The Evil Genius Paul Richardson March 2012 The Progressives (John Dewey, Woodrow Wilson et al) wanted

desperately to change the school system from one aimed at individual enlightenment designed to make citizens who could contribute to a democratic society, to one that would create a none too smart populace of followers that would easily buy into the Progressives desire to move to a system where experts controlled the economy and politics for their view of the common good. Yes, they wanted to replace the founding fathers personal liberty and responsibility design with socialism. It is easier to convince poorly educated people that they are victims and hence need handouts from the government which creates an ever growing portion of the electorate that will vote for progressives to protect their government handouts. If you are replacing the highly effective American Common School approach of Horace Mann, Noah Webster and others you know it will be difficult and take time. They faced many obstacles. Thus, they wanted to preserve the generally positive view of education due to the world-class reputation of the Common School approach (per de Tocqueville, etc.) but gut that process and replace it with their own. They were careful and patient in their implementation which took decades to accomplish and left the trappings of the old school approach in place to make the public think all was well. It was a wolf in sheeps clothing approach. They developed a brilliant plan which they faithfully executed. Phase one was to convince the public that the 2 year Normal School approach for preparing teachers wasnt adequate and that you needed better educated teachers who had four-year degrees. While appealing to the publics desire for better quality educations for the children they could easily pull a fast one under the surface. Thus, the education school movement they started emphasized brainwashing of teachers in methods based on Rousseaus philosophy in his Emile. The direct instruction approach taught by subject knowledgeable teachers from the Normal Schools was replaced by the romantic (they will learn much more slowly by osmosis through discovery or constructivist approaches) of Rousseau and Dewey taught by teachers with little subject

knowledge who are really facilitators at best and highly paid babysitters at worst. The Normal School trained teachers were given 2 years of rigorous subject knowledge and the new 4 year degree teachers were given virtually no subject knowledge. This approach led to a massive reduction in rigor of the schools that fit well into the Progressives desire to create a credulous populace easily swayed by their expert masters. Of course, this was their plan to make teachers seem better educated when just the opposite was true. In so doing they created a hugely profitable education diploma mill that enriched colleges, their faculties and the teachers they graduated. Researchers, book providers, government bureaucrats, and politicians who pandered to the new education approach all benefited as well. They have successfully created a huge cadre of people with a vested interest in protecting the new education process in spite of the enormous harm it has caused to our children who increasingly are faced with global competition against much better educated peers. Subsequent improvements after establishing the education school fraud were to further enhance the ability of the system to extort money from government coffers by creating advanced degree programs within the education schools. Now, if the public wanted what they assumed were degreed, better educated teachers they found being able to hire a superintendent with an education doctorate degree to be very attractive as well. Of course, the rigor of the ed doctorate is nil and as Arthur Levine said in his Educating School Leaders is of no value in any public school administration job. But the point is that the pay scales in education assume that the education degrees are really valuable. This is so true that a recent study shows that teachers total compensation is 52% higher than that of equivalently educated people in the private sector. This new system took total control of the education process in the late 1960s. By then most graduates from the system had experienced the new process and new teachers for their whole school career. At that time, for example, SAT reading scores plummeted. The excuse was that the reduction in scores was due to including more minority and poor students in the testing. In depth

analyses of the data prove that the egalitarian excuse does not explain the reduction in scores at all. Since the dumbing down process began many decades ago there have been continuing reform efforts costing many billions undertaken. These have not improved anything except that more money has enriched the adults who are members of the education fiefdom. It turned out that the new system was particularly harmful to the minority and poor students. E.D. Hirsch commented when discussing that fact that it was hard to conceive of a greater social and moral evil. Robert Kennedy was quoted in the Colorado Closing the Achievement Gap Commission Final Report (11/2005). They said that RFK stated that the achievement gap was a stain on our national honor but that in the more than a third of a century since he said it that the problem had only gotten worse. This, in spite of throwing billions at the problem. Current education reforms all have one thing in common; they attempt to do the wrong thing better. That is, the educators are so brainwashed by their ed school training and the Group Think, politically correct environment they work in, that they cant or wont face the truth that the only thing that will fix the problem is to replace the Progressives system with one like that being used by every country whose kids score better than ours on the international achievement tests. Your first reaction might be, Who would be dumb enough to design a system that is so harmful to our kids? Exactly. The answer, of course, is someone who didnt want the system to work and also who wanted the status quo inertia to be immense. From that point of view Dewey was an evil genius as that is exactly what has happened. You could visualize the many improvements undertaken to fix the current system as trying to do the wrong thing better, but only slightly. So for example, special education which attempts to help those poor and minority kids who are most harmed by the current system. Another strategy is to tout best practices which preserve the harmful system in place. The latest strategy is response to intervention another attempt to pretend they are trying to improve a broken system. These improvements

do not have any positive impact for the kids but do provide more highpaying admin jobs for educators. Our competitors are using direct instruction taught by teachers who have robust subject knowledge because they realize that the global competitive situation is becoming a knowledge meritocracy. Our kids as a whole are very poorly prepared by the current approach. Yet we spend more per year per student on education than all but a couple of small countries in Europe. It is as if we desire to get the best pseudo professionals around to teach our kids. Oh, they dont generally harm them physically; they stunt their mental growth which is worse. The next time you hear a politician talk about the absolute need to spend more money on education hopefully you will realize that it is an attempt to buy votes from educators not to provide a better education for the kids. Thus, giving more money to our current education system only adds to the already huge level of waste. The biggest waste however is to our kids future prospects.