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The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America
Chapter 2

The Turning of the Tides: Early Twentieth Century

Summary
This chapter begins with a comment about how America "had been able to point with pride to extraordinary advances in all areas of endeavor carried out by individuals, with no assistance whatsoever from the government," but that suddenly the 20th Century started bringing Socialism to our shores, "bringing with it radical changes in economics, politics, and education, funded—surprisingly enough—by several wealthy American families and their tax-exempt foundations" who sought to create "a seamless non-competitive global system for commerce and trade."

We continue our chronology, beginning in 1902, when the General Education Board was incorporated by an act of Congress, and paid for by John D. Rockefeller, Sr. "for the purpose of establishing an educational laboratory to experiment with early innovations in education."

In 1905, we have the founding of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, which boasts such prominent names as those of authors Upton Sinclair (The Jungle) and Jack London (The Call of the Wild, White Fang). In 1908, the Intercollegiate Socialist Society became the League for Industrial Democracy; Dewey became president in 1939.

In 1905 we also have the founding of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

In 1906, the National Education Association (NEA) became a "federally chartered association" authorized by Congress.

In 1908, Maria Montessori develops her teaching methods; she publishes The Montessori Method in 1912. She taught that "each child is already a perfectly developed adult human being" and that her educational process would lead them to find their "place in the cosmos." Her teachings were closely tied to Theosophy, and have been embraced by cults and those in the New Age movement. She wrote that "The world was not created for us to enjoy, but we are created to evolve the cosmos."

An issue of the North American Montessori Teachers Association Journal contains the following statement:

Maria Montessori, along with many other enlightened thinkers of our time, foresaw nothing less than the emergence of a new human culture… a global, planetized humanity… 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.

In 1913, we find the Southern Education Board, founded by Frederick T. Gates (Director of Charity for the Rockefeller Foundation), incorporated into the General Board of Education (GEB). In a paper for the GEB, Mr. Gates clearly outlined what they did not intend to get from education:

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.

In 1914, we learn that there was a resolution passed by the "Normal School" section of the NEA, which complained that the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations were trying to "control the policies of our State educational institutions, to fashion after their conception and to standardize our courses of study, and to surround the institutions with conditions which menace true academic freedom."

In 1917, there is an entry made in the Congressional Record of the United States Senate containing articles by the Chancellor of Emory University in Atlanta, wherein he deplores the fact that the General Education Board has been "authorized to do almost every conceivable thing which is anywise related to education," and that they have the "power to project [their] influence over other corporations."

The United States also entered WWI in 1917.

In 1918, in an issue of New York World magazine, William Boyd Thompson (Federal Reserve Bank director and founding member of the Council on Foreign Relations) stated that "Russia is pointing the way to great and sweeping world changes. It is not in Russia alone that the old order is passing. There is a lot of the old order in America, and that is going, too.... I’m glad it is so. When I sat and watched those democratic conclaves in Russia, I felt I would welcome a similar scene in the United States."

In an editor's note, we learn that this man gave $1 million in personal money to help fund the Russian Revolution, and also arranged for the transfer of funds from the United States to Communist revolutionaries.

In 1918, we learn that the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations hatched their plan to bring about the demise of "traditional academic education," and that the Rockefellers would focus on national education while Carnegie focused on international education.

In 1919, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace issued a grant to found the Institute of International Education, which mainly operated a student exchange program. These exchanges expanded until "[t]he U.S.-Soviet Education Agreements were negotiated by the Carnegie Endowment’s parent organization, the Carnegie Corporation," in the 1990's, "fostering exchanges of curriculum, [teaching methods] and materials as well as students."

The Progressive Education Association was also founded and organized by John Dewey in 1919. This same group gathered in 1943 to make official plans for after World War II. They  unanimously proposed "a broadening of the interests and program of this Association to include the communities in which our children live. To this end, they propose additions to the governing body to include representatives of welfare services, health, industry, labor and the professions."

1921 was when the Intercollegiate Socialist Society changed its name to the League for Industrial Democracy. Their stated its purpose was: "Education for a new social order based on production and not for profit."

Also in 1921, Harold Rugg became president of the National Association of Directors of Education Research, which later becomes the American Educational Research Association. Rugg is an attendee at the 1943 meeting of the Progressive Education Association, and signs the proposal mentioned above.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is established in 1921 by "Colonel" House,[1] a close associate of President Woodrow Wilson. The CFR is the American branch of a British group known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs. In 1912, House wrote a book called Philip Dru: Administrator, in which he promoted "socialism as dreamed of by Karl Marx."

A Fabian Socialist named Walter Lippmann (also a member of Intercollegiate Socialist Society/League for Industrial Democracy) was another founding member of the CFR.

The first CFR director was Whitney Shepardson, who was "an assistant to Col. House in the 1918 peace conference following World War I and served as secretary of the League of Nations committee."[2]

We here learn of several other early members of the CFR, all of whom were involved in other shady anti-American activities, including the League of Nations, the Rhodes Scholarship, the "Skull and Bones" society, being a special advisor to Communist traitor Alger Hiss, and the founder of CBS, who had Edward Bernays as his chief advisor.[3]

Professor Carroll Quigley, author of Tragedy and Hope, described the CFR as "a front for J.P Morgan and Company in association with the very small American Round Table Group." He also said,

The board of the CFR have carried ever since the marks of their origin.... There grew up in the 20th century a power structure between London and New York which penetrated deeply into university life, the press, and the practice of foreign policy.... The American branch of this “English Establishment” exerted much of its influence through five American newspapers (New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post, and the late lamented Boston Evening Transcript).

In 1922, the CFR openly endorses world government.

In 1925, a Rockefeller grant funds the International Bureau of Education, which has since become part of UNESCO.[4]

Also in 1925, the Scopes "Monkey Trial" took place, over whether it was allowable to teach evolution in schools. "After this trial, Fabian Socialist and first head of UNESCO Sir Julian Huxley claimed that humanism’s "keynote, the central concept to which all its details are related, is evolution.""

In 1927, the Christian Science Monitor publishes an address by Dr. Augustus Thomas, commissioner of education for the state of Maine, which he presented to the World Federation of Education Associations, and in which he stated:

If there are those who think we are to jump immediately into a new world order, actuated by complete understanding and brotherly love, they are doomed to disappointment. If we are ever to approach that time, it will be after patient and persistent effort of long duration. The present international situation of mistrust and fear can only be corrected by a formula of equal status, continuously applied, to every phase of international contacts, until the cobwebs of the old order are brushed out of the minds of the people of all lands. This means that the world must await a long process of education and a building up of public conscience and an international morality, or, in other words, until there is a world-wide sentiment which will back up the modern conception of a world community. This brings us to the international mind, which is nothing more or less than the habit of thinking of foreign relations and business affecting the several countries of the civilized world as free co-operating equals.

In 1928, a teacher named O.A. Nelson attends a meeting with John Dewey, Edward Thorndike, and other CFR members. They inform him that "the purpose of “new math” was to dumb down students. Nelson revealed in a later interview with Young Parents Alert that the Progressive Education Association was a communist front."

Mr Nelson had the following to say about this meeting and its attendants:

We were 13 at the meeting… Drs. John Dewey and Edward Thorndike, from Columbia University, were there, and the others were of equal rank. I checked later and found that ALL were paid members of the Communist Party of Russia.

The sole work of the group was to destroy our schools! We spent one hour and forty-five minutes discussing the so-called “Modern Math.” At one point I objected because there was too much memory work, and math is reasoning; not memory. Dr. Ziegler turned to me and said, “Nelson, wake up! That is what we want... a math that the pupils cannot apply to life situations when they get out of school!” That math was not introduced until much later, as those present thought it was too radical a change… The radical change was introduced in 1952. It was the one we are using now. So, if pupils come out of high school now, not knowing any math, don’t blame them. The results are supposed to be worthless. 


References:

[1] "Colonel" was a nickname, and not a title, for Mr. Edwin Mandell House.

[2] The League of Nations morphed into what we know today as the United Nations.

[3] For more on Edward Bernays, see our analysis for
The Price, chapter 2.

[4] The
International Bureau of Education was previously known as the Institute Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the man we first learned about at the beginning of chapter 1.
Analysis
It is interesting to note how many "celebrated" authors, the ones most of us were forced to read in public school, were also Socialists. Other examples include Bambi (which was translated into English by a Communist), Helen Keller, H. G. Wells, George Orwell (until later in his life), Aldous Huxley, and many, many others. Was this a coincidence? Or were their texts used to embed Socialist concepts in our young minds before we knew any better?

The League for Industrial Democracy played a prominent role in the so-called "Civil Rights" movement of the 1960's, particularly due to their Communist and Socialist ties.[1]

The teachings of Montessori were popular with Theosophists, a religion not well-known to people today. One notable belief of Theosophy[2] is that there is no God, only "spirit masters" who can guide us. This belief was also adhered to by L. Frank Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz, who stated that he hoped his books would help teach Theosophy to children. This is why the "wizard" of Oz is shown to be a fraud, why Glenda the "Good Witch" helps her, and why, in the end, she discovers she had an innate ability to be her own "savior" all along.

The author does not make note of it, but the Federal Reserve Act was passed in 1913, and is also directly related to the wealthy and powerful individuals and organizations mentioned in this book.

Ponder, for a moment, the stated purpose of the League for Industrial Democracy: "Education for a new social order based on production and not for profit." First of all, this implies that education's role is to prepare children to merely be "producers," i.e., expendable industrial tools. Second, it implies that nameless educators have the right to dictate our social order, and therefore to preach against the standards and values of the parents to achieve their own ends. Third, it implies Socialism and a return to the days before America, when the common man owned and controlled nothing, being merely a servant of the so-called "upper class." What's hilarious is that the League for Industrial Democracy was on the forefront of the "Civil Rights" movement, claiming to work to free Blacks from slavery, yet here they propose slavery for all mankind.

The fact that the New York Times was/is a controlled platform comes as no surprise after reading It's Very Simple: The True Story of Civil Rights, by Alan Stang, which we highly recommend. The Times' complicity in covering for Communist activities in the early-to-mid 20th Century becomes immediately obvious in that book.

Have we seen the fulfillment of the 1927 declaration about educating the public "until there is a world-wide sentiment which will back up the modern conception of a world community"? We think so. It is even more interesting to note that the New World Order had already been conceptualized over 100 years ago, and was being seriously spoken of and planned for among the elites. Today, the public is told that this is only a "conspiracy theory." Yet there is no theory about it; their own words condemn them!

Learning about the "modern math" that was supposed to be implemented in 1928 is not only disturbing, but quite easy to believe in light of the ridiculous math processes of "Common Core."


References:

[1] As outlined in chapters 12, 13, and 16 of It's Very Simple: The True Story of Civil Rights, by Alan Stang. If you wish to go directly to the related chapters, use the "League for Industrial Democracy" tag at the bottom of this page.

[2] You can read about Helena Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, in D. Christian Markham's excellent book,
There Are Save Two Churches Only. This query will locate passages about her in that book.
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