| John Dewey: Founder of America’s Public Education System |
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| February 22, 2024 |
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| John Dewey (1859-1952), one of America’s most influential humanist philosophers, had an incalculable influence on modern education. The man is a loud warning of the danger of Christians sitting at the feet of unbelieving educators. He is the father of what is called “progressive education.” “His educational theories broke new ground and continue to wield influence at the dawn of the twenty-first century” (“Public School Innovators,” PBS.org). John and his brother Davis were raised by Christian parents, and his mother would often question her sons, “Are you right with Jesus?” John professed faith in Christ at age 11 and took the Lord’s Supper at First Congregational Church in Burlington, Vermont. After obtaining his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University, he took a teaching position at the University of Michigan in 1894 and joined the Student Christian Association. His first sermon was on “The Obligation to Knowledge of God,” and he conducted a Bible class on “The Life of Christ” (Kevin Swanson, Apostate: The Men Who Destroyed the Christian West). Dewey’s first book (Psychology, 1887) argued for belief in God through logic. Strong criticism from his former teachers at Johns Hopkins–G. Stanley Hal and William James–started him on the path of rejecting God. He should have tested their criticism by the Bible and cast down every false thing by faith in God (2 Co. 10:5). Instead, like Eve, young Dewey foolishly entertained the devil’s lies and was devoured. Dewey had already been weakened by sitting at the feet of unbelievers through his university training, particularly the damnable influence of Jean Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Rene Descartes, and Charles Darwin. By 1900, Dewey had “abandoned the Christian faith.” In 1916, Dewey wrote an article in which he said that Darwin had removed the Western culture’s need for God. He concluded with these words: “God is a faded piece of metaphysical goods” (“The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy,” 1916). In 1933, Dewey co-authored and signed the Humanist Manifesto, which promoted atheism, evolution, self-determination, and socialism. “The universe is self-existing and not created. … Man is a part of nature and has emerged as a result of a continuous process. … The nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values. … A socialized and cooperative economic order must be established to the end that the equitable distribution of the means of life be possible. … Man is at last becoming aware that he alone is responsible for the realization of the world of his dreams, that he has within himself the power for its achievement” (Humanist Manifesto). Kevin Swanson summarizes Dewey’s educational theory: “Dewey’s theory is really quite simple: education is all about training the individual to fit into the social entity of the state. Sixty years earlier, Karl Marx set out to ‘replace home education with social,’ in the Communist Manifesto. Effectively, Dewey stands in agreement with Marx as he writes in his own Pedagogic Creed, ‘The school is primarily a social institution.’ All educational content is subservient to the social element–training the young person to belong to the social unit and pursue the objectives of the social unit (however unwise, ungodly, and unintelligent they may be). Dewey goes on in the Creed: ‘[Education] is the regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness.’ … Parents should know that the schools are not ultimately committed to academic excellence. Their chief purpose is to plug the children into the ‘social consciousness’” (Swanson, Apostate: The Men Who Destroyed the Christian West). Dewey wanted to replace Christianity with a new God (man), a new kingdom (a New Age created by man), and a new prophet (the public school teacher). He wrote, “I believe that in this way the teacher is the prophet of the true god and the usherer in of the true kingdom of God” (Pedagogic Creed). Dewey’s kingdom of God has turned out to be the kingdom of godlessness. It has produced moral relativism, narcissism, rampant adultery, no fault divorce, the destruction of the “nuclear family,” feminism, homosexual rights, transsexual vengeance, abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, mayhem in the cities, gang violence, Antifa, Black Lives Matters, theft on a scale to bankrupt large corporations, national insolvency, pervasive homelessness, unsafe streets, an epidemic of drug and alcohol abuse, a massive, overburdened prison system, the loss of personal liberty, the destruction of free speech, religious |
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