494
PARTISAN REVIEW
very fact of crisis-which tears away
fa~ades
and obliterates preju–
dices-to explore and inquire into whatever has been laid bare of
the essence of the matter. The disappearance of prejudices simply
means that we have lost the answers on which we ordinarily rely
without even realizing they were originally answers to questions. A
crisis forces us back to the questions themselves and requires from
us either new or old answers, but in any case direct judgments. A
crisis only becomes a disaster when we respond to it with ·preformed
judgments, that is, with prejudices. Such an attitude not only sharpens
the crisis but makes us forfeit the experience of reality and the op–
portunity for reflection it provides.
However clearly a general problem may present itself in a
crisis, it is nevertheless impossible ever to isolate completely the uni–
versal element from the concrete and specific circumstances in which
it makes its appearance. Though the crisis in education may affect
the whole world it is characteristic that we find its most extreme
form in America, the reason being that perhaps only in America
could a crisis in education actually become a factor in politics. In
America, as a matter of fact, education plays a different and, poli–
tically, incomparably more important role than in other countries.
Technically, of course, the explanation lies in the fact that America
has always been a land of immigrants; it is obvious that the enor–
mously difficult melting together of the most diverse racial groups–
never fully successful but continuously succeeding beyond expecta–
tion-can only be accomplished through the schooling, education and
Americanization of the immigrants' children. Since for most of these
children English is not their mother tongue but has to be learned
in school, schools must obviously assume functions which in a nation–
state would be performed as a matter of course in the home.
More decisive, however, for our considerations is the role that
continuous immigration plays in the country's political consciousness
and frame of mind. For America is not simply a colonial country
in need of immigrants to populate the land though independent of
them in its political structure. For America the determining factor has
always been the motto printed on every dollar bill:
Novus Ordo
Seclorum
J
The New Order of the World. The immigrants, the new–
comers, are a guarantee to the country that it represents the new
order. The meaning of this new order, this founding of a new world
