Developing the Character of a Nation’ s Citizens
Developing the Character of a Nation’ s Citizens
By David Lantz
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For over a century, the public schools of the United States used the McGuffey Reader to instill the“ private morality” Washington had called for during his first inaugural address. But beginning in the 1920s, a movement arose to remove free market economics and Christianity from what was taught to our young people. In 1934, Willard E. Givens issued this statement in a report titled“ Education for the New America” during the Proceedings of the 72nd Annual Meeting of the National Education Association:
“ A dying laissez-faire must be completely destroyed and all of us, including the owners, must be subjected to a large amount of social control. A large section of our discussion group, accepting the conclusions of distinguished students, maintain that in our fragile, interdependent society, the credit agencies, the basic industries, and utilities cannot be centrally planned and operated under private ownership.
… Hence, they will join in creating a swift nationwide campaign of adult education which will support President Roosevelt in taking these over and operating them at full capacity as a unified national system in the interests of all of the people.”
Another participant in this movement was Norman Woelfel, a PhD candidate who studied under Dr. George Counts( part of a national commission to redesign the teaching of social studies in the US) and Dr. John Dewey( creator of the Dewey Decimal system). In 1934, Woelfel published his doctoral dissertation in book form. His book, called“ Molders of the American Mind,” was a review of 17 prominent educators of that day. Near the end of his book, Woelfel concluded:
The things of highest value for individual experience and for ethical standards in modern America will not, however, be found out so long as intellectual leaders maintain sensitivity over the supernatural significance of Christian mythology or a sentimental personal attachment to the character of Jesus.( Emphasis added. Woelfel, Norman. Molders of the American Mind: A Critical Review of the Social Attitudes of Seventeen Leaders in American Education.( Columbia University Press: New York), 1934, pp. 205, 229.)
Today, except in some home school and church school programs, the McGuffey Readers are no longer used. Space does not permit the tracking of how efforts by progressive educationalists led to the removal of Christianity’ s influence in public education.
Suffice it to say that by the middle of the 20th century, schools switched to readers like“ Dick and Jane which no longer taught the Bible stories. Test scores began to drop, along with a moral decline of our youth and a rising crime rate.”
As a result, in 2016, like the Israelites of old, America has witnessed the rise of a new generation that, in the words of Judges 2:10,“ grew up who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel.”
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