John Dewey really screwed us up, possibly forever. The Role of ‘Educators’

More of this stupidity is extended into absolute foolishness in films, the likes of "Good Will Hunting."
It is embodied in the rather dull witted actors like Matt Damon, who was Howard Zinn's neighbor. He carries Zinn's Communist baggage into his films, now exemplified in the anti-fracking propaganda film: 'Promised Land'. "Green" has replaced "Red" Communist style for central planning and control. 
Schools once taught the young how to read, calculate, English grammar, factual history and some basic sciences were also taught. 
Find a 19th Century Grammar School Primer and see how comprehensive and how much basic hard work they include. They left the freedom of thought to the individual, not to the politically driven communal curricula. America was once nearly 100% literate with very few college educated individuals.
Now it is almost the inverse.
Actually, the individual was once celebrated, unfortunately, that is not the case today. m/r

The Role of ‘Educators’ - Thomas Sowell - National Review Online
What Dewey wrought.

By Thomas Sowell  January 8, 2013

Many years ago, as a young man, I read a very interesting book about the rise of the Communists to power in China. In the last chapter, the author tried to explain why and how this had happened.

Among the factors he cited were the country’s educators. That struck me as odd and not very plausible at the time. But the passing years have made that seem less and less odd and more and more plausible. Today, I see our own educators playing a similar role in creating a mindset that undermines American society.

Schools were once thought of as places where a society’s knowledge and experience were passed on to the younger generation. But, about a hundred years ago, Professor John Dewey of Columbia University came up with a very different conception of education — one that has spread through American schools and even influenced education in countries overseas.

John Dewey saw the role of the teacher not as a transmitter of a society’s culture to the young, but as an agent of change — someone strategically placed with an opportunity to condition students to want a different kind of society.

A century later, we are seeing schools across America indoctrinating students to believe in all sorts of politically correct notions. The history that is taught in too many of our schools is a history that emphasizes everything that has gone bad, or can be made to look bad, in America — and that gives little, if any, attention to the great achievements of this country.

If you think that is an exaggeration, get a copy of A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn and read it. As someone who used to read translations of official Communist newspapers in the days of the Soviet Union, I know that those papers’ attempts to degrade the United States did not sink quite as low as Howard Zinn’s book.

-read on at link-