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Bill Casey’s Centennial
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Special Report
Dewey’s Disciples: From Madison to Maryland and Beyond
The Soviets loved John Dewey and they still love him in Madison, Wisconsin, and wherever else public employee teachers have taken to the streets.
(Page 2 of 2)
Most telling, and lasting, for Dewey, was the role of “environing forces.” He trumpeted the formative role of the “collective,” the “public,” and “socialization.” The individual student is subsumed by the “collective.”
This Deweyan view conformed to his broader vision for society and the world. Reality itself, the environment itself, progress itself, is always moving onward, never satisfied at its present state. A process of constant, ongoing flux and “reform” is always at hand. This is the essence of the political progressive.
In all, Dewey’s specter thrives. No doubt, his disciples will never go unneeded, if not unemployed, whether in the classroom or training teachers for the classroom, whether in educating or researching education, since experimentation and change is their modus operandi. There will always be something new to conjure up, with the one constant being the youthful guinea pig.
Taxpayers should shut up and fork over the bucks to subsidize the common good set to gush forth.
Finally, and especially significant, in light of today’s politics and education, Dewey judged that pursuing change through politics was frustratingly slow; doing so via education could be much quicker. This was a central theme in his best-known work, Democracy and Education (1916). The schoolhouse could be more efficacious than houses of legislatures.
That is no small point: It was the clarion call that compelled so many '60s radicals to earn graduate degrees in education, making them today’s tenured professors. These revolutionaries ultimately eschewed politics for education. Given their extreme ideas, Americans would never dare elect them, but young people had no choice but to take them seriously in the classroom.
Consider the case of none other than Bill Ayers. In the 1980s, John Dewey’s celebrated home was there to roll out the red carpet for the communist radical and domestic bomber. Ayers had spent the previous decade fleeing the FBI as a fugitive. He wrote some of the most violent, insane screeds ever published in the United States. And after all that, Columbia Teachers College offered him admission. Ayers deemed it a good fit; the college agreed. He earned his doctorate there.
Ayers became a tenured professor of education at the University of Illinois-Chicago, authoring (among other works) books on teaching “social justice,” published by — you guessed it — Columbia Teachers College. Ayers followed the pattern of countless former SDS and Weather Underground fanatics, including his bride, Bernardine Dohrn. They went into education.
There’s much more that could be said about John Dewey and his influence, including the completely neglected fact that the man was adored by the Soviets. During the height of the Russian Civil War, the embattled Bolsheviks wasted no time translating Dewey’s works into Russian. In 1921, the Soviet government published a 62-page pamphlet excerpted from Democracy and Education. This classic of American public education was a Bolshevik phenomenon.
That thought deserves pause: Democracy and Education stands as John Dewey’s most significant work; it remains the most common choice of schools of education. It became the bible of Columbia Teachers College. It has long served as the guidepost of education departments. It was the book where Dewey himself attempted to summarize his “entire philosophical position.” Liberals and progressives swear by the book. And it was a Bolshevik favorite.
The admiration was mutual, as Dewey reciprocated. He made a pilgrimage to the Soviet Motherland in the summer of 1928. A totally duped Dewey returned and filed a six-part series for The New Republic, raving about the “experimentation, the “progress,” and the “Great Experiment” he encountered in the land of Lenin and Stalin.
This is just the tip of the iceberg — as cold as Siberia? — on how Dewey’s ideas were embraced by the Soviet totalitarian education system. I could say much more.
Of course, needless to say, none of this history is taught by Dewey’s disciples today. These are inconvenient facts, not worthy of educational progressives’ time. They have time for other things right now. Witness Madison and Maryland.
To that end, such things regarding Dewey are not being mentioned — but are certainly present — at the rallies from Madison to Maryland and beyond, where Dewey’s disciples are in their natural element. That’s too bad. It’s not Scott Walker that’s the true face of these rallies, not Hitler or any other demon conjured up by our educational “progressives.” The poster child for these protests is the late professor from Columbia University. Dr. Dewey’s notions continue to thrive.
About the Author
Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. He is author of the new book The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor. His other books include The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism and Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (46) | Leave a comment
More Articles by Paul Kengor
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Appleby| 3.25.11 @ 7:08AM
Modern schools when I was in them were designed to produce good factory workers who were trained to sit in orderly rows and move when a bell rang, to keep regular hours and to above all else to follow orders. This is what most of our fathers did every day; it was a natural thing. And at least in our family, when various fads of education, especially the *look and say* method of reading taught because it worked so well for deaf children replaced phonics, and new math replaced arithmetic, Mom and Dad filled in the blanks.
Now the schools are daycare where nobody seems to learn anything, and the parents cant teach them because the parents dont know it either -- and they scream if anybody suggests homework, because the kids need time to update their facebook pages and tweet!
Whether John Dewey is responsible for this, or the general Brave New World conditioning of the masses to replace reading, writing and thinking with sex, drugs and entertainment is a question that will be argued forever. The answer remains in the hands of the people who gave birth to the kids.
Ken (Old Texican)| 3.25.11 @ 7:53AM
Appleby
I have close contact with many young families across the country with kids in public school.
It is fascinating to me how much "homework" even the elementary students bring home...LOTS!
It's as if the kids sit in daycare all day and have to do any studying at night.
When I was in school right after noah's flood we rarely had homework...but we busted our tails in class.
Interesting irony isn't it?
Patrick| 3.26.11 @ 4:13PM
Well, you do have to condition students to a "make work" economy, where nobody actually accomplishes anything, just filling out meaningless paperwork.
In the end, the most terrible flaw in public education is the union. From there, all goldbricking and excess are justified.
Ryan| 3.25.11 @ 9:33AM
Hey, if you're going to copy Gatto (who wrote probably the best secular-side treatise on why to home school), at least give the man credit. You're borderline plagiarizing.
ENOUGH ROPE| 3.25.11 @ 9:58PM
Ideally, school taxes should not be remitted to the government at any level to avoid bureaucratic costs and political trickery. Instead, parents should keep the money and disburse it to the private schools of their choice. How will parents who do not pay property taxes, which is the source of school taxes, have the money to pay for private school tuition? I have ideas, but this commentary would become longer than it is to discuss them. Minds in favor of private schools will find creative and non-governmental solutions.
The private schools should be initiated by secular and religious groups to offer choices between private or religious schools. There would need to be some kind of transition period and plan for the COMPLETE termination of public schools and the start up phase for private schools.
Yes, some parents will spend the tax savings on other things instead of budgeting for their child’s school. What to do about indigent students and students of imprudent parents? In the 1940s I was educated in Catholic elementary schools which were financed by the general collections at Masses and by the teaching services of many nuns. The nuns are gone mostly. Perhaps a portion of collections by ANY religious denomination could supplement the funding for whatever private school that denomination chooses to sponsor partially or fully. With the increased funding from no school taxes, MAYBE private secular and religious schools would have a sufficient excess of revenues over expenses to accept some needy students. At some point, the schools would need to do a means test for needy students to prevent exploitation of the schools’ generosity.
I do not know the exact provisions needed to do a 100% switch to private schools, but I hope the revenue stream that funds the private schools is sufficient to attract teachers who MAJORED in the subject they teach at a college that is NOT a school of education. The revenues must be sufficient to provide for benefits and retirements that are normal for other sectors of private for profit organizations. Obstructive requirements to become a teacher should be repealed; they are just union gatekeepers.
House Republicans should pass a resolution that urges states, especially states with Republican governors, to end the public school system and replace it with private school vouchers funded by current school taxes. Collection of school taxes to fund vouchers for private schools should be an INTERIM measure until public schools are replaced by private schools that are comprised of secular and religious schools. States should limit cities to governmental departments that are essential, such as police, fire, water, streets, and a very few other essential services; public schools should not be one of them.
Government control of the monopolistic public schools systems enables the government to brainwash students with the government party line which opposes Judeo-Christian values, U.S. political, economic and cultural history, the U.S. Constitution, and the idea that our individual rights come from God–not from the state.
I am persuaded that the leftists who control the schools of education and public schools work to make our students, and thus our citizenry, ignorant and incompetent. Why? Ignorant and incompetent citizens can be duped easily.
It will take generations for the permanent underclass created by Liberals and Progressives to be educated about the truth that there is no free lunch. All students should be taught that socialism works until there is no one left with money to confiscate for redistribution.
The victims in the underclass need to learn that they have been duped by the Liberals and Progressives. The public school system monopoly must be replaced by private schools that teach truth, goodness, beauty, virtue, wisdom, love of God, and love of neighbor. Starve the public schools of school taxes that should fund the private schools.
When the current thugs who rule the Senate and the Executive Branch are replaced by Conservatives and Republicans, then a law should be passed that grants the states the CHOICE to do all of the above. I say choice, because we must limit the Federal Government to the powers stated in the U.S. Constitution.
Do the above, and America will become once again a nation under God.
Dee See| 3.25.11 @ 7:30AM
DO CHECK OUT
Charlotte Isserbyte
'The Dumbing Down of America' website
for a good look at the
poly-teching/training vs. educating destruction
of education in America.
Ongoing since Reagan for whom she worked.
ALSO catch the latest quiet UN directed
worldwide destruction of library texts
'to make way for coffee lounges'.
NOTE: much of the online text transfer is
being abridged and edited (i.e. censored).
ESSENTIAL material.
MEANWHILE, back to Latin and Greek, classical
music, literature and history ------FAST!
Walking Horse| 3.25.11 @ 9:59AM
Gatto, John Taylor, _The Underground History of American Education_.
You will be outraged. Dewey is not a major player in the whole sordid affair. He had *lots* of help, including some people you would not expect to find in such roles, until you think about it a bit. Let's just say the folks denigrated as "Robber Barons" deserve the criticism, but not for the reasons usually offered.
Patzer| 3.25.11 @ 8:40AM
Where is Mr. Dewey buried? I'd like to pay a urinary visit.
jothepro| 3.25.11 @ 8:56AM
DITTO !!!!!!
Hillel| 3.25.11 @ 9:54AM
Dewey is misinterpeted (anyone so open to misinterpertation obviously has a problem) be that as it may Dewey was an early critic of the Moscow trials and took a lot of heat for that. While I often wish somone had blown up the Colombia School of Education 100 years ago,and the School of Social Work 50 years ago, our problems are our problems not theirs. One should (of course) read Jonah Goldberg"s "Friendly Fascism."
Anthony| 3.25.11 @ 10:06AM
Don't forget the J School. And yes, Goldberg's book is a must for your collection.
Walking Horse| 3.25.11 @ 3:19PM
The list would be incomplete without a mention of the Frankfurt School, a malignancy imported from pre-war Germany:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School
Dana| 3.25.11 @ 8:00PM
Yes, the Frankfurt School was originally to be called The Institute for Marxism but it was decided they could be more effective if they concealed their true agenda. People should learn about the founders, Antonio Gramsci, and another American educator, Herbert Marcuse. A nasty but very influential bunch they were, and when your parents and grandparents were fighting wars to keep this country free, these leaders of our educational system were working behind the scenes to prepare future generations for communism.
JmsA| 3.27.11 @ 12:06AM
Right on point, Dana.
Vern Crisler | 3.25.11 @ 9:54AM
Excellent article....
Anthony| 3.25.11 @ 10:04AM
"It's just the beginning, so says the CPUSA and the unions".
Oh so true. I hear thunder in the distance.
Petronius| 3.25.11 @ 10:14AM
Being required to study this tripe in college is criminal. And having to pay them for it makes the crime capital.
Sandra| 3.25.11 @ 10:25AM
I've tried the "play along for the grade" in some of my "teachers' education" classes. Some days I wonder if it is even worth the struggles.
I'm NOT a young twenty something that has a bowl of mush for brains, that makes it ever so much harder.
Byron| 3.25.11 @ 11:40AM
Sandra, you prove my point, (see below). You have to put up with it in school but you don't have to infect your students with it later. In fact you can help them to see where the progressive arguments fail.
Byron| 3.25.11 @ 10:15AM
The up side to this is that unlike a computer "garbage in garbage out" doesn't work on human beings so well. At some point most of us see the garbage for what it is and quit putting up with people who are trying to program us to become part of the collective. The progressive agenda is so profoundly idiotic that it falls apart when one has to function in the real world. The down side is that educators never have to live in the real world.
Phil Sukalewski| 3.26.11 @ 8:43AM
Unfortunately many of the idiots who cannot "see the garbage for what it is" become politicians - mostly Democrats .
Patrick| 3.26.11 @ 4:08PM
Actually, I'd hazard that many of them know it's bad, but opportunism trumps all.
Who Knows?| 3.25.11 @ 11:27AM
Why Dewey have to continue to put up with Johns like this?
Be Consciousness.
Seek| 3.25.11 @ 11:35AM
John Dewey certainly was not a fraud. His work influenced certain segments of the Left, but that's like saying Thomas Jefferson "influenced" Timothy McVeigh or that the Beatles "influenced" Charles Manson. Dewey was a public intellectual who cared deeply about education and had many useful ideas. The worst fads (e.g., multiculturalism, Black Studies) shouldn't be laid at his doorstep.
chemman| 3.25.11 @ 8:06PM
ROFLOL. A key concept that Dewey advocated was destroying the ability of Americans to read in order to hasten the onset of a socialist society. Dewey deserves every bit of scorn heaped upon hims.
Tony in Central PA| 3.25.11 @ 11:00PM
The most charitable thing many people can say about Dewey is that he was a dupe.
cicero| 3.25.11 @ 11:59AM
To add insult to injury, the most assigned American history text in our undergraduate classes is "The People's History of the United States", authored by the late and unlamented vice president of the CPUSA. One of my daughters sent it to me when it was assigned for her class as the main text. I read it cover to cover, and was amazed. Shut rot. Once I pointed out the obvious to her, she took a whole new interest in the class, and was able to listen to the lectures with a great deal more of skepticism.
Frisbee| 3.25.11 @ 9:26PM
"listen to the lectures with a great deal more skepticism"
Now THAT's an education.
megapotamus| 3.28.11 @ 1:38PM
This is the chief necessity.
martin j smith| 3.25.11 @ 3:02PM
I would say our system of education changed roughly when I graduated from high School at or about 1960+ or -. At that point my in laws who were teachers in a blue state public school system were beginning to retire and this push to retire continued from then on. Why ? Lets just say this: There was a major change in the role of the teacher from Educator to Disciplinarian to propagandist. With regard to the last role of Propagandist, I can testify that when taking courses in a large urban university I have heard many times "teachers" talking about all the flaws of this country and all of the ways the "people"
have been mistreated and how are county is a
colonial slave trading miserable lousy
worthless place to live --until the DEMOCRATIC PARTY TAKE OVER. --Meaning to say CPUSA.
I do not know if Dewey approved of such teaching but as I see it --it is a miserable failure--and we are paying for these teachers goodies no less !!!!!!!!!!
William Woodford| 3.25.11 @ 5:33PM
Mr. Kengor fails to report that the Soviet infatuation with Dewey doubtless came to an end in the late 1930s when he chaired Trotsky’s so-called counter-trial in Mexico.
Frisbee| 3.25.11 @ 9:29PM
That's an interesting factoid, but being hated by elements within the Soviet Union does not make him less of a stinking commie rat.
Frisbee| 3.25.11 @ 9:28PM
That's an interesting factoid, but being hated by elements within the Soviet Union does not make him less of a stinking commie rat.
kay b| 3.25.11 @ 10:16PM
that's "the deliberate dumbing down of america" by Charlotte Iserbyt - a comprehensive, incredible documentary of the indoctrination of the american people mostly beginning in the 1930's with John Dewey, but he had a lot of helpers. www.deliberatedumbingdown.com. You can download (if you have the memory) for free or buy at a ridiculously low price direct from the author. You'll never think the same about "government schools" reading this work.
Marc Jeric| 3.26.11 @ 4:46PM
After 40 years of teachers unions, these have succeded: our education has fallen to the level of Zimbabwe. These unions are by definition criminal enterprises against the people and should be prosecuted routinely under RICO laws.
niteowl| 3.26.11 @ 11:58PM
How do uneducated people 'wake up'?
Obama has brought America to her knees. How do we bring the unions to their knees? 2012.
Marc Jeric| 3.26.11 @ 4:50PM
Also: 45% of teachers "teach" - mainly self-esteem. The other 55% "develop, interrelate, congregate, lobby, enforce political correctness/multiculturalism/affirmative action, man voting places, protest, negotiate with democrat bosses (former union bosses), organize..."
martin j smith| 3.27.11 @ 7:53AM
No 0 of the purpose of education is pure propaganda in one form or another. Better believe that!!!!!!!!!!!! that.
martin j smith| 3.27.11 @ 7:54AM
0 is omitted from the above post
martin j smith| 3.27.11 @ 7:55AM
for some reason the percent in numbers does not work. I said one hundred percent in the first sentence.
talkradio55| 3.27.11 @ 5:03PM
Dewey's "contributions" to American education are horrifying to look at. Being a student at the Education school here at Columbia, I know the total infatuation with his Democracy in Education. This is why kids spend all those years in school and graduate without being able to read, write, or spell. They can't balance a checkbook, but they can protest against America. Good little sheep the children have become. Education is like everything else infected by liberals (or Neo-Marxists if you will), ruined to a state of disrepair for the purposes of undermining us as a nation. We must be rid of these Deweyan "principles", then rid ourselves of unions, and then rid ourselves of the Department of Education, and force the schools to uphold real standards.
John II| 3.27.11 @ 6:12PM
One point needs a more direct statement than I've seen so far. With a decent nod to the heroic exceptions (maybe 25 percent of the lot, given that about 30 percent of the lot are registered Republicans culturally and politically unrepresented by their thug unions), public school teachers make up the single dumbest profession in the country.
So we have a problem. The ignorant, trend-besotted sheep mass-produced in the corrupt public education system are produced by ignorant, trend-besotted sheep. I know this partly because I've done time in an education school, partly because I've reviewed several books on the grisly topic, and partly because I know the kinds of students in my own college classes who declare an intent to become public school teachers--most of them are airheads, okay?
The corrupt system is now self-perpetuating, and cannot be repaired. Dewey bequeathed an obsession with method, so that substance took a back seat to faddish ideology. Smart people are interested in substance; dumb people think they know something when they have a method and can spout the jargon of an ideology. Dumb people control our public education system. The system is therefore beyond repair.
There is no "solution" to a corrupt system. There is only the hard work of forging alternatives: religious schools, private schools, charter schools, homeschools . . . let a thousand flowers bloom, and MAYBE the weeds will be choked out.
But don't count on it. Americans in general have never displayed much interest in real education. By and large, and again with heroic exceptions, they just want their kids babysat and out of their hair and off the streets for most of the day.
Silver lining: the public school system keeps a lot of worthless, unproductive people from becoming public nuisances, with only occasional exceptions as displayed in Wisconsin.
megapotamus| 3.28.11 @ 1:37PM
It's the parents, not the unions.
Kent Lyon| 3.28.11 @ 6:21PM
Dr. Kengor leaves out the most salient history. Dewey was a Progressive and a "Pragmatist", as our current Commander in Chief calls himself. Arguably the leading Pragmatist philosopher of the 20th Century after Dewey is Richard Rorty, a disciple of Dewey. It is interesting to note that Rorty wrote an apologetic for Heiddeger, the Nazi philosopher, and was an admirer of him. It is also noteworthy that the main project of Progressives and Pragmatists in the 20th Century was Eugenics. Progressives and Pragmatists considered themselves the arbiters of who would be allowed to reproduce. All in the name of improving the race! Eugenics laws proliferated across the US and in Canada. It was all the rage, and was supported by and such luminaries as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who wrote the infamous majority opinion in Buck v. Bell. The entirety of the American elite, including Dewey, supported it. Cold Spring Harbor laboratory, the foremost biology research lab in the US, was the epicenter of Eugenics in the US, housing the Eugenics Records Office. Support was universal among the elite (only the hoi poloi, the target of Eugenics, opposed it, and that's what the Scopes Trial was actually about, as high school textbooks did not teach evolution so much as Eugenics). Only when the endgame of Eugenics became obvious with the liberation of the Hitler death camps in 1945, did Eugenics come under scrutiny, and the Eugenics Records Office was quietly closed. Eugenics laws on the books of every state were no longer enforced. But Progressives rose again with Roe v. Wade. So, it can be said that there were harmonics and congruences between not only Progressives and communists, but also with Nazis--considerable harmonies and congruences. I would say that Dr. Kengor is whitewashing the Progressive and Pragmatist history, which is a history of severe antipathy toward humanity, which persists to this day. Obama has starved farmers in the Central Valley of California, as Stalin starved Ukrainians. He has curtailed productive activity in the Gulf of Mexico to the detriment of states that oppose him, and generally tried to turn America into one giant Grove Parc Plaza with a new brand of fascism represented by his association with Immelt and GE, and Obamacare, which is nothing if not fascist in the definition, worthy of a Mussolini, of a "public-private partnership". Because of the pusillanimity of such as Dr. Kengor, we are losing America. Even he won't tell the full truth about American Progressives and Pragmatists. They all abhor American liberty and the Founding, and are dedicated to obliterating it. And they're doing a damn fine job, not just in the educational system, which is both a plantation system than a communist one. It's all with one objective: The destruction of the American Founding, the greatest political achievement for human liberty in the history of the world. Progressives and Pragmatists would have none of it.
Creative Recreation | 8.10.11 @ 11:24PM
is good