by Tammy Drennan
I’ve spent the last year reading a lot of education philosophy – mostly stuff written over the past century by many of the movers and shakers of public schools. It’s been depressing, though enlightening — and mind-numbing.
These folks, almost across the board, can expend the most unbelievable number of words to say almost nothing. Someone should have gone after them for wasting trees.
When they do say something, it’s scary – mostly utopian, authoritarian, even outright weird.
Here’s an example from George Sylvester Counts, an education professor at Teachers College, Columbia University from 1927 to 1956, and author of numerous books, including “Dare the School Build a New Social Order?” Read it carefully to get the full impact.
“If Progressive Education is to be genuinely progressive, it must… face squarely and courageously every social issue, come to grips with life in all its stark reality, establish an organic relation with the community, develop a realistic and comprehensive theory of welfare, fashion a compelling and challenging vision of human destiny, and become less frightened than it is today of the bogies of imposition and indoctrination….
“If we now assume that the child will be imposed upon in some fashion by the various elements in his environment, the real question is not whether the imposition will take place, but rather from what source it will come….
“That teachers should deliberately reach for power and then make the most of their conquest is my firm conviction….
“It is my observation that the men and women who have affected the course of human events are those who have not hesitated to use the power that has come to them.”
The parade continues to this day. The education establishment must define what it means to be a worthwhile human being then force it down the throats of children. If the children or their parents resist, all power available should be used to break that resistance. It puts me in mind of a quote attributed to Rudyard Kipling: “The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is hard business. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
And one by John Taylor Gatto:
“Growth and mastery come only to those who vigorously self-direct. Initiating, creating, doing, reflecting, freely associating, enjoying privacy — these are precisely what the structures of schooling are set up to prevent, on one pretext or another.” (The Underground History of American Education)
To read more on education philosophies that have shaped today’s schooling, get a hold of a copy of Selected Readings in the Philosophy of Education, Edited by Joe Park, Ph.D.
As an antidote, read The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto
December 7, 2007 at 1:23 pm |
I am not sure how well you understand Counts.
“Dare the school…” is the product of a fervently socialistic, pre-WWII mind. I’m willing to cut him some slack — even Ronald Reagan was a liberal back then! To us, the claptrap is clear, but Counts lived in an era of horrible extremes.
What you may not be aware of is that Counts was an exemplar of HONESTY at a time when socialist educators (to whom the “Dare” presentations were made) were just beginning to embark in earnest on their clandestine program to wrest control of American education from parents, and so redefine all children according to their design.
I do not agree with Counts at all, but he advocated an open and honest socialism among educators, rather than the “stealth” approach (he called it obscurantism) that won the day. He was ostracized by the educational establishment of the time (forebears in every sense of today’s NEA) because his opponents rightly reckoned that the majority of Americans would never accept the radical agenda — if they were to prevail, so they reasoned, they would have to cloak their efforts in the rhetoric of fair play. Counts lost all “credibility” with the progressives, once he showed his “true colors.”
Counts was a fool, but he was the last honest socialist-teacher in America.
December 7, 2007 at 8:15 pm |
Dear Mr Steen,
Thanks much for the information about Counts. You’re right — I didn’t know those things about him. I agree that it’s always important to keep the context of the times in mind when judging a person’s attitudes, but I don’t believe that changes how hard we should come down on the ideas themselves (and you indicate that you believe the same), especially when the individual feels justified in trying to use the force of state to impose his ideas on others (either directly or indirectly).
On the plus side, Counts’s honesty provides a glimpse into the attitudes of educators of that era (an attitude that persists today), so he has, maybe unintentionally, done today’s citizens a small favor.
This issue brings to mind two quotations:
Most of the harm done in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long perservered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends. – Isabel Paterson
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-face for the urge to rule it. — H.L. Mencken