Article submitted by Derek Franklin

Sometime around the middle of April 2018, the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress – better known as the Nation’s Report Card – was released. The results were downright disastrous. Among all 12th graders, only 37% tested proficient in reading while only 25% did so in math. Statistics for black students were even worse. Only 17% tested proficient or better in reading while just 7% tested proficient in math.

What does all of this mean? It means that Public Education or Government Education or State-run Education, by its own standards, is a massive failure. One only needs to ask a few basic questions to put all of this into perspective.

Would you continue to frequent a restaurant that got your order right only 37% of the time? Men, would you gladly pay a barber who cut your hair to your standards 1 out of every 4 times? Would you continue to take your car to a mechanic whose success rate fixing your car was only 17%? And would you seek the services of a pharmacist who succeeded in filling your prescription properly less than 1 in 10 times? Surely the answer to all of those questions in an emphatic NO! Then why does the American Public Education consuming public stand for the massive failure of government run education?

Furthermore, taking into account the 2017 NAEP numbers, most high school diplomas are fraudulent. Nationally, the high school graduation rate is 80% overall and 75% for blacks. A high school diploma is supposed to represent the fact that the recipient can read and compute at a 12th grade level. How can this be when, overall, 73% are not proficient in reading and 75% are not proficient in math and when 83% of black students can’t read at a 12th grade level while 93% are not proficient in math. If a private, for-profit company engaged in this kind of fraud the perpetrators would be thrown in jail and we free marketers would never hear the end of it. But the government that fails as a normal course of action gets a free pass, and, oftentimes, is awarded more money in the process.

No doubt, Public Education has been a massive failure. It is so, because it was never intended to educate in the first place.

Let’s take a brief walk through the period of time before Public Education as we know it came into being.

John Dewey & His Cohorts

John Dewey is widely considered to be the father of Public Education. His quest to establish a public educational system began in the late 1800’s when he and his cohorts embarked on a long-range plan to implement a system of education that would stifle individual development and favor the socialization of school age children.

Dewey was not alone in this quest. He was aided by several men: G Stanley Hall, James McKeen Cattell, Charles Judd, and James Earl Russell. G. Stanley Hall was a professor at Johns Hopkins University who introduced Dewey to the new psychology of behavioral and social change. This “new” psychology led Dewey to believe that the socialized individual – one devoid of individual intelligence, the ability to think independently, and without a proper understanding of individual freedom and liberty – was preferable to the highly literate individual – one taught how to think independently, develop intelligence, and one who understands individual freedom and liberty. Embracing this “new” psychology Dewey sought to ensconce a new educational system by eliminating an emphasis on language and literacy in the primary grades in favor of socialized activities designed to produce socialized individuals. Thus, these socialized individuals would be educated to serve the State.

James McKeen Cattell received his PhD from the University of Leipzig in Germany. He became the head of the Department of Psychology, Anthropology, and Philosophy at Columbia University in 1891. A new method of reading – new at the time – that emphasized teaching children to read by using whole words and word pictures, similar to the way one learns to read Chinese, was based on his research (i.e. a scientific experiment conducted in 1885). This new reading method fit nicely into the system of education Dewey intended to start.

Charles Judd, producer of the Dick and Jane readers, studied under Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig where he received his PhD. As Dean of Education at the University of Chicago, Judd expended untold amounts of labor and energy to transform public school curriculum according to Dewey’s socialist plan.

James Earl Russell, another who studied psychology under Wilhelm Wundt, received his PhD from the University of Leipzig. He was also Dean of Teachers College at Columbia University from 1898 to 1927. He was one of the chief architects of the Lincoln School, which opened in 1916 with support from the Rockefeller General Education Board. Lincoln also became the experimental school for Teachers College. Dewey’s new progressive philosophy of education, one that embraced the new method of teaching reading by the whole word method, was taught at Lincoln. Mr. Rockefeller sent four of his five sons there and all four became dyslexic (some believe that teaching reading via the whole word method produces dyslexia). Jules Ables, in his book The Rockefeller Millions, revealed what the new reading method did for the Rockefellers boys’ literacy:

“Laurence gives startling confirmation as to ‘Why Johnnie Can’t Read.’ He says that the Lincoln School did not teach him to read and write as he wishes he now could. Nelson, today, admits that reading for him is a ‘low and tortuous process’ that he does not enjoy doing but compels himself to do it. This is significant evidence in the debate that has raged about modern educational techniques.”

Each one of the aforementioned men – G Stanley Hall, James McKeen Cattell, Charles Judd, and James Earl Russell – shared something in common: they studied the new behaviorist psychology under Professor Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig in Germany. Professor Wundt was the founder of experimental psychology. He believed that human beings were little more than stimulus-response organisms. Consequently, he embraced the notion that human beings could be conditioned to behave in a certain way similar to the way animals are conditioned to behave. Professor Wundt’s beliefs and concepts laid the foundation for behavioral psychology and its views on behavior modification.

The failures of modern day Public Education, grounded in a method of teaching reading that breeds illiteracy, can be traced to the transformational work these men performed during the late 1890’s and early 1900’s. This is immensely important because the ability to read is the foundation of learning.

Reading Literacy (or Illiteracy)

One of the great travesties perpetrated on today’s youth by educators is the use of a sight, or whole-word method of teaching reading. Empirical evidence proves, without fear of successful contradiction, that a system of reading based on phonics is the most effective way to teach reading.

Reverend Thomas H. Gallaudet developed the sight reading method in the early 1800s. He used this method to teach deaf-mutes to read. Consequently, he thought he could use the method on normal children.

In 1835, Gallaudet published Mother’s Primer, the first whole-word primer published in America. A year later the Boston Primary School Committee elected to try Gallaudet’s primer on an experimental basis. The following year, 1837, the primer was formally adopted for use in Boston’s primary schools. Seven years later, Boston students’ reading ability was measured. The results were horrific. The results were so bad that a group of Boston schoolmasters published a condemning critique of the new method. Eventually, the Boston primary schools ditched the Gallaudet method of teaching reading and returned to the more traditional method used by Noah Webster in his Blue-Backed Speller.

But Gallaudet’s method did not die. It was kept alive in the new state-owned teachers colleges – or normal schools as they were then called – until they were refurbished by the new generation of progressive educators. (Crimes of The Educators, pg. 40)

The whole word method received imprimatur via a scientific experiment conducted in 1885 by a 25-year old psychologist named James McKeen Cattell. Further certification was conveyed on the whole-word method through its use at Dewey’s Laboratory School at the University of Chicago, the Lincoln School, and Teachers College, Columbia University, in New York.

One might ask: How can such an ineffective system of reading continue to be used in the Public School system? Rudolf Flesch gave the answer in Why Johnny Can’t Read in 1955:

“It’s a foolproof system all right. Every grade-school teacher in the country has to go to a teachers’ college or school of education; every teachers’ college gives at least one course on how to teach reading; every course on how to teach reading is based on a textbook; every one of those textbooks is written by one of the high priests of the word method. In the old days it was impossible to keep a good teacher from following her own common sense and practical knowledge; today the phonetic system of teaching reading is kept out of our schools as effectively as if we had a dictatorship with an all-powerful Ministry of Education.”

In short, reading instruction in public schools has been confined to a monopolistic cadre of professors of education, whose lineage traces back to John Dewey and his colleagues, within a state controlled and regulated system. These same professors have a monetary and professional interest in keeping their whole-word based textbooks in the schools. And the State facilitates it all – the monopoly and its maintenance. What’s the result? Millions upon millions of children and adults are unable to read proficiently. And some are functionally illiterate.

Problem Solved

John Dewey’s goal to establish a new system of education – one based on socialization and lacking in cultivating individual development and achievement – is plain to see. He had one particularly vexing problem though: how to convince a multiplicity of superintendents and teachers to adopt his new education plan. Dewey sought to use a respected authority – “educational psychologists” – to remedy his problem.

Dewey once wrote that what was needed first was a “full and frank statement of conviction…from physiologists and psychologists. (Crimes of The Educators, pg. 11) He thought that once physiologists and psychologists were on board, they could be used to convince superintendents and teachers of the need for the Dewey Plan of education.

In 1908, psychologist Edmund Burke Huey, published a book called The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading. That book was based on Huey’s doctoral dissertation while at Clark University – he studied under G. Stanley Hall – and became the bible of the whole-word method of teaching reading.

Huey’s book embraced the notion that a use of “formal printed and written English,” the primary mechanics of reading and spelling, were a waste; that the first three years of school being dedicated largely to reading was irrationally revered and should be discarded; that changing societal, industrial, and intellectual conditions necessitated a change in the importance of reading; that a child’s first six to eight years should not be dedicated to learning to read and write because that child’s sense organs and nervous system were not sufficiently developed; that children should be taught to read using picture-writing; and that it was not necessary to pronounce correctly or pronounce at all new words that appear in a child’s reading. Never mind that the educational system in force during this time, while far from perfect, successfully taught reading through a phonics-based system.

Needless to say, Huey’s book, published in 1908, is still considered the authority on reading instruction and has been read in colleges of education through at least 2014.

It’s likely that Dewey and Huey never taught a child to read since they don’t make any reference to doing so. Nevertheless, their ineffective reading method has been predominant in American teachers colleges dating back to the early 20th century.

Conclusion

Ultimately, Public Education has been and will continue to be a major disaster of epic proportions leaving masses of people unprepared to function at their highest and best because it is based upon a system that is designed to socialize. Those who’ve gone through this system presently suffer from the effects of a lack of literacy (e.g. under-employment, lack of employment, poverty, etc.). It is my great hope that the veil of obstruction is removed from the eyes of America’s parents. Once the veil is removed, hopefully, necessary changes can be made to make sure children are properly educated before it’s too late.

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