Episode 4: America’s Education Past and Future
Welcome back as we continue to look at the history of education in America. In this episode, we will pick up where we left off in episode three, the progressive takeover of public education. Most of what you hear in this episode will come once again from the book Battle for the American Mind by Pete Hegseth and David Goodwin.
Many of us were taught that the Progressive Era ended in 1929, however it continues today as a political party. I am guessing you can figure out which political party that is.
Dewey led the progressives and by 1915 they had their “school tool” in place, as nearly every American child attended a public school. John Dewey became the architect of education as he continued to write articles in The New Republic magazine. That name alone tells you they had an agenda to change America. If you visit their website today, their objectives are telling.
Progressives knew paideia was powerful, and that schools controlled it. They latched onto this and created the Gary Plan. A plan that implemented their model school in Gary, Indiana. These schools became the prototype for all public schools and the model is still used today. However, instead of seeing an increase in academic rigor, it has plummeted.
Here are a few key things to consider when looking at the Gary Plan that exists in all public schools. In fact, everyone listening to this podcast, unless they attended a classical Christian education school, has experienced this model. With this plan, they took subjects and broke them apart, making them silos. Instead of reading and discussing articles or works of literature that crossed across subjects like history and science, you now rotate between seven periods a day and history is no longer history, it is social studies.
This is also where they strategically began to extract Christianity from public schools. Instead of studying the morals and precepts of God’s words within the school, students were allowed to leave school during the day for religious training. It was no longer a part of the curriculum. They knew they could not completely take away religious education, as the WCP was still too strong in our culture. This was their way of appeasing the masses while acquiring yet another win and advance forward in erasing religious teaching in public schools.
I like what Pete and David share on this move. You can find this paragraph on page 87 of their book.
The defenders of this so-called-pull-out period for religious education knew they could end Christian education if they played their cards right. Defending the pull-out period in the same New Republic article, they wrote that “the [church] school [will be] less necessary for those who wish religious instruction for their children. What the Gary Plan seems to do is not to bring religion into the schools, but for the first time to take it out of the schools.” (Battle for the American Mind, page 87)
They needed religion removed from education in order to create a new American paideia devoid of Christ. Remember back in episode two where we discovered that religion, morality, and knowledge were the pillars on which our founding fathers-built education. Dr. Witherspoon, a signer of the Declaration, stated.
“Government was a reflection of its citizens; if Americans became profane and immoral, their government would also become profane and immoral; and history has demonstrated conclusively that such governments do not survive. Consequently, it was simple logic that any true friend of America would promote religion and morality.” (4 Centuries of American Education, by David Barton, page 12)
Even Thomas Paine, one of the least religious of the founding fathers, admonished French schools because of their secular manner. Here is what he had to say.
It has been the error of the schools to teach . . .sciences and subjects of natural philosophy as accomplishments only whereas they should be taught. . .with reference to the Being who is the author of them: for all the principles of science are of Divine origin. . .When we examine an extraordinary piece of machinery, an astonishing pile of architecture, a well executed statue or a highly finished painting. . . our ideas are naturally led to think of the extensive genius and talents of the artist. When we study the elements of geometry, we think of Euclid. When we speak of gravitation, we think of Newton. How then is it, that when we study the works of God in the creation, we stop short and do not think of God? It is from the error of the schools. . . The evil that has resulted. . . has been that of generating in the pupils a species of atheism. Instead of looking through the works of the creation to the Creator Himself, they stop short and employ the knowledge they acquire to create doubts of His existence.” (4 Centuries of American Education by David Barton, page 37)
Stop and ask yourself, did the Gary Plan work? I am going to say no by the fact that I have been told my entire life to never travel through that city because of the crime rate.
The progressives took their model school and implemented it in New York and wrote this in The New Republic magazine:
Twentieth-century democracy believes that the community has certain positive ends to achieve, and if they are to be achieved the community must control the education of the young. It believes that training in scientific habits of mind is fundamental to the progress of democracy. It believes that freedom and tolerance mean the development of independent powers of judgement in the young, not the freedom or older people to impose their dogmas on the young. Democracy claims no right to interfere with worship or opinion, but it does claim the right to develop in every child the capacity for testing its own convictions. It insists that the plasticity of the child shall not be artificially and prematurely hardened into a philosophy of life, but that experimental naturalistic aptitudes shall constitute the true education. (The Battle for the American Mind, page 88)
I have a hard time reading that out loud without throwing up. They are saying the government claims the right to develop our children’s philosophy of life, rather than we the parents. Oh no they did not, but yes they did and continue to today. They know the power of paideia and they fear losing control of it because citizens who are rooted in the word of God and can think and reason have the power to take them down by exposing their lies.
To do that well, you have to understand how they take words that are revered and twist them to mean something different in order to make it easier for people to swallow. Democracy is not a bad word, but they have made it one. (A side note: we are not a democracy but a republic that uses some democratic practices.) The New Republic editorial board wrote the following on July 29, 1916.
The older theories of democracy were negative, built up to protest against kings, aristocracies, and oppression. Those theories were concerned chiefly in saying what government must not do. But during the nineteenth century popular rule became increasingly a reality, and people came to feel that government is not an alien thing to be limited, but a social instrument to be used. Democracy has been evolving from a protest into a purpose. It is becoming a philosophy of life, no longer protestant but in its own way catholic. To be a democrat today is to be something more than a voter. It is to believe in a scale of human values, to have a morality and think with certain assumptions. “Modern sociologists” are simply men engaged in stating the affirmative faith of democracy.
They loaded the language to make democracy sound moral, which is American, but to the keen ear you can pick up on the fact that democracy is not rooted in the moral word of God but in the immoral word of man. Pete and David cover this more in their book, which I recommend you read.
Now let’s get back to education. I think this next quote is going to throw you for a loop. This is a quote from President Woodrow Wilson.
“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.” (Battle for the American Mind, page 93)
This view comes from the Marxist concept of the proletariat or worker class. Wilson believed that most people just need to be trained for a job. They had no use for a free-man’s education.
Again in 1939 C.S. Lewis warned: “education is essentially for freemen and vocational training for slaves . . .If education is beaten by training, civilization dies.”
What do we see a big push for today? Vocational training. Schools are changing their graduation requirements to create a pipeline for vocational training. There is nothing wrong with receiving training in a vocation. The issue arises when education is stripped down to just training for vocation instead of teaching citizens to think and reason for themselves. Our current public schools churn out thousands of worker bees every year.
I like the way Pete and David put it: With a focus on vocation instead of wisdom, the souls of students were oriented toward servile tasks rather than the pursuit of divine Truth. So, assumptions shifted. What we now call “worldview” shifted. Virtues shifted. Thought shifted. The whole ship of society gradually reoriented to a set of new ideas-progressive ones. . .Without realizing it today’s American students absorb a deep affection for scientism(science is the only way to find truth), equity/equality (there is nothing better or worse, just different), individualism (identity/politics), neo-Marxism (the government can and should solve all inequalities), along with a host of other modern and postmodern affections that lead to servitude (it’s all about your job). (Battle for the American Mind, page 94)
These have been slow changes over the past century that have led us to where we are today. Remember John Dewey, the father of progressive education? In 1929 he founded the First Humanist Society of New York. Charles Potter was the president. Here a few quotes from him.
“Be freeing religion of supernaturalism, it will release tremendous reserves of hitherto thwarted power. Man has waited too long for God to do what man ought to do himself and is fully capable of doing.”
“The chief end of man is to improve himself both as an individual and as a race.” ( A side note in Christianity the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him. I don’t know about you, but that sounds way better to me.)
One last quote from Mr. Potter: “What can theistic Sunday school, meeting for an hour once a week, do to stem the tide of a five day program of humanistic teaching?”
If that does not slap you across the face and make you sit up and listen, I don’t know what will. These are the words of a man who was president of a society founded by John Dewey.
When you keep tracing the line through history, you find that the government-based accreditation to validate school diplomas and control high school to college transitions where teachers are certified by states through colleges were designed by Dewey’s progressive disciples. Textbook authors then came from this line of trained professionals, placing public education under the complete control and influence of progressives.
That is a lot to digest. I am going to stop there, but in the next episode we have some fascinating history to look at in our next episode.
Resources and Links
Book- 4 Centuries of American Education by David Barton: https://shop.wallbuilders.com/index.php/four-centuries-of-american-education.html
Book – Separation of Church and State, What the Founders Meant by David Barton: https://shop.wallbuilders.com/index.php/separation-of-church-state-what-the-founders-meant-book.html
Book – Battle for the American Mind by Pete Hegseth and David Goodwin: https://battlefortheamericanmind.com/
Book – The New Republic Magazine: https://newrepublic.com
