Dear Dummies,
Since all of your responses were pretty much the same, I'm assuming you were all educated in the public schools. The propaganda obviously works. So, let's have a little history lesson shall we? America didn't even have a public education system until the mid 1800's. Even then it was only mandatory in certain states. Massachusetts was the first, like that's a surprise. A group that included Horace Mann, John Dewey (considered the father of modern education), and the guy who thought up kindergarten whose name escapes me now, were greatly influenced by the SOCIALIST Prussian system of forced education. See, the SOCIALIST Prussian government believed if they could get children at an early enough age they would have a docile, obedient populace that would do whatever their government wanted. The SOCIALIST Prussian government believed individual thinking was dangerous.
You see, John Dewey isn't just the hero who made shelving library books easier, he and the education system he created is a very dangerous threat to our democracy. Unlike you "free thinkers" at DU, he believed (for a man who wasn't religious he said "I believe" an awful lot), “The mere absorption of facts and truths is so exclusively an individual affair that it tends very naturally to pass into selfishness. There is no obvious social motive for the acquirement of mere learning, there is no clear social gain in success thereat.†That was one of my favorite tag lines when I was homeschooling because it reminded me why I would NEVER put my child back in public school. But if that's too nuanced for you DUmmies try this: "Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent." I won't even go into his admiration of Marx, his drafting of the Humanist Manifesto, or his role in the founding of the NEA because you'd probably think all that's just peachy.
His objection to having religion (i.e. The Bible) taught in school is because it promoted critical thinking. He believed history was unimportant because what other people did in the past had nothing to do with today. He's been pretty successful at that too, since in most schools social studies has replaced American History. I'll never forget, one day when we were discussing WWII, one of Jake's friends from public high school was over. Jake was telling me about one of the tougher battles in the Pacific Theater. His friend said, "Well, why didn't they just send in Teddy Roosevelt and the rough riders." To this day I shake my head when I think about it because this is a pretty sharp kid. And it's sad, really. It's hard to understand how truly exceptional your country is when you have no understanding of the INDIVIDUALS who helped shape her. I wanted more than that for my children and was lucky enough to be able to give them the education I thought they needed. I don't hate education. I hate government schools.
Cindie
