John Dewey is the "father" of Progressive Education. Dewey was a plant. He started as a professor of philosophy before he became the Socialist, Humanist instigator of the modern educational implosion. He was not alone. He just started the ball rolling at the turn of the century. He argued for change based on his observations that modern industrial society required an education system that would meet its needs. Remember, Communism is based on contradictions, so you must infect a working system to cause inequities. If it's not broke, the Progressives must break it so they could later come in and "fix" it.

Studies were done in the 1950s to "show" that American children were lagging behind the Soviets in mathematics and science. (Imagine! the Soviets.) We were losing our edge and this meant we were becoming more vulnerable to "nuclear annihilation." The Sputnik I satellite was launched by the Soviets in 1957, and the Soviets pulled ahead in the "arms race." They had the capability to launch a rocket which could break earth's gravitational pull and put an object in orbit. With this ability they could potentially launch a nuclear explosive and land it on a target anywhere on earth. (Lions and tigers and bears—oh, my!) This took the world out of the "bomber age" and put it into the "missile age," but the USA was still stuck in the "bomber age" and was, for that reason, deemed to be lagging behind. The Defense Education Bill was passed to enhance U.S. mathematics and science skills so we could keep up with the Soviets in the arms race.

The historical facts that were not allowed to be mention were that our nuclear science was their nuclear science and the arms race had been choreographed. The same banks financed both sides of the Cold War and used both sides to leverage their control of the world's nations. Also not mentioned was the fact that the worse thing about the Soviet educational system was probably its lack of the Humanities, which is history, philosophy, and politics. So they never could have by chance stumbled onto unalienable rights, liberty, and self-determination and thereby improved their lot. This is very interesting, of course, because John Dewey's Progressive Educational theories were taken from the Soviet Union's schools. He worked most widely with Soviet educators, and his Progressive platform is based on their behaviorist style of mind control. You mean to tell me that Progressive Education was what the enemy, the USSR, were using to control its people, and then it was introduced in the USA ostensibly to fight against them? Yes, truth is stranger than fiction. This information is even available on governmental info websites about education. They make no attempt to conceal this. Recall that it takes more propaganda to sustain a Republican system of government than it does a Communist one. While Communist governments use terror and threat of death to bring about obedience and "right-think," republics use massive propaganda campaigns and deception to achieve uniformity and obedience.

Progressive education under the leadership of John Dewey and William Kilpatrick, as well as others, was out to create semiliterate Americans without the ability to think for themselves. In this way they could be reduced to a herd of sheep over which the government would become the shepherd. (Paraphrased-Kilpatrick) If citizens did not know where they came from or anything meaningful about history, they would have no basis to question anything. The only things they might question would be based on their feelings or opinions which are arbitrary. They would be like donkeys following a carrot on a stick. In the public school system, attitudes are changed by constant and subtle conditioning.

The social fabric of our nation has been putrefied by the steady draining off of empowering virtues and the siphoning in of vices once held in abhorrence, things thought to be degenerate, taboo, and at the very least not meant for polite conversation. The schools have been a launching ground for this because kids are vulnerable to the pseudo-intellectual drivel the politically correct psycho-babblers feed them daily at school. The textbooks have taken on a completely supportive position on socialist trends so as to turn common sense and compassion on end. The "Puritanical," "intolerant" specter of our patriotic ancestors has been so propagated that the mention of them can call forth an automatic negative response. Our children are nurtured in this programming system. Why should we feel embarrassed or ashamed of Patrick Henry's fixed and determined character? The very people who we owe our freedoms and prosperity to have been repainted with a "deconstructionist" brush, and our kids sit nodding their heads as if they have seen the light, when in fact their light is being put out.

Instrumentalism is the philosophy that believes it is the government's job to create consensus. Iserbyt uses the term "Orchestrated Consensus." Previous to Instrumentalism was the theory of Pragmatism. Both of these theories are materialistic, atheistic. They assume there is no God so therefore there is no truth. All morals are relative and determined by transient human opinion. In the Pragmatist paradigm truth is democratically achieved. If the majority of the people accept something to be true, we say it is true. Things that we choose to be true work for us, they tend to do the most good for the most people. Pragmatism was said to give ascendancy to what has the most "cash value."

The natural development in the next stage of materialistic truth was Instrumentalism. The adherents of this arbitrary search for truth assume that humans, in the pragmatic/democratic selection of truth, will not always determine what is best for the whole community and because of this they must be guided. ("Arbitrary search for truth," I never imagined I would write that.) And who better to guide them than the illuminated ones? See the set-up? There is nothing new under the sun, so we can recognize a rather Machiavellian instrument here. In Dewey's view, humans needed to be directed by superior minds. Say Illuminati. The wise leaders should decide the direction for society, then proceed to plant the seeds of propaganda via the public schools, the news and the entertainment media, and mold the public mind and direct the collective will as they see fit. If the leaders decide what you should want, then they can make you want it, so society will always want what is good for it. In the words of Arthur Koestler, not only will the people want the jack-boot to stomp on their faces, they will request it and be thankful for it. This is Orwell's Big Brother scenario on steroids.

The Progressive Educators have had conflicts with parents over their methods. Two key goals of Progressive Education are: Create respect for diversity, and create critically, socially engaged intelligence. Where are reading, writing, and arithmetic? Traditionally, education sought to use what little time we have with students at school to stuff as much knowledge and information into their little brains as possible, so they would know enough to function in the world as contributing members of society. We decide what they need to know, and we make sure each of our little foundlings know it before they leave school. Again, it is not rocket science. How hard can this be? Maybe that's why our kids were so much better educated before there were colleges of education. See the nose? Look under it.

What the Progressive Education guys are looking for isn't even close to a constructive educational plan. In the typical classroom they vaunt "critical thinking" as if this is some new goal. Cave man Trogg was "critical thinking" the minute he was born and so were you. What these Progressives are actually doing to kids is teaching them "right-think" about diversity and socially engaged intelligence as if to say rugged, self-reliant individualism is not good and that trusting your own conscience and instincts is wrong. Please! What these Progressives are promoting is not progressive at all, it's regressive education. Let's call it Institutional Learning for Herding Humans. Here is an old definition of education juxtaposed against a definition from a modern educator. Read 'em and weep:

Older-
The New Century Dictionary of the English Language (Appleton, Century, Crofts: New York, 1927):

"The drawing out of a person's innate talents and abilities by imparting the knowledge of languages, scientific reasoning, history, literature, rhetoric, etc., the channels through which those abilities would flourish and serve."

This is a great definition and it is in line with the stated goals of the public school systems in America.

New
-edukasheon-

An Outline of Educational Psychology (Barnes & Noble: New York, 1934, rev. Ed.) By Rudolph Pintner, et al.

"That truly revolutionary definition claims that learning is the result of modifiability in the paths of neural conduction. Explanations of even such forms of learning as abstraction and generalization demand of the neurons only growth, excitability, conductivity, and modifiability. The mind is the connection-system of man; and learning is the process of connecting. The situation-response formula is adequate to cover learning of any sort, and the really influential factors in learning are readiness of the neurons, sequence in time, belongingness, and satisfying consequences."

Why would I or anyone else want to connect with such moronic psycho-babble or the people who make up such crap? If you even think about touching my kid's neurons, you'll pull back a stub. The end of this is kids following each other saying, "ba-ah, ba-ah, ba-ah." Traditional education aimed to empower people and set them free to find their way in the world. The world would be the beneficiary of human energy rightly directed. Modern education wants to connect us and make us modifiable. This is not like Orwellian, it is Orwellian. Molding us and connecting us, why don't they just plug us into the Matrix via a microchip? If schools can do this to classrooms full of students, they truly can be the engine of a new world consciousness. They can shape the reality, transform the neighborhoods, transform the nations, and look; we live in the global village. God help us! And this whole thing about "belongingness" and "satisfying consequences," and "situation-response," what does this really mean? Didn't Socrates warn us about being feelers and not thinkers? The properly educated, under this modern definition, will never know anything meaningful about the likes of Socrates. This appears to be an educational program to produce feelers connected to other feelers. These feelers are malleable in that their minds are bereft of facts, definitions, and the fortification of ideas that have been formative in our world.

Lenin knew if he could educate the young he could produce the trained seals needed to build his socialist state. Interdependence, diversity, tolerance, does this ring a bell? If an individual is properly educated, intellectually and morally, and they are allowed to think for themselves, will they not exemplify the best of tolerance and cooperation of anyone? The only people who need to teach tolerance, diversity, and interdependence are people who have something to hide. What do they really want, is the question we should be asking. They have a dangerous agenda because they will not trust the human being, properly empowered, to do the right thing.

It is a sad state of affairs when one must move against the grain of society just to do the right thing. That is how the education system works. Since this system is purposely bankrupt of all inspirational material from the humanities, it can never produce a mind of the caliber of Leonardo da Vinci, Dante, Milton, or C.S. Lewis. What we produce in the way of artistic genius is nothing more than politburo propaganda.

Our educational system has been formulated to design us. Here are a few of its leading lights who stand shoulder to shoulder with Dewey. Dr. Harold Ruggs wrote The Great Technology about the technology of education to change the people and the world. Dr. George Counts wrote Dare the School Build a New Social Order? Dare we? They do. Visit our windowless schools. They teach group think and group behavior. The teachers go to seminars about "capturing kids' hearts," but what is promoted to do so is as dead as Charles Darwin and as deep as a mud puddle.

Even teachers are belittled and micromanaged into a box. They want to inspire and educate kids, but everything they are forced to do thwarts their best efforts. They are given endless busywork to push numbers, record information, and racially profile the students' data to keep their supervisors happy so these can give some evidence that their jobs are needed. By the way, they're not. The most influence they have is making sure that certain minorities get passed even when they do nothing, learn nothing, and give the school a continual supply of disciplinary disruptions. At the end of the day there is little time for teachers to contemplate the effectiveness of a lesson or to muse on the strategies or the tactics to engage the students more successfully. The teacher has been relegated to the level of a serf. They are handed a curriculum, sterile of any depth or lessons to be learned, except those that cultivate diversity, interdependence and, of course, tolerance. The heroes of modern classroom educational theory are Skinner, Watson, Maslow, Bloom, Piaget, Hunter, to name but a few, and they were all admitted Socialists. Columbia University is the citadel of education in America, and the average American with minimal intelligence would be shocked at the theories, goals, and programs they run as social experiments on our young. There is no reform possible of this system. It must be abolished. The only way to reform American education is to remove from it any person who has been brainwashed in American colleges of education. Then we could go back to the standards of education that have been universally successful for thousands of years.

We should never give in to the belief that our kids are different because of technology, the changing world, and all the other crap that is said about the kids we are destroying. There are universal truths that do not change. If you do not believe that, then move to a nation built on anything other than our Constitution. This country was built on certain unalienable rights that are not endowed by government; they are endowed by the Creator. Kids are precious to the Creator to the extent that it is better to have a millstone hung around your neck and sunk in the depths of the sea than to offend one of these little ones. Woe to the designers of this institutionalizing and dumbing-down system.

I have worked with kids for many years. I have found them to be amazing. They are capable of so much. The fact of the matter is obvious to me that the school itself is what makes great kids into dependent and powerless morons. The kids most adept at seeing this are the ones who retain their intellectual integrity in spite of it. For them, school is like a torture track to survive in order to go on with their lives and later get a useful education. It is no wonder our children are bored in school and see it as meaningless. In addition, they believe most teachers do not care and are only going through the motions as they teach. There is no nice way to put it, unless we are willing to force the kids to do their work and hurt them bad if they don't, we will never get their attention or cause them to respect us. The kids control the atmosphere of the school at this time because adults have wimped out. Until men go back into the schools and kick some tail, the kids, especially the bad ones, will continue to look at most teachers with contempt and even cuss 'em out frequently.

The Department of Education did this to teachers. Where has the inspiration to learn gone? Where has the fire of education gone, that ideal that education lets one in on the shared and precious knowledge of us, our accomplishments and our sacred common quest for meaning and fulfillment? It has been censored. Our curriculums, known as essential knowledge and skills, have moved the goalposts and changed the requirements. Gone are the inspirational figures that once gave depth and fire to our educational quest. Even if some of them remain, they are left mere shadows of what they were. Socrates is the leading proponent of independent learning and thinking for one's self. He is transformed into a mere curiosity in a curriculum of conformity. As Oscar Wilde said, "The man who does not think for himself does not think at all." If schools produce people who do not think for themselves, they produce the insipid, rat-conditioned Winston Smiths of Orwell's world in 1984. Why were there once-great thinkers and great writers? Because the education that these received included the greatest, most meaningful and challenging material available, and for this reason inspiration was inherent in it. Education now uses the "is everybody happy," "Big-Bird" techniques to replace the fire of inspiration lost in their boring and insipid lessons plans. What our Progressive "wreckers" of education did was to eliminate all of the truly empowering elements from the classroom, leaving our students with the Harry Potters of teenage angst, while leaving them devoid of the Captain Ahabs of our quest for virtue and meaning (two things they cannot "tolerate"). They pulled the rug out from under our feet, and as we were falling they pulled away the solid ground on which we might land. (Appendix #4 discipline in the public schools)

he Progressives wanted nothing less than a complete destruction of the traditions on which the Western world stood for millennia and to replace them with a Brave New World Order. A semiliterate population devoid of a moral compass, without absolutes, could be easily reshaped