West Point Quotes
Eisenhower did not go to church on Sundays. He was brought up in a Bible Reading, Christian Family. When he served under MacArthur in the Army, MacArthur often criticized him for not attending church. Eisenhower was the only President in American history who did not belong to any church at the time he was elected. He was not anti-religious at all and thought religion was a very important part of the American Way of life. He started Cabinet Meetings with a Silent Prayer, but he himself was not an observant Christian. In this sense he was very much like a number of our Founding Fathers, like Jefferson, Franklin and John Adams for example.
Access not being free did not refer to tuition, but to the concept of free competition. At the time West Point and Annapolis did not admit students on the basis of meeting any educational preparation or test criteria. A student had to have a political patron for admission. As a result, most colleges and university faculty would have little to do with the service academies and whereas most other schools were making major changes to teach the rapidly changing sciences that were growing, few would interact with the academies. It was during this period that the service academies fell behind academically and never did catch up. Even today a student must be nominated by a politician—usually a Senator of Congressperson. At least today, the applicant must pass reasonable qualification examinations and have a strong high school record. Back in 1869 it was pure politics and Eliot and other Academics saw the schools as extensions of corrupt patronage politics as many student’s families bribed politicians for their sponsorship.
West Point to us is a military academy and its benefit to the nation today is military. However, this was not true before the 20th century. The preparation of military officers was always one objective but there was another—much more important. West Point was the premier engineering school until relatively recently. Even as late as 1900 almost ever bridge built in the United States was designed, engineered and the construction was supervised by a graduate of West Point. That is the main reason that Adams was advocating the spending of public money to support the school. Interestingly, the first American Nobel Prize winner was a professor at the U. S. Naval Academy. The Military Academies were major science and engineering incubators and developers up through the First World War.
The comparison of the costs of education and military spending is not just a modern phenomenon. In the middle of the 19th century, the same argument was being made.
