Mrs. Roosevelt Claims Discipline Marks Education of Soviet Youth

"The people of the Soviet Union have no concept of what we call freedom," Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt said in an address in New Lecture Hall to the Law School Forum last night.

Since Russians under the Czars were starving and ignorant, Mrs. Roosevelt said, they now date everything good in Russia as something that has been done after the Revolution. "The Russians are proud that they live in the second best nation in the world," she asserted.

After touring Russia last September, Mrs. Roosevelt stated that the phenomenal progress of the Soviet Union is due to its school system. "Two months after a child is born," she said, "its mother begins taking it to State nurseries."

In the state schools, children are taught the strict discipline of Soviet life. Mrs. Roosevelt said she saw children under a year old doing memorized exercises. Four-year-olds went through group exercise routines "without a word being spoken."

The effect of this discipline can already be seen in Russia. The cities are miraculously clean; few young people go to church, although everyone seems to worship Lenin and Pavlov, she noted. The greatest effect of this discipline, however, has been in the field of education.

Mrs. Roosevelt said that "Science is especialy sugar-coated." No one is forced to go into science, but scientists receive higher pay and more privileges. Soviet science has made such great progress, she said, "because only in science can a Russian think perfectly freely."

The Russian schools also emphasize languages, and Mrs. Roosevelt said that the United States must do the same. She said we should learn Russian because, "if we know what the Soviet problem really is, we can win. We have to have imagination, vision and courage."