Who Is John Dewey??

Here’s something I’ve noticed about the 20th Century. The Communists were supremely gifted at turning their loyal voices into cultural superstars. We would hear their names ALL THE DAMN TIME. Our country has been warped by this perpetual propaganda. (Thank you, liberal media!)

Sometimes, I don’t think there was collusion or discussion. The Communists would simply identify the people who would help them and make sure those people became famous. (Conversely, they would see people that would hurt them and work to destroy those people.)

An example of all this is John Dewey, the most famous educator of the 20th century. Admittedly, he was a very smart man and wrote a lot of books and articles. But, mainly, he was a socialist; and the far-left could use him to push for various “progressive” education ideas.

To make Dewey really useful, they had to pretend he was a god walking among us. You can go on the Internet and find HUNDREDS of sites which treat Dewey as one of history’s great geniuses. It’s just too much.

After a while you want to shout: OKAY, maybe he’s smart and productive, maybe he’s even a nice guy, but he’s just another socialist. And when you look at the track record, the ideas promoted in his name have caused a lot of trouble for our public schools. A lot of trouble!

It was this background that prompted me to write an article in 2009 called “25: Phooey on John Dewey” (which you can Google or find on Improve-Education.org). I picked that title as a message to graduate students in education: hey, not everybody thinks this guy is a god.

My newest installment in this rectification process is called “Educational Decline: Inside John Dewey’s Misguided Mind.” It’s a good little summary of Dewey’s real legacy. You can find this one on RightSideNews with a very nice picture of Professor Dewey.

http://www.rightsidenews.com/2011051013482/life-and-science/health-and-education/educational-decline-inside-john-deweys-misguided-mind.html

My mother was a 2nd wave Montessori teacher who taught thousands of children to read before age 5 (including her own four children).

Oh great, I prayed for the money to send my middle daughter to the new Montessori school that had just opened up here. My ex got a raise, and she went, became a teacher.

I liked her philosophy about children educating themselves and thought it was a good idea. Also liked their nice wooden toys, got my kids a map puzzle with little knobs for each state.

Later I've come to think of it as a snob thing. Except for one daughter (counsellor recommended Quaker school), I'd take her to school and out the other door she'd go, couldn't keep her in school. Got her GED the first try. Driving her there, I asked her how to calculate the circumference and area of a circle. She didn't know. Guess it didn't matter.

But whatever intelligence I have, my kids picked up a lot from me. My son turns out to be a sharp businessman and write well, natural extem speaker which I'm not. So it's not all credit to me. But kids do learn by osmosis from their parents.

Now I'm fighting with the Montessori daughter about sending her probable learning disabled son to elementary school, think kindergarten close to home could be adequate to start and figure out where to go from there. She is far too disorganized to home school, can't afford a private one, and wouldn't be good for her son spending all his time with her. We are all mindful that as he gets older, he is at risk for running with a bad crowd.

I was telling my middle daughter how I taught them to speak properly, enunciate correctly. I described how my oldest got stuck on wowipop and frigerator. I drilled her, very slowly and repeating the difficult sounds until she got it right. My grandson heard me, and pronounced refrigerator perfectly out of the blue. We're still working with him on sounds.

But the joke's on me. My granddaughter who spent more time with me than her mother had a speech defect I missed, had to have a special tutor for awhile.

It is a snob thing in many areas, especially the East Coast. My mother mostly operated out of her basement or garage in rural Pacific Northwest towns (Dad was in the Forestry Service before the envirowhackos ruined it), so she could be a stay at home mom. After we left home, she opened up in a real building and took on and trained staff in the methodology.

That’s all it is, a method. The real secret sauce is the phonics. Learn to read, read to learn, after that anyone can educate themselves for free at the library.

Dewey’s self serving allegiance to whole word reading (sight reading) is what gave all his other noxious theories an opening. If you can’t read well, you can’t find your own sources of information or communicate opposing ideas well, so you’re stuck with the indoctrination they are shoveling.

Aren’t we saying the same thing? I think so.
As I see it, the Left has always been 3 times better organized than the Right. Maybe 6X. And they will ignore differences to win the battle.
Whereas Conservatives will stand back, form purer-than-thou cliques, and argue over little pissant differences that don’t much matter, at least not to me.
That’s why I try not to get involved in such arguments. I have a lot more fun debunking the Left.

Oops, my bad. Wrote all that for nothing. But I'm sure I heard my parents mention something about education associated with the pol Dewey. A kid's memory isn't perfect though, am sure I got the other details right in my little ramble there because it made such an impression on me.

There are definitely gaps in my memory, hints of things that just won't come back, not talking about dark stuff, just ordinary things. There are bits and pieces but can't connect them to the event(s). Then out of the blue, I'll get something back, but most of what I do remember (correctly) has always been there.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.