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March 1, 2024

Circa 1990, journalist and author Rita Kramer (1929–2023) toured the country to study premier schools of education.  She was already an expert on our K–12 schools, having published a highly praised book about Maria Montessori and from years of reporting on education for ABC.  Now Kramer sensed that something new and dangerous was growing in the shadows of America: a tendency toward promoting socialism.  She wanted to know why.  Her journey resulted in an excellent book: Ed School Follies, 1991.

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The activities in our public schools are interesting but rarely the real story.  The real story was that Professor John Dewey, starting roughly in 1900, was planning an attack on America.  He wanted to transform the ed schools into weapons.  They would churn out many tens of  thousands of indoctrinated teachers, who would transform every public school in the country.  The first clever step was to convince John D. Rockefeller, one of the world’s earliest billionaires and much hated, that he should donate one tenth of his income to charity — specifically, the construction of hundreds of ed schools.  In this way, the dumbing down of K–12 could begin.

Harold Rugg, another top educator, described the plan in his book The Great Technology (1933): “Through the schools of the world we shall disseminate a new conception of government — one that will embrace all the activities of men, one that will postulate the need of scientific control … in the interests of all people.” 

Rugg’s “new conception of government” means socialism.  QED: Rockefeller will end up looking good, Dewey will be hailed as the fabulous founder of American education, and totalitarian socialism will prevail.

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Of course, socialist writing always focuses on the fulfillment of the human species and the liberation of workers.  But the practical effect was rampant growth of centralized power, which was a mentality exactly fitted to abet Hitler’s dreams of total control.  Ditto for Stalin.

I briefly communicated with Rita Kramer toward the end of her life.  I sent several questions late in 2023.  Here are her answers:

BDP: What were the things that offended you the most as you worked on your book in 1990?

Rita Kramer: “Finding out that teachers were being taught to teach political propaganda as opposed to academic subjects.  What I observed firsthand back then was the groundwork being laid for the crisis in education today.”

BDP: Looking back over the last 30 years, which problems seemed to come out of nowhere?

Rita Kramer: “It seems to me that the schools are substituting politicization for learning even more than back then, but today’s students and their parents have less defense against what would have in the 1990s been considered reckless child endangerment.”