Chronology of the National Education Association.
John Dewey & his disciples
1899. In The School and Society, John Dewey wrote, "The relegation of the merely symbolic and formal to a secondary position; the change in the moral school atmosphere... are necessities of the larger social evolution." He quoted Friedrich Froebel who said, "The primary root of all educative activity is in the instinctive, impulsive attitudes of children, and not in the presentation and application of external material, whether through the ideas of others or though the senses."[1] Cuddy, page 10.
1904: John Dewey (an admitted socialist) left the University of Chicago to become head of Teachers College at Columbia University in New York - where his ideas have molded the thinking of leading American "educationists" ever since." When Dewey retired in 1930, two of his colleagues and disciples at Teachers College - Dr. Harold O. Rugg and Dr. George S. Counts - were well prepared to carry forward his drive for 'progressive education.'"[5] The Dan Smoot Report.
1933. Harold Rugg, president of the American Educational Research Association and author of 14 Social Studies textbooks, said in The Great Technology: "A new public mind is to be created. How? Only by creating tens of millions of new individual minds and welding them into a new social mind.
"Old stereotypes must be broken up and new climates of opinion formed in the neighborhoods of America. But that is the task of the building of a science of society for the schools..... Basic problems confront us: ... the development of a new philosophy of life... appropriate to the new social order....
"Through the schools of the world we shall disseminate a new conception of government-- one that will embrace all of the collective activities of men; one that will postulate the need for scientific control and operation of economic activities in the interest of all people."[1] Cuddy, page 17.
1956. "Dr. George S. Counts expressed the real purpose of Dewey's 'progressive education': "... in school activities, in the relations of pupils and teachers and administrators, the ideal of a cooperative commonwealth should prevail... All of this applies quite as strictly to the nursery, the kindergarten, and the elementary school as to the secondary school, the college, and the university."
"You will say, no doubt, that I am flirting with the idea of indoctrination. And my answer is again in the affirmative, or, at least, I should say that the word does not frighten me." Rosalie M. Gordon, WHAT'S HAPPENED TO OUR SCHOOLS, AMERICA'S FUTURE, INC. 1956. [5] The Dan Smoot Report.
1956. "Dr. Counts helped organize a small group of educators to study the problem of changing the curricula, textbooks and teaching techniques in the schools of America. The group was called the Commission on Social Studies of the American Historical Association. Its work was financed by a $340,000 grant from the Carnegie Corporation, one of the tax-exempt organizations which supports the Council on Foreign Relations." Dan Smoot, THE INVISIBLE GOVERNMENT, 1962. [5] The Dan Smoot Report.
1958: "The Commission recommended that separate courses in history, economics, civics, and geography be abandoned - or, rather, all combined into one course to be called 'social studies,' with emphasis on 'social' or 'conflict of masses' ideas. ... 'Cumulative evidence supports the conclusion, that, in the United States as in other countries, the age of individualism and laissez faire in economy and government is closing and that a new age of collectivism is emerging.'
"...it will involve a larger measure of compulsory as well as voluntary cooperation of citizens in the conduct of the complex national economy, a corresponding enlargement of the functions of government, and an increasing state intervention in fundamental branches of economy previously left to the individual discretion and initiative - a state intervention that in some instances may be direct and mandatory and in others indirect and facilitative....the actually integrating economy of the present day is the forerunner of a consciously integrated society in which individual economic actions and individual property rights will be altered and abridged." Rene A. Wormser, FOUNDATIONS, Devin-Adair, 1958, pp. 146 ff. [5] The Dan Smoot Report
To Be Continued...
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