Posted on 04/16/2008 3:42:05 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
Entrepreneurs linked to the government like the Rockefellers' established the model of the schoolhouse and classroom during the 2nd Industrial Revolution to manufacture a semi-skilled, obedient, and patriotic laborer to man their machines on the factory floor. Frederick Gates, director of the Rockefeller Foundation wrote in 1913: "In our dream, we have limitless resources, and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hand. The present educational conventions fade from our minds; and, unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or science. We are not to raise up from among them authors, orators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search to embryo great artists, painters, or musicians. Nor will we cherish even the humbler ambition to raise up from the lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we now have ample supply."
(Excerpt) Read more at swans.com ...
Here you have, as far back as before World War I, a founding member of the public schools admitting that he didn’t want the public school students to achieve or even aspire to greatness. And his mission succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.
That’s public education, producing mediocre intellects and childish, dependent personalities for over 100 years.
Well, that certainly explains the liberal mindset doesn’t it.
Mark Twain observed that he never let schools get in the way of his education. He had a point.
LOL...this sounds like the future that Obama has envisioned for the USA. We are all to be docile taxpayers, content to turn our lives and our paychecks over to more intelligent Socialists such as he perceives himself to be.
Hannah More, an upper class English lady who was involved in education in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, believed the working class should be taught to read so they could read the Bible, but not writing because that was above their station in live.
Check out John Taylor Gatto’s “The Underground History of American Education” or Samuel Blumenfeld’s “NEA: Trojan horse in American Education” Both are what you might call “eye opening” in their exposure of the creepy origins of American education.
And there it is. Public education is about your kids being kept down to make way for the rich kids. If you think again about the purpose of the man-hating social programs and propaganda that made way for those, you will see it. You will see it on many other fronts, too.
Liberal slop!
“I have heard blame thrown upon administrators, teachers, parents, students, the state bureaucracy, and the national government. Well, the blame rests with all of us.”
He went on to blame everyone on his list but administrators & teachers.
No mention of violence or lack of discipline in schools, which disrupts the learning of all in the class. No mention of incompetent teachers or administrators.
He is a fan of phonetic spelling, which in my mind is forcing the student to learn to spell a word twice: the phonetic way to graduate, & the correct way to get & keep a decent job.
This essay is complete Marxist drivel!
He is a teacher? I shudder think about the influence he is having on his prisoners ( oops! “students”).
The future of education is an increasingly stratified almost caste system where students with money get educated (at private or upper-middle-class suburb schools) and kids without, don’t. Homeschooling provides a chance for families with less money but plenty of motivation.
Wow, read the whole article, that was scary. People like this are teaching the children of this country? Good lord.
My son is in high school this year, taking AP Physics and CAD, and stuff. He hates it.
Both he and my oldest daughter, who also went her senior year, now REALLY understand why we homeschooled.
Hates the enviroment there, I suppose?
It’s a really long way off for me since we don’t even have kids yet but TalonDJ and I have already discussed a bit what to do when they’re basically done with high school material and too young for college. We don’t care to send them away to school too young (have seen bad effects with that) but I know we won’t want them near the local cesspool. I mean school. So community college, correspondence courses, or even a year of somewhat supervised personal interest driven work.
By the way, this essay is really bad. I mean the more I think about it - it’s disjointed, does not suggest any solutions to the various problems it cites (aside from the usual “stop wasting money on bombs and spend it on healthcase” that will somehow solve all our problems). It’s not quite as bad as that one by the janitor at a school about how bad homeschooling is, but it’s close.
This is a good sign, actually. It means that some on the left are also turning against public education. And the education of the young is of such vital importance, the hoomschooling community needs any ally it can get, even if from the left.
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