John Dewey was an American philosopher, progressive, and a psychologist who was largely responsible for destroying education in America.  In 1916 he founded the American Federation of Teachers.  He was a pluperfect elitist who promoted social engineering to establish a new social order and believed this could be accomplished through education in American schools, where his ideology is now firmly entrenched.

To most easily indoctrinate and manipulate children, he found a way to eliminate critical thought skills.  Dewey writes:

The purpose of education should not revolve around the acquisition of a pre-determined set of skills, but rather the realization of one's full potential and the ability to use those skills for the greater good. (My Pedagogic Creed, 1897) The mere absorption of facts and truths is so exclusively an individual affair that it tends very naturally to pass into selfishness. There is no obvious social motive for the acquirement of mere learning, there is no clear social gain in success thereat. (The School and Society, 1899)

Dewey's goal was not to inform students with what they needed to learn, but to tell them what to think.  He believed that cooperation, sociology, and psychology provided all that is needed for a good life.  His fraudulent vision was godless, without religion and real education, and thoroughly anti-family.

Dewey's influence reverberates throughout American culture.  He ridiculed the eternal verities such as honor, patriotism, faith.  Regarding the teaching of young children, he instituted the "look-say" method, where children are taught a word over and over again until they memorize its shape, not the letters that make the shape.  They are not taught the alphabet or to sound a word out or build it from letters.  Why is this bothersome?  For decades, it has been known that English is a phonetic language, but Dewey was expecting children to "acquire sight vocabularies of 50,000 words."  That is not realistic without a computer in one's brain.  His method failed upward.

Dewey's ideas decimated reading skills to such a degree that in 1955, Dr. Rudolph Flesch published Why Johnny Can't Read.  The problem endures to this day because of the acceptance of Dewey's ideas by the teachers of America.  His progressive ideology was really social engineering designed to inject socialism into America.  While his "look-say" method failed, his foray into socialism was successful.  But there was a problem: few people in America wanted his changes.  And yet, his influence can be seen everywhere.  American educator Bruce Deitrick Price writes:

John Dewey, the world-famous educator, was retained circa 1920 by the new Russian government to advise on the implementation of his progressive ideas throughout the USSR. Circa 1932, the communist government realized that Dewey's progressive education had created a generation of ignorant delinquents. The Communists in Russia banished Dewey's ideas from the country. Meanwhile, the communists et al in the United States celebrated Dewey and his policies.

Dewey's unapologetic progressive indoctrination is still informing the radical left, whose members avoid serious education in favor of everything that dumbs down children.

In his latest iteration, we have the Ibram Kendi/Nikole Hannah-Jones methods of dividing children into sexualized and racialized camps where one group is taught not mathematics, reading, and civics, nor how to write or think, but to hate the child next to him for being white, straight, or smart.  It's about feelings, not knowledge.

Children are not allowed to have a childhood of play and laughter and exploration.  They are told what to think, what to do, how to act, and all of it with an angry tension that children should not be exposed to.  American government schools are overrun with progressives teaching Dewey's ideas.

The post-Dewey generations are so willing to tear down statues, eliminate patriotism, rewrite history, ridicule God, suppress dissent, cancel, and do violence.  Nothing holds them back because nothing that should be carved in stone, is.  Nothing is true, nothing is "good," nothing is sacred.  And so, nothing is of value.

Hate is taught to children who should be sharing toys and learning how to care about one another.  Where they should be learning compromise, they are taught brute force.  Where love should be, there is prejudice.  Where knowledge should be, there is the gauzy, undisciplined world of unreality and lies, where boys can be girls and men can get pregnant and everything is rainbow-colored.

Dewey, with his disdain for truth, honor, patriotism, and faith, is educating from the grave.

Image: Florida Keys — Public Libraries.