| Wednesday,
August 1, 2001
From: Stephen M. St. Onge
saintonge@hotmail.com
Subject: the Dewey debate: interim report
Dear Jerry:
Well, I am still plowing through Dewey, and it is
possible that I will change my mind, but my preliminary assessment is that
I was about 99% accurate in my original contention. (Previous installments
of the Dewey debate are at: http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/mail158.html#Dewey
, http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/mail159.html#Dewey
, http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/mail160.html#Dewey
, http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/mail160.html#Dewey2
, & http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/mail161.html#Dewey
)
A story (quotes approx.): Management consultant Tom
Peters gave a lecture stressing the importance of business people
listening to and learning from their customers. Afterwards, one attendee
asked Peters, "So what do I do?" Peters started to repeat the
lecture, and the young man interrupted, "No, what do I DO?"
After thinking a minute, Peters said, "Invite ten customers to
dinner. Ask them what they think of your business. Listen." What did
John Dewey do, and want others to do?
1) Dewey received a traditional education. He
completed elementary and high school in eight years, enrolled at the
University of Vermont at age sixteen, died at the age of ninety-three
(93), and was recognized as USAmerica's foremost philosopher. He spent
nearly his whole life in academia, and his collected works fill 37
volumes, not counting correspondence. While apparently this suited him, he
disparaged it as harmful for the majority.
2) Dewey taught high school for two years,
1879-1881, then went on to graduate studies. In 1896, he founded an
experimental school at the University of Chicago , and ran it for eight
years. It had, at peak, 140 students, all white, with parents from the
professional class (many were his colleagues at the U. of Chi.) They were
taught by 23 teachers and 10 graduate student assistants, and of course,
Dewey, the Director of the school, was a high genius. The students had
parents who were enthusiastic about his ideas, and Dewey set his own goals
for what constituted education, changed them as he pleased, and evaluated
his own performance. On the basis of these experiences, and 'booklearning,'
he thought himself competent to prescribe an educational system for the
nation.
3) Dewey was an admirer of Rousseau, an advocate of
socialism, and defender of the Soviet Union from Lenin's coup d'etat
through the mid thirties. He was comfortable with the USSR's purges and
secret police as long as they were directed at 'kulaks' and 'nepmen'
(successful farmers and businessmen, respectively), and didn't see
anything wrong with the ideological indoctrination of Soviet schools when
they were pushing ideas he agreed with. He turned against Moscow when
Stalin began purging the Party elites and intellectuals who were his
friends and champions.
4) Dewey spent much time talking about 'democracy.'
He wanted schools to advance 'democracy' by promoting the right attitudes
in children and gradually reshaping society in the proper socialist
course. Little of his work seems to be concerned with allowing the
citizenry to vote on matters of concern to them.
5) Dewey talks a lot about science, experimental
method, gathering data, testing things, etc. He doesn't bother to do much,
if any, questioning of his basic assumptions, makes endless unsupported
assertions, cites hardly any sources, and buttresses his theories of
education with rather dubious history and psychology. He engages in near
constant ad hominem against his opponents, and stoops in places to
outright lying, as when he called Thomas Hutchins and Mortimer Adler
admirers of Hitler.
6) Dewey's theoretical philosophic position is
anti-dualist, but when the chips are down, there's a simple equation of
'good, Progressive, modern, secular, pro-socialist' thought vs. 'bad,
reactionary, antiquated etc.' opponents.
7) Dewey talks about intellectual growth and the
linking of experience to studies. He contends that you can link manual
labor to academic studies, to the great enrichment of the student. Dewey
says he wants an abolition of class distinction, with every child educated
as far as he can go. He seems to have done this, too, when teaching the
children of privilege at his Laboratory School. But when he praises other
schools (see e.g. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~infed/e-texts/school-as-social-settlement.htm
, from his Schools of Tomorrow, 1915), the academic content is missing,
while the manual skills get emphasized. But then, the children at this
school are all black. Dewey offered rhetorical opposition, occasionally,
to those who were dumbing down the curriculum, but also frequently praised
them. He was consistent only in his hostility to the traditional academic
courses.
Although there's frequent reference to Dewey's
critics as 'conservatives,' many of them were also left-wingers. The
'conservative' William Torrey Harris, U. S. Commissioner of Education,
wanted to put less emphasis on the classic curriculum, while establishing
modern languages and science as equal in value for college preparation.
Harris wanted a vast expansion in the number and enrollment of secondary
schools, and wanted to teach _the same academic curriculum to all high
school students_, both those who already knew they'd be studying law or
becoming college professors, and those who were going to be working on
farms and in factories. (The only difference would be in what particular
languages students chose to study.) Harris thought this would be
particularly beneficial to those who would never use these academic
subjects once in their adult occupations, and when charged with educating
the lower classes to be dissatisfied with their station in life, he said
he certainly hoped so.
Dewey opposed Harris and his allies in the early
1900s, just as he opposed Thomas Hutchins and Mortimer Adler in the 1930s
when they proposed to teach the _hoi polloi_ out of the same texts he'd
read in the University, the "Great Books of the Western World."
Instead, Dewey wanted to connect school work to the children's life
experiences and pre-existing interests -- leaving unmentioned that
children from different social classes would have different experiences
and interests, automatically self-sorting the lower classes into their
slots as hewers of wood and drawers of water, and his class's children
onto the fast track for power. Apparently, 'democracy' consists in _not_
making the same education available to all.
So, Dewey is yet another of the plague of left-wing
bait-and-switch artists who promised to free people from the chains of
traditional society, level class distinctions, and make it possible for
all to rise -- while actually stamping out whatever liberty, equality, and
opportunity exist. Like Rousseau, Dewey wanted to smash existing society
because he and his fellow intellectuals weren't in charge of it. The
present state of US-American education is neither an accident nor a
perversion of his ideas. In my arrogant opinion, it's what he wanted.
Best, Stephen
From the Anderson family:
Poul Anderson died at home near midnight, Tuesday
July 31, 2001. He had come home that day to receive hospice care after
kidney failure brought on by prostate cancer.
His last day was spent with family and friends. He
enjoyed his final meals, and especially a Jubilaeum akvavit and Carlsberg
beer.
He was pleased and warmed by the many e-mails he
received from friends and strangers around the world who had been touched
by his writing.
Special thanks go to Diana Paxson, Geoff Kidd, and
Gerry Nordley, who helped greatly in his homecoming.
A memorial gathering is planned for 2pm, Saturday,
August 4 at the First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th Street,
Oakland.
"In lieu of flowers, donations are requested to the SFWA Emergency
Medical Fund c/o Chuck Rothman, SFWA Treasurer, 1436 Altamount Ave.,
PMB
292, Schenectady, PA 12303-2977"
Karen Anderson writes:
Integer Vitae
In Poul's last hours, messages poured in from
strangers who told how they had learned honor and courage from his
writing, courtesy and kindness from his personal example. Such tributes
cannot be awarded, but only earned.
He led his life without expecting to gain rewards or
escape punishment in some other existence. He knew that good and evil
arise from human nature, and believed it is our duty to choose the good.
He was, in the words of the poet Horace, "integer vitae sclerisque
purus" -- a man of blameless life and free of crime.
From Dan Spisak:
Jerry,
Take a look here at the SANS Institue's tracking of
the re-emergence of the CodeRed worm:
http://www.incidents.org/
As you can see it's only Day 1 and they think
136,000 sites are infected. That is anywhere from 1/2 to 1/3rd of the
total suspected number of infected systems from last months round. This
round will also be worse due to an improved version of the worm that has a
much better random IP address generation scheme then the original version
did. Just to give some idea, as of 4PM my box has been hit by 11 others
trying to infect it. There is a great project going on at:
http://www.dshield.org/
that has sites voluntarily forwarding their firewall
and intrusion logs to a central repository to create a worldwide intrusion
detection system. It looks pretty interesting.
-Dan
Jerry,
A few other tidbits on CodeRed v2 I forgot to add.
Caida is doing more analysis on the current spread but don't have links to
all of it. You can see a almost live graph of infected numbers of hosts
here:
http://www.caida.org/analysis/security/code-red/aug1-live-hosts.gif
They are also doing a survey of systems to find out
more information about who is infected here:
http://worm-security-survey.caida.org/
-Dan
So is the sky falling or not?
Jerry,
This came across an international list I frequent
which is made up of graduates of Jeff Cooper's Modern Technique of the
Pistol training. As you can expect, there are a lot of military, law
enforecement, firearms trainers and just plain civilians on there.
jim dodd
---------- Seven Taliban authorities attempting to
take a lone female into custody were shot and killed here yesterday. It
was not clear why they were arresting the woman. According to witnesses
when she resisted their efforts to take her into custody they started to
beat her at which time she produced a silenced pistol from her clothing
and killed all seven Taliban. Witnesses said she reloaded the pistol and
left the area before reinforcements arrived. Local police chief Colonel
Ali-Asghar Sayyaf is concerned that the killer possessed a silenced weapon
and had the skill to easily kill seven armed men before any were able to
fire a shot. The Colonel refused any further comment and said he is
confident his men will locate the woman soon. It is speculated by one
Mujahideen source that she may be the same female assassin who has stalked
key members of terrorist movements throughout Europe and the Middle East
for the past decade. The source speculated that due to the proximity to
one of his homes Usama Bin Laden himself has been selected as her next
target. Commander Masood of the United Front has denied knowledge of any
attempt to assassinate Bin Laden.
Serve them right?
tt
[full Detroit Free Press story at http://www.freep.com/news/mich/lein31_20010731.htm
].
There are just some people in this world who should
have their wrists bound to their ankles, sprayed with the phermones of a
female rhinoceros in heat, and dropped by parachute into an African
jungle...
Michigan police officers are among that group.
(OK, some of you are going to say that "it's
only a few bad apples" and that I shouldn't assume that all police
officers are bad. Well, I'm not a criminal, but I'm still considered
guilty until proven innocent by the FBI every time I ask for their
permission to buy something at the gun shop. So why should I give a damn
if the whole bunch of cops is tarnished?)
Dmitri Sklyarov (http://www.planetebook.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=170)
has been held by the U.S. Justice Department for two weeks now without a
bail hearing. His "crime"? At DefCon9 in Las Vegas, he
demonstrated that Adobe uses crappy encryption for their eBook Reader. He
did not actually violate any copyrights -- he only demonstrated that
Adobe's eBook security could be circumvented, either for legitimate or
illegitimate purposes. The "potential" to violate copyright law
is illegal under the Digitial Millenium Copyright Law of 1998. (On the
bright side, Dmitry has finally been allowed to communicate with his wife
and two small children, and rumor has it that a bail hearing is being
negotiated with the government).
Yet a database which has been used by Michigan cops
-- as though it was their personal perk -- to stalk women and intimidate
people is considered "a powerful weapon in the fight against
crime," and the abusers are usually "taken care of
internally."
But the government doesn't consider outlawing these
databases which have the "potential" (and proven track record)
of being abused and misused, nor criminally prosecuting those officials
who do misuse the. Instead, the government wants more databases to keep
track of us. (Let's hope they don't use Adobe to secure these databases).
This should worry everybody.
RR
DETROIT FREE PRESS
Cops tap database to harass, intimidate
Misuse among police frequent, say some, but punishments rare
July 31, 2001
Sigh.
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