The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

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ST. CATHARINES, Ontario—We left Schenectady (N.Y.) Airport at 9:20 a.m. Tuesday and reached Buffalo almost on time, a few minutes before 11 a.m. Our hosts from St. Catharines, on the Canadian side of the Niagara River, were on hand and kindly offered to drive us along their side of the river.

Fortunately for Canada, its park service has been able to buy all of the land along the river, making it a lovely drive all the way from the Peace Bridge to Niagara Falls. Set far back are some nice, new little houses which have a lovely view. But all commercial building is banned and this makes a great difference.

At last we reached the falls and got out to have a good look. As usual, the rainbow was beautiful. I think that no matter how often I see these falls, I am always impressed by their beauty.

After this we proceeded to the hotel, and in a room high up from where we could see the falls, we had a pleasant luncheon.

Then we drove to St. Catharines and to the mayor's office in the City Hall to sign the guest book. Our photographs were taken there, following which we proceeded to the hotel where we were free until we went to dinner a few minutes before 6 p.m. and afterwards to my lecture.

From November 10 to 12 more than a thousand adult educators and hundreds of representatives of institutions and organizations were in Atlantic City for the annual conference of the Adult Education Association of the U.S.A. Their theme was, "The Development of Mature Individuals."

For three years they have been studying this problem and developing different aspects of it, and their President, Dr. Kenneth B. Denne of Boston University, said, "The ability to think and act like real grownups could be the life or death factor in America's future."

He said this because he recognized that the challenge of the Soviet Union is constantly increasing. In a world in which we find colonial rebellion and runaway developments in destructive armaments, all of our people, including our leaders, will be required to develop new ways to bring about peace, and we will need to show qualities of maturity which we have not had in the past.

Dr. Denne also said that we need "the wisdom to be dissatisfied with the way things are, the boldness to attempt to change them, and the patience to do it in company with others who disagree with us about how it should be done."

This is an interesting statement, for it poses clearly some of the problems that lie before us as a nation where democracy places on each individual a responsibility for the ultimate role of government.

It is encouraging to find that the Adult Education Association reported that adult registration in schools and colleges is growing faster than undergraduate enrollment.

That is because more and more people realize that today they face problems and situations in the world which they do not understand. They realize they need the help of education to act with greater maturity and intelligence in coping with the world problems, which have become the problems of each individual citizen.

E.R.

(Copyright, 1956, by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

Persons
  • Denne, Kenneth B. [ index ]
         American educator
Organizations
Geographic
  • St. Catharines (Canada) [ index ]


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, November 16, 1956

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
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Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
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