Eisenhower made a passionate case for integrated education — not racial integration (though that was coming), but the integration of liberal and practical learning. 'Too often it is a liberal education for one and a practical education for another. What we desperately need is an integrated liberal, practical education for the same person — for every American youth who can possibly obtain its blessings.' He pointed to Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln as exemplars — men who combined practical skills with broad humanistic understanding despite lacking formal schooling. 'Education today can nurture for us the possibility of a thousand Franklins and a thousand Lincolns in a generation, where before we were fortunate to have one.' The argument was that the nuclear age demanded not just technical competence but philosophical wisdom: 'The need for philosophers and theologians parallels the need for scientists and engineers.'