Competing Philosophies: The Crisis in American Education

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"If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war." From a 1982 study by the National Commission of Excellence in Education entitled "A Nation at Risk."

The problems inherent in American education are clear and there's been enough finger-pointing as to who is responsible. The problem isn't that there aren't educators intelligent to teach, the problem is that they're not allowed to do so. So the question arises- why? The answer, as is usually the case, lies with the government. The government doesn't want citizens that think, the government wants citizens that obey. Simply put, the government doesn't want citizens, they want subjects- subjects that accept unquestioningly whatever they're told by the government controlled mass media. What they've discovered is that there's no better way to mold subjects than by controlling education. In the words of psychologist B. F. Skinner...

The crisis in American education is less academic than philosophical.

Thomas Jefferson- homeschooled himself- understood the importance of an educated electorate. In a letter to his friend William Jarvis he wrote: ""I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their
control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it away from them but to inform their discretion by education." Jefferson was one of the first proponents of a public education system- the outcome of which was that every citizen be able to read his own Bible. How things have changed, both educationally and culturally where in contemporary schools reading the Bible might get a student expelled.

Thomas Mann, widely called the Father of American Education wrote in 1837 of a day when education would become a, "new religion with the state as the new church and education as its Messiah." Mann went on to write: "What the church has been for medieval man the public school must become for democratic and rational man. God will be replaced by the concept of the common good... The common schools... shall create a more far-seeing intelligence and a pure morality than has ever existed among communities of men." Apparently Mann was a much better writer than a philosopher... where he left off, John Dewey picked up.

Dewey was a humanist who despised and ridiculed the idea of God. For Dewey, the ultimate religion was "state consciousness." He wrote: Every teacher should realize the dignity of his calling; that he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of proper social order and the securing of the right social growth... In this way the teacher is always the prophet of the true god and the usherer [sic] of the true kingdom of god." Not one word about educating or teaching, only the humanist agenda. In this next statement, he is even more explicit about his disdain for religion: "There is no God and there is no soul. Hence there is no need for the props of traditional religion... There is no room for fixed, natural law or moral absolutes." Without moral absolutes, there is only chaos. Contrary to the humanists, morality isn't something you can make up on the run.

The goal of the humanist run school has never been to educate. In fact they applaud the decline in academic accomplishments. Paul Blanshard a frequent contributor to the Humanist Magazine sees this decline as a sign of victory. He wrote: "Our schools may not teach Johnny to read properly, but the fact that Johnny is in school until he is 16 tends to lead toward the elimination of religious superstition."

John Dunphy, another writer for the Humanist goes one step further: "The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new- the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery and the new faith of humanism." And what a splendid job they've done, I'm sure they're very proud. Since the humanists have gotten prayer out of schools they have been turned into arenas of conflict... Drugs are commonplace as is violence. Before prayer was removed, school shootings were unheard of. Homosexuality and abortion are pushed on children as young as kindergarten. In the late 1980's Dr. John Goodland wrote a report for the NEA (who is behind this agenda): "Our goal is behavioral change. The majority of our youth still hold to the values of their parents and if we do not resocialize them to accept change, our society may decay." Once again, not one word about education. The US Department of Education, who formulates the national curriculum and how it's taught, is run part and parcel by the NEA. As it is with the FDA and other agencies, there is a revolving door where school administrators and union officials take positions with the Ed Dept.

Maybe professor S.L. Pressy of Ohio State University outlined the humanist position best when he wrote: "People are what the world made them. In character, in usefulness, in happiness, they are the product of forces which can be controlled. And the chief agency for such control must be education." Another professor at the same institution, Dr. Boyd Henry Bode, reinforces Pressy's position, "authoritarianism places these values in the acceptance of certain habits for the guidance of belief and conduct."

That fairly well sums up the goals of the Authoritarian philosophy that drives American education today, no focus whatsoever on teaching even the basics... in fact, there isn't even the pretense of education, only indoctrination. Since 1979 the US Dept. of Education have been in control of education on a national level and what a mess they've made. Public schools are a cesspool of immorality where every tenet (with the exception of Christianity) has been given credence. With what result?

(From the NEAA "Nation at Risk" study at the beginning) "The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people." This was in 1982! Things have gotten much, much worse. "One of the most shocking findings is that only one-fifth of seventeen-year-olds in public education can write a persuasive essay... and 13 percent, by the simplest tests of reading, writing and comprehension, are functionally illiterate, with only 29 percent functioning at a 'basic' level."

This has been an overview of the current state of education and the philosophy driving it. Tomorrow- a differing philosophy, the original one that was purposely destroyed.