My High School’s Drift from Excellence Reflects the Progressives’ Corruption of Public Education

Regarding public education, it is past due time to educate, not brainwash school children.

Anthony J. DeBlasi  "The public high school in Brooklyn, New York that I attended in the late 1940s had a student population of 10% black and 90% white from families of Italian, Irish, German, Jewish, Polish, British and other ethnic origin. Attendance and graduation exceeded 90% [information from my yearbook and other records.] The principal of Bushwick High School opened assemblies with the reading of a Psalm. The music teacher played the auditorium’s pipe organ and conducted the school orchestra and chorus in very challenging music. The baseball coach hired Ebbets Field from the Brooklyn Dodgers for the school’s important games. The Metropolitan Museum of Art sent art works to the school for temporary exhibit. The Mayor of New York occasionally presented a scholarship award at City Hall to an outstanding student. The school’s yearbook won an award for excellence in a nationwide contest.

"The tests we had to pass in order to advance and graduate would stump many today, I’m sure. We had a bewildering assortment of clubs including Latin, chess, reporters, religious, a club for excellence in scholarship, a rifle team, and extracurricular outreach to community for a variety of worthy projects . . . with et ceteras that today could spell trouble.

"Was Bushwick High a special school in its day? I can report, having grown up in New York City, that it reflected the quality of the city’s public schools in the 1940s. " . . . 

. . . "Quick answer: early 20th century Marxist educators led by John Dewey the “father of progressive education,” dared “build a new social order.” And they succeeded.

"For a broader answer, check out what John Dewey was up to and how his ideas ruined public education.

"For a full history of what gave America’s public schools the mission to groom Americans for a socialist society, see the book written by President Reagan’s Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, Charlotte Iserbyt: The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America."

Anthony J. DeBlasi is a veteran and lifelong defender of Western culture.