Posted on 10/10/2015 10:07:35 AM PDT by 100American
"The traditional view is simply stated: the purpose of public education is to take each child as far as each child can be taken. Who can disagree with that?"
"H. L Mencken famously proclaimed: “The erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.” And that was in 1924! Mencken describes what he had concluded is the real “aim of public education.” It’s low and ignoble, which brings us to the eternal question: is all the failure in our schools happening by incompetence or intent? One has to suspect intent because, starting around 1905, John Dewey and his progressives laid out a blueprint for dumbing down the schools as a way to turn the US into a socialist country.
The basic strategy is to remove facts and knowledge from the classroom, using whatever pretext is handy. The point is to keep the kids engaged in empty discussions, empty projects, empty testing. At the end of each school year, astonishingly enough, many students know hardly more than at the beginning of the school year. Samuel Blumenfeld, in a book published just before his death earlier this year, concluded: “K-12 education is a criminal enterprise from top to bottom.” I believe everyone should be fighting back. How?
(Excerpt) Read more at educationviews.org ...
My tag line is nearly as old as I am. Is it time to direct attention to it?
(I guess they like the Boy Scouts now.)
Well, it would be, if we could just cut through all the CR*P.
The educationist progressive, John Dewey, was a proselytizer of the "Prussian Model" of public education. The educational decline of America starts precisely with Dewey, around a 100 years ago.
The Prussian model seeks to build "productive citizens." It cares more about inculcating "job skills" in students than in training them to be critical thinkers.
John Dewey studied at the very knee of one Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), a prominent German philologist and man of letters, who believed that the very methods of education of our young must "evolve" with changing times and circumstances. In his own words,
"The ancients concerned themselves with the strength and development of man as man; the moderns with his material well-being, his property, and his earning capacity. The ancients sought virtue, the moderns happiness.... The highest ideal of human beings living together, I believe, would be that in which each develops out of himself and for his own sake." [emphasis added]In von Humboldt's educationist scenario, "the state is only viewed as a means, there doesn't have to be as much effort on the part of the individual to support this means.... As long as the subject obeys the laws, and keeps himself and his dependents well provided for in an occupation that is not harmful to others, the state is not concerned about the exact manner of his existence."
What better scenario can you think of, to undermine the principle of human liberty, and of human direct participation in a political culture of which we the people are supposed to be "sovereign?"
Dewey's model completely negates any appreciation of human history as being in any way relevant to the proper functioning of a free people. Ultimately, with this sort of Humboldtian-style education, the only freedom the people have left is to pay their taxes on time [or else]. Humboldt's educationist plan boils down to grinding out reliable future taxpayers, by giving them "job skills"— all for the benefit of the State.
And that's what "public education" is all about.
If that's so, then it seems to me that we are on a course leading to mass suicide....
Today’s lesson:
Read or figure out how many hours a year a teacher must be teaching a third grader in your state, if you can, from the following:
http://edsource.org/wp-content/uploads/95051.pdf
I remember the diversity classes. I think they were pushed by Wall Street mutual funds. They would put pressure on the company boards to implement diversity programs or effectively face sanctions affecting their stock price.
And banks were accused of ‘red lining’ mortgage loans. Clerks used to look at photo copies of borrowers drivers licenses to see if they could be claimed as Hispanic or something to meet the quotas. Eventually, it came to 5 million mortgage loans to illegal aliens, lol.
In preschool my grandson spends a great deal of time learning Spanish words and working on a Spanish journal. Of course, until recently, he thought fifty-five was pronounced fivety-five, so you’d think they would want the kids to master English first.
When I was a kid, schools were to educate the populace from Kindergarten thru 12th grade for free to provide an educated continuous stream of replacement workers ans others aged out.
The costs of building schools, hiring teachers, buying books, etc., was put into property taxes.
Approximately 50% of property taxes are for school costs.
Now, with children being declared ‘special needs’ kids BY THE SCHOOL BOARD WHO BENEFITS FROM THIS STATUS DECLARATION, the costs for each of these special needs kids is budgeted at 400% of what is spent on a ‘normal’ kid.
I owned the following houses:
3 BR/2 bath in So Calif from May 1966 to May 1995= 29 yrs.
2 BR/1 bath in Wis from late 1980 to late 1998. =18 yrs.
3 BR/2 bath in N Calif from Jan 1988 to Dec 2004== 17 yrs
3 BR/2 bath in N Nev from Feb 2005 to present== 16 yrs
I paid the property taxes on the Wis property for 5 years before I owned it outright, as I inherited it from my Dad.
This totals 85 years of property taxes I have paid out of my pocket.
I am now 75 years old.
I had no kids & hence, no grandkids.
I didn’t place a single child into the school system. However, I have been punished with horrendous property taxes for 85 years.
Sure would like to have half of those property taxes refunded to me.
Creeping Socialism....
For the Children...
Tugs the heartstrings....
The path they always take first...
1932 is 83 years ago.
.
With respect to education:
"I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is mass psychology ... Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Of these the most influential is what is called 'education.' Religion plays a part, though a diminishing one; the press, the cinema, and the radio play an increasing part ... It may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment."
"The subject will make great strides when it is taken up by scientists under a scientific dictatorship ... The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at. First, that the influence of home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. But I anticipate. It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark gray."
"Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen." (pp. 40-41)
Destroying Free Will via Scientific Technique
"Scientific societies are as yet in their infancy ... It is to be expected that advances in physiology and psychology will give governments much more control over individual mentality than they now have even in totalitarian countries. Fitche laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished ... Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible ...
The Nazis were more scientific than the present rulers of Russia ... If they had survived, they would probably have soon taken to scientific breeding. Any nation which adopts this practice will, within a generation, secure great military advantages. The system, one may surmise, will be something like this: except possibly in the governing aristocracy, all but 5 per cent of males and 30 per cent of females will be sterilised. The 30 per cent of females will be expected to spend the years from eighteen to forty in reproduction, in order to secure adequate cannon fodder. As a rule, artificial insemination will be preferred to the natural method ...
Gradually, by selective breeding, the congenital differences between rulers and ruled will increase until they become almost different species. A revolt of the plebs would become as unthinkable as an organised insurrection of sheep against the practice of eating mutton. (pp. 49-50)
Scientific Technique Issuing in Slavery
After all, most civilised and semi-civilised countries known to history and had a large class of slaves or serfs completely subordinate to their owners. There is nothing in human nature that makes the persistence of such a system impossible. And the whole development of scientific technique has made it easier than it used to be to maintain a despotic rule of a minority. When the government controls the distribution of food, its power is absolute so long as they can count on the police and the armed forces. And their loyalty can be secured by giving them some of the privileges of the governing class. I do not see how any internal movement of revolt can ever bring freedom to the oppressed in a modern scientific dictatorship. (p. 54)
Liquidating Slaves
"I do not pretend that birth control is the only way in which population can be kept from increasing. There are others, which, one must suppose, opponents of birth control would prefer. War, as I remarked a moment ago, has hitherto been disappointing in this respect, but perhaps bacteriological war may prove more effective. If a Black Death could be spread throughout the world once in every generation survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full. There would be nothing in this to offend the consciences of the devout or to restrain the ambitions of nationalists. The state of affairs might be somewhat unpleasant, but what of that? Really high-minded people are indifferent to happiness, especially other people’s. However, I am wandering from the question of stability, to which I must return.
"There are three ways of securing a society that shall be stable as regards population. The first is that of birth control, the second that of infanticide or really destructive wars, and the third that of general misery except for a powerful minority. All these methods have been practiced: the first, for example, by the Australian aborigines; the second by the Aztecs, the Spartans, and the rulers of Plato’s Republic; the third in the world as some Western internationalists hope to make it and in Soviet Russia ... Of these three, only birth control avoids extreme cruelty and unhappiness for the majority of human beings. Meanwhile, so long as there is not a single world government there will be competition for power among the different nations. And as increase of population brings the threat of famine, national power will become more and more obviously the only way of avoiding starvation. There will therefore be blocs in which the hungry nations band together against those that are well fed. That is the explanation of the victory of communism in China. (pp. 103-104)
% Star post and I wish it could (and should() be locked at the top...
Education is my battlefield and now you see clearly why...
Awesome work, I will venture a guess that your views are forever changed...
In short, your Light is On!
God Bless...
Illegal Immigrants Hold 5 Million Fraudulent Mortgages
OCTOBER 10, 2008
A seldom-reported fact that has greatly contributed to the nation’s financial crisis is that millions of illegal immigrants across the U.S. have fraudulent home mortgages and many have defaulted.
The illegal aliens obtained the loans from banks that were pressured by the government to offer them. In fact, the agency in charge of preserving and promoting public confidence in the nation’s financial system, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), began pushing banks to offer services to illegal immigrants a few years ago. (snip)
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2008/10/illegal-immigrants-hold-5-million-fraudulent-mortgages/
Yes, my views are forever changed, which usually leaves me feeling rather isolated, and I bet you know just what I’m talking about.
As education is your battlefield, you’ll find much to think about in, “Global Schooling: The Hijacking of American Education” by Patrick Wood:
http://www.augustforecast.com/global_schooling_the_hijacking_of_american_education
He wrongly clings to the fantasy that the government's socialist-entitlement and price-fixed cartel schools can be fixed. The very foundation of socialism that government socialist-entitlement schooling is built upon is rotten. Our nation is is in the condition it is due to 150 years of K-12 socialist-entitlement schooling.
He wrongly clings to the fantasy that the government's socialist-entitlement and price-fixed cartel schools can be fixed. The very foundation of socialism that government socialist-entitlement schooling is built upon is rotten. Our nation is is in the condition it is due to 150 years of K-12 socialist-entitlement schooling.
I share it as the current system although extremely flawed is in most if not all state constitutions directly assigned the Education responsibility for “The Public”
Adding religion makes it a Separation of Church/State BS rat hole negating OUR Right to choose the schools we attend as aligned to our value sets versus theirs
They want to own them early, before u mess things up for them...
For the Children of course...
That, of course, is the purpose of all the excrement the Liberals throw at us. It is, however, our fault if we allow the excrement to divert us from our primary task. But, of course (you’re right again), many do allow themselves to be diverted by the excrement.
Thanks for the many comebacks, and thanks for the BEEPs.
Thanks for the comeback.
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.