If a nation expects to be ignorant and
free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will
be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command
at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe
deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe
with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man is
able to read, all is safe.
Thomas Jefferson
in a letter to Col. Yancy, 1-16-'16.
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The quote above
is a very brief statement of Jefferson's formula for a free and prosperous
United States. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries our nation has enjoyed
freedom of the press in the sense that, except in matters of national security,
the government has not had the ability to determine what the news media
must report or cannot report. By the end of the 19th century illiteracy
in the U.S. had been nearly eliminated. At that time, however, one could
not say that the liberty and property of the people rested in their hands
because, among other reasons, the majority of adult Americans did not have
the right to vote. By the end of the 19th century, control over the liberty
and property of the people had long since been vested in two major political
parties, both of which were controlled not by the people but by a few wealthy
and powerful individuals with the aid of a much larger group of people
who put their own interests ahead of the welfare of the nation.
By the end
of the 19th century education, at least in a rudimentary form, was
available to virtually every American and there was an ever-increasing
demand for universal suffrage. As I have previously explained it was about
that time that the planners embarked on a program to gain political and
economic control of the world. The planners realized, as fully as Jefferson
did, that in a democratic republic access to information and education
are roadblocks to tyranny. Thus their plans, from the beginning, involved
control of education and control of the press, which would later become
control of the media with the advent of movies, radio, television, and
very recently, the internet.
At the end
of the 19th century the planners already exercised virtual control of the
government of the United States and its economy. Their control of the government,
however, depended to a great extent on crude bribery. Controlling the government
in this way would probably become increasingly difficult as the populace
became better educated, the right of suffrage was expanded, and as the
ability of the press to promptly and efficiently disseminate information
continually improved. Their control of the economy also depended on crude
and somewhat inefficient methods and thus it was sometimes difficult to
conceal from the public their exercise of this control. One could say that
they possessed the ability to shape the economy with a meat ax and they
wanted to be able to do it with a scalpel. They designed the scalpel they
wanted and induced Congress to create it for them under the name of the
Federal Reserve System.
Three other
aspects of their agenda were intended primarily to solidify their control
of the government and the political process and at the same time conceal
this control from the view of the people. The first of these was the promotion
of the socialist, or progressive, political movement. I have already alluded
to this and I will have more to say about it later. The second was to gain
effective control of the press which will also be explained in a later
chapter. The third was to shape the education system so that it could be
used to promote their objectives. They pursued these three aspects of their
agenda simultaneously and separately but progress in any one of them automatically
promoted their progress in the other two. This chapter will, of course,
be limited to the consideration of their activities in the field of education.
Even before
the end of the 19th century some of the planners exerted a significant
degree of influence on some of the nation's most prestigious colleges and
universities. They did not, at that time, have any control over the nation's
elementary and secondary schools, often referred to today as K-12 (kindergarten
through twelfth grade). In the primary and secondary schools reading, writing,
mathematics, geography, and science were being taught in much the same
way they had been taught for centuries if allowances were made for new
scientific discoveries. The literature that formed a part of the curriculum
was usually literature that illustrated virtues such as justice, integrity,
loyalty, etc. The history of the U.S. that was taught was a rather sterilized
account of people and events that usually omitted the faults or character
flaws of the people and often concealed certain aspects of historical events.
The teaching of history was intended to promote a "jingoistic" type of
patriotism among students, sometimes at the expense of accuracy. What the
planner set out to do, and largely succeeded in doing, was to use our schools
to inculcate socialist ideas in the minds of Americans. They were unwittingly
aided by many Americans whose sole intention was to improve the education
of our children.
At the turn
of the century many teachers, perhaps the majority of them, in K-12 did
not possess a college degree of any kind. The curriculum taught was largely
up to the teachers and the local school board. In rural areas many students
attended rural schools where one teacher was usually responsible for teaching
all of the first eight grades simultaneously. In most urban areas, including
most towns of any significant size, the schools were divided by grades
with a separate teacher for each grade. Even there, however,
many schools were of frame construction and thus extremely vulnerable to
fire.
Many Americans,
motivated solely by good intentions, worked to improve education by securing
fire-resistant buildings, establishing higher qualifications for teachers,
securing better pay for teachers, establishing state education departments
for the purpose of standardizing and improving curricula, and establishing
education departments at universities and colleges to improve the education
of teachers. These people promoted these objectives at the local and state
level. All of these changes involved spending more money and eventually
many Americans accepted the premise, which always was and still is promoted
by educators, that spending more money on education will improve the education
of our children. We spend far more, in dollars adjusted for inflation,
today than were spent a century ago but the overall results achieved by
our schools today are atrocious compared to those of 100 years ago. Apologists
for our school system may protest that this is the result of societal changes
that have occurred outside of the school system. Actually most of these
changes have had very little direct effect on our schools and most of these
changes have long been promoted by our school system. In short, the fallacy
of the premise that more money means better education should be obvious
to any rational individual who examines the facts.
The planners
began their attempts to shape the education system by influencing the activities
of colleges and universities. They established tax-free foundations and
endowed them with a great deal of money. These foundations used their money
to support financially those educators and institutions that were either
already promoting the agenda of the planners or were willing to promote
it in exchange for money and professional advancement.
In 1912 Congress
created the Commission on Industrial Relations for the purpose of studying
labor conditions and the treatment of workers by major industrial firms.
Senator Frank P. Walsh was the chairman of this commission and thus it
was often referred to as the Walsh Commission. In the course of its deliberations
the Walsh Commission also investigated concentrations of power, interlocking
directorates, and tax-free foundations as instruments of these concentrations
of power. The foundations investigated were primarily those established
by Carnegie and Rockefeller as they were among the oldest of them although
even these foundations were quite new at the time.
The majority
report of the commission said;
the domination by the men in whose hands the final control
of a large part of American industry rests, rapidly extended to control
the education and "social service" of the nation.
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Three members
of the commission who dissented from the findings of the majority in regard
to labor issues agreed with the majority report in its conclusions regarding
the activities of foundations. The following are two additional excerpts
from the majority report of the Walsh Commission.
The control is being extended largely through the creation
of enormous privately managed funds for indefinite purposes, hereinafter
designated "foundations," by the endowment of colleges and universities,
by the creation of funds for pensioning teachers, by contributions to private
charities, as well as through controlling or influencing the public press.
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It would seem conclusive that if an institution
will willingly abandon it religious affiliations through influence of these
foundations, it will even more easily conform to their will any other part
of its organization or teaching.
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The latter
statement referred to the fact that the commission had learned that several
colleges and universities had abandoned their religious affiliations and
charter clauses relating to religion in order to secure endowments from
the Carnegie Corporation. Bear in mind that this commission investigated
only the activities of these foundations prior to the year 1915.
More than
35 years later, in the Democratic-controlled 82nd Congress, another investigation
into the affairs of these foundations was attempted but abandoned after
the investigating committee was subjected to extreme pressure by the subjects
of the investigation. In the 83rd Congress the Republicans controlled the
House and the Reece Committee was established to examine the activities
of tax-free foundations. This committee unearthed a great deal of evidence
of the activities of these foundations, largely as a result of the persistence
of the committee chairman, Congressman Brazilla Carroll Reece, the committee's
chief counsel, Rene Wormser, and their staffs. This committee was also
pressured to abandon its investigation. Congressman Wayne Hays, a Democrat
member of the committee, obstructed the committee's efforts at every opportunity
and claimed to have been asked to do so by the White House, occupied at
that time by Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican. In spite of the opposition
to its efforts the committee did learn a great deal about the activities
of foundations.
The
committee learned that the directors of these foundations, who were responsible
for overseeing their operations were, in most cases, busy people with other
interests. Their real function in many cases was to serve as "window dressing"
to enhance the prestige of the foundation rather than to take a significant
part in directing its operations. The staff members of the foundation often
withheld information from the directors to acquire the support of the directors
for activities they might otherwise have opposed.
Most of the
larger foundations were leftist oriented and their support was given almost
entirely to organizations and individuals who were similarly oriented.
Some of them gave millions of dollars to the Institute for Pacific Relations
which was created by the previously discussed Round Table groups to promote
their policies in the Pacific nations. The staff of the IPR were overwhelmingly
pro-Communist and were very influential in determining U.S. policies in
Asia.
In the field
of education the committee found that the foundations had provided huge
amounts of money to individuals and organizations who used the money to
promote socialist ideas. The foundation would often give the money to some
organization that would pass the money on to the eventual recipients. The
executives of the foundation would then claim that they were functioning
as "wholesalers" of these endowments and that they had no knowledge of
the use made of them by "retailers." The sole purpose of this procedure
was to insulate the executives and directors of the foundation from responsibility
for the way in which there contributions were used. Sometimes the foundation
would simply rely on the recommendations of another organization as to
who would receive the grants and then make the grants directly to the recipients.
This was, of course, just a variation of the method explained previously.
The foundations
made many grants to the education departments of various schools and to
individuals connected with them. Grants were made to educators to permit
them to write textbooks slanted toward socialism. Other grants were made
to schools for the purchase of these books. Since this established a market
for such books publishers were eager to publish them. Grants were made
to organizations of professional educators to fund studies promoting socialism.
These studies benefited from the prestige of the organization even if they
were opposed by many members of the organization. Very, very few grants
from these foundations were ever made to individuals or organizations who
did not support, or actively opposed socialist principles.
Due to the
limitations of space I must content myself with offering a single example
of the the way these methods were used. The Commission on Social Studies
of the American Historical Association issued a report in 1934. The American
Historical Association was, of course, the professional association of
historians. The work of the Commission on Social Studies was financed by
a grant of $340,000 from the Carnegie Corporation. This may not seem a
large sum today but in 1934 many Americans earned less than $50 per month
and considered themselves very lucky to have a job. The following is an
excerpt from the final section of the report which was titled Conclusions
and Recommendations.
Cumulative evidence supports the conclusion, that, in
the United States as in other countries, the age of individualism and laissez
faire in economy and government is closing and that a new age of collectivism
is emerging... It may involve the limiting or supplanting of private property
by public property or it may entail the preservation of private property,
extended and distributed among the masses. ... Almost certainly it will
involve a larger measure of compulsory as well as voluntary cooperation
of citizens in the conduct of the complex national economy, a corresponding
enlargement of the functions of government, and an increasing state intervention
in fundamental branches of economy previously left to the individual discretion
and initiative - a state intervention that in some instances may be direct
and mandatory and in others indirect and facilitative. In any event the
Commission is convinced by its interpretation of the empirical data that
the actually integrating economy of the present day is the forerunner of
a consciously integrated society in which individual property rights will
be altered and abridged.
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Note that the
"new age of collectivism," which the commission considers both desirable
and inevitable, will involve more government authority, the elimination
or abridging of private property rights, and compulsory cooperation of
citizens in the conduct of the complex national economy. And now one more
sentence from this report.
As often repeated, the first step is to awaken and consolidate
leadership around the philosophy and purpose of education herein expounded.
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Lest the reader
feel that I have taken these quotes out of context or attributed to them
significance, relative to the whole of the report, that they did not merit,
I will quote what Professor Harold Laski, the prominent British socialist
said of it.
At bottom, and stripped of its carefully neutral phrases,
the report is an educational program for a socialist America.
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Around 1900
there was a great deal of sentiment, among leading educators, in favor
of making changes in the educational system. There was also considerable
support for radical changes proposed for the economic system and the political
system in the U.S. It would probably be no exaggeration to consider John
Dewey the patron saint of those who pressed for sweeping changes in education.
Dewey believed that strict discipline imposed in the classroom did not
prepare a student for life in a free society. The value of classroom discipline
is still widely debated today but I would like to make two observations
here regarding it. The first is that life in a free society places a premium
on self discipline when compared to life in a society that is not free.
The second is that most children learn self-discipline only, or at least
chiefly, by experiencing discipline imposed on them by others.
Probably the
most destructive premise expounded by Dewey was his contention that all
truth is relative. Many of the worst innovations in classroom instruction
today are based on that premise and such innovations are increasing both
in number and in the ridiculous lengths to which they are carried.
Dewey developed
a following among educators, and particularly among those involved with
training teachers and establishing curricula. This meant that in some schools
the prevailing sentiment favored change and the planners, by means of their
ability to distribute money, capitalized on this sentiment to direct this
change toward the promotion of socialism. They also began to promote innovations
that would be detrimental to the education of children insofar as they
would diminish both the ability of children to learn and the value of what
they did learn. In short they actively promoted what we now term the "dumbing
down" of America. I do not know whether this was part of their plan originally
or if they merely took advantage of an opportunity that presented itself
but in either case they began doing this early in this century and they
are continuing to do it today.
Of all of
the academic skills that were ever taught in any school at any time reading
is far and away the most important. The ability to read well makes the
acquisition of any other academic skill easier. At the turn of the century
reading was taught in our schools by the phonics method. This basically
consists of teaching a child the sounds of the various letters as well
as some common combinations of letters when they are used to form words.
Once he has learned these sounds the child who encounters a word he does
not recognize can sound it out by combining the sounds of the letters.
Because the child who is learning to read already possesses a significant
vocabulary of spoken words he will often recognize the word when he sounds
it out. If the word is one with which he is not familiar he will nevertheless
be able, in most cases, to pronounce it either correctly, or close enough
to the correct pronunciation so that he will recognize it when he hears
it used. If there is an adult present when the child encounters a written
word that he does not know he will usually ask the meaning of the word.
If the child encounters such a word when there is no one present to explain
its meaning he can look it up in a dictionary, a habit I never acquired
when I was young, or he may determine the meaning of the word from the
context in which it is used. Learning the sounds of the letters thus permits
the child to sharpen his reading skill rapidly simply by exercising it.
He will sharpen his reading skill even as he reads for his own enjoyment
and, in fact, will probably sharpen his reading skill faster when reading
for his own enjoyment than he will when reading something that is overtly
educational in nature.
Very
early in this century educators began to develop new methods of teaching
children to read. They were ostensibly intended to improve on the phonics
method but it is difficult to accept that educators actually believed they
could possibly achieve superior results. It is true that the pronunciations
of letters in specific words are sometimes varied in the English language
in a random fashion derived from usage that is not subject to any universal
rules. It would be easier to learn to read by the phonics method if this
were not the case but it is still far easier to learn by the phonics method
than by any other. There is even a remote possibility that, as some educators
contend, there are children who can learn to read more readily by one of
the other methods than they can by the phonics method. Even if there is
any truth at all in this contention it does not justify using any inferior
method for all students because it is superior in rare cases.
Some of these
new methods of teaching children to read gained wide acceptance in our
schools in spite of their obvious inferiority. When a school system faced
up to the fact that the innovative method was not satisfactory, as they
quite often did, they would usually not return to the phonics method. Instead
they would try to improve the innovation or discard it in favor of a new
innovative method. This stubborn refusal to use phonics to teach children
to read has been a major factor in the increasing inability of our schools
to provide their students with a mastery of the basic academic skills.
In spite of
the failure of all of the innovative methods of teaching children to read,
many of our schools have embraced innovative methods of teaching other
subjects, most notably math. These other innovative methods have usually
failed as miserably as did the innovative methods of teaching children
to read and yet they continue to be widely used.
The inability
of our schools to adequately educate our children has become so obvious
that it was even publicly acknowledged by the head of the American Federation
of Teachers. This mediocre performance of our schools had to be obvious
to educators long before it became obvious to the public. This begs the
question of why they continued, and still continue, to rely on innovative
methods after they have been proven ineffective.
This has been
due primarily to the fact that these methods have been so assiduously promoted
by the planners. They promote the teaching of these methods in the education
departments of our universities. New teachers are thus familiar with these
methods but not with the older, more effective methods. When they begin
using them they are actually unaware, in many cases, that these methods
are inferior. Because these methods are favored by prominent educators,
state education departments, and the education departments of most of our
universities, teachers risk being considered radical or old fashioned if
they offer opposition to them. Grants are readily available for universities
that teach these methods, individuals who write textbooks featuring them,
and schools who want to purchase them.
On the other
side of the coin little or no foundation money is available for universities
that do not teach these methods. Foundation money is not available for
people who write textbooks that do not feature them, nor is such money
available for the purchase of these textbooks, and publishers will usually
not publish them because they do not expect them to sell.
As previously
mentioned the Walsh Commission found, in 1915, that even at that early
date several institutions of higher learning had already severed their
ties with organized religion in order to take advantage financial aid from
the Carnegie Corporation. It is quite possible that those who controlled
this Carnegie money were enemies of religion in general but I think there
was a more specific reason why they stipulated a severance of all religious
ties as a requirement for schools that wanted to share in this money. Most
religions have moral codes that conflict with the premises of socialism
and these people were using monetary gifts to promote the teaching of socialism.
They would probably have found it difficult to promote the teaching of
socialism in schools where an organized religion was capable of exerting
influence on the school's policies.
Socialists,
in general, have often been hostile to all religions and it appears to
me that socialists have had much to do with pushing the idea that government,
including government-supported schools, should have no ties of any
kind with any religion. I believe that it was this contention that eventually
gave rise to the premise, so popular with many prominent "educators," that
our schools should avoid teaching any values. It is obvious that our schools
are very much engaged in teaching values, but only those values that these
people consider desirable.
Even if the
schools were not teaching these values, which include radical sexual mores,
the premise that all truth is relative, and the idea that any type of behaviour
is as good as any other type, they would still be teaching values. If they
could actually educate children without teaching any values, which seems
an impossibility, they would still be teaching children that values are
of no significance and this is, in itself, a value judgement.
We see on
every hand the results of the failure of our schools to attempt to instill
character in American children. There are certain ethical values to which
a large part of the populace must subscribe if those people hope to live
in a free, civilized society. At a minimum these include the belief that
it is wrong for one person to kill another, except in certain specified
circumstances, it is wrong to take property belonging to another, every
individual is responsible for his own actions, and finally that the government
must not discriminate between individuals on the basis of race, color,
or sex.
If you imagine
a society where no individuals subscribe to these beliefs you will have
to conclude that those people could not possibly form or preserve a free
civilized society. If you imagine a society where every individual subscribes
to these beliefs it is obvious that their society will have very few internal
problems. Of course neither or these societies will ever actually exist
but it is obvious that the fewer individuals who subscribe to these beliefs
the greater will be the internal problems that society will face. This
is theoretical proof of the value of these ethical principles to society
and the history of our nation over the last four decades furnishes emperical
proof of it.
These four
ethical principles are stated or implied in the moral codes of virtually
all religions but that does not make them the property of religions. They
are just as important to a society of atheists as to any other society.
Because of their value to society it behooves any society to inculcate
these principles in its children because they will seldom be acquired in
adulthood. The only way that society, as a whole, can instill these ideas
into the individuals who comprise society is by teaching them in its schools.
Our schools
did not become what they are today by accident. I have explained how the
changes that have done so much harm to our schools were accomplished in
large part by the planners. In Appendix A you will find other sources of
information regarding their efforts.