John Dewey - The Father of Stupidity in Education

The Lab School at the University of Chicago is prestigious and pricey, but I would send my kids to Moses Montefiore, before I'd send them there. As I sent them through Catholic schools the point is as moot as it is root. Nothing against the good folks at the Lab School who come armed to instruct with degrees and certifications that would make the founder's moustache quiver with delight. More so, I would hazard a guess that most of the staff of Baronet Moses Montefiore,Kt ( British Jewish Financier.Philanthropist and Sheriff of London 1784-1885) High School on Ashland Ave. were trained in the methods and philosophy of John Dewey. That said, all American public schools are fostered in Dewey/Hegelian non-sense.

As I have posted many times, John Dewey bullied his way into American Education by dint of his intellectual gifts and membership in the American Brahmin Class. Dewey clicked with good old American contrarian ways and means. Dewey made inquiry and not the pursuit of truth the core of American public education. The Lab School at University of Chicago mandates inquiry as play and play as power. You can arrive at any pre-conceived outcome so long as that outcome fully agrees with the point that inquiry begins. e.g. All police officers are brutal agents of systemic racism - Alpha and Omega. President Obama is the greatest President Ever! Our Economy is Better Now Than Under George W. Bush. The Debt Debate is a crisis leading to the aversion of the crisis created by the the very crisis itself. A family consists of any human beings. The Act of Sex is a Civil Right. The New York Times said it and that settles it. More Tax Dollars Poured into Public Education Will Save Tax Dollars.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is sending his kids to Chicago Lab School and they will follow the intellectual and professional paths of Arne Duncan, the Obama kids, and Valerie Jarrett. They will be fine. Their self-esteem, personal growth and life-long associations will blossom.

Founded in 1896 by pre-eminent American educator John Dewey, the Lab Schools are known as one of the most diverse of the nation's elite private institutions; about 35 percent of its students are people of color. It's also known as one of the best: its high school is one of the top feeders in the country to America's elite colleges and universities, and its extracurriculars, from newspaper and yearbook to Model U.N., are regular winners of regional and national awards.

Such prestige doesn't come cheap: the lower school costs $21,060 per year, while the upper school is just shy of $25,000 annually. That means that the Emanuels will be forking over more than $60,000 each year for their three kids' tuitions.

Huffington Post - The Hollywood Squares of Journalism

Hey, Catholic schools are diverse. Leo High School for example in the heart of Gresham has 90.9% persons of color and a growing number of Mexican kids and now several white ethnic Catholics from Canaryville. There is greater diversity, to be sure, at Mount Carmel, De LaSalle, St. Rita and Marist, but Leo is a very happy campus.

One thing is certain, the kids at south side, west side and north side Catholic schools come from very homogeneous financial backgrounds - Mom, Dad, Auntie, Gramma and Alumni are President Obama's working stiffs: cops, firemen, nurses, public school teachers, skilled tradesmen, industrial workers, Unlike the Lab young 'uns, these kids will not have the path of inquiry festooned with placement, nor will they have the grease and juice backing their play necessary to waltz into Harvard, Columbia, Yale and Oberlin. Catholic kids will scratch their way into those same schools by dint of achievement. Lab School kids get cache with a diploma.

Cache is okay, but core values are much better. Here is a recent commentary by an American Academic and covert to Islam. The guy knows that Dewey is as dangerous to his Faith as it is to Jews, Catholics, Lutherans, Unitarians and Wiccans. In writing about the idiotic neologism THE ARAB SPRING coined by New York Times Dewey-boy Thomas Friedman

Truth, however, cannot exist in a culture with an educational system that denies the possibility of its very existence. Without truth and justice, there is no such thing as a moral disaster. The root cause of most of the injustices in the world, however, is the moral disaster of secular utilitarianism. The wielders of financial and political influence in America have imposed this utilitarian philosophy as a paradigmatic monopoly in the American educational system and with it infected the entire world.


In a compartmentalized system of education, where there is no coherence in anything, the products of this system necessarily are too narrow to value knowledge exogenous to their field of expertise or even to sense that a system of morality can even exist.

The spread of this moral disaster has been going on within the American educational establishment for more than a century, especially since John Dewey. Dewey was born before the American Civil War and set the standard for modern education in America and throughout the world a hundred years ago in his many books, perhaps especially in his Depression-Era book, How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Educative Process. Dewey invented the school of “philosophical pragmatism” which is associated originally with John Stuart Mill, but was further developed at Harvard by others who defined all meaning in life and all morality as the maximization of net utility based on pain versus pleasure. Avoid whatever gives one pain, and embrace whatever gives pleasure, which, in turn, is associated with the philosophy of hedonism. One can argue with this approach pro and con, but the major distinction is that in modern secular education there is no truth and no justice, because even the concepts of truth and justice are thought to restrict rather than maximize human freedom.

Dr. Robert D. Crane*

Back at you, Doc!

*DR ROBERT D. CRANE Chairman, Center for Understanding Islam, and President, The Center for Policy Research. Earned a doctorate (J.D.) at Harvard Law School (1959) in international investment and comparative legal systems. Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates (1981). Principal da’ii (religious instructor) at the Islamic Center, Massachusetts Avenue, Washington, D.C. (l983-86). Director of Publications, International Institute of Islamic Thought (1986-88). Founding member of The American Muslim Council and Director of its Legal Division, 1992-1994. He has published 10 books and 50 professional articles on comparative legal systems, global strategy, and information management. Languages include English, German, Russian, Spanish, French and Arabic.