"A little more than a year ago, America was jarred into a sweeping reappraisal of its own potential for the future. Sputnik I was wheeling over our heads as we pondered its full import. A nation dominated by a communist dictatorship was setting a faster pace of technological development than our own. We searched for reasons. For the most part, we found fault within our system of education which, we decided, was not training and encouraging enough scientists and engineers, enough foreign language experts, enough teachers to meet the demands of space-atomic age. We laid plans to remedy these deficiencies, but we changed some of our attitudes as well. The man absorbed in things of the mind, particularly the scientists, no longer seemed quite so distant from our everyday lives. He was as close, indeed, as the preservation of our own freedom. This reawaking, this awareness has been a good thing for our country, and it has already begun to bear fruit."
Good Reading Rack Service, 1958
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