Posted on 03/23/2002 12:10:35 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
That the prevailing philosophies and methodologies of American public education are leftist is not up for debate. Leftists have dominated the federal Department of Education, most State Departments of Education, the teachers unions, most teachers Colleges, and education foundations for several decades. Many rank and file teachers know this, and have observed the catastrophic results, yet the situation is so rotten that they dare not speak out. Taxpayers will no doubt continue to unwittingly dump their hard earned money into a system that seeks to damage children by undermining morality and turning them into human resources.
On December 5, 1928, "The New Republic" published an article written by self described Socialist John Dewey, the revered father of so-called progressive education, in which revealed the true nature of the leftist education agenda. In the article, Dewey spoke of "the marvelous development of progressive educational ideas and practices under the fostering care of the Bolshevist government." This tells us everything we need to know concerning Dewey's admiration for the Soviet system and its "ideas and practices."
He fawningly described the development of a "required collective and cooperative mentality" which was, of course, the exact opposite of the American ideal of the development of self-sufficient creative and competent individuals. Dewey considered "the great task of the school" to be "to counteract and transform those domestic and neighborhood tendencies" which he specifically and accurately identified as "the influence of home and Church." In order for Dewey's "progressive" agenda to advance, the moral authority of "home and Church" would have to be undermined and replaced with the authority of the State. The State run school would be the chief agent and catalyst in the development of this "collective and cooperative mentality."
Dewey stated that "In order to accomplish this end, the teachers must in the first place know with great detail and accuracy just what the conditions are to which pupils are subject in the home, and thus be able to interpret the habits and acts of the pupil." Socialists like Dewey, Hitler, or Stalin, whom Dewey greatly admired, or today's crop of change-agents, always seek to poke their noses into other peoples business. They teach students to be snitches in the same way the Nazi's encouraged people to turn in Jews. Students would be taught that the enlightened school knows better than parents because school is scientific and parents are backward.
A Child who is recruited to spy on his parents would be more likely to grow up to be an adult who would turn someone in for, perhaps, engaging in expressions or actions not deemed to be politically correct. With the statement "Thoroughgoing collectivists regard the traditional family as exclusive and isolating in effect and hence as hostile to a truly communal life," Dewey expressed his hatred for the autonomous sovereign family and his conviction that the family was the prime obstacle to the creation of his "communal life." To create this "communal life," the Communists, with the tacit support of fellow travelers such as Dewey, would murder over 100 million people.
Dewey wants "The institution of the family (to be) sapped indirectly rather than by frontal attack." This describes the cowardly and dishonest method of the left as they implement their agenda through subterfuge, lying, and conspiracy, which is part and parcel of a philosophy that requires the gun-backed State to enforce its strange agenda of social change. Only through force can the left hope to achieve their agenda as no rational person or society would ever voluntarily surrender freedom.
Dewey spoke of "Outcome based Education," or whatever the establishment is presently calling it, when he stated that "The earliest section of the school system, dealing with children from three to seven, aims to keep children under its charge six, eight, and ten hours per day, and in ultimate ideal this procedure is to be universal and compulsory." He believed that "When it is carried out, the effect on family life is too evident to need to be dwelt upon." This explains why the left supports high taxes, welfare, no fault divorce, homosexuality, and abortion, drugging children with Ritalin, gun control and other freedom eroding agendas.
Dewey observed that Soviet education was "part of a whole network of agencies by means of which the Soviet government is showing its special care for the laboring class and to give a working object-lesson in the value of a communistic scheme." Dewey believed that the best way to implement communism in America over the long term was to infiltrate all major areas of American life. Education would, he believed; provide the foundation since pupils could be indoctrinated into this peculiar way of thinking at a young age. Dewey, the father of American 'progressive' education shows his cards with the following statement in the New Republic article:
"Reference to this phase of Soviet education may perhaps be suitably concluded by a quotation from Lenin: 'We must declare openly what is concealed, namely, the political function of the school
It is to construct communist society."
"Amen and amen! However...WHY is our American media COMMUNIST through and through? Because so-called "professors of journalism" at the college level are COMMUNISTS, through and through. Until we get at the ROOT of the problem (our MARXIST education system), and rip said problem out by the ROOTS, we will NEVER see balance in the American media. ("They" want more money for education, and we are STUPID enough to give it to them. "They" are buying a LOT of rope with that money...)"
Our mass-compulsion schooling system was created by anti-capitalists, to be sure, but they weren't Marxists -- they were robber barons, especially Rockefeller and Carnegie. Our schooling system serves one 'need': to create pliant and dependent people who will produce what they are told to produce, and to consume what they are told to consume. There is no room for Henry David Thoreau in today's America. The reason that so many teachers have such a socialist bent is that they believe in a central planned economy. They just want it to be a public planned economy and not a private controlled economy. When big business and big government are indistinguishable (blatantly anti-Constitutional Disney copyright extension, for instance), the effect is virtually the same.
Look at the job projections from the U.S. Department of Labor. We're going to 'need' janitors and retail clerks and cooks. Go ahead and look at the job projections.
The trick is in maintaining the illusion that schooling=education, and that the government has the authority and the responsibility to provide it. We need janitors? OK. You're going to have to keep kids in school for 13 years, give or take, and do your damndest to make sure that they're willing to endure boredom and take orders so that we'll have a portion of the "workforce's" "human resources" who are content to empty grease traps and mop floors forty hours a week. We "need" unambitious and dumbed-down "human resources" whose lot in life is to fit shoes on people and keep track of which jeans are included in this week's 20%-off sale. We "need" a vapid mass of order-takers who will think that it's their patriotic duty to buy a Ford truck, to help the economy, even if it's not in their best interest to do so.
This is the reason that Bush is continuing the centralization of power regarding what and how children grow up, most noticeably in his move toward a federal curriculum ("oh, local schools can do whatever they want, so long as we approve" passes as "local control") and is expanding the number of surrogate mothers and hack government psychologists and statistics-gatherers by pushing for more than a million new "teachers." Our schooling system serves the needs of a central planned economy.
Well when the choices are, pay your taxes to fund the school system, or, have your property taken and possible go to prison. It does make it somewhat difficult to contest.
Remove the compulsory nature of education, and 90% of the problems will be removed. The students that cause most of the disruption problems will go disrupting elsewhere, but at least they won't get in the way of your child's future success anymore. Most of the administrative problems will be removed when the unions and politicians are shown the door. Most of the remaining problems will disappear when competent faculties are allowed to remove incompetent emloyees.
Also, you might want to check out this thread, where Educational Leadership magazine openly admits that they are focused on turning students into social activists.
If public schools will not respect the cultural heritage of a free America, they should not be supported by American taxpayers. It is sheer madness to finance the indoctrination of children against everything that we believe in.
It is not my purpose to make any blanket accusation. Schools need to be evaluated on an individual basis. But there should be no more compromise with the many that have allowed themselves to be used for the purpose of undermining America.
For a perspective on why some of the extreme Leftist ideas seem so prevalent in American "Educational" systems, see Myths & Myth Makers In American "Higher" Education. For the underlying compulsions which the propagandists of the Left exploit, see The Compulsion For Uniformity.
We are losing the war for our own future, because the enemy has learned how to use our own resources against us. We have to learn how to fight back more effectively--and that can only start with a frank exposition on what has really been going on.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
That's not the worst. It's the raw naked evil... of what they want.
in the "Land of the Free."
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