Controversies: Overview
Where Did All This Social Engineering Come From?
Q. I don't
like how school is no longer considered an extension of the home, with the
parents superior and the educators subordinate. More and more, educators and
bureaucrats are trying to fix it so that the HOME is the extension of the
SCHOOL, with the SCHOOL in charge. Isn't it against our country's principles to
draw kids away from the love and authority of their parents and families, and
claim that the State is sovereign over them?
The man that most educators are taught to
revere - John Dewey, an important, left-wing education figure of the 20th
Century - loved how the communist countries handled schooling their children.
He wrote extensively about it.
Tragically, a lot of those ideas - that
the State, not the parents, is in charge of the children who live within its
borders - undergird a lot of education policy today. Through financial
subsidies of all kinds, social control is being exerted over children. And
their parents in most cases don't even realize it.
But no American parent would like what
the Russian Communist Party said in 1918: "We must remove the children from the
crude influence of their families. We must take them over and, to speak
frankly, nationalize them." The goal: so that the children would grow up to be
"real" communists, not influenced by their own families.
Dewey termed himself a "Progressive" and an
"anti-communist," but he also called himself a "democratic socialist," and he
espoused many of the practices that he witnessed in the former Soviet Union. He
toured the Soviet educational system, and wrote in 1928: "It is obvious to any
observer that in every Western country the increase of importance of public
schools has been at least coincident with a relaxation of older family ties.
"What is going on in Russia appears to be
a planned acceleration of this process. For example, the earliest section of
the school system, dealing with children from three to seven, aims . . . to
keep children under its charge six, eight and ten hours per day, and in
ultimate ideal . . . this procedure is to be universal and compulsory."
Dewey noted that in Russia, the
government had devised "a whole network of agencies" intended to socialize the
functions of the family. The communists had set up summer camps in the country,
so that children didn't even spend the summer months at home.
His descriptions eerily match the social
programs entwined with American public schools today:
§
"Home visitors" from the early childhood education social
service bureaucracy almost as soon as a child in a household considered
"at-risk" is born, with the power to remove the child from that home;
§
Head Start, basically a free, government-programmed nursery
school;
§
School-based preschool and child care;
§
Free breakfast, lunch and now, in places, dinner, at school;
§
Free after-school programs;
§
Year-round schooling;
§
Longer school days;
§
School-to-work programs where teenagers work at their school-assigned
job after classes;
§
Mandatory community service graduation requirements
§
Tightened-up attendance policies with real teeth if you miss
so many days of school;
§
Recent pushes for "urban boarding schools" in which
low-income, at-risk kids would live in dormitories in programs that cost three
or four times as much as regular schooling;
§
Recent pushes for "parent licensing" in which the state
could take away children born to "unlicensed" parents, or deny a license to
parents whose beliefs don't match the State's;
. . . and on and on.
What is the point of all of this?
Apparently, it's to level the playing field - give all children equality of
opportunity.
That sounds good . . . except that, since
some kids really do have bad home situations, it is thought to be better for
them to have the government take responsibility for raising them.
And since it wouldn't be "fair" for the
government to take charge of some kids, but not all, the programs are gradually
extending to more and more middle-class children, with a goal of "communally
raising them."
What's the best way to stop social
engineering? Educate your fellow parents and taxpayers. Organize politically. And
vote in leaders who will dismantle the programs that are the weapons of
collectivism.
Homework: Read about John
Dewey's life:
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/1020.html