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Obama, Freud, and the American Progressives' Guilt Trip
The American Thinker ^ | February 07, 2010 | Chuck Rogér

Posted on 02/07/2010 3:59:50 AM PST by Scanian

At the turn of the twentieth century, an early "progressive" Vermonter named John Dewey kick-started a makeover of America's education system. At the conclusion of the second of his seminal works, The School and Society and The Child and the Curriculum, Dewey offered these bits of wisdom.

"But save as the teacher knows, knows wisely and thoroughly, the race-expression which is embodied in that thing we call the Curriculum, the teacher knows neither what the present power, capacity, or attitude is, nor yet how it is to be asserted, exercised, and realized."

Even in this final sentence, as in the preceding 122 pages, Dewey's words imitate concepts but depict few cogent thoughts. Yet nonsensical theorizing was the stuff of fledgling progressives' dreams. And so from The Child and the Curriculum emerged a construct that Dewey called the "psychologizing"[1] of education, and progressives would use his unsupported contentions to pervert the process by which education would be conducted over the next hundred years.

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Education; History; Politics; Society
KEYWORDS: johndewey; progressivism; psychology; theoreticalnonsense

1 posted on 02/07/2010 3:59:50 AM PST by Scanian
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To: Scanian

He certainly beats around the bush. Sounds like Zero’s czars.


2 posted on 02/07/2010 4:39:47 AM PST by Lumper20
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To: Lumper20

The “progressives” were the great-great-grand-daddies of the left-wing fascist movement in this country, which is currently reaching its full flowering under Obama and the Czars.


3 posted on 02/07/2010 4:48:12 AM PST by livius
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To: Scanian

America has been sold on a guilt trip that says it lives too well and should be ashamed of its prosperity. Other nations and races are suffering, Americans of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds are also suffering: therefore, America is to blame. America, in this respect, is like George Bush — always good the left’s blame game. Nothing will change the world view of the left. The point is not to buy into it.


4 posted on 02/07/2010 5:00:59 AM PST by Blind Eye Jones
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To: livius

Woodrow Wilson shoulda loved these commies.


5 posted on 02/07/2010 5:09:35 AM PST by Lumper20
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To: Scanian

No wonder Ayn Rand nailed them so well... the nation was full of these elitist snobs. There is hope for us yet - we drove them underground before, we can do it again.


6 posted on 02/07/2010 5:56:50 AM PST by Tzfat
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