Circa 1990, journalist and author Rita Kramer (1929–2023) toured the country to study premier schools of education. She was already an expert on our K–12 schools, having published a highly praised book about Maria Montessori and from years of reporting on education for ABC. Now Kramer sensed that something new and dangerous was growing in the shadows of America: a tendency toward promoting socialism. She wanted to know why. Her journey resulted in an excellent book: Ed School Follies, 1991.

The activities in our public schools are interesting but rarely the real story. The real story was that Professor John Dewey, starting roughly in 1900, was planning an attack on America. He wanted to transform the ed schools into weapons. They would churn out many tens of thousands of indoctrinated teachers, who would transform every public school in the country. The first clever step was to convince John D. Rockefeller, one of the world’s earliest billionaires and much hated, that he should donate one tenth of his income to charity — specifically, the construction of hundreds of ed schools. In this way, the dumbing down of K–12 could begin.

Harold Rugg, another top educator, described the plan in his book The Great Technology (1933): “Through the schools of the world we shall disseminate a new conception of government — one that will embrace all the activities of men, one that will postulate the need of scientific control ... in the interests of all people.”

Rugg’s “new conception of........

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