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Tuesday, August 18, 2009 - 9:43pmSanction this postReply
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Can someone fix the format of this essay? Without line breaks it is illegible.

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Post 1

Wednesday, August 19, 2009 - 12:14amSanction this postReply
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Line breaks now.

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Post 2

Wednesday, August 19, 2009 - 1:21amSanction this postReply
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I believe the mastermind behind the collectivist education system is John Dewey.  In the Internationalist Social Review, Vol 21, No. 1, Winter 1960, W.F. Warde wrote:
quoteDewey sought to supply that unifying pattern by applying the principles and practices of democracy, as he interpreted them, consistently throughout the educational system. First, the schools would be freely available to all from kindergarten to college. Second, the children would themselves carry on the educational process, aided and guided by the teacher. Third, they would be trained to behave cooperatively, sharing with and caring for one another. Then these creative, well-adjusted equalitarians would make over American society in their own image.


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Wednesday, August 19, 2009 - 11:45amSanction this postReply
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Welcome, Wendy.

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Wednesday, August 19, 2009 - 1:13pmSanction this postReply
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Well, haven't they??

[and also a welcome, Wendy]

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Post 5

Wednesday, August 19, 2009 - 8:41pmSanction this postReply
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Hy Wendy,

You are correct up to a point.  Dewey put a lot of the pieces together into a coherent whole, based on a neo-Platonic view of humanity, in which most people are expected to be mere citizen cogs in the great wheel of state.  That's why the desks are lined up in neat rows and kids have a particular assigned desk.  To leave your desk is an act of mutiny.  The purpose of the desks and other instruments of imposed order in the "Progressive" Dewey system was to condition the child to accept boredom, lack of personal freedom, and authority as the source of knowledge.  Thus, to become good little citizen warriors or assembly line workers as needed.

However, as Joel Spring has documented out of Harvard, Dewey himself was just a piece of a grand conspiracy going back to the takeover of Harvard from the Puritans by the Unitarians around 1820.  The Unitarians were followers of the various utopian socialists who started communes such as New Harmony here in the U.S. and around the world during the early 19th century.  They went public in the U.S. after taking over Harvard and probably much of the rest of ivy league academia and announced their goal of creating a uniform, compulsory, state primary educational system, whose aim would be to produce the New Socialist Man. 

(The reason for this choice of agendas was the universal failure of the communes, which convinced them that human nature was at fault, specifically our implicit indoctrination in a selfish, individualist, competitive, market attitude.  Only by setting up a generations-long project to gradually re-educate the public would they be able to hope of achieving their utopian goal.  First they would train the new teachers at Harvard, as well as the teaching professors to be sent all over academia to do the same.)

The American public, however, would have none of it and laughed them out of court.  So, they went underground and formed a conspiracy, which has been completely documented, as much of their correspondence survives.  They almost had the private schools outlawed just before the Civil War, but the federal law, which they had promoted in a totally hypocritical and racist  attack on Catholicism and the parochial schools, was overturned by one vote by the Supreme Court.

Then the Civil War gave them their big opportunity.  The Yankee fathers were on the battlefield.  The mothers were in the factories.  The kids were often left alone and so the logical solution was for the state to set up an educational system, and boy, was Harvard ready for that!  And when the war was over, an army of much-hated, grimly utopian Yankee schoolmarms, all trained under the system designed and monitored by Harvard, descended like vultures upon the defeated South, where, oddly enough they promoted such ideas as the racial inferiority of negros (because that was the "scientific" position of the time).  They were in fact responsible for the 2nd rising of the Klan in the Deep South, having indoctrinated kids even in the areas such as NW Georgia, which had been hotbeds of abolitionism, that a black man was the natural moral and intellectual inferior of any white man.

The Lincoln neo-fascists were also eager to jump on the state indoctrination system, and so it happened, and when the neo-fascists who had mutated intellectually from the original crew of utopian socialists started calling themselves "progressives," which spun a lot better than "socialism," completing the job of "reforming" the schools was as natural for them as committing virtual genocide in the Phillipines, in the name of eminent destiny, or killing hundreds of thousands of U.S. men in the name of "a world safe for democracy," or destroying the free-market system of private businesses in favor of the state-fiat corporation - i.e., "Trust Busting."  Or, as Mussolini put it, "another term for fascism is 'corporatism'."


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Post 6

Wednesday, August 19, 2009 - 8:56pmSanction this postReply
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Oh, come on Phil. Assigned desks is not some conformist plot. They had them on Little House in the Prairie. And do you want kids to have to fight the class bully for their desks? A desk you keep all day and all year is more like an exercise in private property. In progressive classes you put the desks in a big circle and it doesn't matter where you sit.

Puritans, Unitarians, Lincolnian neo-Fascists, the takeover of Harvard by the Bildburgers? You need to have them up the meds, you will scare away the newbie.
(Edited by Ted Keer on 8/20, 5:10am)


Post 7

Thursday, August 20, 2009 - 5:13amSanction this postReply
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I enjoyed this piece, and thought the title was exceptional.

It immediately brought to mind how the 'alignment' in virulent theocracies is fundamentally (pun intended) different then the alignment in secular experiments like America. (For example, not much love being taught for 1st Amendment principles in theocracies.)

If you look at collectivism as a religion(I do), teaching its theocratic 'the state is God and you are here to worship it,' then the 'alignment' that has slowly over-run even our secular experiment -- to some extent -- serves its own purpose as well. The social scientists were insidious; they called their religion 'science', and before long, secular public schools were chock full of bible studies -- sorry, social studies, children were reading from scripture("sociologists believe..."), and the freshly aligned citizens of the state were carrying their God security -- sorry, social security cards.

And still, alternatives like Montessori thrive -- even if the mark has been mixed/muddied over the years after her original work.

When I hear criticisms of the Montessori method, they are often based on accusations akin to letting the inmates run the asylum. But, I take the essence of Montessori as something akin to my core belief on the topic of education:

"Education is primarily taken, not given; it is at best well offered."

Montessori seems to me to encourage from the start that students 'take' their education.

That fringe belief is anathema to popular public debate on education, which is all about 'what is wrong with the system.' Often times, we even blame the buildings. The tone of the public debate implies that, when we believe education is somehow failing that the solution lies in the 'giving' of education, and we must focus on fixing the 'givers.' If only we fixed the givers of education, then the giving of education will succeed. But, doesn't that very message encourage students to sit back and wait for the education system to get fixed? It sounds like it places the ultimate responsibility for education on the giving, and not the taking.

Perhaps that is what distinguishes Montessori, and makes it seem so foreign from what is going on in public schools; Montessori focuses on the process of students taking their education, and the role of the offerers in that scheme is to well offer and get out of the way.

There is not a lot of political room to sell the absolute need for tribal political leaders in an education system that emphasizes the taking of education, and perhaps that is why the power grubbers don't embrace the idea.

Indeed, it's all about aligning citizens.

Nice piece.
(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 8/20, 5:38am)


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Post 8

Thursday, August 20, 2009 - 8:45pmSanction this postReply
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Ted wrote: "Oh, come on Phil. Assigned desks is not some conformist plot. They had them on Little House in the Prairie. And do you want kids to have to fight the class bully for their desks? A desk you keep all day and all year is more like an exercise in private property. In progressive classes you put the desks in a big circle and it doesn't matter where you sit.

Puritans, Unitarians, Lincolnian neo-Fascists, the takeover of Harvard by the Bildburgers? You need to have them up the meds, you will scare away the newbie."

 

The Puritans and their anti-man, guilt-driven, intellectual spawn, such as the born-again cretins of today, had their own sins, to be sure.  I believe that most of the little red schoolhouses taught across wide age ranges, with the older kids expected to tutor the younger, as there was typically one teacher to go around, often paid in chickens or whatever was at hand.  The "desks" were more likely a single bench, and the kids probably wrote on slates with chalk, paper being somewhat pricey in those days.

 

There is a rather good movie, "The Learning Tree," which depicts how the educational system, even in the relatively enlightened non-segregated areas of the U.S., still assumed that if you were black, then you could hope, at best, to be a mechanic or farmer.  I learned of the insidious role in promoting racism that the progressive sponsored  compulsory universal state schooling (CUSS) taught more directly from a black friend whose parents were both high-school teachers in NW Georgia.

 

Senator Edward Kennedy, however, had his office do a study of educational performance in Massachusetts over the lifespan of the colony/state.  It turned out that the evidence pointed to an actual decline in educational attainment since the early to mid 19th Century, when the compulsory public schooling was being promoted and instituted in the state.   Prior to CUSS, there were all manner of educational opportunities provided by private sources, including apprenticeship programs, church schools, for-profit schools and correspondence courses, etc.

 

I won't bother trying to deal with the lumping of various conspiracies, real or imagined.  Our newbee can sort it out herself, I'm sure.  But when did I say anything about "the takeover of Harvard by the Bildburgers?"  Next you'll have me promoting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion....  Let's try to stick to facts.

 

For some facts about more modern conspiracies, one can simply ask "Que Bono?", and if you look, you will likely find.  The U.S. has the largest percentage of people incarcerated - and the largest total - of any nation on the planet.  (Keep telling yourself, "the U.S. is a FREE country." "the U.S. is a FREE country.")  It is common in the general media to mention in passing that the Prison Guards' Union is both the largest and wealthiest union in virtually every state in the U.S. and also contributes more than any other source to the campaign funding for politicians who vote for even more expansion of our prisons. 

 

Laws that used to be local ordinances with $25 fines are bumped to misdemeanors and then to felonies.  Kids are nabbed by police for talking with someone who is on a list of gang associates (meaning that they themselves have talked to someone on that list, and so on, and so on....), and then put on a list with a space for checking off how many times they are seen talking to a "suspected gang associate."  That list then shows up when they are busted for defending themselves against attack at school, and suddenly they are felons.

 

Then we have the crews of vipers such as the thought crimes squads.  The OC Register this week had a - so far - two part series on these valiant Puritans who go the extra mile to search out "kiddie porn" on someone's hard drive, even when the files have all been long deleted.  No matter that the material is available freely all over the web, or that porn is still the number one use of the web.  No matter whether the party actually paid for the material, thus financially supporting the porn producers, or simply downloaded free sample, which costs the porn people.

 

Forget the amazing percentage of people NOW incarcerated in the U.S.  These goons were claiming that ~"in any tract of 100 houses, 10 of them will be hosting sexual child abusers or kiddie-porn addicts."  They went on to discuss how a kiddie-porn perp could be anyone, a teacher, a fellow employee, any of your neighbors, just no way to tell.  But, they're going to get them and add one more victim to our prisons. 

 

Meanwhile, in the paper this same week, news that prisoners are now being employed to grow food for the needy.  Can you spell S L A V E?  This may not last, as farm prices are plummeting, but, worry not, we can take care of that, too.  Farmers are organizing to demand sudsidies to keep food prices so high that poor people cannot afford to buy the food, so that we can employ the world's largest prison population to fill the gap.  And the Obama administration is poised to go after the big corporate farms that are driving down the prices, using anti-trust. 

 

It all makes sense, Ted.

 

Similarly, educational performance has been generally going down throughout the U.S., while spending has kept going up.  Notice how powerful and wealthy the teachers' unions are.  On a more related note, I was told by the head of the California Day Care Association (private schools) that the reason the day care was priced out of range for most low-income parents was precisely because of a systematic conspiracy by the teachers' union to accomplish just that. 

 

Allegedly, the teachers union subsidized via grants professors in education departments who would then testify as experts at hearings held by Social Services as to what regulations were needed in private day care.  Many of these legal requirements were meaningless but costly additions to the day care budget that forced day care facilities to jack up their rates correspondingly.

There are so many egregious real conspiracies out there flaunting themselves in the news, that I really wonder at the people who resort to illuminati's or Bilderberger's, etc.


Post 9

Thursday, August 20, 2009 - 7:29pmSanction this postReply
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It's a pleasure to read your articles, and I learn a lot from them, so thank you very much.
Best regards,
Gabriel


 


Post 10

Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - 1:30amSanction this postReply
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Phil, I have digested all that you have written, and although some of what you say at first appears to be overstated, I must agree that all that I have read indicates  the Progressives had every intention of setting themselves up as philosopher kings, complete with flowing Grecian robes.  But I wonder: What motivated the submission of the populace to such overt conditioning?  That is, what turns a nation of pioneers and rebels into cogs?

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Post 11

Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - 10:50amSanction this postReply
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By receiving the benefits of work, without having earned those benefits... and then being told that those benefits were rights, not the product of personal effort.

Hi Wendy. Cute hat!

jt

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Post 12

Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - 11:48amSanction this postReply
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By listening to decades (since FDR) of the propaganda that the democrats politicians are "for the little guy" and that socialists systems are "just as good" and "socially more responsible" than capitalists systems.  Propaganda by media and academics and self-serving leftist politicians, none of whom have a clue or care about how to make an honest living and don't care about the property rights of those who do.

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Monday, June 1, 2015 - 9:30amSanction this postReply
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Manfred, this was an excellent article, and I would like to see more like it.



Post 14

Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - 12:34pmSanction this postReply
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There is a valiant project to bring Montessori schooling to children in Karachi.

This was reported last evening on the PBS Newshour and is available online here.



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