Tag Archives: John Dewey

By Dennis L. Cuddy, Ph.D.

There is a great controversy today over the current educational reform movement known as Common Core (CC). Many people have offered specific criticisms of the movement, but they generally look at CC in isolation. However, it is important to understand the back ground of CC, and a good starting point for that begins with the Illuminati, which began on May 1, 1776.

The fundamental purpose of the Illuminati was to do away with existing authority (e.g., monarchical, religious, etc.) and adopt the principle of its founder, Adam Weishaupt, which was that they, the Illuminati or Enlightened, knew what was best for people. The leaders of CC today also believe they know, even better than parents, what is best in education for children in the United States. Relevant to education, certain members of the Illuminati became tutors to princes, who would then become czars, kings, etc. (e.g., Alexander I of Russia) and be under the influence of the Illuminati.

In terms of what we know today as elementary and secondary education, Illuminati member Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (a Swiss, code-named Alfred) had the greatest influence. According to Will Monroe’s HISTORY OF THE PESTALOZZIAN METHOD IN THE UNITED STATES (1907), the educational ideas of Pestalozzi began to be printed in journals and textbooks in the United States in 1806. They began to be used in some school systems, especially in New England where they were viewed favorably be the intelligentsia of Horace Mann’s day. This was the first half of the 1800s, and Mann became known as the “Father of the American Public Education.”

Utopian Socialist Robert Owen visited Pestalozzi at Yverdon, Switzerland in 1818, and applied the Illuminist’s educational principles in Britain and America. In 1825, Owen established the first commune in the United States in New Harmony, Indiana. Joining Owen in 1828 was Frances Wright (formerly Madame Francoise D’Arusmont from France) who, with Owen’s son Robert Dale Owen and Orestes Brownson, formed the Workingmen’s Party in New York.

According to A CONCISE HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC (vol. 1) by Samuel Morison, Henry Steele Commager, and William Leuchtenburg, Frances Wright became “a lecture-platform apostle of…a system which she called ‘National, Rational, Republican Education, Free for All, at the Expense of All, Conducted under the Guardianship of the State,’ apart from the contaminating influence of parents.” After Brownson became a Christian, he revealed in THE WORKS OF ORESTES BROWNSON (20 volumes) that their plan in establishing their political party was as follows: “The great object was to get rid of Christianity, and to convert our churches into halls of science. The plan was not to make open attacks upon religion, although we might belabor the clergy and bring them into contempt where we could; but to establish a system of state—we said national—schools, from which all religion was to be excluded, in which nothing was to be taught except such knowledge as is verifiable by the senses, and to which all parents were to be compelled by law to send their children. Our complete plan was to take the children from their parents at the age of 12 or 18 months, and to have them nursed, fed, clothed, and trained in these schools at the public expense; but at any rate, we were to have godless schools for all the children of the country….The plan has been successfully pursued…,and the whole action of the country on the subject has taken the direction we sought to give it. One of the principal movers of the scheme had no mean share in organizing the Smithsonian Institute.”

Brownson further revealed that the connection between the Workingmen’s Party, Robert Owen (father of Robert Dale Owen), Pestalozzi and Horace Mann is very important. In HORACE MANN: EDUCATIONAL STATESMAN, Heidelberg College (Ohio) Prof. E.I.F. Williams wrote: “The ‘workingmen’s movement’ was an organization of the liberals in opposition to the conservative order….Its members were the radical wing of the Jacksonian democracy. In 1831 a large convention (of the Workingmen’s Party) made up of farmers and workmen was held in Boston….Leaders such as Horace Mann (in Massachusetts)…urged their cause. Education was advanced as the surest and best method of advancing their aspirations….Labor leaders were enthusiastic about education in tax-supported schools….Education soon took first place among the reforms they demanded. They urged the necessity of an ‘equal, universal, republican system of education.’…Reform was the watch-word of the day….More than two hundred communists Utopias were established….For two or three decades, they centered the attention of the country on socialistic and communistic schemes for human betterment. One of the most famous of the communities was established at New Harmony, Indiana by Robert Owen.”

Part 2

In HORACE MANN : EDUCATIONAL STATESMAN, E.I.F. Williams related that Robert Owen “brought William McClure, ‘father of American geology,’ to organize his school. He first introduced the Pestalozzian system into the United States….Later, the Pestalozzian movement spread to other sections (of the country), and among its enthusiastic champions were Horace Mann….Very soon (after New Harmony) another society based on Owen’s principles was begun at Yellow Springs, Ohio, where Antioch College was to be founded.” Horace Mann was president of Antioch College from 1853 until his death on August 2, 1859. In 1837, Mann had established the first “normal” (public) school in the United States as part of his effort to promote non-sectarian education.

In 1848, the COMMUNIST MANIFESTO was published, including Plank No. 10, which provided for a “Combination of education with industrial production” (a type of school-to-work approach). Nine years later in 1857, the National Education Association (NEA, until 1870 called the National Teachers Association) was founded and emphasized the importance of teachers in children’s education. Following this, California State Superintendent of Public Instruction John Swett in 1864 declared: “The vulgar impression that parents have a legal right to dictate to teachers is entirely erroneous….”

In 1879, Illuminati member Kirchenrat Karl Kasimir Wundt’s (code name Raphael) grandson, Wilhelm Wundt established the first laboratory in experimental psychology at the University of Leipzig (Pavlov studied there in 1884). The first of his American students was G. Stanley Hall, who would become John Dewey’s mentor at Johns Hopkins University (where Dewey received his doctorate in 1884). Educational experimentalists James McKeen Cattell, Charles Judd and James Earl Russell also received doctorates from Wundt. Dewey later become known as the “Father of Progressive Education,” even though Dewey himself used that appellation in reference to Francis Parker, who had studied the ideas of Pestalozzi when in Europe.

Twelve years after receiving his doctorate, Dewey established in January 1896 his own laboratory school at the University of Chicago, an institution of higher learning well-endowed by John D. Rockefeller, Sr. This oil magnate in 1902 chartered the General Education Board, and appointed Frederick Gates (a Baptist minister) as chairman. Gates wrote Occasional Letter, No. 1 (published in THE WORLD’S WORK in 1912) in which he remarked: “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.”

On October 12, 1917, THE NEW YORK TIMES published Judge John Hylan’s comments about a letter by Dr. Abraham Flexner (Secretary of the General Education Board and formerly of the Carnegie Foundation describing a “secret conference” of New York City Board of Education’s members to elect a board president who would institute a type of school-to-work outcome-based education program. Five years later, THE NEW YORK TIMES (March 27, 2026) covered a speech by Judge Hylan after he had become mayor of New York City.

In the speech, Mayor Hylan said: “The warning of Theodore Roosevelt has much timeliness today, for the real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, State and nation….The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States Government for their own selfish purposes….These international bankers and Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests control the majority of newspapers and magazines in this country.” Mayor Hylan quoted from Frederick Gates’ paper mentioned above, and then said “This is the kind of education the coolies receive in China, but we are not going to stand for it in these United States. One of my first acts as Mayor was to pitch out, bag and baggage, from the educational system of our city the Rockefeller agents and the Gary plan of education to fit the children for the mill and factory.”

Part 3

Following the theme of the Illuminati and Common Core proponents that “they know what is best for the rest of us,” Arthur Calhoun in `1919 authored the third volume in his series, A SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN FAMILY, which became a widely used social service textbook. In it, he noted that “the child passes more and more into the custody of community experts,” and he also elaborated that “the new view is that the higher and more obligatory relation is to society rather than to the family; the family goes back to the age of savagery while the state belongs to the age of civilization. The modern individual is a world citizen (a view of the Illuminati), served by the world, and home interests can no longer be supreme….As soon as the new family, consisting of only the parents and the children, stood forth, society saw how many were unfit for parenthood and began to realize the need for community care….As familism weakens, society has to assume a larger parenthood.

The school begins to assume responsibility for the functions thrust upon it….The kindergarten grows downward toward the cradle and there arises talk of neighborhood nurseries….It seems clear that at least in its early stages, socialism will mean an increased amount of social control….We may expect in the socialist commonwealth a system of public educational agencies that will begin with the nursery and follow the individual through life….Those persons that experience alarm at the thought of intrinsic changes in family institutions should remember that in the light of social evolution, nothing is right or valuable in itself.” Remember the above references to “cradle” and “follow the individual through life” when reading a later part of this series describing a letter written by National Center on Education and the Economy president Marc Tucker on November 11, 2025 to Hillary Clinton about Bill Clinton’s presidential victory giving them a chance to implement their “cradle to grave” plan for everyone.

In the 1920s, “Father of Progressive Education” (and later National Education Association honorary president) John Dewey went to the Soviet Union and authored an article in the December 5, 2025 edition of THE NEW REPUBLIC, in which he described “the marvelous development of progressive educational ideas and practices under the fostering care of the Bolshevist government…the required collective and cooperative mentality….The great task of the school is to counteract and transform those domestic and neighborhood tendencies…the influence of home and Church….In order to accomplish this end, the teachers must in the first place know with great detail and accuracy just what the conditions are to which pupils are subject in the home (remember this when reading about Common Core’s collection of large amounts of personal data)….One of the most interesting pedagogical innovations…to discover the actual conditions that influence pupils in their out-of-school life…(is using) the themes of written work, the compositions of pupils, and also a detailed study throughout the year of home and family budgets….The institution of the family is being sapped indirectly rather than by frontal attack….There is no word one hears oftener than Gruppe, and all sorts of groups are instituted that militate against the primary social importance of the family unit.

In consequence, to anyone who looks at the matter cold-bloodedly, free from sentimental associations clustering about the historic family institution, a most interesting sociological experimentation is taking place….Our special concern here is with the role of the schools in building up forces and factors whose natural effect is to undermine the importance and uniqueness of family life….The earliest section of the school system, dealing with children from three to seven, aims to keep children under its charge six, eight, and ten hours a day, and in ultimate ideal this procedure is to be universal and compulsory….Reference to this phase of Soviet education may perhaps be suitably concluded by a quotation from Lenin: ‘We must declare openly what is concealed, namely, the political function of the school….It is to construct communist society.'”

The next year (1929), Edward Thorndike (trained by Wundtians in the United States) and Arthur Gates authored ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION, in which one reads: “Traditionally the elementary school has been primarily devoted to teaching the fundamental subjects, the three R’s, and closely related disciplines….Artificial exercises, like drills on phonetics, multiplication tables, and formal writing movements, are used to a wasteful degree. Subjects such as arithmetic, language, and history include content that is intrinsically of little value….”

(In an upcoming part of this series, NEA president Catherine Barrett will make a similar comment in 1973.) Pursuing these “progressive education” attitudes, Thorndike will produce new spellers, math texts, dictionaries, and textbooks on education and educational testing.

A year later (1930), the “Dick and Jane” basal reading series begins, using the “look-say” or “whole word” method of reading instruction Up until this time, there was a high rate of literacy among the people of the United States, but the consequences of “progressive educators” using the “look-say” approach (instead of the highly successful intensive phonics method) will prove disastrous, causing a growing problem of illiteracy.