Summary: It's a shocking story. Our educators betrayed everything they should have defended. Who would imagine that so-called educators would undermine education? Why, and how, did they do it?

Symptoms of educational malfeasance are everywhere in America: rising illiteracy, high dropout rates, dyslexia, and young adults who are ignorant of even simple facts (such as where New York might be on a map). Doesn't it sometimes seem that our educators don't genuinely believe in what they profess to care about?

My research turned out to have two sides. First, I had to determine if, in fact, whole word is a fraud. But if it is, then the mystery just grows. What kind of people would use a tool or a medicine that damages far more people than it helps? Here's the relationship between the two sides: the intellectual incoherence of whole word throws light on the moral bankruptcy of the perpetrators. Without whole word, we could suppose these people were bumblers making innocent mistakes. With a bogus reading pedagogy factored in, we are forced to consider more vicious motives.

My conclusions are contained in a disturbing report titled "A Tribute to Rudolph Flesch," which is item #21 on Improve-Education.org. Invest twenty minutes and you'll understand the pathology in American education. Especially, parents with children in public schools should read this. However, for all of you with just a few minutes to spare, here's the short short version:

We're looking at a huge complex saga unfolding over many decades but the basics are simple enough. Our top educators circa 1900 decided that American students really did not need so much reading, writing, and arithmetic, not to mention science, history, geography and all the rest. What American students needed was more group activities and social engineering. These educators drew up a blueprint for greater conformity and passivity, with the right people in control. The right people were, of course, themselves. One problem. Nobody in America was interested in such a program. How do you push it through?

Our early educators decided they would first take control of the teachers colleges. The country's future teachers could be radicalized and sent to the small towns of America, where they would reprogram (i.e., dumb down) the public schools and what was taught there. These "progressive" teachers would create a New American Child--more uniform, more pliable, with fewer academic skills, and a reduced ability to think independently.

On the local level, one tactic more than any other made the entire campaign possible, because the effects of this tactic permeate every school activity. This idea was a preemptive attack on literacy itself. The audacity is breathtaking (cf. Pearl Harbor). How could they do this? Simple. Pretend to teach reading but use a method that doesn't work. Begun in earnest in early 1900's, the war against literacy was relentlessly fought for 100 years under the banners of look-say, whole word, etc. People are dumbfounded that educators would try to undercut this essential skill. But the evidence is overwhelming that whole word simply cannot work, and that educators had to know this. Memorizing 800 words a year for 12 years is slow and tedious, and means you're still effectively illiterate at college age. That's evidently what our educators wanted: to slow everything down. All of their schemes had the same goal: to level the population.

Recall the famous government report titled A NATION AT RISK (1983). A huge panel of experts said that what our educators perpetrated was what an enemy country might try to do to us. Exactly. But that comment is incredibly hard for the average citizen to take in. Why would so-called educators be such saboteurs? Short answer: they were ideologues. They didn't like the USA they lived in. They wanted to change it into something else. Imagine a gang of mini-Lenins and you have the idea.

Bottom line: the problems in American education are not accidents of nature; they are not tribulations that must be put up with. The problems are theory-driven and educator-devised. In short, foolish men sat around a table and plotted to make these terrible things happen.

I should acknowledge that dozens of smart people have already written about the failures of American education. I have picked up insights from many sources (some of which are listed at the end of my report). What sets my expose apart is that it is sweeping (the time frame is a century) but compact.

A Tribute to Rudolph Flesch" is divided into three sections. Part I is a careful analysis of why look-say or whole word was a fraud. Parts II and III broaden out into an intellectual history of American education, neatly tying together John Dewey's bizarre theories, parallels with Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World," and the double-whammy effect produced by the Communist Revolution.

American students don't do well when compared to students from other countries. We have tens of millions of functional illiterates. Businesses have to invest billions in remedial programs. Signs of failure and despair are common. It's time to stop the slide. American education will improve when enough people realize why our educators went over to the dark side. It's time to bring them back.
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For the Complete Report - Please see #21: A Tribute to Rudolph Flesch on Improve-Education.org.

Bruce Price - is the founder of Improve-Education.org, a lively intellectual site with articles on Latin, birds, Pavlov, phonics, sophistry, 1984, the assault on math, design, teaching science, why our educators do a bad job, and much more.

Bruce Price's fifth book is "THE EDUCATION ENIGMA--What Happened To American Education." (Available on Amazon.)

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