Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

9 violated “if two children want the same material” and are not “left to settle the problem for themselves” or by forcibly removing a misbehaving child from a group. Montessori, much like Rudolph Steiner of Germany, taught that each child is already a perfectly developed adult human being and that through her educational process “the incarnating child” can find his own place in the cosmos. It should be noted that at one time Benito Mussolini was president of the Montessori Society of Italy. The Montessori Method was published in 1912 and much of Montessori’s work was printed by the Theosophical Publishing House. Montessori once lived with the Theosophists in India and earned the praise of Mahatma Gandhi with her “Cosmic Education” which was popular with Hindus and Theosophists worldwide. Elizabeth Clare Prophet, the cultic head of the Church Universal and Triumphant, founded a group called Montessori International, and Robert Muller, the celebrated author of the New Age World Core Curriculum , in a Costa Rica speech claimed that the Montessori Method was one of the educational programs which would greatly benefit global children for the New Age. In her Education for a New World Montessori wrote that “The world was not created for us to enjoy, but we are created to evolve the cosmos.” In an issue of the North American Montessori Teachers Association Journal one finds the following revealing comment: Maria Montessori, along with many other enlightened thinkers of our time, foresaw nothing less than the emergence of a new human culture. This new culture, a global, planetized humanity, would be based on a new consciousness of the unity and interdependence of all being, the interconnectedness of all forms of energy and matter. It is a culture of the present paradigm shift, by which we are beginning to align ourselves to educate the human potential for conscious cooperation with the evolution of life on the planet. 1 The Turning of the Tides : c. 1913 J OHN D. R OCKEFELLER , J R .’ S DIRECTOR OF CHARITY FOR THE R OCKEFELLER F OUNDATION , Frederick T. Gates , set up the Southern Education Board (SEB), which was later incorporated into the General Education Board (GEB) in 1913, setting in motion “the deliberate dumbing down of America.” The Country School of Tomorrow: Occasional Papers No. 1 (General Education Board: New York, 1913) written by Frederick T. Gates contained a section entitled “A Vision of the Remedy” in which he wrote the following: Is there aught of remedy for this neglect of rural life? Let us, at least, yield ourselves to the gratifications of a beautiful dream that there is. In our dream, we have limitless resources, and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hand. The present educational conventions fade from our minds; and, unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or of science.We are not to raise up from among them authors, orators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians. Nor will we cherish even the humbler ambition to raise up from among them lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we now have ample supply. 1913