep the local economy humming, and don’t unsettle inherited hierarchies.

Context matters because Shriver comes out of the mid-century liberal project that treated education as nation-building infrastructure. As the architect of War on Poverty programs and a builder of institutions (Peace Corps, Head Start), he’s speaking from a worldview where schools are instruments of mobility and civic capacity - and where local control can be an obstacle to equal opportunity. There’s also a Cold War undertone: a country competing on science, leadership, and democratic competence can’t outsource its future to parochial preferences.

What makes the quote work is its quiet provocation. It forces the reader to choose between two uncomfortable truths: democracy needs public consent, and democracy also needs citizens educated beyond what they already believe they “need.”