Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Monday, June 3. 2013

Political quotes du jour

“Independent self-reliant people would be a counterproductive anachronism in the collective society of the future where people will be defined by their associations (1896).”

“The children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society that is coming, where everyone would be interdependent (1899).”

Both from John Dewey, via a commenter here.

Posted by Bird Dog at 11:10 | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (0)

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Those statements are powerfully concentrated examples of the tragic overconfidence of the technocrats.

Casually arrogant and so confident and sure of obvious and inevitable social progress, they don't sound zealous. Gives the impression that brilliant, comprehending men have things well in hand.

Chilling. Tragic because Dewey's Pragmatism began to fail early enough for him to see it, but no measure of runaday evidence could shake the Pragmatists' faith in their power and ability to create a perfect and orderly society.

Later, you get folks like John McNamara.
#1 T.K. Tortch on 2013-06-03 12:04 (Reply)
Interesting how deep the socialist process goes to remain hidden. The two quotes above completely undermines the Wikipedia write up on Dewey and education. I'm going to say the Wikipedia entry was white-washed so as not to reveal.

Sadly, Dewey advocates won the day. There was a sea change in the 1920s in education and at the universities with the socialists beginning their long march through western institutions.

Prior to that, good results were being found by doing crazy things like teaching students to study.

QUOTE:
One of the most important functions of the class period is the development of initiative and self-reliance in pupils. These qualities are fundamental, not only in proper study, but they lie at the very basis of a democracy such as ours, and it is important that the school make provision for their development. In these days of hysteria it is essential that the future citizen be trained to stand on his own feet and to think for himself.

--Teaching Boys and Girls How to Study' (1919) by Peter Jeremiah Zimmers, Superintendent of City Schools, Manitowoc, Wisconsin


Instead we have a system that edumedicates out of students the child's inherent ability to think (look to a child before they've been exposed to the classroom) then tries to re-teach "critical thinking" to those who have been filtered by the school sieve and determined to be of sufficient refinement. Only, these days, the universities are failing at the latter.

On the upside, we have increasing homeschooling with many throwing off the damaging methods of tightly controlled classroom instruction that inculcate "school helplessness".
#2 JKB on 2013-06-03 12:08 (Reply)
Agree whole-heartedly with comments above, every jot and tittle.

Might add too that the likes of McNamara worked for something known as "Camelot" --a characterization wherein the obvious Lancelot & Guinivere imagery was but the visible (and blinding) facet.

The turn of the century in Europe featured a rampant 'Prussianism' (Germany was recently amalgamated, and had stymied the Napoleonic soi-disants next door (the 1870 war mostly in process of solving, in an admirably continental executive stroke, a thitherto bedeviling Spanish succession question), whose philosophers were being rapidly drawn into American academia (Johns Hopkins leading the charge) and straight into the little red schoolhouse on the prairie.

American parents had no 20th century mirror for reference; only the 19th, and its european reflection of 'America the Somewhat Vulgar', with the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Frontier and Indian Wars making fertile ground indeed for the explanatory 'master-race of the future' weltanschauung.
#3 buddy larsen on 2013-06-03 14:20 (Reply)
In following up on some other education stats, I found that ONE in FIVE -- 1 in 5 -- students are diagnosed with ADD or ADHD? What! Who is doing this diagnosing? This speaks of child abuse by the system.
#4 jma on 2013-06-03 14:25 (Reply)
See below Dr. Bliss's post on the DSM, especially Mike Moore's comment.
#4.1 XRay on 2013-06-03 21:04 (Reply)

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