the govt controls the schools...as long as they do, America is dumbed down...

It's not a matter of detaching the wrong bodies from an educational oligarchy. They are there because of laws that entrench them (in all forms of public education) and because of what is in the heads of all of them, which makes the bad ideas accepted. Educational philosophy also does not exist in a vacuum. It is made plausible by wrong philosophical premises across the board, and that is what must be fought to improve both the laws and educational philosophy. School choice should be supported as critical to reform.

Very well put and understandable. Thanks again for shedding light on this topic. My take-away is that it would be nice if our educational oligarchy could detach itself from this "runaway" use of subjectivity and get back to a more rational and objective foundation. Policy and doctrine unfortunately is still being made at all levels by those "radicals" of the sixties and seventies unfortunately.

"we delegate the reins of power to them"
That's the problem. Who has the reins doesn't matter much.

John Dewey's ideas in philosophy of education started around the beginning of the 20th century and became increasingly influential as it spread, along with pragmatism in general. The irrationalism, altruism, collectivism and statism of philosophy in general has been spreading and become more accepted, resulting in the weakening of the American sense of life and individualism.

It made possible in practice the changes experienced by everyone in every era as it progressed. That history did not start when you happened to be in school. The political activism you observed directly coincided with the rise of the New Left in the late 1960s and early 70s through the "student rebellion" encouraged by some faculty members and teachers and appeased by many of the rest. By the next generation the "student rebels" had entered the professions and soon controlled education. It didn't take long for what you observed to become worse and more pervasive, and those effects were not without cause.

There can be no "how" to think without the "what". No one can think without content. Learning means learning both: concepts and principles about facts, and the proper conceptual methods. Dedicating years to education into young adulthood means learning as much as possible in both content and method. After that there is far less time for it as you are more dedicated to productively applying what you know and gaining experience, and the flexibility of the mind required to absorb new information in large quantities begins to decrease.

The subjectivism now rampant in education divides content from method, and thanks to Dewey and his followers in progressive education, there is very little left of objective method at all, either in teaching or in the minds of the students being educated. That is why academic "rationalism" -- thinking and arguing in floating abstractions cut loose from reality -- is so rampant everywhere in the name of 'critical thought' while the more explicit anti-intellectual irrationalism rages all around it. There is no better illustration of that then the current resurrection of New Left violence in the streets and on university campuses of what have been among the most prominent universities influenced by the spread of ideas.

Yes, but regarding the Constitution in particular, understanding it is also what voters are for. We don't have to be Constitutional lawyers, but we do need to evaluate politicians and know what they are betraying.

More important than knowing detailed article this or article that is knowing and understanding why the Constitution is important and why and how government must be limited. It's not "faith and the founders said so and if you don't know that you are a self-indulgent imbecile".

The dumbing down of our educational system has been a goal of the progressive left for over a century. And, it's been extraordinarily easy to do given our dependence on government for education. It's no accident that teachers are generally left leaning given the state of our colleges and universities. They were taken over by the left a long time ago and it's only gotten worse. The left will leave only kicking and screaming and will destroy as much as they can in the process. They are protected by tenure and government connections.

Public schools are a mess. The government, I fully believe, should get out of the business.

Just last night I was joking with a doctor friend of mine about our schools. "We are given a 'right to a free public education'. But, if you don't go you get arrested for truancy. What am I missing here?" ...lol What other "rights" are like that? "Speak freely or go to jail!" "Better pack heat, or else!"

As does the pooling of labor. While I can't build electronics out of dirt, there is a need for others who can and they need to eat.

Growing, preparing and storing food? That, I can handle.

I can also do the machine shop and fine woodworking stuff, teach adults any skill I have taught myself, run a locomotive and a dump truck. I can change a diaper and soothe an irritated baby.

I am perhaps the world's worst fisherman.

Here's why: because we delegate the reins of power to them and they can impact our lives in horrible ways if allowed.

I think if you'll look around you you'll realize that not being worried about politics is why there are so many other troublesome things to worry about.

For a while, when I took off on my bike to see (however furtively) the most beautiful girl on the planet, it was a 10 mile round trip.

When I was in first grade I got permission to go see Kandra and her bunnies. My Mom granted permission. It wasn't until I got home and related the details of my "date" (her Mom provided Twinkies and lemonade at the picnic table) that my Mom realized that I had been about a mile away and across a fairly busy 45 mph road. I think we almost lost her on that news. ;-)

I was the kind of kid who would later figure out how to climb to the roof without a ladder and, with a towel around my neck, go flying past the kitchen window as she was washing the dishes in front of it. I never broke anything, but I don't think she ever got used to that or seeing me go sailing past the house on my bike while standing on the seat and balanced on one foot.

By the time I was 10 or 12, a summer day would find me playing with kids in a neighboring town or exploring miles of dirt roads and inviting wooded glades ... climbing high in trees and napping in the breeze. I would grab my fishing pole and spend the day uptown by the river, sustained by the reward of 1-2 cents per bottle that the local market gave for found bottles.

If we don't hover over them 24/7, kids do a pretty good job of figuring the world out. We are there as guides and shepherds and maybe ambulance drivers, leading them in good directions, never totally ignoring them but being aware that we have done our job if, when it is time for them to live life on their own, they are capable of doing so successfully and confidently. And nothing breeds confidence quite like occasionally terrifying your Mom. ;-)

Thank you for your reasoned and eloquent posting. Your perspective is appreciated.

As for my comments about a "palpable" change in Public Education during the 1960'sand a linkage to an emerging political component, and indoctrination, I can only relate personal experience and my recollections of that critical period of time.

In 1963, while a freshman in HS (I was on my football bus at the time of Kennedy's assassination) to about the time I had graduated (1966) the "new" teaching practices and tools were pretty much implemented. Also, over that 4 year period, the changes in the philosophical underpinnings began to change in subtle ways and began taking root, perhaps in response to the upheavals raging at the timet. However, it wasn't until the 1970's that a more serious "politicization" of the subject matter seemed to permeate the environment. There were also new crops of educators who were being influenced by events and by "improvements" in educational doctrine and goals.

I don't know how old you are however during the time frame mentioned, for me (and others), these changes became easily observable. In addition, over the years with the myriad of tests (TIMS, College Boards, etc.) the scores of students across the country kept dropping, even with the bogus approach of "Normalizing" test criteria.

There is a cause and effect to all of these education related issues, of that I am sure. Teaching the teachers has become little more than "Indoctrination" and the skills that teachers used to possess has dropped greatly! Of that I don't think there is much that can be refuted. Therefore, I stand by my observations and linkages to where we find ourselves today.

In closing, it seems "What" to think is more important than "How" to think and that Reading, Writing and Arithmetic is no longer the primary focus of Public Education. A humble observation....

I don't know the mechanism, but this is consistent with my recent observations. Catholics get stuff done. I know Jews, Muslims, and atheists who send their kids to Catholic school.

My comment was meant as a personal nod to CircuitGuy who lamented not being skilled at outdoors crafts. His comments, mine, and yours all underscore the same point, the one you made about division of labor. Knowing the Constitution is important to being a good citizen, but you can live a happy and productive life knowing nothing about it because that' what lawyers are for.

Actually, we used NetFlix DVDs a LOT... No commercials, and we controlled the content a bit. As my daughter got older, I had her watching 21 Jumpstreet with Depp... She loved it, and we got to talk about the TROUBLE Kids in High School got into, and how it affected their life...

Also, Cosby show (which I shudder at now, but it had some great lessons). My daughter and I joke about the episode where he goes to buy a car, and tries hiding the fact that he is a doctor: "What type of work do you do?" -> "Hard Work!"...

Mad Magazine is pretty educational, and still fun when she is a bit older. Seek, and you shall find. Just take the time out to teach her to use them as COUNTER EXAMPLES and not examples...

Kids are our future...

Luvvit!

The idea of education for a political purpose serving the state was imported from Europe, primarily Germany, in the early 19th century when New England Unitarians battling with Catholic immigrants for ideological domination imposed state controlled public education.

Dewey's later educational philosophy based on Pragmatism was much more than a political purpose. He emphasized subjectivist socialization in groups, encouragement of a subjective surfacing of a child's supposed unique innate self, and 'critical thinking' as 'learn by doing' pragmatism, all at the expense of both objective content and objective method in thinking. "Critical thinking" is emphasized today, but it takes the form of subjective rationalization, not objective conceptual thought. Academic rationalism is everywhere.

Government control of education today supports and controls the intellectual and educational establishment, with its willing collaboration, not government directly deciding and dictating what is to be regarded as true. Controls through compulsory monopoly schools, unionized teachers, bureaucratic regulation, and double costs of education through taxation for those who might escape, are supported and exploited by establishment intellectuals to protect their position of intellectual control. Both the politics and the intellectuals are caused by the same bad philosophy and can only be reformed by replacing that.

I don't know what you mean by seeing since the 1960s "a preponderance of movements and philosophies beginning to permeate the American classroom". There always was a dominant classical educational philosophy, consisting largely of stuffing knowledge into heads as dogma without regard to how to think rationally, but today there is no emphasis on variety in educational philosophies and movements, only the progressive loss of objective content as multiculturalism spawns competing ethnicities and other trivial anti-intellectual fixations in the name of education, and all of which embrace the same anti-reason collectivism with control by a political and intellectual elite.

I look to the fact that many of the winners of the ARI essay contests come from Catholic Schools.

Mike, I personally research voter fraud in Florida, and have testified in Federal court about the data I was able to easily crunch to identify problems being ignored.

Illegals voting is so common, it doesn't even phase me. I believe 5 states made it ILLEGAL to validate someones citizenship for voting reasons!
And, it turns out, we are ENCOURAGING ICE to deny citizenship to ANYONE going through the process, who has SO MUCH AS REGISTERED to vote.
Because in so doing, they have likely PERJURED themselves by saying they are, in fact, citizens. And this ICE agency, under President Trump seems WILLING to look into it!
(this assumes they filled out the federal form which asks if you are a citizen under the penalty of perjury).

I think ANYONE who votes illegally should be stricken from voting for 99 years. And I believe they should NEVER become citizens. And the country should PROCLAIM this very loudly, and publicly. But the media will not let it happen. So the hundreds of prosecuted cases will never see the light of day. It's like getting a "Home owner shoots intruder" on the AP. It aint happening. Not unless the homeowner gets charged with a crime!

J. J. Hill was a railroad entrepreneur who did not seek government subsidies. Hill was born in Canada. He became an American citizen after he voted in a local St. Paul election -- he knew that he had to go back and dot the i's and cross the t's to be legal. But is was after the fact. And he was a Democrat.

We had a friend of the family who served in the Army and was wounded and when he came home, he voted. But he wasn't really a citizen. It caught up with him. The judge let him off on the charges but made him take a citizenship class and get sworn in.

The British system - the "Anglo-American system" - is called "bench made law." The legislature passes a broad bill and the courts decide on a case-by-case how to apply the law to the facts presented. The other way is the Continental system where the legislature passes laws with lots of clauses covering all the possible cases. The courts look at the facts presented and apply them to the law with very little interpretation. "Man Without a Country" and "Les Miserables" provide dramatic contrasts between the two systems.

My 6 yeqr old grand daughter only wants to watch cartoons on TV which are now mostly meaningless drivel. I wish serieis' like "Liberty Kids" and "school House Rock" were still on. I'm going to see if they are available at Amazon. Actually cartoons and comic books are pretty effective ways to reach kids at an early age.

That is not what the concept 'communism' means. Nor does the government policy promote the idea that there is only one right answer chosen by government. Just as frequently as it supports an educational elite dictating national education standards it insists on a subjectivist 'no right answer'.

How many people need to? Division of labor based on specialized knowledge makes an advanced economy possible.

If that article is misleading (which it is), the description at the top of this thread is much worse: We are not "a culture of self-absorbed imbeciles". Likewise for the assertion, "The only solution to America's woes: true education about our rights and basic economics". There is a lot more to education than that, and the fundamental solution to the downward trend of the country is philosophical, explaining and spreading the philosophy of reason and individualism, not conservative assertions of "rights" and "economics" based on tradition and faith. Conservatives demand that the Constitution be taken seriously but have no principled answer to the left's demands that it not be in the name of reason and science 'pragmatically' applied. With that approach, faith competing with unprincipled pragmatism and progressivism posturing in the name of science and rationality, it's no surprise that people don't take the bill of rights more seriously.

The survey itself was misleading because it caught people off guard on the telephone asking about details they mostly hadn't though about in years, but which could have easily reviewed and brought back to connect with basic ideas of freedoms still largely taken for granted by the average American (but not the intellectuals). That doesn't make us "a culture of self-absorbed imbeciles". (More details on the survey methodology are at https://cdn.annenbergpublicpolicycent...

The people of this country are not "imbeciles", they are still the most civilized, properly "self-absorbed" individualistic, productive people on earth, living advanced lives in the most knowledge-based economy in the world despite the statism wrecking it. They are fully capable of understanding the basis for what is left of the American sense of life, but had no way to learn it as the professional intellectuals have accepted and disseminate irrationalist, altruist, collectivist ideas from old Europe encouraging resentment and pressure group ethnic and class warfare. We are confronted with the clash between the success of reason and individualism in the realm of science, technology and economic productivity versus primitive irrationalism and mysticism in the realm of the 'humanities' concerning principles of human value and ethical standards, which is why so many important aspects of education are so abysmal today.

I believe that Dewey had the major influence on American education for years. Of course he was heavily influenced by Hegel as well as Kant and others however under Kennedy, National education took on a much more Progressive posture.

Hegel agreed with Aristotle when he said "that the practical problem of education is to prepare the person to be a good citizen of a good state". This then became the focus of American Public Education at that time. It expanded throughout the 60's and by 1970 we were starting to see a preponderance of movements and philosophies beginning to permeate the American classroom.

This is the application and we are seeing it on steroids today. Empiricism has given way to group think (Preparing a person to become a "good" citizen or a "good" state). Of course the "good" state, even though very imperfect, determines what a "good" citizen should know and act upon.

Since empiricism (or even simple "critical thinking" is no longer being taught per se, we are left with for all intents and purposes, Truth as determined by the state. In simplest terms, I believe that captures the issue that public education faces today. It is by design and definitely not by accident.