[zzeeman]

I have absolutely no argument with your points on public education. However I don't share your optimism that this level of reform (i.e., the abolishment of the current system) will ever occur within the current environment. And even if it were to be accomplished immediately, it would not repair the damage done for generations that results in the current state of the body politic. What I do think will be important going forward, is that the knowledge of this particular form of evil must be preserved for the next generation(s) going forward that will hopefully survive this conflagration and be active in establishing the next Constitutional Republic.

The roots of this problem can be traced prior to Dewey:

"In 1852 when the state of Massachusetts pioneered the first program of public education in America, it decided to borrow as its model the Prussian educational system, the then reigning paradigm of educational discipline and efficiency. The designers of the Prussian system did not share Condorcet's concern with teaching children to think for themselves. The German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, an enthusiastic supporter of the Jacobins during the French Revolution, had been one of the spiritual architects of the Prussian system. Fichte summed up his philosophy of public education by saying: 'If you want to influence [the pupil] at all, you must do more than merely talk to him; you must fashion him, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will. ... The new education must produce this stable and unhesitating will according to a sure and infallible rule.' This method of teaching no doubt produces the kind of orderly discipline necessary for mass education to work at all, and yet it is also the doctrine of education embraced by all subsequent forms of totalitarian government and eerily prophetic of George Orwell's Newspeak."
-- Lee Harris, The Next American Civil War, The Populist Revolt against the Liberal Elite

[wintertime]

The roots of this problem can be traced prior to Dewey:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Yes, indeed! The problem has its roots **prior** to Dewey.

And....I also agree that our socialist, collectivist, and godless government schools will not be abolished soon.

Even here on Free Republic it is discouraging to readb posts from conservatives who think these schools can be reformed or who defend their child's government indoctrination center as being one of the “good” ones.