Teaching methods are out-dated.

[Athena]

Quote by: Keith Hamburger Athena, please, please, please read the links that have been provided to show that we never had a government run education system in this country that was intended to provide a liberal education in support of freedom. It never has been that way and it never will be that way as long as education is in the hands of the government. Keith

The teachers at the 1917 National Education Association Conference were proud that education lead people to stand up for their rights, in many different ways. Unions and granges were organizations for the benefit of members, and the people in the first unions, risked getting their heads bashed it in their struggle for better pay and working conditions. Education promoted this.

What do you know of the Conceptual Method of education? How about John Dewey? What of the several different purposes of education? Which purposes do you think education should serve? Please, please, please, this discussion should not be either/or. The subject is an a matter of degrees and method. It would be great if this thread were about method, but methods are unknown, so we can't discuss them.

One of the most contraversial changes in public education, in the US, is destroying national heroes and praising effeciency. This is what the Prussians did when they took control of Germany and centrialized education; focusing it on technology for military and industrial purpose. This changes the culture. It turns citizens away from strong individual leadership, everyone being a hero, modeling national heroes, and converts them sheeple dependent on authority.

[Keith Hamburger]

Quote by: Winter wind You have yet to address my argument about how it would be better if only the parents did it.

Sorry. I've been away for the past week on a business trip and haven't had the time to respond properly here, so I've just let things go.

As to "better if only the parents did it", that is in no way what I would advocate. I would prefer that parents have the option of getting together and setting up a school if that's what they prefer. The old "one-room" schoolhouses with up to 15-20 students, and often more, at a wide range of ages (usually 1st through 8th grade), and only one teacher and no support staff, were much more effective at basic education than our current system. Even if the parents were to pay some $4000 per student (much, much less than we're currently paying in taxes) would provide as much as $80,000 per year to such a school. Plenty to pay a teacher and provide for the facility.

You don't need much more than a basic room, in the city it could be in a shopping mall or some such, a chalkboard and a selection of books. In most cases in such a school the older children helped teach the younger children thereby taking the burden off of the teacher and allowing even more students to be served by a single teacher.

Perhaps such a local school could provide specialized education to support children in subjects that their parents don't feel confident in teaching themselves. Perhaps such a school would provide the only source of education for a parent overburdened by our tax system and providing a third of their income to support the government.

The point is that there are a lot of options available here. Private business assistance may be available. I would expect that castoff computers from local businesses would be available to most every school, for one example. They might be a little dated but would usually be just fine for educational purposes.

Having parents teach their children, directly, is just one option, but it has been shown to be viable in many cases. But, it's not the only option out there.

Keith

[Keith Hamburger]

Quote by: Winter wind \Again again again, the system of education needs to be overhauled. Government has little to do with it. The standard mean worldwide needs to be completely scrapped and changed. Even without the government, private education groups are still going to use the 1-12 grade system, and as long as I still see that, the complete overhaul has yet to come.

Actually, government has everything to do with it. Why do you think the 1-12 grade system is going to continue to be used. It wasn't always that way. In the old one-room schoolhouses that predated government education, and persisted for 100 years after government education was implemented, all grades, usually 1-8, were grouped together and the older children helped teach the younger children.

I have ideas in completely scrapping age seperation of children in schools. Such grouping is a control measure implemented to allow the system to more easily condition students, and, thereby citizens, to be dependent on the authorities rather than develop strong relationships older or younger peers and being more self-sufficient or reliant on one another, rather than looking to the teacher or authority for that which you are not yet able to do for one's self.

But, letter grading, age seperation, scheduled class times, all of the routine of our school system is specifically designed to instill and condition a reliance on authority and routine, and destroy any interpersonal relations that might allow one to work outside of that reliance with one's peers or friends.

Keith

[Keith Hamburger]

Quote by: Athena The teachers at the 1917 National Education Association Conference were proud that education lead people to stand up for their rights, in many different ways. Unions and granges were organizations for the benefit of members, and the people in the first unions, risked getting their heads bashed it in their struggle for better pay and working conditions. Education promoted this. What do you know of the Conceptual Method of education? How about John Dewey? What of the several different purposes of education? Which purposes do you think education should serve? Please, please, please, this discussion should not be either/or. The subject is an a matter of degrees and method. It would be great if this thread were about method, but methods are unknown, so we can't discuss them. One of the most contraversial changes in public education, in the US, is destroying national heroes and praising effeciency. This is what the Prussians did when they took control of Germany and centrialized education; focusing it on technology for military and industrial purpose. This changes the culture. It turns citizens away from strong individual leadership, everyone being a hero, modeling national heroes, and converts them sheeple dependent on authority.

From the book I've referenced many times ...

Dewey’s Pedagogic Creed statement of 1897 gives you a clue to the zeitgeist: Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth. In this way the teacher is always the prophet of the true God and the usherer in of the true kingdom of heaven. What is "proper" social order? What does "right" social growth look like? If you don’t know you’re like me, not like John Dewey who did, or the Rockefellers, his patrons, who did, too.

Which all sounds fine and good, except for the religion part of it, turning education itself into a religion. However, what was done with this completely perverts the entire intention of Dewey of empowering the individual. Dewey was funded by Rockefeller and Carnegie to create schools that would turn

In 1919, using Rockefeller money, John Dewey, by now a professor at Columbia Teachers College, an institution heavily endowed by Rockefeller, founded the Progressive Education Association. Through its existence it spread the philosophy which undergirds welfare capitalism— that the bulk of the population is biologically childlike, requiring lifelong care. From the start, Dewey was joined by other Columbia professors who made no secret that the objective of the PEA project was to use the educational system as a tool to accomplish political goals. In The Great Technology (1933), Harold Rugg elucidated the grand vision: A new public mind is to be created. How? Only by creating tens of millions of individual minds and welding them into a new social mind. Old stereotypes must be broken up and "new climates of opinion" formed in the neighborhoods of America. Through the schools of the world we shall disseminate a new conception of government—one that will embrace all the activities of men, one that will postulate the need of scientific control...in the interest of all people. In similar fashion, the work of the Social Science Research Council culminated in a statement of Conclusions and Recommendations on its Carnegie Foundation–funded operations which had enormous and lasting impact upon education in the United States. Conclusions (1934) heralded the decline of the old order, stating aggressively that "a new age of collectivism is emerging" which will involve the supplanting of private property by public property" and will require "experimentation" and "almost certainly...a larger measure of compulsory cooperation of citizens...a corresponding enlargement of the functions of government, and an increasing state intervention... Rights will be altered and abridged." Conclusions was a call to the teachers colleges to instruct their students to "condition" children into an acceptance of the new order in progress. Reading, writing, and arithmetic were to be marginalized as irrelevant, even counterproductive. "As often repeated, the first step is to consolidate leadership around the philosophy and purpose of education herein expounded." (emphasis added) The difficulties in trying to understand what such an odd locution as "compulsory cooperation" might really mean, or even trying to determine what historic definition of "education" would fit such a usage, were ignored. Those who wrote this report, and some of those who read it, were the only ones who held the Rosetta Stone to decipher it.

While there is some truth to the idea that the great decline started in the 1940's, the real start of this goes far back. Again, from the Underground History of American Education,

By the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, a form of school technology was up and running in America’s larger cities, one in which children of lower-class customers were psychologically conditioned to obedience under pretext that they were learning reading and counting (which may also have happened). These were the Lancaster schools, sponsored by Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York and prominent Quakers like Thomas Eddy, builder of the Erie Canal. They soon spread to every corner of the nation where the problem of an incipient proletariat existed. Lancaster schools are cousins of today’s school factories. What few knew then or realize now is that they were also a Hindu invention, designed with the express purpose of retarding intellectual development. How Hindu schooling came to America, England, Germany, and France at just about the same time is a story which has never been told. A full treatment is beyond the scope of this book, but I’ll tell you enough to set you wondering how an Asiatic device specifically intended to preserve a caste system came to reproduce itself in the early republic, protected by influentials of the magnitude of Clinton and Eddy. Even a brief dusting off of schooling’s Hindu provenance should warn you that what you know about American schooling isn’t much. First, a quick gloss on the historical position of India at the time of the American Revolution—for Lancaster schools were in New York two decades after its end.

This effort goes back to the early 19th century, sometime around or before 1825. It took a long time to get to be the universal system we have today, but the system of education we have today is directly derived from the Hindu caste system of the 18th century. It came to us by way of Britain.

The entire purpose of Hindu schooling was to preserve the caste system. Only the lucky 5 percent received an education which gave perspective on the whole, a key to understanding. In actual practice, warriors, administrators, and most of the other leaders were given much diluted insight into the driving engines of the culture, so that policy could be kept in the hands of Brahmins. But what of the others, the "masses" as Western socialist tradition would come to call them in an echoing tribute to the Hindu class idea? The answer to that vital question launched factory schooling in the West. Which brings us back to Andrew Bell. Bell noticed that in some places Hinduism had created a mass schooling institution for children of the ordinary, one inculcating a curriculum of self-abnegation and willing servility. In these places hundreds of children were gathered in a single gigantic room, divided into phalanxes of ten under the direction of student leaders with the whole ensemble directed by a Brahmin. In the Roman manner, paid pedagogues drilled underlings in the memorization and imitation of desired attitudes and these underlings drilled the rest. Here was a social technology made in heaven for the factories and mines of Britain, still uncomfortably saturated in older yeoman legends of liberty and dignity, one not yet possessing the perfect proletarian attitudes mass production must have for maximum efficiency. Nobody in the early years of British rule had made a connection between this Hindu practice and the pressing requirements of an industrial future. Nobody, that is, until a thirty-four-year-old Scotsman arrived in India as military chaplain. Young Bell was a go-getter. Two years after he got to India he was superintendent of the male orphan asylum of Madras. In order to save money Bell decided to try the Hindu system he had seen and found it led students quickly to docile cooperation, like parts of a machine. Furthermore, they seemed relieved not to have to think, grateful to have their time reduced to rituals and routines as Frederick Taylor was to reform the American workplace a hundred years later. In 1797, Bell, now forty-two, published an account of what he had seen and done. Pulling no punches, he praised Hindu drill as an effective impediment to learning writing and ciphering, an efficient control on reading development. A twenty-year-old Quaker, Joseph Lancaster, read Bell’s pamphlet, thought deeply on the method, and concluded, ironically, it would be a cheap way to awaken intellect in the lower classes, ignoring the Anglican’s observation (and Hindu experience) that it did just the opposite.

And, since I'm sure I'm running out of room on this post, I'll move forward in the next to discuss the Prussian influence on this Hindu system that came about at the end of the 19th Century.

[Keith Hamburger]

continued;

For true believers, children are test animals. The strongest belt in the engine of schooling is the strand of true belief. True believers can be located by their rhetoric; it reveals a scale of philosophical imagination which involves plans for you and me. All you need know about Mr. Laszlo, whose timeless faith song is cited in the front of this book (xiii), is that the "we" he joins himself to, the "masters who manipulate," doesn’t really include the rest of us, except as objects of the exercise. Here is a true believer in full gallop. School history is crammed with wild-eyed orators, lurking just behind the lit stage. Like Hugo Munsterberg. Munsterberg was one of the people who was in on the birth of twentieth-century mass schooling. In 1892, a recent émigré to America from Wilhelm Wundt’s laboratory of physiological psychology at Leipzig, in Saxony, he was a Harvard Professor of Psychology. Munsterberg taught his students to look at schools as social laboratories suitable for testing theory, not as aggregates of young people pursuing their own purposes. The St. Louis Exposition of 1904 showcased his ideas for academicians all over the world, and the popular press made his notions familiar to upper middle classes horrified by the unfamiliar family ways of immigrants, eager to find ways to separate immigrant children from those alien practices of their parents. Munsterberg’s particular obsession lay in quantifying the mental and physical powers of the population for central government files, so policymakers could manage the nation’s "human resources" efficiently. His students became leaders of the "standardization" crusade in America. Munsterberg was convinced that racial differences could be reduced to numbers, equally convinced it was his sacred duty to the Aryan race to do so. Aryanism crackled like static electricity across the surface of American university life in those days, its implications part of every corporate board game and government bureau initiative.

...

Horace Mann exemplifies the type. From start to finish he had a mission. He spoke passionately at all times. He wrote notes to himself about "breaking the bond of association among workingmen." In a commencement harangue at Antioch College in 1859, he said, "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity." A few cynical critics snipe at Mann for lying about his imaginary school tour of Prussia (which led to the adoption of Prussian schooling methodologies in America), but those cynics miss the point. For the great ones, the goal is everything; the end justifies any means. Mann lived and died a social crusader. His second wife, Mary Peabody, paid him this posthumous tribute: "He was all afire with Purpose." Al Shanker, longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in one of his last Sunday advertisements in The New York Times before his death: "Public schools do not exist to please Johnny’s parents. They do not even exist to ensure that Johnny will one day earn a good living at a job he likes." No other energy but true belief can explain what Shanker might have had in mind.

And, from elsewhere in the book, the coup de etat of the arrival of Prussian schooling to the US in the early 1800's. Schooling that was intended and designed to create illiterate workers and compliant "citizens",

Information about Prussian schooling was brought to America by a series of travelers’reports published in the early nineteenth century. First was the report of John Griscom, whose book A Year in Europe (1819) highly praised the new Prussian schools. Griscom was read and admired by Thomas Jefferson and leading Americans whose intellectual patronage drew admirers into the net. Pestalozzi came into the center of focus at about the same time through the letters of William Woodbridge to The American Journal of Education, letters which examined this strange man and his "humane" methods through friendly eyes. Another important chapter in this school buildup came from Henry Dwight,1 whose Travels in North Germany (1825) praised the new quasi-religious teacher seminaries in Prussia where prospective teachers were screened for correct attitudes toward the State. The most influential report, however, was French philosopher Victor Cousin’s to the French government in 1831. This account by Cousin, France’s Minister of Education, explained the administrative organization of Prussian education in depth, dwelling at length on the system of people’s schools and its far-reaching implications for the economy and social order. Cousin’s essay applauded Prussia for discovering ways to contain the danger of a frightening new social phenomenon, the industrial proletariat. So convincing was his presentation that within two years of its publication, French national schooling was drastically reorganized to meet Prussian Volksschulen standards. French children could be stupefied as easily as German ones. Across the Atlantic, a similar revolution took place in the brand new state of Michigan. Mimicking Prussian organization, heavily Germanic Michigan established the very first State Superintendency of Education.2 With a state minister and state control entering all aspects of schooling, the only missing ingredient was compulsion legislation. On Cousin’s heels came yet another influential report praising Prussian discipline and Prussian results, this time by the bearer of a prominent American name, the famous Calvin Stowe whose wife Harriet Beecher Stowe, conscience of the abolition movement, was author of its sacred text, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Stowe’s report to the Ohio legislature attesting to Prussian superiority was widely distributed across the country, the Ohio group mailing out ten thousand copies and the legislatures of Massachusetts, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Virginia each reprinting and distributing the document. The third major testimonial to Prussian schooling came in the form of Horace Mann’s Seventh Report to the Boston School Committee in 1843. Mann’s Sixth Report, as noted earlier, had been a paean to phrenology, the science of reading head bumps, which Mann argued was the only proper basis for curriculum design. The Seventh Report ranked Prussia first of all nations in schooling, England last. Pestalozzi’s psychologically grounded form of pedagogy was specifically singled out for praise in each of the three influential reports I’ve recited, as was the resolutely nonintellectual subject matter of Prussian Volksschulen. Also praised were mild Pestalozzian discipline, grouping by age, multiple layers of supervision, and selective training for teachers. Wrote Mann, "There are many things there which we should do well to imitate."3 Mann’s Report strongly recommended radical changes in reading instruction from the traditional alphabet system, which had made America literate, to Prussia’s hieroglyphic-style technique. In a surprising way, this brought Mann’s Report to general public attention because a group of Boston schoolmasters attacked his conclusions about the efficacy of the new reading method and a lively newspaper debate followed. Throughout nineteenth-century Prussia, its new form of education seemed to make that warlike nation prosper materially and militarily. While German science, philosophy, and military success seduced the whole world, thousands of prominent young Americans made the pilgrimage to Germany to study in its network of research universities, places where teaching and learning were always subordinate to investigations done on behalf of business and the state. Returning home with the coveted German Ph.D., those so degreed became university presidents and department heads, took over private industrial research bureaus, government offices, and the administrative professions. The men they subsequently hired for responsibility were those who found it morally agreeable to offer obeisance to the Prussian outlook, too; in this leveraged fashion the gradual takeover of American mental life managed itself. For a century here, Germany seemed at the center of everything civilized; nothing was so esoteric or commonplace it couldn’t benefit from the application of German scientific procedure. Hegel, of Berlin University, even proposed historicism—that history was a scientific subject, displaying a progressive linear movement toward some mysterious end. Elsewhere, Herbart and Fechner were applying mathematical principles to learning, Müller and Helmholtz were grafting physiology to behavior in anticipation of the psychologized classroom, Fritsch and Hitzig were applying electrical stimulation to the brain to determine the relationship of brain functions to behavior, and Germany itself was approaching its epiphany of unification under Bismarck. When the spirit of Prussian pelotonfeuer crushed France in the lightning war of 1871, the world’s attention focused intently on this hypnotic, utopian place. What could be seen to happen there was an impressive demonstration that endless production flowed from a Baconian liaison between government, the academic mind, and industry. Credit for Prussian success was widely attributed to its form of schooling. What lay far from casual view was the religious vision of a completely systematic universe which animated this Frankensteinian nation.

And, once again I'm out of room. Conclusion in next post.

[Keith Hamburger]

And, no matter what quotes are attributed to Dewey, he was brought up and steeped in this system of indoctrination and anything he has said has to be read in this context. Add in the financial influence of the major corporatists at the time, and you get a system that from the very beginning in it's purpose and methodology (to tie to the subject of the thread) was intended to produce the vast majority of the population as automotons to feed the welfare/warfare machine that this nation has become.

The pinnacle, thus far, is the education system we have today which was clearly intended to minimize literacy and generate compliance with and support for the government.

Those of us here that are able to intelligently discuss these issues are failures of the system.

Keith

And, I will once again plug the entire book. It goes into much more detail and ties all of the history into our current educational situation. It's available free online.

[Winter wind]

Quote by: KH The point is that there are a lot of options available here. Private business assistance may be available. I would expect that castoff computers from local businesses would be available to most every school, for one example. They might be a little dated but would usually be just fine for educational purposes.

This and the rest of the post is a perfectly valid argument. I would say in response that I feel nervous about pushing the gap between the lower in upper class farther via education, but I think you make a good point.
However, I'm thinking about playing to individual student's strengths. Less about government involvement (that comes next). IE, learning via video games. Creating a system of games and techniques of teaching that don't make the average student come to hate learning. People hate math, not because math is boring, but because the way it was taught was boring. Now tell me if this sounds dumb, but would students like math better in the following scenario.

In some kind of video game, a kind of "hacker" character class (I'm a geek, I know) would need to use some kind of math mathematical formula to get farther in the game. Like breaking into enemy data banks using Pythagorean theorem or something.

Would that work? Homework wouldn't be forced, the other people on the kids team would be pushing him to study harder. Wouldn't that be more fun? Probably just for guys, but still. That's what I'm talking about. Making learning more interesting.

Actually, government has everything to do with it. Why do you think the 1-12 grade system is going to continue to be used.

The reason why the government system is used, is because no body will send their kids to another kind of school. No one wants to give their kids an "experimental" education. The government hasn't scrapped it because people aren't mad at this system yet. The government may or may not benefit from the current system, but I think it is more that parents think that their kid wont get into college in a new kind of educational system.

[Keith Hamburger]

Quote by: Winter wind This and the rest of the post is a perfectly valid argument. I would say in response that I feel nervous about pushing the gap between the lower in upper class farther via education, but I think you make a good point. However, I'm thinking about playing to individual student's strengths. Less about government involvement (that comes next). IE, learning via video games. Creating a system of games and techniques of teaching that don't make the average student come to hate learning. People hate math, not because math is boring, but because the way it was taught was boring. Now tell me if this sounds dumb, but would students like math better in the following scenario. In some kind of video game, a kind of "hacker" character class (I'm a geek, I know) would need to use some kind of math mathematical formula to get farther in the game. Like breaking into enemy data banks using Pythagorean theorem or something. Would that work? Homework wouldn't be forced, the other people on the kids team would be pushing him to study harder. Wouldn't that be more fun? Probably just for guys, but still. That's what I'm talking about. Making learning more interesting.

Sure. That's one option and a perfectly valid one. There can be as many ways to learn as there are learners. Perhaps that technique will work well for one student learning math while a pure lecture might be good for that same student in another subject. And, the opposite might apply for a different student. When you have one size fits all through government run education the majority will fall through the cracks on something and a significant minority will fall through the cracks on everything.

Quote by: Winter wind The reason why the government system is used, is because no body will send their kids to another kind of school. No one wants to give their kids an "experimental" education. The government hasn't scrapped it because people aren't mad at this system yet. The government may or may not benefit from the current system, but I think it is more that parents think that their kid wont get into college in a new kind of educational system.

The reason the government system is used is because government education has brainwashed everyone that the government is the solution to the world's problems. It has taken the government a very long time to get to that point, but, they're finally reaching it.

Keith

[Winter wind]

Sure. That's one option and a perfectly valid one. There can be as many ways to learn as there are learners. Perhaps that technique will work well for one student learning math while a pure lecture might be good for that same student in another subject. And, the opposite might apply for a different student. When you have one size fits all through government run education the majority will fall through the cracks on something and a significant minority will fall through the cracks on everything.

It's true, so I'll share my view properly. I think government should fund government. Not decide how it is run. How it is run should be as flexible as humanly possible, but with a broad system of organization so that everyone has equal access to education regardless of economic status.

The reason the government system is used is because government education has brainwashed everyone that the government is the solution to the world's problems. It has taken the government a very long time to get to that point, but, they're finally reaching it.

If you look at Bush's approval ratings, you'll see that they did a pretty crappy job at that education. I also think it is less the education system that is responsible and more the environment in general (parents, media, religion, etc). But how education is run should be a separate from the government, while still being funded.

[Keith Hamburger]

Quote by: Winter wind It's true, so I'll share my view properly. I think government should fund government. Not decide how it is run. How it is run should be as flexible as humanly possible, but with a broad system of organization so that everyone has equal access to education regardless of economic status. If you look at Bush's approval ratings, you'll see that they did a pretty crappy job at that education. I also think it is less the education system that is responsible and more the environment in general (parents, media, religion, etc). But how education is run should be a separate from the government, while still being funded.

But that will never happen. The government will work to control everything and funding gives it the leverage for that control. You can see it in every example where the government funds anything, they will use that funding for control.

As to Bush's approval ratings, that doesn't have anything to do with the attitude that the government, as a whole, is looked to as the solution to many, many problems. Someone out there will look to the government as the solution to every problem that might be faced. This is a dependency that is fostered and taught through government run education, and also heavily influences supposedly private education because of the government influence on the entire system.

Keith

[Athena]

What is "proper" social order? What does "right" social growth look like? If you don’t know you’re like me, not like John Dewey who did, or the Rockefellers, his patrons, who did, too.

Can we stop right here? If we do not value the principles of democracy, we have fought every war for nothing. Right now we are loosing our liberty, because it is not understood and it is not being defended. We defend our liberty is by being moral and obeying the laws, and fat cat corporation leaders who understand not the principles and reasoning of democracy, and destroying our country. They are doing more harm to our country, than the hoodlums on the streets, but both are damaging to our liberty.

The number one priority of public education, was to teach a set of values, and assure all children understand what it means to be citizens in this country.

This education had nothing to do with vocational trianing, until we mobilizing for the first world war. It was not directed by industry, and industry claimed it was not getting its money worth from public education when tried to close public schools, claiming the war had caused a labor shortage. If industry had won its argument, it would have put an end to child labor laws, and would have returned to manning their factories with children. We sharply criticize countries around the world if they exploit child labor. INDUSTRY WANTED TO CLOSE SCHOOLS.

Teachers argued, an institution for making good citizens, is good for making patriotic citizens, and that if we didn't replace the well educated young men who were professionals and enlisted in the war, our country would be devastated even it we won the war.

The orginal purpose of education was to protect our liberty by teaching values and principles and the skills of reading and writing that are essential to our liberty.

Our Statute of Liberty holds a book for literacy, and a torch for the enlightenment that comes from being literate, and no one should hold himself as an authority of education unless he understands the connection between education and liberty.

[Athena]

Thank you for all that information. We need to round it out a little. Eisenhower praised the Germans for their contribution to democracy, just after WWII. Prussian education was not all bad, and if it were, we would not have immitated it, nor would we be discussing it.

Because the US focus on education was defending liberty by teaching a set of American values, it was very slow at picking up the Prussian model. Perhaps we should have the debate that was raging when we entered the first world war. J.A. B. Sinclair, Surgeon, United States Navy, Portland Recruiting Station, Portland, Oregon, when speaking at the 1917 National Education Association Conference, argued:

The German military organization is the world's model, at least from the standpoint of immediate accomplishment of results, and therefore we can hardly do better than to emulate it in its perfect working. It was effected in its munitest detail by the very essence of scientific thought and application. In that organization every tongue fitted its groove, every tooth its socket. We have seen how the Kaiser's marvelous soldiers carried their banner to the very outskirts of Paris in August and September,1914. It is the Great God efficiency, to which the Germans were required by their commanders to pay homage of worship-and it behooves us either to effect a thing that will operate as well or to copy theirs. The fact of the world at war has slienct the erring lips that declared against the necessity for preparation against disaster, like that of Belgium and Servia.

Your information already established the nationalistic, state first and military intent- of Prussian education. In 1899 William James objected to this model on the grounds it did not prepare citizens to think about those things, self governing people must think about. He saw the education as programming minds, and opposed to preparing thinking adults capable of self government. Our education history is not limited to following the Prussian model. Liberal education followed the ancient Greek model and not only prepared the young for citizenship, in a self governing democracy, but perpared everyone for well rounded, individual growth. We followed the values of Athens, and taught everyone to be generalist. The Prussian model, specializes people. Specialized people are not well prepared for self government. The point is, there was a debate about the purpose of education and how to meet the goals. Not until 1958 did the Prussian side win so completely, destroying the culture essential to the democracy we had.

Now why did, Eisenhower, praised the Germans for their contribution to democracy? It is nonsense to argue we have both the Prussian education for technology which creates equality, and the Indian education for a caste system, as though the one does not cancle out the other.

Because education for technology creates an equality of the masses that is achieved in no other way, Britian rejected education for technology, to protect its social classes, which were from the bible, not India. This technology thing is not just about education, but also social order and bureaucratic order. The class system means you have to be born into your position and is supported by the bible, and that is what England was protecting. To a large degree, the Christian US was doing that same and was not so democratic. Especially not in the Christian South that was more aristocrataic than democratic, even after the Civil War that ended slavery. The technology system, doesn't give a hoot who your parents are, everyone is educated the same, and everyone has equal opportunity. This mixes the classes and was intolerable to England. The other end is, the hiring end, where anyone who passes the test can have the job, and is advanced on merit, regardless of race, religion or circumstances. These are democratic values. A democracy, enables the most people to make their best contribution. It you want to argue this point of democratic values, please start a thread for this very important arguement.

Okay, so what is wrong with the Prussian/German system? It does not do what liberal education does. It does not prepare us to defend our liberty and freedom. It leads to fascism and a police state, and it is the New World Order, a naton supported by industrous tax payers, to rule the world with economic and military might. It is the Military/Industrial Complex, Eisenhower warned us of. We have perverted our democracy through public education. So I believe we have agreement and disagreement. We agree we have imitated Germany and this has harmed our nation. The disagreement is, I say universal education is essential to the health of our democracy, and the defense of our liberty.