The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America

Woodrow Wilson summed it up more succinctly with this statement:

“We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”

However the phrase, “Limited learning for lifelong labor” is a wonderful dictum for modern “education”.

Collectivism is not a bad thing, aka crowd-sourcing, together we stand divided we fall, etc.

This, on the other hand, is just plain old authoritarianism, which Rudkowski has simultaneously identified and misidentified. Of course an authoritarian society has authoritarian public education. Why would it not? True collectivism need not be top-down authoritarianism, but rather would place greater value on the individual and the ability of the individual to bring a unique perspective and make unique and therefore valuable contributions.

For a visual reference, the inside of an authoritarian classroom is arranged like the inside of an authoritarian church. Everyone faces the front of the class, the authority figure. Sit down, shut up, don’t touch each other, are the three main things we are taught in grade school. It’s so obvious that we don’t notice it.

On the other hand, a mental health support group, a cancer-survivors support group, or maybe an AA group, is arranged in a circle. This roughly demonstrates a scenario in which individuals are more valued in a collectivist system, than in a supposedly “individualist”/Ayn Rand society where the individual is trampled on if they do not conform to society and authority.

She is mostly correct. Her views on cooperative learning being negative and competition being positive are incorrect. One can still be an individual while cooperating. All the available research — read David and Roger Johnson’s work on cooperative learning — shows that cooperative learning is healthier, more productive, more creative. She is also wrong about competition — read Alfie Kohn’s superbly documented book No Contest: The Case Against Competition. In competitions, most people lose and one succeeds to the degree one can screw over others — which is a recipe for disaster, and research shows it is far more counter-productive. All that said, she is absolutely right about the “elites” plan to dumb down people to be obedient workers. In fact, it is the implementation of competition which reduces individualism, as the focus is on defeating someone else (business is war, etc) rather than collaborating toward making something (which is more productive and creative a process). Competition is the tool of the elites. We compete everywhere — in school, in sports, in jobs — but most of that competition is learned. This is how we end up with a few people on top — the “elites” — and most people down below. Like the Super Bowl or the World Cup, on a few make it to the top, while most lose. Read this: http://www.alfiekohn.org/parenting/tcac.htm So she is correct about many things, but her views are twisted and incorrect in certain important areas. A far far far better pedagogist is Alfie Kohn. I highly recommend his books: http://alfiekohn.org/index.php