Roots that go deep
April 3, 2003
In the context of the transformation of
our nation, the shifting of the paradigm as many call it, one is left
with the impression that this transformation is something new, never before
tried.
No so. The roots of this paradigm shift go deep and have a
history not taught in the classrooms of most schools, public or private.
Where did this philosophy get its start?
The exact time and exact date would be difficult to pinpoint. The philosophy,
itself, has been in progress for centuries, being pruned, fine tuned,
and developed, seeing the influence of a multitude of philosophers, and
blossoming in the nineteenth century. The multitude of those of influence are
too many to name; but a representative sampling of names most recognizable
would include Kant, Wundt, Neitzsche, Hegel, Marx, Locke, Fichte, Bacon,
Descartes, Hume, Mill, Russell, James, Watson, Thorndike, Dewey, Maslow,
Rogers, Skinner ....
While all these philosophers held
beliefs and developed theories that influenced the emerging philosophy, they
all held two things in common: first, their philosophy was built upon theory,
established over time via experimentation and observation, of how the human
mind works and functions as an organ of intellect; and second, they, each of
them, were subject to the very fallacies and frailties of the human condition
they studied. In other words, the work of these men and the resultant theories
were influenced by the very fallacies and frailties they studied. This
establishes a cycle which is self-defeating. Man has never been, nor will he
ever be, successful in figuring out why the human mind does what it does when
it does it because man cannot escape the fallacies and frailties of the human
condition.
But from the process has come a
philosophy achieving greater standing in society than the teachings of our
Creator, who made man in His own image, who does know what makes the human mind
do what it does when it does it, and who established, via His teachings,
natural law.
This emerging philosophy, coming forth
from the minds of man, has a name: humanism, aptly named for its underlying
belief that "no deity will save us, we must save ourselves" (Humanist
Manifesto II, 1973).
The New Age philosophy also carries the same underlying belief, taking on the
tenets of Eastern mysticism in seeking a spiritual basis.
As established, our nation was founded
on natural law as our Founding Fathers knew what few today seem to understand:
natural law is the only means by which man can truly be free.
How and when did this man-made
philosophy come to America? Again, the exact time and date cannot be
pinpointed. Suffice it to say, the philosophy is like the root of a morning
glory plant ... slowing invading over time, sending up foliage when conditions
are favorable, growing and spreading faster when conditions are most favorable,
but always growing even when that growth is not visible to the naked eye.
John Dewey, self-proclaimed socialist,
Professor of Philosophy and Education at Columbia University, and signer of Humanist
Manifesto I, was writing and publishing on education in the United
States in the late 1800's. At this point in time the philosophy had already
invaded and taken over Columbia University via such men as Andrew Armstrong,
James Cattell, G Stanley Hall, Charles Judd, James Russell and Edward
Thorndike.
Columbia University produced many
graduates immersed in the philosophy who became teachers and administrators at
other colleges of education and departments of education as well as in schools
nation-wide.
The virtues of Franklin Delano Roosevelt
have been defended and questioned alike by many over the years. It was FDR who
knew of the coming attack by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor and let it happen to
draw the United States into World War II. It was also FDR who, in the first 100
days of his administration, established what became known as the New Deal
to combat devastating effects of the Great Depression.
Threads of this philosophy can also be
found there. The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), proposed by FDR and
passed by Congress to bring the United States out of the Great Depression, was
designed to "encourage industrial recovery and help combat widespread
unemployment." In response to the passing of the NIRA, Roosevelt, by
executive order, established the NRA — the National Recovery Administration —
whose purpose it was to draw up industrial codes of "fair practice."
The work of the NRA was promoted through
the NRA speakers bureau of which Louis P Alber was
appointed head in July 1933.
Who was Louis Alber? Not much, if any,
mention of him is made in histories of the United States, but the personal
papers of Sir Winston Churchill divulge something of the history of Alber. Up
until his appointment as head of the NRA speakers
bureau, Alber was president of the Affiliated Lecture and Concert Association,
Inc, setting up lecture tours in the United States for foreign dignitaries,
including Sir Winston Churchill. At one point, in December 1930, in the very
midst of the Great Depression when money was scarce and hard come by (at least
by the common folk), Alber offered to pay Churchill $50,000 for a two month
lecture tour in the United States starting in October 1931. Early in 1931,
letters in the Churchill archives indicate financial problems for the Affiliated
Lecture and Concert Association, Inc, at one point Churchill requesting his
lecture fees be paid to him directly instead of through that organization.
This, however, apparently did not have an adverse affect on the relationship
between Alber and Churchill. In December 1931, Alber encouraged Churchill to
accept an invitation from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) to speak on a
subject of Churchill's choosing and take afternoon tea with that body.
This is the man who, as head of the NRA
speaker bureau, stated in an interview in New York in 1933, published in
newspapers nation-wide:
"The rugged
individualism of Americanism must go, because it is contrary to the purpose of
the New Deal and the NRA, which is remaking America.
"Russia and Germany
are attempting to compel a new order by means typical of their nationalism —
compulsion. The United States will do it by moral suasion. Of course we expect
some opposition, but the principles of the New Deal must be carried to the
youth of the nation. We expect to accomplish by education what dictators in
Europe are seeking to do by compulsion and force. ...
"The NRA is the
outstanding part of the President's program, but in fact it is only a fragment.
The general public is not informed on the other parts of the program, and the
schools are the places to reach the future builders of the nation."
The above quote appeared in the Monroe
Evening News, Monroe, Michigan, on September 13, 1933, the article in
that newspaper stating:
"So, according to
what Mr Alber says, NRA—sweeping and revolutionary as it is—is only a
'fragment' of the greater program of which the public knows nothing, and this
unknown program is to be inculcated in the minds of pupils in the schools
everywhere, by official efforts and at government expense. Hitherto the purpose
of the schools has been merely to educate the youth of the land--to impart
knowledge, in an unbiased and nonpolitical manner. Now, according to Mr Alber,
our schools — like those of Italy, Germany and Russia — are to become an agency
for the promotion of whatever political, social and economic policies the
administration may desire to carry out. And the taxpayers,
whether they like those policies or not, are to pay for having their children
converted to them."
In 1939, Hitler stated, "give me
the children, I will give you a nation." Sounds very much as though Hitler and Alber were reading from the
same page. What Alber was promoting, in 1933, was the gradual
transformation—the quiet revolution to the Marxist state—through
"moral suasion" of American society to the same state sought by
Hitler, Mussolini, and Lenin by force.
In 1935 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in
Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, that the
compulsory-code system established by the NRA improperly delegated legislative
powers to the executive branch, and further, that the codes did not fit within
the federal jurisdiction in the regulation of interstate commerce. While the
NRA was officially disbanded following this ruling, the provisions of the NRA
were reenacted in later legislation, such as the Fair Labor Standards Act and
the National Labor Relations Board.
In his book, The New Dealers' War: FDR and the War Within WWII, author
Thomas Fleming sums up the NRA as follows:
"Most ambitious of
all was the NRA, the National Recovery Administration, which set out to control
wages and prices in American industry. The New Deal's goal, people began to
see, was not merely to stanch the wounds of the Depression but to prevent
further downturns by increasing the buying power of the people at the bottom
and limiting the profits of the people at the top.
"In a world where
Russia had embraced a form of state control called communism and Germany had
opted for another variety of this same nostrum, national
socialism, while Italy embraced fascism, yet another variation on
authoritarian rule, the New Deal's attempt to insert the government into
American business on a broad and apparently permanent scale alarmed not a few
people......"
While one could claim the aims of the
NRA ended with the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, history tells us that
such is not the case.
During World War II, those who supported
the quiet revolution to the Marxist state in Europe — the Transformational
Marxists — where either incarcerated, put to death, or removed to friendlier
shores. Antonio Gramsci was imprisoned by Mussolini while Kurt Lewin removed to
America.
This quote, concerning the contributions
of Lewin, comes from the Foreword to the The Change Agent's Guide; Second
Edition and was written by Matthew B Miles of the National Training
Laboratory Institute for Applied Behavioral Science:
"The truth is that
not until the late 1940's, when American behavioral scientists began exploring
and developing the ideas of the emigre psychologist Kurt Lewin, did we really
have anything like a systematic science and practical craft of planned change
in the kinds of social systems that matter most—families, small groups,
organizations, communities."
This quote leaves little doubt about the
purpose and direction education was to take. Established in 1947 by Kurt Lewin,
Ronald Lippitt, Kenneth Benne and Leland Bradford, National Training
Laboratories (NTL) had connections to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS),
the World War II forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and has
connections to the National Education Association (NEA) (Iserbyt, 1999). The
core values of the NTL are:
·
Training in
the theory and practice of group dynamics, organizational change, and societal
change;
·
Learning from
these experiences;
·
Sharing the
results of the learning; and
·
Engaging in
inquiry, knowledge building, and the publication of findings.
NTL is one of the leading institutes for
behavioral education and training in the United States.
In 1949, the grip this philosophy had
attained in education could be seen in this quote from a book written by Ralph
Tyler, one of the leaders of educational philosophy at the time:
"Since the real
purpose of education is not to have the instructor perform
certain activities but to bring about significant changes in the students'
patterns of behavior, it becomes important to recognize that any statement of
the objectives ... should be a statement of changes to take place in the
student."
What Tyler promotes here is exactly what
Alber spoke to. And Tyler was not, and is not, alone. He is joined by other
education leaders — Benjamin Bloom, John Goodlad, Abraham Maslow, Carl
Rogers, Theodore Sizer, William Glasser, Howard Gardner, B F Skinner and the
plethora of other ideologues, before and after, whose promotion of this
philosophy undergirds the education system being put in place today.
Under this philosophy, education is for
the purpose of conditioning children to the perceived environment of the
created future (the global sustainable environment) as created by a few and
foisted on the masses wittingly or unwittingly by state legislators and
Congress who haven't a clue what this philosophy is or that it is antithetical
to the philosophy on which this nation was founded and on which this nation can
truly remain free.
In the final paragraph of his piece
concerning the statements of Louis Alber, made in 1933, the editor of the Monroe
Evening News wrote:
"The whole
proposition is so amazing, and so alarming in its implications, that we refuse
as yet to take it seriously. We prefer to believe that Mr Alber is merely an
enthusiast who has been carried off his feet, and who spoke rashly. We cannot
believe that Mr Alber reflected the President's designs or his desires."
Take it seriously ... believe it ... for
it has come to pass, not as the result of one man, far from it, but as the
result of the efforts of many men whose philosophy has been allowed to permeate
every segment of our society unchecked. When we wonder how we got where we are
today, this is part of the history of how that has come about.
Sources:—
The
Churchill Papers; A Catalogue
Fleming, Thomas; The
New Dealers' War: FDR and the War Within WWII; New York: Basic Books;
2001; p 51.
Havelock, Ronald G. and Steve Zlotolow; The Change Agent's Guide; Second Edition;
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications; 1995; Foreword.
Iserbyt, Charlotte Thomson; The Deliberate
Dumbing Down of America; Ravenna, OH:
Conscience Press; 1995; pages 38-39.
Monroe Evening News;
Monroe, MI: Monroe Publishing Company; September 13, 1933; p 4.
Tyler,
Ralph; Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction; Chicago:
University of Chicago Press; 1949; p 49.
© 2003 Lynn M. Stuter - All Rights
Reserved