Sixteenth Report
SENATE INVESTIGATING COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
CURRICULUM CHANGE
Published by the Senate of the State of California
See also A Double-Headed System: A History of K-12 Governance in California and Options for Restructuring, California Research Bureau
Notice, in the following statements, the same buzzwords and concepts that permeate Goals 2000 -- the US branch of UNESCO's global education management system. (Our Glossary would help you compare today's education philosophy with its seventy-year-old roots in a California agenda)
It's not surprising that the transition to "lifelong" global education began so long ago, when you consider that socialist John Dewey, who inspired and engineered changes in the USA education, was also working with British socialist change agents such as Aldous and Julian Huxley. As the first Secretary of UNESCO, Julian Huxley laid the foundation for a system that would mold the minds of the masses in preparation for the envisioned Brave New World.
Introduction:
"read further and evaluate the very extensive changes that are developing in educational methods and objectives...
California Blue Bulletin/California State Dept. of Education, September 1919, page 5.
"California is one hundred percent literate."
Californian Blue Bulletin, June 1920, page 4:
"I confess that I am becoming somewhat perturbed by certain tendencies in our schools that are anything but conservative. It would seem that the young people enrolled in some of our high schools have adopted not only a bill of rights but also a declaration of independence.... Has authority been banished in these later days? Is there still such a things as discipline? Has the world reached a point where it will condone the formation of pupil soviets?'
No school worthy of the name can exist unless the principle of respect for authority is observed. No school can exist without discipline, without subordination of pupils to reasonable rules and regulations. Anarchy in school means anarchy in the nation later on...."
"In 1918, a committee was appointed to study reorganization of the public school system to meet changing needs. The quotations relative to this committee are from the June, 1918 issue of the California Blue Bulletin, pages 1-2.
"At its last meeting the State board of Education appointed a committee on the reorganization of the public schools system...." [19]
"The idea of social equality was urged by some.... as in the following quotation from Edwin R. Snyder, CA State Commissioner of Industrial and Vocational Education. See the December 1919 issue of the CBB, page 13:
The ideal of democracy is social equality... It is, however, the business of every real democrat to promote such equality. The future of social democracy and democratic government depend solely upon the degree of co-operation that may be attained by the people acting as whole, and social distinctions stand in the way of such co-operation.
"The function of the public schools is to educate for the duties of citizenship. One of the most important duties is that of being a real democratic. The good citizen must be democratic in all this thought and all his actions....." [20]
Teacher's guide to Child Development, 1930, pages 9-10:
"If teachers see only the outward forms and miss the spirit of the 'new education', much will be lost.... The most important factor in the elementary school is the teacher, and the fact of supreme significance about the teacher is her fundamental philosophy of life and of education.
"Improvement in school practice, therefore, implies fort of all gradual acceptance of new conceptions of the meaning of education, and a sane effort to grow progressively in the application of the newer principles. Modifications of administrative relationships, of teaching technique... grow out of changed points of view as the values of new procedures are made evident through actual trial." [21]
"What were these changed procedures and changed points of view? This question can best be answered by examining material from the 1930 Teachers' Guide to Child Development...." [22-23]
This group of representative educators concluded that there was urgent need for a comprehensive consideration of the entire world of the primary grades, which should clarify for teachers generally the education philosophy and the actual operation of a school program based upon rich and carefully guided experiences, and contrasted with that based upon more tradition, logical, formal organization of school subjects..." pages xvii, xviii
Subject matter has no values or meaning apart from experience." page 8.
The teacher's function is to deal with the whole child, his development and his adjustment to life with all its complexity.... Adjustment is difficult, a life-long process. [page 4]
Guidance of children's activities is necessary... It is the teacher's great privilege to discover the interest and purposes of children, to guide in the selection of these which will offer opportunities for riches experiences and be most fruitful of desirable growth in those attitudes, habits, skills..... [23]
The teacher helps them through hints to realize the need for these and to develop a cooperative group spirit. [44]
The teacher is a real member of the group. She participates with the children in group discussion.... She does not dominate... but allows children to take the initiative, to assume responsibility and exercise their judgment as far as they are capable.... She unobtrusively but skillfully guides all the activities of the classroom." [44]
Through these times of experiencing and exploring the teacher is a member of the group, learning with them.... She studies the group carefully to find interests, needs, capacities. She is alert always to discover leads to worthwhile group activity.... [348
Child monitors were in charge of the room at all times, the teacher making herself more and more unnecessary. We try to have one hundred percent self-government. [340]
The development of self-control requires that we learn to act according to the standards of conduct which have meaning to us... [52
Dr. John Dewey gave the following clear statement of the test of a good activity: '...The test of a good project is whether it is sufficiently full and complex to demand a variety of responses from different children and permit each to go at it and make his contribution in a way which is characteristic of himself...." [87]
"...both first and second grade children will profit from simple activities which will help them find out how ... community helpers contribute the the welfare of the group.... 161
"Many interests of children relating to home and family life led naturally to a consideration of the family's dependence upon the community life...." [209]
"Sympathetic understanding of the lives and problems of other people--knowledge of the manner of living, their homes, their occupations, their traditions, their recreations, their holidays and festivities, their music, their art...-- offers the most encouraging hope for future world cooperation, progress and peace....
"...and the 1936 Teachers' Guide to Child Development in the Intermediate Grades:
To be finished later
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