America's Achilles' Heel: Modern Education

Little Manchurian Candidates by Matt James is a good essay about the bulk of modern education -- both public and private -- worth reading in whole. The common denominator, that which unites all schools this applies to, being the philosophy of John Dewey. His ideas, such as 'truth is a social product' and 'there are no timless, universal absolutes' cause the dumbing down of America and cause what you read in this essay.

Dewey was an explicit disciple of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, who's spiritual children gave us communism, modern racism, modern feminism, environmentalism, male-bashing, and America's current impotence in the face of barbarians. That's the power of philosophy, a view on the whole of existence: reality, man, thought and emotion, morality, politics, art.

I don't know the validity of the essay, but from my experiences and that of reliable sources I've read and talked to, I find this essay credible. Here's an excerpt:

"One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them,
One ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them."
--Tolkien


Our six-year-old daughter was so excited to start school. At our first parent-teacher conference, Barb and I expected to hear the usual compliments and heartwarming anecdotes about our bright little angel. From our experiences with activities like T-ball and soccer, or dance and music recitals, we had learned that parents always say nice things about the children of others. If the compliments are sometimes unrealistic or excessive, well, parenting is tough work. We can all use the encouragement.

I guess we had been spoiled. Jenny's teacher got right to the point. She had some negatives to address. For one thing, Jenny was struggling with her reading. The teacher confessed that one of the most difficult parts of her job was deflating parents with the news that their children were simply not exceptional. Jenny was, at best, an average reader. She was not an Eagle; she was a Pony. Our job was to learn to enjoy her as a 40-watt bulb rather than a bright light. Was it my imagination, or did this middle-aged matron's sweet smile contain a trace of malice as she related these tidings?

I was confused by this assessment of Jenny's reading abilities because it simply didn't fit in with her prior history. She had a love affair with books for her entire childhood. We have a photograph of her at 11 months of age staring earnestly at the contents of an open book. I remember reading to her when she was three. I stopped for some reason, but she continued the narration. She knew her stories by heart. Like many other children, Jenny had learned to read at home. She was a bookworm, and she was an experienced and passionate reader before she ever started first grade.

The teacher went on to explain that Jenny cried too much at school and that we needed to correct this problem with the appropriate discipline. Barb and I exchanged glances but didn't argue. We were in shock.

I was curious about the crying. Jenny was such a happy child. I asked her that night what made her sad at school. Expecting to hear about something on the playground, I was surprised by her answer. The listening-hour stories made her sad:

Once upon a time there was a daddy duck with seven ducklings. They ranged in age down to the youngest (who reminded Jenny of a first grader). The daddy was mean. One day he demanded that all his children learn three tasks, such as running, swimming, and diving. If a duckling was unable to master all of the tasks, he would be banished from the family to live with the chickens. The youngsters struggled under the cruel eye of their father. When it came to diving, the first grader floundered and was sent away to live with the chickens.

This was the story Jenny related, in her own words, as an example. I heard it told a second time several years later, by my cousin Nancy, as a sample of objectionable curriculum. We were impressed with the coincidence, since our families resided in different states.

...What in the name of heaven was going on at this school?

I was determined to get to the bottom of things. Since they didn't send books home with students in the younger grades, I went to the school the following day and spent a couple of hours reviewing the elementary readers. As I read, my eyes opened wider and wider. I had assumed the purpose of the reading curriculum was to stimulate the juvenile imagination and teach reading skills. Instead, I saw material saturated with, to borrow another parent's language, "an unadvertised agenda promoting parental alienation, loss of identity and self-confidence, group-dependence, passivity, and anti-intellectualism."

...

When a child-figure in the stories split away from his group, for example, he would get rained on, his toes would get cold in the snow, or he would experience some other form of discomfort or torment. Similar material was repeated ad infinitum. Through their reading, our students would feel the stinging rain and the pain of freezing toes. They would learn the lesson like one of Pavlov's dogs: avoid the pain, stay with the group.

But, yes, there are some good schools out there such as The Van Damme Academy, The Academy of Classical Education, and Montessori schools (if real Montessori); and some good books such as "The Well-Trained Mind." I don't know how the Thomas Aquinas College is, but I love their curriculum.

Unfortunately, the good schools are small in number compared to the others. The question is whether they and homeschooling -- and new schools which teach reasoning skills to independent human minds -- can have a positive effect before the current tide takes us into a new Dark Ages...

Education Posted by Cyrano at March 13, 2006 10:39 PM