Reviews by Hubie Goode: Secrets of Our Educational System Part 2

Secrets of Our
Educational System

part 2

In the early 1800’s, the leaders of Prussia took it upon themselves to bend schooling to the service of big business and the political state. A century later, a small group of now famous academics followed suit here in America. Symbolically led by persons such as John Dewey, perhaps the most destructive philosophical force to influence education here in America, and also an admitted atheist; if not in word then certainly in deed. And also Edward Thorndike of Columbia Teachers College, Ellwood P. Cubberley of Stanford, G. Stanley Hall, and some power hungry others; they were all financed by major corporate and financial allies such as Morgan, Whitney, Rockefeller and “shamanist” Andrew Carnegie.

Cubberley outlined the motus operandi this way: “The nature of the national need must determine the character of the education provided.” The term national need is, of course, dependent upon one’s view point, even if there is a large crowd of others involved. The NEA sharpened its position and our own understanding of this by specifying that “school serve as an effective use of capital”, through which our “unprecedented wealth producing power has been gained.” Looking beyond the rhetoric of those on either side of the political equation, these statements display the intended influence over schooling that the powers that be had in mind.

We're better Than That Now...

In cooperation with the pervasive thinking of the day, that of mankind having progressed beyond what was considered “painful truth” displayed in the last thousand years of man’s history by most of the “dark ages”, the designers and managers of this schooling project had a seemingly helpful and not harmful concept in mind, firmly entrenched within their humanist philosophy. That concept being that the home and the church existing as the primary leader of tomorrow’s children was now an anachronism. There was now suddenly, as there had not been before, a new age of mankind upon us, and this captured the dreamers and the zealots in their “progressive” hearts and minds.

The entire academic community had been Darwinized by now, despite the lack of real science present within the paradigm, and academia was now committed to managing evolutionary destiny. Don’t be mislead by this, their directive had everything to do with dealing with Christianity and the Bible. It had been the main thrust of intellectuals from the 1800’s and into the 1900’s to deal with the perceived threat of competitive control that the Bible and also religion itself held for humanist organizations, organizations like the NEA.

One could make the case that America and Britain have an ego problem due to their believing that the personal national history that the battle over the Bible involves in our societies is somehow superior to the rest of the world. India, Africa, China and even Russia have major world histories of which most of the subject matter is NOT a battle of social and religious control maneuvering society and re-writing history (considering the role of the Bible), but actually, that is precisely the point. The nations of Britain and America have had this battle, and have brought the world forward in the smallest increment of time and influence beyond that of any of those nations mentioned, as a few others have ever done. Just consider how long India, Russia, the Arab Nations and most of the world have remained exactly as they are for a very long time, and in the same span of time America and North Western Europe have been liquid in their changing form.

Historic freedom traditions make for a frustrating place to initiate a managerial revolution, and America was nothing if not committed to the freedoms of the individual. Economic giants committed to the purpose of social engineering did much to finance the work of those who took their concept to the mainland of China. There they launched something called the “new thought tide”. John Dewey himself lived there in China for two years, his pedagogical theories absorbed by the youth of the day with little concern as to their effectiveness. This new thought was then tested on a bewildered population that had been recently stripped of its ancient form of governance. The new Russian state was also effected in the same way around 1920.

The American public had little idea that such things were going on. Big city superintendents got wise however, to the fact that they were part of a global experiment.

H. B. Wilson. Superintendent of the Topeka Schools:

“The introduction of the American school into the orient has broken up 40 centuries of conservatism. It has given us a new China and Japan, and is working marked progress in Turkey and the Philippines. The schools are in a position to determine the lines of progress.”

-Motivation of School Work (1916)

The Western inspired and financed Chinese revolution, following right behind the last attempt by the Chinese government to prevent the British government market in narcotic drugs there, made it easy for experiments in mind altering technology to be performed. Something called “The Dangan” was born at this time. It was a universal tracking procedure, used to create a lifelong personnel file exposing every student’s intimate life from cradle to grave. In China there is no privacy. Everyone who works only works with a Dagan.

Ralph Tyler of the Carnegie endowments, had his grubby little fingers in the personal data collection of students in the United States as far back as the 1960’s. This information was unified with computer code for easy cross referencing. Tyler though it was the moral right of institutions to gather data on everyone and anyone.

Industrialists, financiers and charitable foundations, paid for university chairs, university researchers, and school administrators, spending more money on forced schooling than the government itself. With huge investments of money controlling all the top positions of schooling, the public was now subject to a system of modern schooling in which they had NO participation. The motives for this are mixed, of course, but George Orwell couldn’t have said it better:

“In our dreams, people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions, i.e. intellectual and character education, fade from our minds. 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 men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple... we will organize children.... and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.”

- Mission statement of Rockefellers General Education Board (1906)

Back to WWII.... again

Way back when, at the start of America’s involvement in World War II, millions of American men showed up at registration offices to take low level academic tests before induction. The schooling of the men who were involved in the years from ‘42-’44, happened during the ‘30’s. (Here comes the statistics, but there is a point, so please don’t let your eyes glaze over just yet.) Eighteen million men where tested during this time, and 17.2 million where judged to have the minimum competence in reading that is required for soldiering. That’s 96%! Now it is true that this was a dip in numbers from the 98% of the voluntary enlistees from over a decade before, however, the difference was negligible.

1945 saw the end of WWII and six years later America went to war in Korea. Two million men were tested for military service this time in the same fashion as those from World War II, this time however, 600,000 men were rejected. All one needed to be able to do was read at a fourth grade level in order to serve, but the literacy rate had dropped to 81% this time. The Korean war group had received its schooling in the 1940’s. These folks had more years in school, more professionally trained teachers and more scientifically selected text books than the World War II men. Interestingly, they could not read or write or count or speak or even think as well as the earlier, less schooled contingent. (Home schooling, anyone?)

Vietnam involvement began in the mid 1960’s and by the time it ended in 1973, the number of non-inductable soldiers had risen to 27% of the total pool. (Down to 73%). Vietnam serving kids had been schooled in the 60’s and 70’s, they had it even better as far as the provision of education in their school lives. Over the three wars illiteracy had gone from 4% (1941) to 19% (1952) to 27% in 1970. A large chunk of that last figure had immense trouble simply running their own lives without some type of outside assistance.

These military statistics don’t have any kind of “study group” looking into why things mean what they do and how they can be changed, like high school and college educational associations often do, and therefore military education testing remains a constant over time. There is no information inflation that happens with school testing due to the ever changing methods by which tests are scored in schools.

Back in 1840, statistics from the state of Connecticut showed the illiteracy rate as 1 out of every 579 citizens. What was considered illiterate back then you ask? A popular novel of the day was Last of the Mohicans, by Cooper. It sold so well that comparable novels of today would have to sell more than 10 million copies to match it. Today if a novel sells 10,000 copies in a year, it is considered a hit. An uncut version of Mohicans is rich in philosophy, history, culture and manners, politics, geography and human motives and actions. It is GREAT writing. In 1818, the United States was overrun with farm folk, and also a lack of colleges and universities (in comparison to what we have today).

Here’s Some Amazing Stats of Which Most People Have Been Lead to Believe Otherwise

In 1940 the literacy rate for African-Americans stood at 80%. Despite all the disadvantages that they went through in those days, four out of five were still literate. Sixty years later, the National Adult Literacy Survey and the national Assessment of Educational Progress show that 40% of African-Americans and 17% of Whites are completely illiterate. Black illiteracy doubled in 60 years and white illiteracy quadrupled. We spend three to four times as much real money on schooling as we did 60 years ago, but 60 years ago virtually everyone, black or white, could read. Go back and look at the prison statistics over the years also, spending being 33,000 dollars a year per prisoner in the United States today and each student costing about 3,500 dollars a year. Illiteracy rates among prisoners is sky high.

The Bell Curve

There’s a famous best seller called The Bell Curve, that says that these statistics are the result of selective breeding. Smart people get together with smart people and so on conversely. As their kids have kids and then those kids have more kids, the differences between the groups become larger. The stats provided are quite impressive, but they are also predicated upon the information solely provided by educational institutions, with no reference at all toward the information provided by the military.

The drop in illiteracy between WWII and Korea happened in a decade. Not even Darwin himself would argue that survival of the fittest unfolds in this manner. The Bell Curve writers would have you believe that African-American illiteracy is genetically programmed, and so is the violence that they experience on an everyday basis. But that’s just not fair, for much of the contradictory evidence that exists is ignored. Statistics can often say what you want them to say, but not if all points are considered honestly.

Statistics of black persons from other parts of the world tell a different story than those that are revealed solely in America. Compare the current African-American illiteracy rate at 56% with that of Jamaicans at 98%, that’s higher than the white population of America at 83%.

Hooked on Phonics?

So what happened? If it is not a matter of genetics, then what? During the second world war, American public schools had a major change. They converted to non-phonetic ways of teaching reading. Students were no longer taught to look at words as a collection of letters and to sound them out. They began instead, to teach the “whole word” method. Meanings of words were memorized through sheer repetition. This is the method you and I know quite well from our days with Dick and Jane, Doctor Suess and the Pig who did a Jig. This was no mistake, with the destructive monster of existentialism running wild in our education system, it was easier to control the future populace by teaching them the meaning of words according to the desired results. I know, that sounds a bit impossible, but it is not that hard to spread confusion and then weaken a populace’s resistance in the future; especially if they already agree with you as to the meaning of things, due to their upbringing. Car salesman do this sort of thing all the time. They make a career of it.

Referring back to the prison population, over 80 percent of them are illiterate, according to statistics from the Justice Department. Poor reading ability creates frustrated and angry citizens. The inability to keep up or even earn an honest living, creates criminals. I realize there is more to this equation, but I am endeavoring to stay on topic, not ignore outside statistics. As reading ability plummeted in America, fewer people could even read the Bible, and crime has risen proportionately. Don’t think the Bible has nothing to do with this, it is at the center of the whole matter of social control.

In the 1950’s, out of wedlock births doubled, and then in the 60’s bizarre violence on a daily basis became commonplace in everyday life. But who remembers that world? Oh yes, my parents used to comment all the time about how they missed the days when you could sleep with the windows open at night. When I was seven years old, my mother used to go into the grocery store and let me wait in the car until she came back. Can you do these things today? You had better not!

Let Me Read That For You...

In plain and simple terms, literacy was abandoned as the primary goal by schooling, White people were in a better position than black people because they inherited a 300 year tradition of HOME SCHOOLING that taught how to read with matching spoken sound with letters. Home schooling also adjusted the student upwards from the dumbed down teaching being proliferated among early 20th century schools. African-Americans had been forbidden to learn during their time of slavery and as late as 1930 they only acquired three or four years of schooling on average. When teachers suddenly stopped teaching students how to read, an entire population was left behind. Now the black populace had to trust the school authorities to a much greater extent than their white counterparts had to.

In 1952 the Army hired hundreds of psychologists to try and find out how those 600,000 high school students I talked about earlier, had FAKED illiteracy. Once the phycologists told the Army that the kids were not faking, the Army realized that something horrible had happened in grade school reading instruction. The problem had begun back in the 30’s, and the switch back to the system of teaching reading that worked should have been made at this time. Unfortunately, it wasn’t.

What were 5th graders reading back in 1882? Shakespeare, Thoreau, Washington, Twain, Holmes, Webster, Carroll, Jefferson, Emerson and others like them. What are they reading today? Pick up a copy of Last of the Mohicans yourself, see if you can read it. You know, it’s the book where the MASH TV character Hawkeye Pierce got his name.

more to come in part 3