"In May 1898, Dewey published his seminal essay, “The Primary-Education Fetich,” which was to guide the progressives in their long-range crusade to remake American education as an instrument to bring about socialism. He wrote:
There is … a false educational god whose
idolators are legion, and whose cult influences the entire educational
system. This is language study — the study not of foreign language, but
of English; not in higher, but in primary education. It is almost an
unquestioned assumption, of educational theory and practice both, that
the first three years of a child’s school-life shall be mainly taken up
with learning to read and write his own language. If we add to this the
learning of a certain amount of numerical combinations, we have the
pivot about which primary education swings....
… It does not follow, however, that
because this course was once wise it is so any longer. On the contrary,
the fact that this mode of education was adapted to past conditions, is
in itself a reason which it should no longer hold supreme sway.... My
proposition is, that conditions — social, industrial, and intellectual —
have undergone such a radical change, that the time has come for a
thoroughgoing examination of the emphasis put upon linguistic work in
elementary instruction....
… The plea for the predominance of
learning to read in early school-life because of the great importance
attaching to literature seems to me a perversion.... No one can clearly
set before himself the vivacity and persistency of the child’s motor
instincts at this period, and then call to mind the continued grind of
reading and writing, without feeling that the justification of our
present curriculum is psychologically impossible. It is simply
superstition: it is the remnant of an outgrown period of history."
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