Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Varmint Al
"Silent Spring" The book written by Rachel Carson. This book has caused the death of about 50 million Africans. It was based on "feelings" and the facts were distorted. It was the start of the Echo Freaks and they are still with us today.

Absolutely. I would also nominate The Population Bomb (1968) by Paul Ehrlich, which predicted famine and food rationing in the 1970s, total depletion of oil reserves by 1980 and possible human extinction before 2000. In a later work, Ehrlich actually sugggested the forcible sterilization of men in India (but not Red China) as a possible solution to over-population. Absurd as they seem today, these predictions were vastly influential at the time and Ehrlich remains a revered figure among eco-wackies (aka the genocide lobby) to this day.

32 posted on 05/16/2008 11:36:26 PM PDT by atomic conspiracy (Victory in Iraq: Worst defeat for activist media since Goebbels shot himself.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies ]


To: atomic conspiracy; Varmint Al
I agree with both of you.

To make some room on the list for these new titles; I suggest that John Dewey's works do not belong. Dewey has been woefully misinterpreted, or misrepresented by many “educators” with an agenda — but, that should not reflect on Dewey. The author of the article seems to be condemning those “educators” by firing on Dewey.

Dewey was a strong proponent of “learning by doing” & was consequently a major influence for generations of high-school shop teachers (of which, I was one for a few years). He stood for pragmatism, and an empirical approach — the exact opposite of the postmodern crap that the author seems to want to tag him with. The “progressive” education that Dewey promoted would lead to real progress in the real world.

Prior to Dewey students were taught largely by rote — they were required to memorize “facts”. Well, these “facts” are subject to change in the real world. The facts change whenever empirical evidence shows they were wrong. Most of the science “facts” taught in 1916 have either been proved wrong, or greatly revised. What Dewey advocated was completely different from post-modernism, which is based on the notion that there are no objective facts.

40 posted on 05/17/2008 12:39:22 AM PDT by USFRIENDINVICTORIA
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 32 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson