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"I’ll bet you think that the problems with our nation’s schools are a fairly recent phenomenon. Wrong. It dates backs to the 1960’s."

Wrong.

It goes back a lot farther than that.

The basic philosophies and the ground work for implementation of the radical changes this article highlights came over from Europe early in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The seminal ideas we combat today lay in an incubational state with early education reformers like Horace Mann and Melvil Dewey (of the decimal system fame).

Check out the work of Emile Durkheim, a French sociologist of the 19th and 20th century. He stated that it was the most important goal of education to allign the student with the approval and identification of his cohort and to take him/her away from the influence of the family. Only in this way could the educator control the values the student would absorb and carry for life. He also stated that this sphere was one that progressives would never give up.

The 'Progressive Era' of that period was loaded with starry-eyed socialists who gained ground in our national institutions against the unbridled excess of many American capitalists. That legacy continues today and has become far more than the 'reforms' of earlier socialists. Today, the larval states of these earlier philosophies were shed long ago and the weevils we recognize as threats today are fully emergent adults intent on defense and replication.

The changes in the educational system this article addresses, while true, are simply the lastest act in a much longer play. The boomer generation is the first fruit of their complete control and the values that have guided the boomer throughts and actions through their social trajectory are realization of nearly a century of subversive effort.

Here's a few background links on the early educators:

http://www.patriotist.com/abarch/ab20000731.htm

http://www.hewett.norfolk.sch.uk/curric/soc/durkheim/durk.htm

http://www.fee.org/vnews.php?nid=1095

http://libr.org/rory/wbm7.html