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Episode 4: America’s Education Past and Future

Episode 4: America’s Education Past and Future

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 Welcome back as we continue to look at the history of education in America. In this episode, we will pick up where we left off in episode three, the progressive takeover of public education. Most of what you hear in this episode will come once again from the book Battle for the American Mindby Pete Hegseth and David Goodwin. Many of us were taught that the Progressive Era ended in 1929, however it continues today as a political party. I am guessing you can figure out which political party that is. Dewey led the progressives and by 1915 they had their “school tool” in place, as nearly every American child attended a public school. John Dewey became the architect of education as he continued to write articles in The New Republic magazine. That name alone tells you they had an agenda to change America. If you visit their website today, their objectives are telling. Progressives knew paideia was powerful, and that schools controlled it. They latched onto this and created the Gary Plan. A plan that implemented their model school in Gary, Indiana. These schools became the prototype for all public schools and the model is still used today. However, instead of seeing an increase in academic rigor, it has plummeted. Here are a few key things to consider when looking at the Gary Plan that exists in all public schools. In fact, everyone listening to this podcast, unless they attended a classical Christian education school, has experienced this model. With this plan, they took subjects and broke them apart, making them silos. Instead of reading and discussing articles or works of literature that crossed across subjects like history and science, you now rotate between seven periods a day and history is no longer history, it is social studies. This is also where they strategically began to extract Christianity from public schools. Instead of studying the morals and precepts of God’s words within the school, students were allowed to leave school during the day for religious training. It was no longer a part of the curriculum. They knew they could not completely take away religious education, as the WCP was still too strong in our culture. This was their way of appeasing the masses while acquiring yet another win and advance forward in erasing religious teaching in public schools. I like what Pete and David share on this move. You can find this paragraph on page 87 of their book.The defenders of this so-called-pull-out period for religious education knew they could end Christian education if they played their cards right. Defending the pull-out period in the same New Republic article, they wrote that “the [church] school [will be] less necessary for those who wish religious instruction for their children. What the Gary Plan seems to do is not to bring religion into the schools, but for the first time to take it out of the schools.” (Battle for the American Mind, page 87) They needed religion removed from education in order to create a new American paideia devoid of Christ. Remember back in episode two where we discovered that religion, morality, and knowledge were the pillars on which our founding fathers-built education. Dr. Witherspoon, a signer of the Declaration, stated.“Government was a reflection of its citizens; if Americans became profane and immoral, their government would also become profane and immoral; and history has demonstrated conclusively that such governments do not survive. Consequently, it was simple logic that any true friend of America would promote religion and morality.” (4 Centuries of American Education, by David Barton, page 12)Even Thomas Paine, one of the least religious of the founding fathers, admonished French schools because of their secular manner. Here is what he had to say.It has been the error of the schools to teach . . .sciences and subjects of natural philosophy as accomplishments only whereas they should be taught. . .with reference to the Being who is the author of them: for all the principles of science are of Divine origin. . .When we examine an extraordinary piece of machinery, an astonishing pile of architecture, a well executed statue or a highly finished painting. . . our ideas are naturally led to think of the extensive genius and talents of the artist. When we study the elements of geometry, we think of Euclid. When we speak of gravitation, we think of Newton. How then is it, that when we study the works of God in the creation, we stop short and do not think of God? It is from the error of the schools. . . The evil that has resulted. . . has been that of generating in the pupils a species of atheism. Instead of looking through the works of the creation to the Creator Himself, they stop short and employ the knowledge they ...

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