Bruce Deitrick Price

I have a review on Amazon, written about 2007. Now I'm writing another article. I'm a big fan of this author. The people in ed school should read Rita Kramer's book, not the socialist propaganda they usually read. Her book was published 30 years ago; and she already saw clearly, that long ago, that our education establishment was using public schools to promote left-wing views.

This is one of my favorite ed books. I have the first review on Amazon, where the book is still available cheaply. Written in 1953, in the blackboard jungle known as Brooklyn, this book chronicles the sad devastation caused by the progressive ideas of John Dewey. In a more perfect world, young teachers would have to read this book and explain how they will deal with many obstacles the book describes. Basically, Dewey wanted schools and teachers to cater to the students, their good days and bad days, their moods, their deficiencies, their destructive behaviors. This guaranteed that the school system would operate ever more slowly and inefficiently. Dunn explains all of this anecdotally and conversationally. She's a sweetheart of a teacher. She lasted only a few years. If you want to know what befell American K-12, read her book.

I already have a positive review on Amazon. So I'll just add a brief comment. 1880 to 1900 was a feverish era, philosophically and ideologically. European socialism was a strong current. At that same time Anglo-German culture was the apex of civilization, at least that's what all the professors in the German universities thought. And that's where a lot of the most rootless American intellectuals went to get their graduate degrees, the university in Leipzig, in particular. And these young hotshots, as they doubtless saw themselves, went back to the US to create three new fields: Sociology, Psychology, and Education. John Dewey is called the Father of American Education. But when Dewey said education, he meant social engineering. And that's the curse, as I would see it, that we have been living with the last hundred years. (You can tell the whole story of American K-12 education through the thoughts of John Dewey. That's why I have pronounced this verdict: Phooey on John Dewey.) The book covers the intellectual firestorm that adopted the name Progressivism, which was code for Socialism. Because the book is short, and covers all the stars from the late-1800s to the mid-1900s, it has many affectionate fans. .