Crimes Of The Educators?

Samuel Blumenfeld’s tenth and latest book is titled Crimes Of The Educators. One might ask, is the word “Crime” in the book’s title to entice sale of the book or is crime identified in the book? Let us search.

John Dewey is generally lauded as the father of progressive education. In 1898 Dewey published the essay “The Primary Education Fetish.” Dewey in brief wanted to produce little socialists and collectivists instead of little capitalists and individualists. He called for a new curriculum that emphasized socialization and taught children to read by a whole-word method. The latter was to lower the nation’s literary level and make its children more amenable to collective values.
Dewey’s ideas were implemented at the Lincoln School at Teacher’s College, Columbia University in New York. He was invited to teach there and set the direction for teacher education. There he was joined by James Mc Keen Cattell and Edward L. Thorndike. They became the chief architects of the progressive curriculum.

John D. Rockefeller, who greatly admired Dewey and his radical ideas, donated $3 million to the school. Mr. Rockefeller sent four of his five sons to the school to be educated under the new progressive philosophy. All four boys became dyslexic. Because of their wealth, sons Laurence, David, Winthrop and Nelson, were able to live with their reading handicaps by having great secretaries. Nelson hired Henry Kissinger.

The tragedy is that there are millions of Americans like the Rockefeller boys who must endure the crippling consequences of education malpractice. The fact that the progressives refused to stop what they were doing indicates their intent was criminal.

The relationship between whole-word reading and dyslexia, as was prevalent with John Rockefeller sons, is explainable. The human brain is divided into two hemispheres. The left brain is the center of language development. The right brain deals with spatial functions: Art, distance, perspective and so forth. When children are confronted with a teaching method that prevents the left hemisphere of their brains from performing its normal functions, they become learning disabled and suffer considerable pain. Now that we have brain scans, it is not difficult to figure out what happens in the brain when a child is forced to use his right brain to perform functions of the left brain. Deliberately damaging a child’s brain with a known faulty method of teaching is a crime.

In 1955, Dr. Rudolph Flesch published Why Johnny Can’t Read. In brief he wrote that the phonetic system of teaching reading is kept out of the schools as effectively as is if we had a dictatorship with an all powerful Ministry of Education. Dr. Flesch simply recommended: beginning in primary school, teach each child how to read with intensive phonics without pictures. The professors of education accused Dr. Flesch of misrepresentation and over simplification.

In 1981 Dr. Flesch published Why Johnny Still Can’t Read. It was essentially an update on the ongoing literary crisis. A few examples: American business leaders wanted to know why their younger middle-level executives could no longer communicate their ideas effectively in speech or writing. Another is the decline in the level of U.S. presidential speeches. They are now pitched at the level of seventh graders. A half century ago they talked at the level of twelfth grade.

In 1988 Arthur Sulzberger, publisher of the N.Y. Times, told his fellow newspapers publishers, “Today up to 60 million Americans, one third of the adult population….cannot read their local newspapers.”

Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education reported parents in the U.S. spend five to seven billion dollars a year on tutoring programs.

However, there is hope. An example is Marva Collins, a teacher in Chicago. She quit the failed Chicago schools in 1975 and created her own private school to prove that so-called uneducable, learning-disabled black children could become highly literate human beings if taught in the proper manner. Her students became physicians, lawyers, engineers, educators, and so forth. She used intensive, systemic phonics in reading instruction.

There is hope in the increasing demand for charter schools and educational vouchers. And around the world, the home-school movement in exploding in every corner of the globe. Even in countries like Russia, where home education is legal and growing at a tremendous pace.

Art Crino is a combat veteran of WW II, graduate of OSU in Electrical Engineering and his career was in engineering and factory managment. Art may be contacted by e-mail at: crino9850@comcast.net.
Reprinted with permission from the Roseburg Beacon News. Vol. 10-Issue 44 November 1, 2017