Dewey: Stalin's Propagandist, the World's Teacher

American Thinker ^ | 5/22/2013 | Daren Jonescu

[VR-21]

Joseph Stalin had been General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party for six years in 1928, when John Dewey, "the father of modern education," toured Russia with a group of educators. Later that year, The New Republic published Dewey's Impressions of Soviet Russia and the revolutionary world. This polemic stands as a remarkable testament to progressivism's disdain for mankind, reason, and truth. It is also Dewey's most honest and concise primer on the principles of his progressive education method. Anyone prepared to defend the idea of government-controlled schooling after reading this work is perhaps beyond reach of rational argument.

Dewey's general assessment of the Stalinist Russia he claims to have encountered is unabashedly positive, not to say romantic. Here is a very typical example:

But since the clamor of economic emphasis, coming... from both defenders and enemies of the Bolshevik scheme, may have confused others as it certainly confused me, I can hardly do better than record the impression, as overwhelming as it was unexpected, that the outstanding fact in Russia is a revolution, involving the release of human powers on such an unprecedented scale that it is of incalculable significance not only for that country, but for the world. [p. 15]

Note the peculiar effect of combining the most understated, non-judgmental language to describe a murderous dictatorship ("the Bolshevik scheme") with the most unobjective hyperbole ("overwhelming," "unprecedented," "incalculable") to describe something as abstract and speculative as "the release of human powers" under communism. This passage, and indeed the entire document, written by a sixty-nine year old eminent intellectual, reads like the silly postcard effusions of a ten-year-old girl on her first trip to Disneyland.

[what's up]

bump

[VR-21]

Thanks for the article FH, and I do acknowledge that Dewey turned against Stalin. The message of the American Thinker article hasn't so much to do with Stalin as it did with Dewey's statist impulses. As the article you sent me states...

"Yes, Dewey did considerably better when it came to the Trotsky trials, which is a complicated subject, and didn’t necessarily put Dewey in the camp of stalwart anti-communist — though it did make Dewey anti-Stalin. The professor’s actions were more in protest of Stalin rather than communism in general. Where Dewey stood on communism by the end of his life is another of those maddening aspects of Dewey and his writings that’s exasperatingly difficult to pin down.

It's my opinion that Dewey was very much in the mold of early 20th century American Progs, who were very statist and totalitarian in their mindset, and who regarded public education to be one vehicle in their quest to move American society away from the founding principles. Good to hear from you...take care.

[OldNewYork]

This is important to understand. Thanks for posting this.

[VR-21]

You’re quite welcome OldNewYork. I graduated from High School in 1969, and while public schools were by no means the indoctrination pens they’ve become, I distinctly remember a German teacher of mine often complaining about ‘progressive education.’ It seems to me that the mask finally came off in 1977, when Jimmy Carter created the Dept. of Education in keeping his promise to the teachers unions in exchange for their support in his election. This in effect gave the rabidly left-wing NEA a Cabinet post, and they have had total control of public education ever since. I’m sure that even the Progs are astonished by their success. People like John Dewey and George S. Counts laid the groundwork.

[ProgressingAmerica]

John Dewey ping

[little jeremiah]

Thank you - will read and I think ping one list to this.

[Whenifhow]

http://www.globalmuseumoncommunism.org/

[VR-21]

Looks good, thank you.