Posted on 05/24/2012 12:51:21 PM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
The following words are attributed to Woodrow Wilson in 1909: (14th quote down)
The purpose of a university should be to make a son as unlike his father as possible. By the time a man has grown old enough to have a son in college he has specialized. The university should generalize the treatment of its undergraduates, should struggle to put them in touch with every force of life.
This is important, for several reasons. He's making clear the progressive point of view about universities - they're not really there to educate people with meaningful and substantive information(although, some of what will come out of a college education will inevitably be useful) what they're really there for is to indoctrinate! To turn students into good little progressives. The progressive view is that colleges are a manufacturing plant. And I'm not being hyperbolic about this, it's no wonder that after the Days of Rage, Ayers and Dohrn decided to become professors. But note how the line is thrown in there about specialization vs generalization. I'll explain this further in a minute.
Now, I can verify that this is a true Woodrow Wilson quote by referencing the following volume from Arthur Link's "Papers of Woodrow Wilson", in this case, Volume 19. But by repeatedly massaging the various search terms, I was able to get a large portion of what was actually written here, and it is much worse than the small snippet above leads you to believe. I was able to extract about a page and a half, pages 99/100. This will begin badly because it's the beginning of the page, I can't seem to get at what's at the end of page 98. What you're about to read is a portion of a newspaper article, The Philadelphia Public Ledger, March 13, 1909: (Or, that's what Link attributes, anyways)
of accomplishing their work through the subterranean channels of their committees. The public might then be permitted to assist at the "general assize" of a subject. The country would then be able to weigh the men who come out into the open. It would reject those who remained in the background."A senator complained rather peevishly to me some time ago," said Doctor Wilson, "Of the injustice which had been done Congress when the President had been given the right to address it with messages. I replied that I thought it was fortunate that it had been so. The President's messages are given to the newspapers and through them he speaks to the people.
Few members of Congress speak in such a manner that their words are read so widely. "It is [not] an ideal situation in which Speaker Speaker [Joseph Gurney] Cannon suspects everything the President does and the President rejects everything Mr. Cannon does, while the Supreme Court stands between them. I think it desirable to have a President who can express himself forcibly. The President understands the foreign relations of the country as few others do. He is in a position to He is in a position to possess such knowledge of its domestic condition as few may possess." Doctor Wilson believed that we had emerged from the era of "regulation." We had been making experiments and the men who know most had not been advising us. Lawyers had been "standing pat" with the corporations by which they had been employed, saying that they would take advantage of every opportunity the law afforded to withstand the tendency. It had become the duty of every corporation lawyer to advise the corporation by which he was employed to correct the abuses which had caused the criticism of them.
Time was when public life had been easy. It had ceased to be easy. America had become a world power. It must cease to be provincial if it would grow, keep abreast of the times.
"The purpose of a university should be to make a son as unlike his father as possible," He said. "By the time a man has grown old enough to have a son in college he has specialized. The university should generalize the treatment of its undergraduates, should struggle to put them in touch with every force of life. Every man of established success is dangerous to society. His tendency is to keep society as it is. His success has been founded upon it. You will not find many reformers among the successful men. A man told me once that he left college interested in humanity. At 40 he was interested only in an industry to which he had applied himself. At 60 he was interested only in his bank account. Any social change affects that bank account. Society cannot progress without change." The relation of the university to life was the relation of the conception to the act, he said; the relation of the vision to that slow, toiling process by which an end was accomplished. University extension societies should extend the influence of the university to the general public.
Now, having a fuller view of Wilson's whole though we can proceed to examine just how dirty progressivism really is:
Time was when public life had been easy. It had ceased to be easy. America had become a world power. It must cease to be provincial if it would grow, keep abreast of the times.
This is common amongst progressives. They want one single nation,(or even better, global) because it's easier to centrally plan than 50 "provinces" are. In Wilson's day, there were only 48 provinces - still too many. Wilson continues:
"The purpose of a university should be to make a son as unlike his father as possible," He said. "By the time a man has grown old enough to have a son in college he has specialized. The university should generalize the treatment of its undergraduates, should struggle to put them in touch with every force of life. Every man of established success is dangerous to society. His tendency is to keep society as it is. His success has been founded upon it. You will not find many reformers among the successful men.
Toward the beginning of the posting I made a comment about generalization vs specialization. Now Wilson's thought comes into much clearer view. Those who have gone through the paces, become established in life, have specialized in some way; those who may have opened their own business, or done well climbing the ladder at whatever company they work for - these people don't want to throw it all away! Wilson recognizes this. So therefore, the successful man is a threat. A threat to social change. A threat to progressives. A threat to the schemes of the do-gooder. Seeing this quote in a much fuller context, you are seeing just how similar that Barack Obama is to Woodrow Wilson.(or vice versa) In short, this is a complaint. Woodrow Wilson wanted to centrally plan society, and he wanted to fundamentally change everything he possibly could. But so many of you d@#m successful people are out there in society and are wishing to remain successful, you stood in Woodrow Wilson's way. But that's ok. Woodrow had a plan. He'll indoctrinate your kids and make them the exact opposite of you - make them into revolutionaries. He continues:
You will not find many reformers among the successful men. A man told me once that he left college interested in humanity. At 40 he was interested only in an industry to which he had applied himself. At 60 he was interested only in his bank account. Any social change affects that bank account. Society cannot progress without change." The relation of the university to life was the relation of the conception to the act, he said; the relation of the vision to that slow, toiling process by which an end was accomplished. University extension societies should extend the influence of the university to the general public.
Reading this makes my blood boil. So again, Wilson makes clear what he said at the top. He wants to change society, and you successful people are the ones standing in the way of the schemes of the planner. Especially those of you with big bank accounts. It isn't just marxists who hate the rich, Wilson wasn't a marxist.
The quote at the beginning of the posting is nearly out of context, because it leaves one with the impression that Wilson is merely making some statement about making sure students are educated, and more prepared to enter life as productive citizens. That's not who Wilson was, he could've cared less about any of that. This statement's real intent, in context, is an open statement of intent to remake America into something it was never meant to be. And at the end, Wilson also inadvertently admits to what it is that progressives really mean by 'progress'. Wilson absolutely hated the principles of the Founding Fathers, and this is more of his words that go into establishing that concept. What once was, is old. It's dusty. It's outdated. It's provincial. And the universities are our best vehicle for permanently changing it into something else. A "fundamental transformation", according to our current dear leader Obama.
I really can't stand how progressives look at American society. What the founders gave us is totally unique, and they want to destroy it because they know better than we do. Progressivism is totally unacceptable to me.
Hopefully someday universities will be unnecessary. Superseded by practical knowledge learned online and practical on-the-job experience.
I think Rush said the other day 50 per cent of new graduates from College are UNEMPLOYED!
Online Learning is gaining momentum.
And Wilson was not the only one who looked at colleges this way. John Dewey, widely regarded as the Father of Modern Education, held a very similar, perhaps identical view. As did Horace Mann, who considered your children to be hostages to their cause. Nice group of people, eh?
My entire college experience was spent squirming my way through a gauntlet of manipulative leftists. This is back when you could hitch hike, and once got a ride from a popular econ professor for 10 of the lonegest miles of my life. He was a Sandinista sympatizer who deserved to be punted all the way to Nicaragua.
Institutions of higher learning will always be around, in what form is the question. What we need to do is make sure posterity is properly informed before entering college so as to laugh at these radicals in their faces when they attempt to radicalize.
Or in the instance of online classes, there’s plenty of indoctrination embedded into the curricula to continue the process, so it’s incumbent upon all parents to keep an eye on the student’s workbooks and correct things contained therin, such as things related to social/distributive/environmental/etc justice.
Eternal vigilance is the price we pay for liberty.
Crowd psychology and propaganda have always interested me. Its one of the reasons I was able to recognize the manipulation of the early sex ed classes we had in school.
Take a classroom full of teenagers who are desperately trying to fit in and tell them that all “normal” boys and girls have homosexual thoughts. It wasn’t very effective at my rural school back in the late 70s and early 80s but the whole structure wasn’t in place at that point. Today its reinforced by a steady stream of gratuitous homosexuality on TV, teachers fully trained to encourage bullying of the stand out heteros, and gay and lesbian groups in schools. My niece who went to Western Michigan said there’s a whole subculture of temporary homosexuals who are soaking up the benefits of being a protected class. She called them HUGs and LUGs. “Homosexual until graduation or Lesbian until Graduation.”
Dewey was a Fabian socialist as was John Maynard Keynes. They wanted Marxist ideology and it is infused through BF Skinner methodology in all curricula which destroys not only moral absolutes but produces atheist/pagans/Satanists.
The curricula is to destroy knowledge and Values—all Classical Education—destroy phonics as it was prior to Dewey when even with Jim Crow Laws Blacks had a 90% literacy rate.
When you throw out Natural Law and God’s Law-—you get Rule of Man. That is what they want—exactly the government of Stalin, Mao and Hitler, etc. That is why the communists force homosexual “marriage”—they twist the meanings of words to mean nothing—to create chaos in culture. They teach lies to children to create cognitive dissonance—like Heather has two mommies—so logic and reason is removed from schools and emotions trump intellectual development. Feel good, do it comes from Marcuse—the Cultural Marxists who took control of all our institutions—education, publishing companies-—corrupted the law so it is not Just Law (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr) etc. Etc. They marched through the institutions like Mao —and like Mao instituted speech codes “hate speech” so that the Truth could be shouted down or hidden from young people.
We need to restore Truth and get rid of Mao’s speech codes and the corrupt press. Journalists need to be accountable for defamation and lies. But for sure, we need to BURN all curricula developed for public school and restore local control of schools-—only parents on boards and get rid of public unions—which are fascist.
Most Core Curriculum (2 years of fluff to drag tuition money out of a student) is a waste of time.
I have actually had very large engineering companies tell me that they would rather a smart HS Student come into an intern program and maybe miss college.
Colleges cannot keep pack in curriculum for the technical changes.
Great point.
It goes back to Nietzsche who alluded to the fact that if you kill off God as Marx and all the Postmodernists were doing—you kill off morality.
All the godless leftists do extremely immoral things. John Maynard Keynes—idolized by Soros—was a sodomite who brought boys to his little homosexual orgies for the elite policy makers. He is responsible for getting England off of the Gold Standard in the thirties. Disgusting, evil people.
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.