| Summary/Abstract |
Anthropologist Margaret Mead supported Point Four—at least at first. In January 1949, U.S. President Harry S. Truman had made the sharing of U.S. know-how with the rest of the world a pillar of his foreign policy agenda, ushering in a “cooperative” program of technical assistance and self-help. Under the perception that the rapidly shifting forces of modernity were on the march around the globe, Mead echoed her earlier scholarship when she advocated for development in the post-1945 era as akin to “education for choice”: allowing other cultures to “cope with modernity as much on their own terms as possible.”1 The head of Point Four, Dr. Henry Garland Bennett, a Progressive and former teacher, shared similar sentiments. In November 1951, he noted to a room full of fellow educators “the ferment” of the times. People around the globe now had a “window into the 20th Century,” Bennett argued. “They are looking for a door, and we are helping them to find one. We can do no less than welcome them as partners.” Mirroring Mead’s educational emphasis, he added: “The Point 4 Program is education, from first to last. It is in fact the essence of education: an adventure in the sharing of knowledge.”
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