Bibliography of Criticism of Public Schools and Colleges

One of the books on my bookshelf is a little volume from 1922 called Free Thought and Official Propaganda by Bertrand Russell. It is an first printing of the Crowley Memorial Lecture that Mr. Russell gave on 24 March 1922 at the South Place Institute. 

I was prompted to review the book because of the widespread influence of "cancel culture" that has been occurring in public discourse. It's interesting that Mr. Russell recognized early on, more than two decades before Orwell's 1984 made waves, that there is a tendency to pressure people to conform to certain ideas. The pressure comes in a variety of forms, and it is unhealthy. 

That, however, is not the subject of this blog post. On the empty page that precedes the title page of this little book someone penned a list with the heading Bibliography of Criticism of Public Schools and Colleges. 

The other night I searched online to see if I could find any of these volumes. The answer is that most are quite hard to find or too expensive to consider purchasing in order to quench my curiosity. Nevertheless, I did take notes, did a little cut and paste work so that others, if interested, could get a feel for some of the attitudes toward public education about a century ago.

Here's what I found.

The Goose-Step
Upton Sinclair (1923)
It is an investigation into the consequences of plutocratic capitalist control of American colleges and universities. Sinclair writes, “Our educational system is not a public service, but an instrument of special privilege; its purpose is not to further the welfare of mankind, but merely to keep America capitalist."

"I talked with another professor at Chicago, who does not want his name used. I asked him what he thought about the status of his profession, and he gave the best description of academic freedom in America that I have yet come upon. He said, 'We are good cows; we stand quietly in our stanchions, and give down our milk at regular hours. We are free, because we have no desire to do anything but what we are told we ought to do. And we die of premature senility.'" (p. 247)

University Control
J.M. Cattell (1913)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

https://books.google.com/books/about/University_Control.html?id=FJTewwEACAAJ

Cattell remains famous for his contributions in intelligence testing, as well as his work on individual differences in perception and reaction times.

Like many eminent scientists and scholars of the time, Cattell's thought was influenced by belief in eugenics, defined as the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population, usually referring to human populations."^[6] Cattell's belief in eugenics was heavily influenced by the research of Charles Darwin, whose theory of evolution motivated Cattell's emphasis on studying “the psychology of individual differences”.

Free Thought and Official Propaganda
Bertrand Russell

Of this I plan to write at least one or two future blog posts on aspects of the book.

The Goslings
Upton Sinclair
https://www.amazon.com/Goslings-Study-American-Schools/dp/1162796359

Cicero Brian wrote: Socialist Upton Sinclair penned this withering critique of government (a.k.a. "public") schools in the early 1920s. He realized, as Hitler, the Jesuits, and any else interested in controlling or influencing a society does, that schools are where the young clay is molded. Perhaps the best review of it was written by the great the libertarian intellect H.L. Mencken in the April, 1924 issue of The American Mercury (url: [...]). He recommended the book heartily, noting that it "presents an engrossing, instructive, and, if allowance be made for the author's indignation, highly amusing record of chicanery and imbecility--a vast chronicle of wasted money, peanut politics and false pretenses," but pointing out a serious flaw, "an erroneous assumption" from which "springs... a great deal of false reasoning and vain indignation." (Read about that flaw from Mencken himself.)

Many people, including yours truly, have long researched and warned about the conspiracy that has long gripped the American education system; among them, John Taylor Gatto is arguably the single most valuable. Named NY City Teacher of the Year in 1989, 1990, and 1991, and NY State Teacher of the Year in 1991, he gradually realized that our schools were doing more harm than good. Having the ear of the top education officials in the nation because he rubbed elbows with them, he initially assumed his ideas for improving the schools would be welcome. When he found out that they weren't, Gatto quickly realized that our schools were not, as he had naively assumed, broken; they were working as designed. He quit teaching in 1991 and has been waging guerrilla warfare on gov't schooling ever since. 

Humanizing Education
Samuel Schmalheusen

https://www.nytimes.com/1927/11/06/archives/indicting-education-humanizing-education-by-samuel-d-schmalhausen.html

Summary of review: https://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=ijp.008.0441a

The Law of the Jungle Chap IX ff
Coburn Allen

https://gulokywymyzuku.hotseattleseahawksjerseys.com/law-of-the-jungle-book-26675jm.php

The Higher Learning in America
Thorsten Veblen (1926)

Probably the best-known fact about The Higher Learning in America by Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) is that the author’s original subtitle for it was “A Study in Total Depravity.” By the time the book finally appeared in print in 1918, the wording had been changed to “A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men,” which gives the reader a clearer sense of the contents, albeit at a considerable loss in piquancy.

https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2015/04/15/review-thorstein-veblen-higher-learning-america-first-annotated-edition

What’s Wrong with American Education
David Snedden (1927)

https://web.stanford.edu/~dlabaree/publications/How_Dewey_Lost.pdf

Many of the battles in education today are the same ones faced a century ago. 

The Education of Henry Adams
Henry Adams

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Education_of_Henry_Adams

The Education of Henry Adams is an autobiography that records the struggle of Bostonian Henry Adams (1838–1918), in his later years, to come to terms with the dawning 20th century, so different from the world of his youth. It is also a sharp critique of 19th-century educational theory and practice. In 1907, Adams began privately circulating copies of a limited edition printed at his own expense. Commercial publication of the book had to await its author's 1918 death, whereupon it won the 1919 Pulitzer Prize. The Modern Library placed it first in a list of the top 100 English-language nonfiction books of the 20th century.

What Is and What Might Be
Edmond Holmes (1911)

http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/holmes/

The Standardization of Error
Vilhjalmur Stefansson

This thin tome is a seminal work on how we humans tend to cloud up topics of interest with utterly innane 'facts,' and how the folks who do so are like the proverbial ostrich with its head in the sand, a behavior *never* observed in Nature.

Nonetheless, the allusion has progressed to an extremely useful rhetorical 'shorthand" of sorts, that far transcends its untruthful beginnings. A VERY good read, which will take you years to fully 'grok.'

Fads & Fallacies in Present Day Education
H. E. Bucholtz

https://www.questia.com/library/594271/fads-and-fallacies-in-present-day-education

NRA Response To Newtown Tragedy Is Absurd

This gun only shoots ink, skin deep.

This past spring, I had a first had experience with the consequences of budget cuts in our schools. The Duluth school board was once again wrestling with their financial straits and was striving to determine what to cut. Members of a loose affiliation of artists made appeals to the school board not to cut music and arts from the schools, one of the items on the table. The debate was real because state and federal funds are being diverted to other programs and in other directions. And Duluth is not the only community dealing with this problem of limited funds.

Within seconds doing a Google search you can find over a million articles about budget cuts in our nation’s schools. Schools have historically been battleground for our children’s futures. School boards agonize over how thin to spread the gravy. Here’s an excerpt from just one such report addressing this matter titled
Starving America’s Public Schools: How Budget Cuts and Policy Mandates Are Hurting Our Nation’s Students.

New austerity budgets passed by state legislatures are starting to have a huge influence on direct services to children, youth, and families. There is widespread evidence that the education funding cuts are leading to:

• Massive cuts to early childhood education programs (pre-K and kindergarten);
• Huge class sizes in many subjects, reaching levels that are upsetting parents and potentially damaging students’ education;
• An end to art, music, physical education, and other subjects considered to be part of a well-rounded education;
• Cuts in specialized programs and/or hefty fees for them. Some of these programs serve students with developmental issues or those who need more individualized attention. They also include extra-curricular activities such as band and sports as well as academic offerings in science, foreign language, technology, and Advanced Placement subjects.

Against this backdrop my jaw dropped when I heard the NRA recommendation to place a trained, armed officer in every school. This NRA response to place an armed officer in every school in America shows a complete disconnect with what has been happening in our schools. Did the NRA leadership really spend a week of deliberation to come up with this response.

I agree with Michael Mayo, Sun Sentinel Columnist, who wrote

Dear NRA,
Really? This is how you're going to respond? With the same tired cliches? By doubling down on guns (a weapon in every schoolhouse!), ramping up the fear, and not even broaching the possibility of some common-sense restrictions on rapid-fire guns and ammunition to keep the carnage in check?

The full article carries this headline: NRA shoots self with brazen response to Sandy Hook.

To get an idea of how many armed guards would be needed in Duluth alone, I did a count of how many schools we have here... 9 public elementary schools, 2 public middle schools, 2 public high schools, 4 charter schools, 6 alternative public schools, 4 Catholic schools, 4 private non-Catholic schools, and the independent Marshall school for a total of 32 schools. Hiring 32 more personnel will not solve the problem of overcrowded classrooms here. I know of communities that have no police at all because they can't afford them. Now they'll be required to have them in their schools?

The response to the tragedy that I did like this week is pictured below. Former school board member Harry Welty has a reputation locally of making an annual snow sculpture on his front yard at 21st Avenue East and 4th Street. They are usually quite creative and often make the local papers. This year Welty's sculpture was designed to honor the Sandy Hook shooting victims.