Dewey Disciple Johnson

I’ve been commenting on the history of education on and off now for a couple of months. Recently, I’ve pointed out that John Dewey is considered the “Father of Progressive Education.” He had many disciples who put his ideas into practice.

One of those was Marietta Pierce Johnson who started a school in Fairhope, Alabama, in 1907. She called it the Organic School. Here were her basic tenets:

• There were no achievement groupings for students
• Children were never be compared
• No homework or exams were part of the education process
• “Play” was a central component of learning, particularly folk dancing; only folk dancing and classes in the arts were required for all students
• No child was allowed to fail (which wasn’t hard, considering there were no exams)

Sound like fun? Well, yes, but that’s all it really was—fun. Dewey was impressed, however. He commented,

Her main underlying principle is Rousseau’s central idea, namely: The child is best prepared for life as an adult by experiencing in childhood what has meaning for him as a child; and, further, the child has a right to enjoy his childhood.

Quoting Jean Jacques Rousseau is hardly the means to winning my support. He’s the philosopher who fathered illegitimate children, and rather than take the responsibility to raise them himself, turned them over to an orphanage instead. Of course he would focus on the rights of a child—he never grew up himself. He was childish in all his ways.

While I can’t say that Johnson’s ideas have taken over education completely today, her imprint—and that of her mentor Dewey—is clearly evident. How does this educational approach prepare anyone for real life?

 And then, of course, there’s the need for actual effort on the part of the students.

I saw this cartoon yesterday, and it touched off a train of thought in my mind. First, let me share it—do you see the hidden meaning in it?

The reference is to how the mainstream media ignores the real danger and instead worries about how members of a group that committed acts of violence will be treated by the general population. The favorite concern right now is how Muslims will be treated, given all the Islamic terrorism.

Well, when’s the last time you heard about gangs running wild destroying the homes of Muslims? How about instances of dragging Muslims out of their homes and beating them? Perhaps we’ve been inundated with examples of intolerance and hatred toward this group?

If anything, it’s been just the opposite. Yet the phobia continues to be spread by the media.

Looking back on American history, there are not many times when government policy has been in favor of denigrating people groups. Yes, there was slavery, and the segregation policies that followed were unconscionable. But we’ve worked through that, despite what some people would have you believe.

The only other major problem along these lines occurred in WWII, when Japanese Americans were placed in camps. What was particularly wrong about this was most of them were American citizens, and their basic citizenship rights were denied. That also was dealt with later via reparations.

Those are the exceptions to the rule, however. Overall, America has been pretty receptive to those who are different. The massive immigration of the late-19th and early-20th centuries was welcomed. Businesses especially wanted workers, and the immigrants wanted work: both needs were met.

The source of this immigration was quite different from earlier arrivals to these shores. Now we were seeing people from “strange” places like Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Italy. The demographics of many parts of America were altered as a result. Many of the immigrants were Jewish and Catholic, religions that were not prevalent earlier. Yes, some prejudice existed toward them, but never by government design. You cannot stop individuals from being prejudiced, but you can set up barriers against that prejudice. Those groups ultimately succeeded in being incorporated into American life.

After WWI, there was a brief concern that the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia that had created the Soviet Union might replay itself in America. There were roundups of suspicious individuals who were part of the American communist movement. What was done with these individuals? Most were simply sent back to their home countries. Similar roundups in other nations resulted in firing squads. Not in America.

The Witness of Whittaker Chambers

Hollywood likes to make a lot of noise about the “McCarthy era” after WWII. If you believe the information spread by that crowd, you would believe that America was a dark place full of paranoia. In fact, there really was a significant communist underground movement in the 1930s and 1940s that placed men and women in key positions within the government. The threat was real.

The hero of this tale was a man named Whittaker Chambers, a former underground worker who then left communism and made his witness to the nation about the compatriots he left behind. Chief among those was a man named Alger Hiss.

Hiss Being Questioned by Congress

Hiss had worked with Chambers in the underground and was a highly trusted man in the State Department. He was with FDR at the Yalta Conference and took the lead in setting up the United Nations. People like Hiss were a true threat. The communist party was taking its orders directly from the USSR, attempting to undermine the American government.

Yet what did the American government do about this? Did it outlaw the party? Did it round them all up and shoot them? Hardly. Even when a genuine threat existed, we allowed people to believe what they wished. Was that wise? That is debatable. But at least it shows America was not a nation that retaliated with official violence toward its enemies.

Never has a nation allowed such liberty of protest. I lived through the 1960s and early 1970s when the Vietnam War so bitterly divided the country. From what I saw and have learned later, if you want to find the source of most of the violence within the nation during that time, you have to focus on the protesters themselves, not the government. We seem to tolerate a lot.

All that to say this: Muslims in America have nothing to fear. There will be no backlash. For that, I am grateful. However, the other end of the spectrum is that we will bend over backward not to offend to the extent that we will often refuse to see the real threat that exists.

America’s biggest problem right now is not its intolerance; rather, it’s an over-tolerance of those who would wish to destroy us.

Yesterday, I showed how John Dewey, the “Father of Progressive Education,” was one of the authors and signers of the Humanist Manifesto, a blatantly antichristian document. Today, let’s go a little further.

Dewey’s educational philosophy can be summarized in four points, as follows:

There is no such thing as an eternal truth.

What happens when this is the starting point for education? You are left in a vacuum, morally and spiritually.

Education should be child-centered.

This sounds good. After all, isn’t education for the children? However, what this means in Deweyspeak is that children will direct their own education—they will decide what they want to learn. How many children do you know who are aware of what they need to learn?

Experience is more important than booklearning.

There’s always an element of truth in error. Yes, experience can add a lot to one’s education. Field trips can be quite beneficial. All history students should see the most significant historical sites. Yet for Dewey and his followers, this meant that experience was the primary means for learning. Books were not that important. In fact, Dewey didn’t believe children should be taught to read until they exhibited a desire to learn how. I thought it was a teacher’s responsibility to make sure students could read. Not according to Dewey.

Schools should be embryonic communities.

All schools should be turned into social laboratories to ensure children are “socialized.” Make the schools just like the community by having students help run the office, etc. While there can be value in some of this, that’s not the main reason for a school. The emphasis is on socialization—preparing students to fit into their society. For Dewey, that society was going to be a socialist one. Everyone needs to know their place in the “new order.”

To me, this is scary stuff, the more so because we now see much of what he wanted coming to fruition. Our education system may not use the word “progressive” as often as before, but the philosophy that currently dominates education is manifestly progressive.

Let’s take a break from purely political anaysis today. Instead, let’s look at one of the reasons we are where we are as a nation, and why some of our political problems exist. To do so, we need to recognize what has happened to our education system over the past 100+ years.

We have to start with John Dewey, who has earned the title “Father of Progressive Education.” That “progressive” label is almost always poison. What were Dewey’s contributions to our current ills?

First, Dewey was one of the principal architects of the 1933 Humanist Manifesto. What are some of the key planks in this Manifesto? Here are some samples:

First: Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created.

Second: Humanism believes that man is a part of nature and that he has emerged as the result of a continuous process.

Fourth: Humanism recognizes that man’s religious culture and civilization, as clearly depicted by anthropology and history, are the product of a gradual development due to his interaction with his natural environment and with his social heritage. The individual born into a particular culture is largely molded by that culture.

Fifth: Humanism asserts that the nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values.

Eighth: Religious Humanism considers the complete realization of human personality to be the end of man’s life and seeks its development and fulfillment in the here and now.

Tenth: It follows that there will be no uniquely religious emotions and attitudes of the kind hitherto associated with belief in the supernatural.

Fourteenth: The humanists are firmly convinced that existing acquisitive and profit-motivated society has shown itself to be inadequate and that a radical change in methods, controls, and motives must be established to the end that the equitable distribution of the means of life are possible. The goal of humanism is a free and universal society in which people voluntarily and intelligently co-operate for the common good. Humanists demand a shared life in a shared world.

Summary: the universe was not created, but just somehow existed; man is not a special creation of God but a mere result of a continuous process (translation: evolution); religion is a human construct, gradually developed over time; there is no such thing as the supernatural (i.e., nothing above nature); there is no life after death, so everything we do is for the here and now; capitalism is a source of evil, so we must switch to a socialist system.

These points form the foundation of Dewey’s worldview. No problem if he doesn’t influence others, but Dewey’s influence has been vast. More on that in a later posting.