Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

A–62 easily than single words and words more easily than single letters. Lewin stated, in referring to Forrer’s experiment, that “the findings confirm the marked advantage of the ‘global’ method of reading and writing. To a child taking no joy in learning to write an alphabet, a change of valence (attractiveness) occurs more quickly when he is allowed as soon as possible to write meaningful communications in sentence form.” (p. 258) What is interesting in all of this is that Clara Schmitt in 1914 (see chap. 12) had shown in her analysis of the errors made by mentally defective and normal children that the mentally defective had problems learning to read phonetically. And even when they were taught to read phonetically, they made the kinds of errors that normal children make when taught to read by the look-say method. Decroly was obviously confirming that the “global,” or whole language method, was easier for retarded children than the more abstract alphabetic system. But to assume that the global (i.e., whole language) method was also better for normal children was either a serious error on Lewin’s part, or a deliberate effort to promote look-say. He must have known that the Central Committee of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union had rejected the whole-word method in 1933 mainly through the work of his colleagues, Luria and Vygotsky. Lewin obviously believed in the Marxist doctrine that the end justifies the means. In his book, Resolving Social Conflicts , published in 1948, he wrote: In regard to a change toward democracy this paradox of democratic leadership is still more pointed. In an experimental change, for instance, from individualistic freedom (laissez faire) to democracy, the incoming democratic leader could not tell the group members exactly what they should do because that would lead to autocracy. Still some manipulations of the situation have to be made to lead the group into the direction of democracy…. To investigate change toward democracy a situation has to be created for a certain period where the leader is sufficiently in control to rule out influence he does not want and to manipulate the situation to a sufficient degree. The goal of the democratic leader in this transition period will have to be the same as that of any good teacher, namely, to make himself superfluous, to be replaced by indigenous leaders from the group. (p. 39) In other words, during the transition period from individualism to “democracy” (i.e., col lectivism) the end can justify the means, because the “end” is the greater good. The look-say method may be needed during the transition period in order to make Americans less literate and thereby less independent as individuals. This would indeed be a necessary strategy for moving the nation toward a socialist, collectivist society. And, of course, it was in keeping with Dewey’s own views on reading instruction given in his essay, “The Primary School Fetich,” published in 1898. Vygotsky died in 1934 and Lewin died in 1947, but Luria, who knew them both, continued his work. During World War II he did painstaking research on brain-injured people, discover ing many facets of how the brain works. He had worked closely with Vygotsky from 1924 to 1934, the period in which they had worked on early childhood development and the artificial means of creating behavioral disorganization. During that period Vygotsky also worked on the problems of Soviet education, applying psychology to the problems of massive illiteracy which, according to James Wertsch, “has been almost completely overcome today.” How were the Soviets able to achieve this? By using an alphabetic-phonics method of teaching reading!