THE FOUNDERS' WORLDVIEW
AUTHORITY AND EDUCATION
WHAT IS "PROGRESSIVE?"
John Dewey is known as the Father of Progressive Education. The progressive education movement began in the early 1900's and went out of business, so to speak, in 1957. Why? For the same reason the civil rights movement is no longer visible. It has achieved its goal of dominating the educational establishment controlling the education of our nation's children.
In his 1897 paper, "My Pedagogic Creed," Dewey said,
...education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness; and that the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction.
Here, Dewey discloses the goal and methodology of his child-centered philosophy of education. The goal is "social reconstruction" and the method is the regulation of the "process..." As a Humanist/Atheist and a socialist, Dewey had an agenda. He dedicated his life to the reconstruction of our American Constitutional Republic to build an Atheistic Socialist Republic. The Creation principles which are the foundation of our nation necessarily promote freedom from government-over-man and are, therefore, an anathema to an Atheistic socialist like Dewey.
The "social consciousness" involves the whole of mankind on the earth. Since the United States is based on principles which foster national individuality (sovereignty), those principles must be exchanged for ideas that promote one-worldism (one world government). We are to minimize or reject our national sovereignty and submit to the "new" world order.
The National Education Association (NEA) is the largest labor union in the United States and has adopted the goals and methods of the progressive education movement. In 1975, the NEA commissioned Henry Steele Commager, a leading revisionist historian, to write the Declaration of Interdependence which calls for the United States to set aside its national sovereignty in exchange for submission to a one world order. Deplorably, 128 national senators and representatives signed the document. Public education has performed effectively to achieve its objective of "social reconstruction."
Teaching methods that encourage individuality are changed for the students to "share in" or "fit" into the "social consciousness." Of course, to lose our individuality, whether a nation or an individual, requires relinquishing our freedom so that we can conform to the overall world social consciousness. Few knowingly give up their freedom. That's why "the regulation of the process" has to be deceptive.
According to "the process," the "social consciousness" of a nation must be "harmonized" with the other nations of the earth. The concept of national sovereignty must give way to the Atheistic socialist belief in a one world government controlled by a power elite. Therefore, documents such as the Declaration of Interdependence and curriculum subjects of social studies, globalism and nuclear education are substituted for the American Declaration of Independence, history, geography and civics.
For an individual to give up his freedom without realizing it, an extensive deceptive effort is required. Thus, the past twenty-five years in public education has spawned behavioral modification, values clarification, decision-making, stress management, global education, magnet schools, self-realization, self-actualization, student classification (e.g., learning disabled, gifted and talented), stimulus-response techniques--the list is endless.
A man-centered mind is a Humanistic/Atheistic mind which finds little place in the American Constitutional Republic as founded by the God-centered minds of our Founding Fathers. That is why so much energy and extensive resources have been expended to "reconstruct" our society into an Atheistic Socialist Republic. It is time for His people to obey His command to restore righteousness in our nation before it's too late.
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Neil F. Markva 14