laws and eternal truths and principles. He adopted
Using Schools To Create A New Social Order 45 pragmatic, evolutionist, relativistic concepts as his guiding philosophy. Dewey believed, that because man's environment is constantly changing, man also changes constantly. Therefore, Dewey concluded, teaching children any of the absolutes of morals, government, or ethtics was a waste of time.
He saw the destruction of a child's individualistic traits as the primary goal of education. Once this was accomplished the youngster would conform or adjust to whatever society in which he found himself. Ability to
"get along with the group" became the prime measuring stick of a child's educational "progress." Dewey sum- marized his theories, saying:
Education, therefore, is a process for living and not a prepara- tion for future living.
THE END OF TRADITIONAL EDUCATION
Dewey laid the foundation for the future "destruction of traditional education" decried by Admiral Rickover when he said:
We violate the child's nature and render difficult the best ethical results by introducing the child too abruptly to a number of special studies, of reading, writing, geography, etc.
out of relation to his social life...the true center of correlation of the school subjects is not science, nor literature, nor history, nor geography, but the child's own social activities.
INTO THE TEXTBOOKS
The introduction of a 1960s first grade "social studies"
curriculum guide prepared by the Contra Costa Coun- ty, California schools shows how Dewey's theories were
implemented. It told teachers:
No longer can history, geography and civics, taught separately as in the recent past, be considered adequate preparation for effective citizenship.
Some would ask, "Why not?"
LEVELING DOWN TO THE GROUP'S LEVEL
The group is the nucleus of the progressive systenm The long-established Washington newsletter, Human Events, revealed that to elevate and promote the
"group," Dewey had to destroy individualism and the thinking which encourages it. The publication quoted Dewey as saying:
Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming, where everyone is interdependent.
No child is permitted to forge ahead of another. This would hurt the group. Automatic "social promotions"
become the norm. Nobody is left behind because of poor work. This would disrupt the group. Grading and graded report cards showing actual percentages earned are frowned upon. Grading promotes competition Competition breeds rivalry and encourages students to excel and rise above the group.
In the 1990s, Dewey's emphasis on the group has resulted in schools adopting the practice of "cooperative learning."
Rosalie Gordon wrote What's Happened to Our Schools? It was widely circulated in the early 1960's|
and said of Dewey's progressive education:
The progressive system has reached all the way down to the lowest grades to prepare the children of America for their role as the collectivists of the future...The group—not the in- dividual child—is the quintessence of progressivism. The child must always be made to feel part of the group. He must indulge in group thinking, in group activity.
She explains Dewey's obsession with the group and group activity by saying:
You can't make socialists out of individualists.27
Using Schools To Create A New Social Order 47 Dewey was a socialist. At the climax of his career in 1950, he became honorary national chairman of the League for Industrial Democracy, the American counterpart of the socialist British Fabian Society.
Fabians believed socialism could be achieved by a process of gradualism rather than Karl Marx's call for a violent revolution.
CUTTING A CULTURE'S TIES TO THE PAST
Dewey and his disciples wanted to create "a new social order." The first step in doing so was rewriting textbooks to prevent an upcoming generation from learning of the traditions, values, heroes and glorious accomplishments of their nation. The next chapter shows how it has been done.
It was in the area of new materials, textbooks, and teaching aids, that Dewey disciple Harold Rugg achieved greatest influence. He concentrated on the job of indoctrinating teachers and preparing teaching materials designed to "influence the social attitudes, ideals, and behavior of coming generations."
Completely new textbooks were needed. Rugg wrote them. They were called "social studies." All traditional presentations of subject matter was scrapped, and a variety of economic, political, historical, sociological, and geographical data was lumped into one textbook.
With such a conglomeration of material in one book, the deletion or slanted presentation of key events, basic truths, facts and theories was not so evident.
MILLIONS DEPRIVED OF THEIR HERITAGE
Five million school children "learned" American political and economic history and structure in the 1930s from 14 social studies textbooks Rugg authored.30 He also produced the corresponding
t e a c h e r s ' g u i d e s , c o u r s e o u t l i n e s , a n d s t u d e n t workbooks.
So blatant was the downgrading of American heroes and the U.S. Constitution, so pronounced was the anti- religious bias, so open was the propaganda for socialis- tic control of men's lives in Rugg's textbooks that the public rebelled,
Rugg's textbooks went too far, too fast for complete public acceptance. Thus, in 1940, the National Educa- tion Association began promoting a set of "social studies" texts known as the Building America series.33 They were replacements for the discredited Rugg series. They were widely adopted but a few years later the Senate Investigating Committee on Education of the California legislature condemned the NEA-spon- sored series for subtly playing up Marxism and destroy- ing American traditions. The Senate committee report...
...found among other things that 113 Communist-front or- ganizations had to do with some of the material in the books and that 50 Communist-front authors were connected with it.
Among the authors are Beatrice and Sidney Webb, identified with the Fabian Socialist movement in Great Britain.
Rugg's efforts and the efforts of others who followed his lead had an effect. A dozen years later young Americans went to Korea to fight. They had grown up on the books produced by Rugg and others with similar goals. Thousands of them became POW's. Unlike wars before or since, nearly one-third collaborated with the communist enemy. In their early months of captivity nearly four out of every ten died from a new disease Army psychiatrists called, "Give-Up-Itis."
A very unflattering professional evaluation of the typical American was written by the Chief of the Chinese Peoples Volunteer Army during the Korean
Using Schools To Create A New Social Order 49 War. Prepared for his superior in Beijing, it fell into American hands. It said:
The American soldier has weak loyalty to his family, his community, his country, his religion, and to his fellow soldier.
His concepts of right and wrong are hazy and ill-formed.
Opportunism is easy for him. By himself he feels frightened and insecure. He underestimates his own worth, his own strength, and his ability to survive.
There is little understanding of American political history and philosophy, the federal, state, and community organizations, state and civil rights, freedom safeguards, checks and balances and how these things allegedly operate within his own system.
He fails to appreciate the meaning of and the necessity for military or any other form of organization.