What Caused the Dumbing Down of America?

To understand the devastation that has taken place in our school classrooms, you need to know what historical changes have taken place that changed the history of education in our society.

One milestone of change happened in 1895. At this time there was a guy by the name of John Dewey who was known as the Father of "Progressive Education."

In 1895 Dewey joined the Rockefeller-endowed University of Chicago as the head of the combined philosophy, psychology and pedagogy (teaching) departments.

The University let Dewey apply psychological principles and experimental techniques to the study of learning.

A laboratory opened up in 1896 as the Dewey School, known later as the University of Chicago Laboratory School.

One of several principles Dewey applied, intended to prepare a child for a democratic society, was that the school should be social rather than individualist.

What kind of curriculum would fit a school that was a mini-cooperative society?

Dewey's recommended that "the curriculum should be built around occupational activities which provided maximum opportunities for peer interaction and socialization."

Why would he do that?

Because "high literacy produced that abominable form of independent intelligence" which was, in Dewey's eyes, "anti-social." (Geez!)

Since the beginning of Western civilization, the school curriculum was centered around the development of academic skills, the intellectual faculties, and high literacy.

Dewey wanted to change all of that.

Thus, from Dewey's point of view, the school's primary commitment to literacy was indeed the key to the whole problem! This guy and others like him were responsible for changing our educational system which had been getting great results.

Think about it. Just a couple of hundred years ago we had a society with a very high intellect and literacy.

Take the constitution for example. A very sane document of the times.

There is a lot more to this story, but I assure you it is not a pretty picture!

So, when you look around and ask what has happened with our society, you can quickly see that bad influences in our educational system have created a long dwindling spiral.

As a result, America has the highest rate of drug use in the world.

In order to curb this degradation, we need to educate our youth on the subject of drugs.

They need truthful, factual information that they can rely on to make the correct decisions.

At Friends of Narconon we are working to re-educate our youth on this subject.

With school budgets being slashed all over the place, we need to help the teachers reach our kids with the truth right now.

The best way you can do that is to sponsor a school.

In order to make this easier, we have launched our online school sponsorship program.

Just go to this link: www.truthaboutdrugs.org/sponsor and you can immediately sponsor schools online to receive our "Truth About Drugs Educators' Kits."

You can also call Sarah Jonic at 1-800-882-6862 for any questions you may have.

We offer programs where you can sponsor an entire county or state too.

Additionally you should call Sarah because we have schools waiting right now for our "Truth About Drugs Educators' Kits" but we have no sponsors for them.

This is one simple way you can help us reach more kids, before it's too late.

Join us now in our effort to re-educate our children!

Sincerely,
Robert Hernandez, CCDC*
President, Friends of Narconon, Intl.
*Certified Chemical Dependency Counselor

Copyright © 2006 Friends of Narconon, Intl. All Rights Reserved. Narconon, the Narconon logo, and the Narconon "Jumping Man" logo are trademarks and service marks owned by Association for Better Living and Education International and are used with its permission.