John Dewey Enters The Scene

   
     One of the biggest forces early in the education reform movement was John Dewey. Let's look at what he believed about education and where he thought it should go. 

"Psychology by John Dewey, the father of "Progressive Education," was Published (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1896). This was the first American textbook on the “revised” subject of education. Psychology would become the most widely-read and quoted textbook used in schools of education in this country. Just prior to the publication of his landmark book, Dewey had joined the faculty of the Rockefeller-endowed University of Chicago as head of the combined departments of philosophy, psychology and pedagogy (teaching). In that same year,
1895, the university allocated $1,000 to establish a  laboratory in which Dewey could apply psychological principles and experimental techniques to the study of learning. The laboratory opened in January 1896 as the Dewey School, later to become known as The University of
Chicago Laboratory School.
     "Dewey thought of the school as a place where his theories of education could be put into practice, tested, and scientifically evaluated….
     "…Dewey… sought to apply the doctrines of experience and experiment to everyday life and, hence, to education... seeking via this model institution to pave the way for the “schools of the future.” There he had put into actual practice three of the revolutionary beliefs he had culled from the new psychology: that to put the child in
possession of his fullest talents, ducation should be active rather than passive; that to prepare the child for a democratic society, the school should be social rather than individualist; and that to enable the child to think creatively, experimentation rather than imitation should be encouraged.

"Samuel Blumenfeld in his book, The Whole Language/OBE Fraud (Paradigm Co.: Boise, Idaho, 1996), further explains Dewey’s perspective:

The Sowing of the Seeds : c. 1896

"'What kind of curriculum would fit the school that was a mini-cooperative society? Dewey’s recommendation was indeed radical: build the curriculum not around academic subjects but around occupational activities which provided maximum opportunities for peer interaction and socialization. Since the beginning of Western civilization, the school curriculum was centered around the development of academic skills, the intellectual faculties, and high literacy. Dewey wanted to change all of that. Why? Because high literacy produced that abominable form of independent intelligence which was basically, as Dewey believed, anti-social. Thus, from Dewey’s point of view, the school’s primary commitment to literacy was indeed the key to the whole problem. In 1898, Dewey wrote an essay, “The Primary-Education Fetish,” in which he explained exactly what he meant:

"'"There is... a false education god whose idolators are legion, and whose cult influences the entire educational system. This is language study—the study not of foreign language, but of English; not in higher, but in primary education. It is almost an unquestioned assumption, of educational theory and practice both, that the first three years of a child’s school life shall be mainly taken up with learning to read and  write his own language. If we add to this the learning of a certain amount of numerical combinations, we have the pivot about which primary education swings.... It does not follow, however, that conditions—social, industrial and intellectual—have undergone such a radical change, that the time has come for a thoroughgoing examination of the emphasis put upon linguistic work in elementary instruction.... The plea for the predominance of learning to read in early school life because of the great importance attaching to literature seems to me a perversion."'"

(The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, pg. 5-6; ch. 1)