Chapter 10

American education in the first quarter of the 1900s becomes Danish and European pedagogy, later on marketing and the like in 1970s

 

In the following a short reading that is founded centrally on the well-documented facts of the 'The Leipzig Connection' by Lance J. Klass and Paolo Lionni, published by The Delphian Press 1978, Sheridan, Ore-gon, USA [1]

 

Some of the experiences of my own

Having taught economics for twelve years at Commercial College, first in Copenhagen later on in Aarhus, there was a general experience that I often thought of. It never caused my wonder, but something was lacking in the picture, some pieces were missing in the puzzle.

The foundation that the students showed at the beginning had become more and more humble, and the difference between the foundation of a few stood in an increasing contrast to the foundation of the most of them, when they began their education.

It was not seldom I ascertained that nearly illiterated had got a Danish General Certificate of Education A-level, and more and more could not express a thought, if a subordinate sentence was required to secure the meaning. It was not youthful uncertainty or inferiority complexes, on the contrary.

In return the most were very opened and benevolent to learn new.

Sometimes I could doubt, if they were the most qualified for the purpose.

Something was totally wrong, when you leave out of account a few of the young people every year.

75-150 students every year for 12 years is significant number, and regardless it is some kind of a random sample, when the teams of lecture were random put together.

Other teachers made the same experiences.

The effects could be seen on the mark lists with which the corridors of the schools were papered every summer.

The worst were those that had Certificate of Education A-level, and were taught in the hours of the day. In the evening hours the lectures were given to the little older ones but still young people. The last mentioned worked for a carrier at same time that they were taught economics in the evenings.

Early in the 1970s I often met shop-employees that could not manage a simple sales-service, more and more often, they were not apple to count the money correctly, and give the right sum in return. Hundreds of other examples showed the same. Something was terribly wrong.

What had happened?

I knew it, I could see from my original explanations to criminality (read next chapter). 1968-romance became serious, the new-totalitarians inspired by among others Habermas, Marcuse, Sartre and Marx. I who had started at the University of Aarhus in 1969, ought to know. Yes, at this time we were a large number which laughed of these new actors. We should not have laughed, and when the rulers gave them the visible power, the number of laughing ones reduced a great deal. Other just got them out of their minds by starting their carrier.

 

The Leipzig Connection 

But did this civilization overstep the mark, you might ask? When did it began?

The Danish Georg Brandes visited Berlin on his journey in 1870-1871, but with poor results for himself, and he had to be helped by influent people at the University of Copenhagen to get home and enter upon a post at the university. The so-called 'Modern Breaking Through' in the Danish intellectual life started in the beginning of 1870s, when he returned to Denmark.

Oh, I remember the intellectual arrogance of this man (his readings). The head-master of the Gymnasium of Svendborg tortured us with this author nearly every day in the period 1967-1969. At last I thought (as a country boy) I was not apple to learn anything, perhaps I could not even understand anything essential of what was needed, but still especially in the disciplin literature.

Georg Brandes repaid the missing results (perhaps just his karma) to write to his family: "I hate Christianity to the marrow of my bones". The head-master did not tell us this. Now I understand a little better, and I am able to correct a little of, what I learnt in fear by heart by looking in 'Explanation of Literature', published by Politiken.

 

"Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt was born 1832 in a little town in the southern Germany. University in Tübingen, when he was 19 years old, transfered to Heildelberg after half a year, and appointed to doctor of medicin at the university in the year 1856. He stayed in Heidelberg for the next 17 years. At first he was employed as a professor assistent, later on he was appointed professor in psychology.  At this time the word psychology meant the study (ologi) of the mind (psyke).

In1874 Wundt left Heidelberg to take over the charge as professor of philosophy at the University of Zürich. He stayed there for only a year, as he agreed to take over the chair in philosophy in Germany at the University of Leipzig. He stayed in Leipzig for the rest of his academic carriere, eventually with the hope to be appointed to Principal of the university. Wundt died in 1920.

The period of Wundt. How was this?

After the defeat of the Prussians (Germans) by Napoleon at the battle of Jena in 1806, it was decided that the reason why the battle was lost was that the Prussian soldiers were thinking for themselves on the battlefield instead of following orders. The Prussian philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), described by many as a philosopher and a transcendental idealist, wrote "Addresses to the German Nation" between 1807 and 1808, which promoted the state as a necessary instrument of social and moral progress. He taught at the University of Berlin from 1810 to his death in 1814. His concept of the state and of the ultimate moral nature of society directly influenced both Von Schelling and Hegel, who took an similarly idealistic view.

Using the basic philosophy prescribing the "duties of the state", combined with John Locke's view (1690) that "children are a blank slate" and lessons from Rousseau on how to "write on the slate", Prussia established a three-tiered educational system that was considered "scientific" in nature. Work began in 1807 and the system was in place by 1819. An important part of the Prussian system was that it defined for the child what was to be learned, what was to be thought about, how long to think about it, and when a child was to think of something else. Basically, it was a system of thought control, and it established a penchant in the psyche of the German elite that would later manifest itself into what we now refer to as mind control.

The educational system was divided into three groups. The elite of Prussian society were seen as comprising. 5% of the society. Approximately 5.5% of the remaining children were sent to what was called realschulen, where they were partially taught to think. The remaining 94% went to volkschulen, where they were to learn "harmony, obdience, freedom from stressful thinking and how to follow orders." An important part of this new system was to break the link between reading and the young child, because a child who reads too well becomes knowledgable and independent from the system of instruction, and is capable of finding out anything. In order to have an efficient policy-making class and a sub-class beneath it, you've got to remove the power of most people to make anything out of available information.

This was the plan. To keep most of the children in the general population from reading for the first six or seven years of their lives.

Now, the Prussian system of reading was originally a system whereby whole sentences (and thus whole integrated concepts) were memorized, rather than whole words. In this three-tier system, they figured out a way to achieve the desired results. In the lowest category of the system, the volkschuelen, the method was to divide whole ideas (which simultaneously integrate whole disciplines - math, science, language, art, etc.) into subjects which hardly existed prior to that time. The subjects were further divided into units requiring periods of time during the day. With appropriate variation, no one would really know what was happening in the world. It was inherently one of the most brilliant methods of knowledge suppression that had ever existed. They also replaced the alphabet system of teaching with the teaching of sounds. Hooked on phonics? Children could read without understanding what they were reading, or all the implications.

In 1814, the first American, Edward Everett, goes to Prussian to get a PhD. He eventually becomes governor of Massachusetts. During the next 30 years or so, a whole line of American dignitaries came to Germany to earn degrees (a German invention). Horace Mann, instrumental in the development of educational systems in America, was among them. Those who earned degrees in Germany came back to the United States and staffed all of the major universities. In 1850, Massachusetts and New York utilize the system, as well as promote the concept that "the state is the father of children." Horace Mann's sister, Elizabeth Peabody (Peabody Foundation) saw to it that after the Civil War, the Prussian system (taught in the Northern states) was integrated into the conquered South between 1865 and 1918. Most of the "compulsory schooling" laws designed to implement the system were passed by 1900. By 1900, all the PhD's in the United States were trained in Prussia. This project also meant that one-room schoolhouses had to go, for it fostered independence. They were eventually wiped out.

One of the reasons that the self-appointed elite brought back the Prussian system to the United States was to ensure a non-thinking work force to staff the growing industrial revolution. In 1776, for example, about 85% of the citizens were reasonably educated and had independent livelihoods - they didn't need to work for anyone. By 1840, the ratio was still about 70%. The attitude of "learn and then strike out on your own" had to be broken. The Prussian system was an ideal way to do it.

One of the prime importers of the German "educational" system into the United States was William T. Harris, from Saint Louis. He brought the German system in and set the purpose of the schools to alienate children from parental influence and that of religion. He preached this openly, and began creating "school staffing" programs that were immediately picked up by the new "teacher colleges", many of which were underwritten by the Rockefeller family, the Carnegies, the Whitney's and the Peabody family. The University of Chicago was underwritten by the Rockefellers.

The bottom line is that we had a literate country in the United States before the importation of the German educational system, designed to "dumb down" the mass population. It was more literate that it is today. The textbooks of the time make so much allusion to history, philosophy, mathematics, science and politics that they are hard to follow today because of the way people are "taught to think."

Now, part of this whole paradigm seems to originate from an idea presented in The New Atlantis, by Francis Bacon (1627). The work described a "world research university" that scans the planet for babies and talent. The state then becomes invincible because it owned the university. It becomes impossible to revolt against the State because the State knows everything. A reflection of this principle can be seen today with the suppression of radical and practical technologies in order to preserve State control of life and prevent evolution and independence. The New Atlantis was widely read by German mystics in the 19th century. By 1840 in Prussia, there were a lot of "world research universities", in concept, all over the country. All of them drawing in talent and developiong it for the purposes of State power and stability.

If you think this state-thinking was especially reserved for German writers think again.

Charles R. Darwins (1809-82) so-called pioneering work "On the Origin of Species by Means of natural Selection", 1859, shall not be ignorized though Darwin himself admitted late in his life that he had written it for spirit of time. Science or Myth? "Surviving of the fittest" and "The Master Race". Could you reconsider debates over social and public policy issues from the 1870s through the 1910s with an openness and sensitivity they would wish for their own statements without Darwinism. It is one thing to argue (as have Robert Young and others) that Darwinian science was ideological from the start, but another to demonstrate that the science was then pressed back into ideological service. The capitalism (no ism cause it is not based on any ideology - defined and named by Karl Marx or perhaps Albert Pike) in the Gilded Age defenders of free market mechanisms, individualism, and laissez faire (so-called "conservatives" but in reality liberals by mid-19th century standards) rarely laced their prose with appeals to Darwinism, and virtually never in the way described in conventional accounts. New Deal-defenders in the 1930s (to characterize the laizzes faires could have done without Dawinism), the New Marxism in the 1970s, and New-libe-ralism in the beginning of the 1980s.

 

Experimental Psychology – the same from yet another angel

The great Wilhelm Wundt asked and answered the question:

What is will?

 

"To Wundt, as it developed, 'will' was the direct result of the collection of experienced influences, not by a independent intention of an individual of causal relations".

"His intention was to prove that the human being is a sum of its experiences, of the influences that push his consciousness and unconsciousness.."

"What decide the difference in time of reaction between individual and other things?" "Why do some individuals experience the influences different from others?"... To the experimental psychologist education is the process which gives meaningful experiences to the individual to secure correct reactions..."

"Wundt's thesis laid the philosophical foundation for the principles that later on became deciding to the development of Pavlov's animal-experiments and to American psychologists of behaviorism... in addition decisive to the development of school-children, who were orientated more towards socialization than towards the development of the intellect of the child with the intention to continue the culture, but in favor of the development of a society that more and more submit to the satisfaction of sensual wishes on behalf of conscientiousness and endeavor for perfection."

The young Americans who had learnt by Wundt, returned and established departments of psychology all over their own country.

All of them were successful and they got respected on influential posts, especially at the American Universities. Each of them educated big crowds of students to the American doctor's degree in psychology. New periods and other publications, new societies and clubs emerged, and every psychologist was pulled into another subject too at once, and here there was opened for the new urgent German psychology everywhere.

The first two American students at Wundt's institute were G. Stanley Hall and John Dewey.

The first were known for a lot of things, as a great inspirator at the John Hopkins University that was founded on the German model, and he was also known as the founder of the American Journal of Psychology.

After he had been taught by G. S. Hall for a year at the John Hopkins University, Dewey should start an exceptionally intensive and deep influence on the American sector of education. In 1886 Dewey published the first textbook of psychology with the same title. In 1895 he was invited to join the faculty at the Chicago University that was supported by Rockefeller. He became the leader of the department of philosophy, psychology and pedagogy.

 

In 1904 he published his master piece:

Upbringing: Its psychology and its relation to physiology, anthropology, sociology, sex, crime, religion and education.

With Dewey’s words:

"Upbringing consists of either to use ones own force in a social direction or in the ability to share the experiences of others, and in that way expand the individual consciousness to the consciousness of the race" (Dewey, John, "Lectures for the First Course in pedagogy", unpublished, No. 1 (1896) pg. 1)

..."The biggest problem in all upbringing is to coordinate the psychological and social factors...the coordination claims...that the child is apple to express itself, but in such a way that it in reality rounds off a social closing."

 

Not until the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century thorough upheavals of teaching and upbringing began in the American system .

"The word 'upbringing' meant to Wundt that you 'feed' experiential data into the young brains and nerve systems - but you do not introduce them to the development of a skillful, interior mental life, you do not bring up with the intention to ennoble the intellect".

"The teacher has quite another purpose that means another role, he has become some kind of guide to socialization of the child. He leads every young boy and girl to accept that special behavior, which is ordered by him with the purpose to get the young ones to follow the group. In that development were also the efforts to equalize individual differences to get an uniformed collection of students, which do not know anything about the techniques of the teaching, to think out social patterns of the future, to change courses of study and methods as he likes."

"James Mckeen Cattell did not have the honor of enjoin to be the first student of Wundt, but he was Wundt's first assistant. He was born 1860."

After having got a university degree at Lafayette University (1880), where his father was Rector Mag-nificus, he went abroad to Wundt in Leipzig and asked to be his assistant. Here he got the doctor degree in 1866.

"He was especially known for his fantastic studies of the theme 'reading and spelling'"..."Single individuals can recognize the words without having spelled. From this he concluded that the words are not read by composing the letters, but are being perceived as 'whole word-pictures'...The result was that sound- and spellmethods were excluded from teaching of reading and replace with the word-picture-method".

 

Country wide spreading of his pioneering results and new proposals was promoted by Teachers College at the Columbia University.

 

Later Cattell started a new period, The Psychological Review, and acquired from Alexander Graham Bell the weekly magazine 'Science', as later was developed to American Associations for the Advancement of Science. In 1900 he started Popular Science Monthly, from 1915 he was the publisher of School and Society.

 

He advanced to the highest levels of scientific circles and got 'the new science', the expe-rimental-psychology, extended with secure bastions all over the American university-world.

 

There were more of this kind - read 'The Leipzig Connection' that is a much more complete and well-documented reading of this and many other subjects tied related to this problem. 

James Earl Russell at the Columbia University had acquired the doctor degree in Leipzig in 1894.

He worked closely to Cattell on the quickly expansion and German laboratory psychology in USA Teachers College at the New York University became the place, from which the influence spread out over the whole country.

Edward Lee Thorndike was also a leading figure - also behind Danish, perhaps European, marketing-thoughts too, but that was later on. See in chapter 11.

He was especially interested in animal-experiments. "He defined psychology in this way:

Psychology is the science about the intellect, character and about behavior of animals, the human being included.

 

Thorndike was the first psychologist who studied the behavior of animals in an experimental laboratory. "He used the same technic with children and young people".

As a result of this he published the book 'Educational Psychology' in 1903. And it did not remain by that. The purpose of the upbringing is, Thorndike maintained :

"Upbringing is interested first of all in the common relations between the human being and his en-vironment that make it possible to obtain a better adaptation of the human nature to the environment."

 

The human being is a social animal.

 

Thorndike deliver other very interesting contributions to the American education system:

"... Following the tradition the primary school has primary been dedicated the teaching the fundamental skills: Reading, writing, arithmetic and near related disciplines...artificial exercises as training sound, tables of multiplication and formal writing-exercises that are used in a destructive way. Skills as arithmetic, languages, history include things that are of low value..." "Thorndike's thorough point of view is that children are like animals. They should be given the right influences and excitements, strengthened with supply of pleasures. If the half of the pupils in a school class get a satisfactory result, the experiment must be considered as half a success. That the other half do not learn anything is certainly not the fault of teacher, when the other half have heard the same, and they have been influenced of the same things. There is something wrong with the other half of the class. Psychological tests must decide where the faults of the other half are."

 

Another pioneer named Frederick Taylor Gates got as adviser for John D. Rockefeller Junior, in cooperation with dr. Wallace Buttrick John D. Rockefeller Senior to participate in the financing also to freshen up the business reputation.

 

In 1917 Abraham Flexner from General Education Board supplied an extension of the activities in Teacher's College. He was a scientific researcher at The Carnegie Foundation for Advancement of Teaching in New York City. At the same time he had a good contact to more tax-free foundations with galaxy-large tax-free fortunes[2].

"While Flexner worked at Carnegie Foundation he was requested to make some investigations of the departments of the medical schools in USA and Canada."

 

A combination of German, chemical medicine and the psychology of Wundt on American upbringing was developed by a group of scientific researchers at the John Hopkins University supported by the General Education Board. The heaped measure was reached in 1963 in that 'they proved it solid" to use amphetamines like Dextrines and Ritalin to 'treat' children that were considered 'difficult' or too active. The documentation is found in 'The Myth of the Hyperactive Child, and other Means of Child Control' by Divoky and Schrag.

'The modern school' that Flexner was pleading for from 1916 would not totally abolish literature and history, but new methods were required in these areas. Formal English grammar should be abolished and classical literature should be considered, as if it did not existed.

The new methods triumphed in the mid-1920s, the booming 1920s, where everything appearantly was possible.

 

Dewey's disciple Harold Rugg said:

"... through the schools of the world we shall spread out a new understanding of the government, one that will include all joint human activities, one that points at the necessity of scientific control and brings economic activities to performance in the interest of all peoples."

 

Rugg proposed three ways after which this could be achieved:

"First of all by the development of a new philosophy for the life and the upbringing that will be totally transferred to the new socialistic order, second by the development of a suitable plan to establish a new race of educated workers, third by elaboration of new activities and subject for courses."

There were a lot more of the same or of a 'even more convincing kind'.

 

Around 1953 the psychology of Wundt had reached every school in USA via Teachers College.

 

Schools you have for all of your most formative years. John Taylor Gatts calls them vast laboratories of behavioral modification. Much of the world 'order' rests on this foundation stone of ensuring confor-mity and efficiently preventing too much critical awareness or interest in what is really going on.

 

The Work of Wilhelm Wundt was appreciated

Of other most well-documented readings I must mention 'Klokke (Bell) Roland' in Danish by Johannes Joergensen, published by Pio's Book-Shop, Copenhagen 1916. In this most special reading 93 German personalities of culture are exposed. They certainly did not tell the truth to the public about World War I in 'Proclamation to the world of culture', when they said they did so.

Johannes Joergensen proves this mostly with himself as an primary source.

On page 155 in 'Klokke Roland' you can read:

“What do Beethoven and Goethe have to do with those, who burnt Louvain and bombarded Rheims. And also Kant - 'Kant's Vermächtniss' do you dare to allege - Kant's Testament to the world. But an Eucken, a Wundt (mine: 2 of the 93 named) must know that Kant's Testament, Kant's Perspective was the united states of Europe and the eternal peace”, Johannes Joergensen wrote in 1916. (unquote) 

Never mind, Johannes Joergensen verified, and told the truth about, what was happening in contrast to what the peoples were told about the World War I. So Wundt was exposed as a liar four years before his death. Johannes Joergensen had to leave Denmark, and lived his last years in Italy. His book was a big succes in France, Belgium and Italy.

Johannes among other thing bescribes the uncomprehensible suffering of his family in Belgium that has been accused for an attack on Germany in order to get the war started, and he included copies of original written commands from Berlin to among others the 93 selected ones to lie of what was happening. And the fine culture elite did what they were told to, you see. The book Bell Roland is simply a juvel of documentation.

 

2002:Fills your school child with amphetamin to control it

The consumption of ritalin used on those Danish school chil- dren, who have difficulties to find the "right role to play in NWO-pedagogy" that means transformation of children to social, unified, creatures, who run with the herd, has increased with 40% in just one year. This follows (indirectly) from DR-Texttv-News14-12-2000 You can read articles (in Danish) on the search subject (ritalin) on:www.politiken.dk and on www.berlingske.dk defending the use of ritalin, of course. Click for example the newest articles directly:

http://www.politiken.dk/VisArtikel.sasp?PageID=36546

http://politiken.dk/VisArtikel.sasp?PageID=21522

http://berlingske.dk/artikel:aid=70795

http://berlingske.dk/artikel.aid=70301

and in the periodical Folkeskolen (The Folk School): http://www.folkeskolen.dk/1999/05/anmeldelser/anm05.htm

A Polish-Danish psycologist/physician named Gideon Zlotnik is the only one I have seen on TV distance himself from ritalin given to children (often 13-15 years). If you search on e.g. www.northernlight.com with the word ritalin, you will find several relevant and also critical articles on the matter outside Denmark.

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