Posted on 10/27/2012 7:46:42 AM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
Robert Rothman collection of John Dewey, 1935-1959 | Manuscripts
Biographical Note
John Dewey was born on October 20, 1859 in Burlington, Vermont and graduated in 1879 from The University of Vermont. Although he taught and remained primarily at Columbia University, he also taught or lectured at the University of Chicago, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, University of California, Imperial University in Tokyo, National University in Peking, and the University of Mexico. He retired from active service, and was appointed as Professor Emeritus of Philosophy in Residence at Columbia University in 1930. He also worked for the Turkish government and as an educational ad visor for the Barnes Foundation, served as chairman of the Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky and was elected president of the League for Industrial Democracy.
This is from Southern Illinois University.
For those who may come upon this at random, John Dewey is widely regarded as the Father of Modern Education in the United States.
The League was a very radical group in the early progressive era. Later on in it's existence, the LID's student wing would change it's name and become Students for a Democratic Society.
This is one of those things I'd written about before, but merely as a footnote when it should've gotten a greater focus.
I wrote my PhD dissertation on John Dewey. He was not the monster he is often made out to be. Why left wing he was not a communist and not at anything at all like modern democrats.
This does not mean he was right.
You also can’t blame the fiasco of modern education on him so much as on taking his ideas to absurd lengths and and by changing the definitions of his terms. Dewey was not a subjectivist in that he believed the children would dis cover the world as it is not a post-modern narrative created in a persons mind devoid of actual facts.
I wrote my PhD dissertation on John Dewey. He was not the monster he is often made out to be. Why left wing he was not a communist and not at anything at all like modern democrats.
This does not mean he was right.
You also can’t blame the fiasco of modern education on him so much as on taking his ideas to absurd lengths and and by changing the definitions of his terms. Dewey was not a subjectivist in that he believed the children would dis cover the world as it is not a post-modern narrative created in a persons mind devoid of actual facts.
The LID's youth affiliate, the Student League for Industrial Democracy later became the Students for a Democratic Society, which splintered in the late 1960's. One of its factions became known as the Weathermen, a faction of which became a terrorist group, the May Nineteenth Communist Organization (M19CO). So the JBS and the M19CO have a connection.
Public education, at least as it was conceived in the Northeast, was designed to bring in kids of all ethnic groups and teach them in such a way as to remove all those superstitious ideas planted by their parents and their religious groups. Remember that the largest ethnic groups at the time were Italian and Irish, and were largely Catholic. The Catholic Dioceses started their own schools to counteract the secular forces behind the public schools. They wanted Catholic kids educated, but in such a way that supported their faith, not denigrated it.
In doing some additional digging for a timeline, I found out when Dewey was nominated as it's president: 1939. Dewey's involvement with the LID leadership has been written about by several of his biographers. Jo Ann Boydston, Molly Cochran(above timeline link), and Alan Ryan. Here is Dewey's welcome address as President of the group.
Where might I find this information about Welch?
And when(if) did he leave the LID?
It might be worth noting that Whittaker Chambers used to be a communist, as did David Horowitz. Brandon Darby is also someone who used to be a trusted friend of the revolution.
Welch wrote that he joined the LID so as to keep tabs on what they were up to.
Thanks for the link and follow up.
In searching for/in The Blue Book, I don’t see an obvious reference. I trust that it’s in there, you’ve already demonstrated you have knowledge of the topic.
http://archive.org/details/TheBlueBook
Could you point me to the relevant portion?
Also, surely you can see how this is entirely different than the implication of your first post. A counter-revolutionary(or something similar) who goes in looking for information has almost quite literally nothing in common with a faithful member who actively advances the group’s cause.
To put it another way, Dewey wasn’t the LID’s president because he wanted to funnel information out and undermine them. Their cause was his cause.
John Dewey promted “pragmatism” and vowed to change the American landscpae through education. Today pragmatism is what we face and it is ruining our once great culture. A good book to read is Crisis Of Civilization by Hilaire Belloc. If you can get past any anti-catholicism that you harbor, then you will be wiser for reading it.
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