Bonner County Homeschool Group

By Michelle Copher

Just over six years ago I pulled my oldest child out of his Kindergarten class in order to homeschool him.  His situation at school had become unbearable.  I had two choices, leave him there and allow his entire future to be shadowed by an aversion to learning or pull him out and teach him myself.  I took the plunge and taught him myself.  I can’t tell you how grateful I am that I made that decision.  Not only did it save my children, but I became educated along the way as well.

Homeschoolers have their own community, their own culture to some extent, and their own library of resources.  The books homeschoolers use, since they have complete freedom of choice, are the very best.  They are not the books used in public schools. It is because of this environment that I came across books like The Law by Frederick Bastiat, A Thomas Jefferson Education by Oliver Van DeMille, and the book I’m going to focus on now, None Dare Call It Education by John A. Stormer.

John Dewey, head of the Prestigious Teachers College at Columbia University in New York during the first half of the 20^th century, was the most influential educator America has ever seen.  He was a Progressive and one of the authors of the Humanist Manifesto I.  By the 1930’s his movement had enough influence to change the course of education in America forever.  They controlled teacher training programs, textbook authorship, and the National Education Association. 

Dewey’s goal was to create “a new social order”.  Harold Rugg, one of Dewey’s cronies, said, “A new public mind is to be created.  How?  Only by creating tens of millions of new individual minds and welding them into a new social mind.  Old stereotypes must be broken up and new “climates of opinion” formed in the neighborhoods of America[i]”.

In another passage Rugg continued this thought, “ . . .through the schools of the world we shall disseminate a new conception of government—one that will embrace all of the collective activities of men; one that will postulate the need for scientific control and operation of economic activities in the interest of all people.[ii]”

They were not proposing an overthrow of government, just a changing of the way government is viewed, a new way for the government to do business and they would accomplish this through the schools, but before they could make this happen, they had to seize government control of the schools.  As long as schools were run by individual communities there could be little influence over what was taught there.

Before the 1930’s although education was completely voluntary and most parents paid out of pocket, nearly every child in America attended school.  There was about 97% literacy rate at the time of the Revolution.  More than that, there was true cultural intelligence. Kids were better educated and more prepared for life, whether that life led them to work a farm or run a company.  There’s a reason that the Edisons, Rockefellers, Lincolns and Fords arose from the lowest social class to the highest in that culture.  Education, in other words, was not broken.

In 1852 Massachusetts issued the first compulsory education laws.  It took awhile, but by 1918 all states had some form of compulsory education laws.  Since then the minimum ages have been lowered steadily from about 8 years old to around 6 years old in most states.  At the same time the maximum age requirements have been rising to the age of 18.  The school year has also been increasing over the years.  The original Department of Education was established in 1867, but its functions were extremely limited and it didn’t resemble at all what it is today.  It was merely a fact-finding bureau and did not attempt to fund, control or administer education in any way.  It wasn’t until 1979 that our current Department of Education was established and in 1981 it rose to a cabinet level department, finally fulfilling all of Dewey’s wildest dreams.  Of course by then Dewey was long gone, but unfortunately his legacy is very much with us.

What exactly were the aims of this education movement?  In what way did they wish to engineer society and for what purpose?  First they despised the laissez-faire economic system.  Socialism was the getting under way in Europe in the late 1800’s and the American Progressive movement was dedicated to the concept of an enlightened class directing the well being of the masses. 

Next they despised the concept of God as a superstition for the masses, which disbelief led them to play God, interestingly.  One of their aims was to remove God from America. 

They wished to hold everyone to the same mediocre level.  Dewey once said, “Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming, where everyone is interdependent.[iii]”

They wished to create a society of “sheeple”, who could be easily manipulated, for their own good, of course!

They deliberately dumbed down the educational content of the schools in order to create an ignorant and easily manipulated mass of people.  In the place of history, government, economics, and geography they introduced “social studies”.  How many schools now teach logic or the classics?  How many students reach beyond basic algebra in their years of schooling?  How many students study history and discuss the ramifications of actions and the characters of famous people?  How many schools teach American government adequately?  How many students even know the difference between a republic and a democracy and which one America’s Constitution established?  The standard argument is that these subjects are not useful in real life; the trend has been more and more toward vocational training.  This is no accident; this was an important aim of Dewey’s movement.

I myself was educated in a public school, a very good one.  It was in a wealthy suburban area and had adequate funds.  It was known as the best school in the city and one of the best in the nation.  Nearly all my friends went on to higher education and in my school it was actually “cool” to be a brainiac.  I did very well, took the toughest classes, got good grades, and went to a good college.  It wasn’t until I began to homeschool my own kids and read more that I realized how woefully inadequate my education had been.  I am ashamed to say that I did not know the difference between a republic and a democracy. I did not know anything about history.  I did not know geography or current events.  I had never studied logic at all.  I could only very vaguely tell you who Columbus was.  I was very shaky on things like how my own religious beliefs could be upheld and stand against the prevailing beliefs of evolution and the anti-God culture.  The methods used to teach math were inferior and I struggled because of it.  After some painful uprooting of some of my core beliefs, I now know the things I was missing and I am very active in teaching my own kids.  They already know more about these subjects than I did upon my college graduation.

Is it any wonder that the homeschool movement has met such violent opposition?  The best argument anyone can come up with against homeschooling is the “but kids need the socialization they receive in school”.  Pretty weak, considering.