“HE ALONE , WHO OWNS THE YOUTH, GAINS THE FUTURE!” ADOLF HITLER
Who are the real “movers and shakers” of the educational establishment? Who initiates and funds our educational studies? Who has all the solutions to our educational woes? Who stands at the schoolhouse door with check in hand waiting to lure us onto the educational-reform bandwagon? The answers to these questions may surprise you.
While the little taxpayer is scrimping and struggling to support his family and pay his taxes, the real power behind the reform movement is raking in the cash, tax free, and using that tax-free income to finance the destruction of our educational system. An elitist coterie of America’s tax-exempt foundations has designed and initiated every wave of educational reform since John Dewey and his progressive education. The goal of each and every reform movement has been the same–to eliminate knowledge in the classroom and to pilot the United States toward a one-world, socialist government.
You may find these accusations preposterous. After all, we have laws in this country; we have a Constitution that protects our rights. While this is true, we also have the Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford Foundations. These tax-exempt institutions are above the laws of common man, they are the real power behind our government, and they answer to no one. Presidents, be they Democratic or Republican, may come and go, but the foundations never leave office!
Let us, then, turn our attention to the foundations and examine the effect they have had on education for almost a century. This monopoly on public education began with the creation of the Rockefeller General Education Board in 1903 (terminated in 1953); The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 1905; The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 1910; The Carnegie Corporation of New York in 1911; and The Rockefeller Foundation in 1918. The impact of these foundations will become evident as we look at what has transpired since their inception.
As we begin our journey back in time, the first item worth noting is that the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations were staunch supporters of Dewey’s educational philosophy. Dewey in fact, taught four of the five Rockefeller brothers, including David and Nelson.
The Walsh Committee was created on August 23, 1912, to review industrial relations. During the tenure of this committee, tax-exempt foundations were also examined. The following was revealed: “A number of witnesses testified that colleges had surrendered their religious identifications in order to comply with foundation requirements to receive grants…” (William M. Bowen, Jr, Globalism America’s Demise, Huntington House Inc., 1984, p.40)
The foundations’ activities came under scrutiny again in the late 1940s and early 1950s due to several Congressional investigations. The first case involved Alger Hiss, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Hiss had worked for the State Department in 1936 and was an advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference in 1945. Hiss was elected president of this Carnegie Foundation in 1946.
In 1948 during the hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Hiss was accused of being a member of the Communist party and of passing State Department documents to a Soviet Agent, Whittaker Chambers, editor of Time magazine. These charges resulted in two trials, the first of which ended in a hung jury. Hiss was convicted on two counts of perjury in the second trial on January 21, 1950.
By the early ’50s, it had become obvious that someone was interfering with the educational system in the United States. Schools were no longer teaching the concepts associated with the economic and political structures inherent of our form of government.
A preliminary inquiry into the educational dilemma pointed to several tax-exempt foundations which had been funding the promotion of textbooks and methodologies that were socialistic and globalistic in nature. The three major foundations implicated in this inquiry were the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. (Michael Loyd Chadwick, The Freeman Digest, “Tax-Exempt Foundations Their Impact on the World,” Published by the Freemen Institute, Salt Lake City, UT, June 1978 issue, p.1)
These preliminary findings resulted in House Resolution 561, approved by the 82nd Congress, demanding an investigation into the tax-exempt foundations to determine if any foundations had been “using their resources for un-American and subversive activities or for purposes not in the interest of the tradition of the United States.” (Ibid, p.2)
This committee became known as the Cox Committee. The Cox Committee was short lived due to time constraints and the death of the committee chairman; however, “In its final report, the Cox Committee reported that a Moscow-directed, Communist plot existed to infiltrate American foundations and to use their funds for Communist purposes. (See No. 2514, 82nd Congress, 2nd Session)
Congressman B. Carroll Reece introduced House Resolution 217 to continue the investigation into the tax-exempt foundations. This resolution passed on July 27, 1953. The actual hearings by the Reece Committee lasted only nineteen days before being canceled as a result of questionable political maneuvers. While the evidence uncovered as a result of this committee was substantial, the foundations have continued to “do business as usual”.
The Freemen Institute devoted its entire June, 1978 issue of The Freemen Digest to the finds of the Reece Committee. This publication contained an interview with Norman Dodd (Research Director for the Reece Committee), a summary of the investigation, and quoted excerpts of some of the testimonies given during the hearings. Some of the evidence disclosed by the Reece Committee included:
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace was organized specifically to get the United States into the United Nations. With this task accomplished, the Endowment moved on to tackle education. The following information was revealed in the minute books of this foundation:
After the First World War, the foundation Trustees came to the conclusion that to continue moving the nation toward Carnegie’s objective, they must control education. Carnegie solicited the help of the Rockefeller Foundation for this task. Rockefeller was given the task of changing education as it pertained to domestic subjects, while Carnegie worked on subjects dealing with international relationships. The major changes focused on the teaching of American history, by discrediting the founders of the U.S. and demeaning the nation’s Constitutional structure of government. The Guggenheim Foundation facilitated the work of these two foundations by awarding fellowships to several “likely” students studying history and sending them to London where they were briefed in “what was expected of them.” These students returned to the U.S. where they became the most influential members of the American Historical Society.
Toward the end of the 1920s, Carnegie funded the American Historical Society to prepare a report detailing what the future of the U.S. should be. The seventh volume of this report specifies that “the future belongs to collectivism” (William M. Bowen, Jr., pp 35-36)
In the Reece Committee Staff Report on Relations Between Foundations and Education, Assistant Research Director, Thomas M. McNiece wrote:
What this investigation does seem to indicate is that many small grants have found their way into questionable hands and many large ones…have been devoted to purposes that are promoting a departure from the fundamental concepts of education and government under our Constitution… This is indicated by the frequent references in their own literature to the ‘age of transition’ through which we are passing, and the responsibility that must be assumed by educators in leading the way. (Thomas M. McNiece, “The Reece Committee Staff on Relations Between Foundations and Education”, The Freemen Digest, p.12.)
According to our compilations, the Carnegie Corp. has contributed to all educational purposes from 1911 to 1950, approximately $25,300,000. (Ibid, p.13)
…most of the information submitted (from various foundations’ annual reportsprofessional publications whose circulation is ) is available only in largely confined to those engaged in these professions (education and the behavioral sciences). This results naturally in two things: One, the coordinated effectiveness within the professional groups is increased; two, relatively few of the citizenry outside these professional circles have any means of knowing what is developing and therefore of organizing any protest against itbe obscure to . In fact much of the meaning of some articles would the average citizen because of the subtle approach and high technical vocabulary(Ibid. P. 15.).
Miss Kathryn Casey, legal analyst of the Reece Committee, filed a detailed report on the foundations’ activities in regard to education. This information was included in the Reece Committee’s Final Report on Relations Between Foundations and Education. Excerpts from the Final Report include:
The Carnegie Corporation of New York had contributed a total of $41,237,711 to the National Education Association, the Progressive Education Association, the American Council of Education, perhaps the major part of their sustenance in the early years…She (MS. Casey) concluded that these organizations have operated to the end of producing uniformity in teaching, teacher-training and administrative practices in education and that the Carnegie Corporation must have approved this work. (The Reece Committee Final Report on Relations Between Foundations and Education,” The Freeman Digest, p. 17.)
The Carnegie Foundation gave considerable attention to the place, relationship and function of the secondary and primary schools as well. This was done largely through the National Education Association and the Progressive Education Association, to which other foundations have also contributed heavily. Some of the strange things which have happened in the secondary and primary educational fields can be traced directly to the influence of these two organizations. (Ibid. P.18.)
From 1928 to 1933 the Carnegie Corporation of New York provided heavy aggregate financing ($340,000) to the American Historical Society…for the production of a study by its Commission on Social Studies whose final report- “Conclusions and Recommendations” includes the following:
As to the specific form which this ‘collectivism,’…is taking and will take in the future…it is by no means clear or unequivocal. It may involve the limiting…of private property by public property, extended and distributed among the masses…Almost certainly it will involve…compulsory as well as voluntary cooperation of citizens in the conduct of the complex national economy, an..enlargement of the functions of government, and an increasing state intervention in fundamental branches of economy previously left to the individual discretion and initiative–a state intervention that in some instances may be direct and mandatory and in others indirect and facilitative.
If historical knowledge is any guide, these tensions, accompanied by…popular opinion, public policy, and the fortunes of the struggle for power, will continue until some approximate adjustment is made between social thought, social practice, and economic realities, or until society, exhausted by the conflict and at the end of its spiritual and inventive resources, sinks back into a more primitive order of economy and life…” (Ibid. P.20)
Under the heading of “The Redistribution of Power” it continues:
…the teaching profession as a whole will have to organize, develop a theory of its social function and create certain instrumentalities indispensable to the realization of its aims.” (Ibid. P. 21.)
If the board of education is to support a school program conceived in terms of the general welfare and adjusted to the needs of an epoch marked by transition to some form of socialized economy, it should include in its membership adequate representation of points of view other than those of private business.” (Ibid.)
Under the heading “appendix A–Next Steps” the Report continues:
…The first step is to awaken and consolidate leadership around the philosophy and purpose of education herein expounded–leadership among administrators, teachers, boards of trustees, colleges and normal school presidents–thinkers and workers in every field of education and the social sciences. Signs of such an awakening..are already abundantly evident; in the resolutions on instruction in the social sciences adopted in 1933 by the department of superintendence of the National Education Association at Minneapolis and of the United States Commissioner of Education.. And in almost every local or national meeting of representatives of the teaching profession. (Ibid.)
The American Historical Society announces further that it has taken over a publication called The Historical Outlook, a journal for social science teachers, (it was then re-named The Social Sciences). Among the new purposes of the publication was to be ‘to furnish as rapidly as possible various programs of instruction organized within the frame of reference outlined by the Commission…’ Writers of textbooks, said the report, was ‘expected to revamp and rewrite their old works in accordance with this frame of reference and new writers in the field of social sciences will undoubtedly attack the central problem here conceived…’ (Ibid. P. 22.)
The President and Treasurer of the Carnegie Corporation of New York not only endorsed but lauded the call to socialism in the report described above. This was evidenced in their annual report for 1933-4.
Professor Harold J. Laski, philosopher of British socialism, made the following comment in his testimony about the Commission’s report: ‘At bottom, and stripped of its carefully neutral phrases, the report is an educational program for a socialist America’. (William M. Bowen, Jr., p. 38)
The Reece Committee had this to say about the report produced by the Commission on Social Studies: “This committee finds the document from which we have quoted an astounding piece of work. We cannot understand how a foundation, Carnegie in this instance, administering funds dedicated to a public trust and made free of taxation by the grace of the people, could justify..having supported such a program. Is this what foundation executives refer to when they assert the right of foundations to ‘experiment’ and to use ‘risk capital’ to reach ‘new horizons’? (The Freeman Digest, p.22.)
Carnegie has continued to endorse the American Historical Society’s “Conclusions and Recommendations” through the years. This will be evidenced in the next part of this report.
The commission on Higher Education appointed by the President produced a report…in 1947…The Report…contained this statement: ‘In speed of transportation and communication in economic interdependence, the nations of the globe are already one world; the task is to secure recognition and acceptance of this oneness in the thinking of the people..There is an urgent need for a program for world citizenship that can be made a part of every person’s general education.’ (Ibid. P.24)
Aaron M. Sargent, a lawyer specializing in anti-subversive work and investigations affecting American education, testified that a movement began in the U.S. shortly before the turn of the century, closely related to Fabian socialism. According to Mr. Sargent, a group of American radical intellectuals organized an attack upon patriotism, “challenging basic American Philosophy founded on the doctrine of natural law.” Sargent attributed the new revolutionary philosophy to the teachings of John Dewey. In fact, Sargent referred to Dewey as “a gift from the gods to the radicals”.
Mr. Sargent pointed out that the period under discussion was one of growing intellectual radicalism, citing the statement of Professor Von Mises that socialism does not spring from the people but is a program instigated by special types of intellectuals ‘that form themselves into a clique and bore from within and operate that way..It is not a people’s movement at all. It is a capitalizing on the people’s emotions and sympathies and skillfully directing those sympathies toward a point these people wish to reach’. (Ibid. 31)
Sargent’s testimony went on to include:
Educator Dr. George S. Counts, served a chairman on a committee sponsored by The Progressive Education Association which was funded by Carnegie. This committee produced the pamphlet, “A Call to the Teachers of the Nation.” The following quote appeared in this pamphlet: “The progressive minded teachers of the country must unite in a powerful organization militantly devoted to the building of a better social order, in the defense of its members against the ignorance of the masses and the malevolence of the privileged. Such an organization would have to be equipped with the material resources, the talent, the legal talent, and the trained intelligence to wage successful war in the press, the courts, and the legislative chambers of the nation.” (Ibid. P.33)
Dr. Counts also served as a member of the American Advisory Organization whose purpose was to “introduce American Teachers and students to the new education methods used in Soviet Russia”. Dr. Counts’ interest in Russia was apparent in his publications, one of which was entitled, “The Soviet Challenge to America”. Counts’ work was known and well received by the Russians, as is evidenced in a letter he received from a member of the State Scientific Council and Commissariat of Education of the Soviet Union: “May I be so bold as to hope that your profound and consistent attack on the social order in your country will eventually lead you to a complete emancipation from American exclusiveness and intellectual messiahship so aptly exposed in your pamphlet thus enabling you to consider all social progress from a universal proletarian point of view.” (Ibid. 34)
Dr. Counts was signatory of the “conclusions and Recommendations” report by the Commission on Social Studies described before. Counts was also a favorite student and disciple of John Dewey and claimed Columbia Teacher’s College as his headquarters. (W. Cleon Skousen, The Naked Capitalist, 1970)
Another interesting aside is that Dr. counts’ pamphlet, mentioned above, is listed in the Communist Leaders’ Handbook for recommended reading. Carnegie’s interest in things Russian will be discussed again later.
The Ford Foundation for the Advancement of Education and the Old Dominion Foundation jointly supported a project of the Institute for Philosophical Research. Mortimer J. Adler was the Director of this Institute. The project, implemented in 1952, is described as “undertaking a dialectical examination of Western humanistic thought with a view to providing assistance in the clarification of basic philosophical and educational issued in the modern world.” (The Freeman Digest, p.29)
That this project deserves attention is witnessed by the well-known radical opinions of Mr. Adler, its director. In the January, 1949 issue of Common Cause, Mr. Adler had an article entitled ‘The quiet Revolution,’ in which he said:
The basic trend toward socialism, which began with Wilson’s New Freedom, and which was greatly accelerated by Roosevelt’s New Deal, has been confirmed by Truman’s return to the presidency on a platform which does not yield an inch to the right and in many respects goes further to the left. That fact suggests the possibility that some form of socialism–may prove to be the middle ground between the free enterprise capitalism and the oligarchical politics of the “economic royalists” on the one hand, and the dictatorship of the proletariat and the despotism of the party on the other…It all adds up to a clear picture. It looks like a quiet but none the less effective revolution. If we still wish to be cautious we need say no more than that we have reached a turning point in American politics at which it has become evident that the general social process of the last 20 years is irreversible-except by force. By choice the American people are never going to fall back to the right again. That deserves to be called a revolution accomplished…
But it is also a revolution which will continue. Either the Democratic Party will move further to the left or a new political party will form to the left of the Democrats.” (Ibid.)
Mr. Adler is still around and very active in the field of education.
A portion of the concluding remarks of the Reece Committee stated:
Putting the evidence together, we conclude that the National Education Association has been an important element in the tax-exempt..world used to indoctrinate American youth with ‘internationalism’…referred to as ‘globalism.’ This point of view is closely related to the ‘new era’ which so many social scientists have envisioned as the ultimate goal of our society when they have gotten through ‘engineering’ us into it. (Ibid. P.66)
The evidence uncovered as a result of the Reece Committee was incontrovertible. What action was taken against the foundations? NONE!!! The committee was canceled due to the disruptive behavior of Congressman Wayne Hayes of Ohio, a member of the Committee, and the matter was more or less dropped.
The findings of the Reece Committee merely became a matter of public record, and as such, is stored in the archives in Washington, DC. The information was never picked up by the media. However, at least two books have been published in the years that followed exposing the influence and power that the major foundations have had on our government and educational institutions.
Rene Wormser, General Counsel for the Reece Committee, published Foundations: Their Power and Influence in 1958. Dr. Carroll Quigley, a professed “insider” among the foundations and money people, published the “tell all” book, Tragedy and Hope – a History of the World in Our Time in 1966. On page 955 of his book, Quigley explains why the press never jumped to cover the Senate investigation: “It soon became clear that people of immense wealth would be unhappy if the investigation went too far and that the ‘most respected’ newspapers in the country, closely allied with these men of wealth, would not get excited enough about any revelations to make the publicity worth while, in terms of votes or campaign contributions.” (W. Cleon Skousen, p. 58)
In an interview with Michael Loyd Chadwick, editor of The Freemen Digest, Norman Dodd, Chief Investigator and Director of Research for the Reece Committee, was quoted as saying that the foundations had succeeded in providing the United States with a “national system of education.” According to Dodd, through the efforts of “organizations and persons little known to the American public. The principles upon which this country was founded are now scorned as a result of the changes fostered by the foundations’ control of education. The foundations have been able to take the philosophy upon which American civilization was based and turn it into its opposite…” (The Freeman Digest, p.75)
To recap the evidence gathered by the Reece Committee, it appears that the elitist coterie of tax-exempt foundations used the tax dollars of American citizens to gain control of our colleges, elementary and secondary schools, the media, the legislatures and courts, the textbook industry, and any person or organization even remotely connected with the educational establishment. Thus establishing this control, the foundations then went to work to mold and indoctrinate the voters and leaders of the future. The goal of this indoctrination being to engineer society into a collectivist, socialist state as outlined in the “conclusions and Recommendations” report.
You see, the “new world order” can be achieved in a more timely and tidy manner when the equalized masses willingly follow the “pied piper of Planethood” than if they surrender through force. To paraphrase Ludwig von Mises, Austrian economist and international educator, collectivism is not something that springs naturally from a people, rather it is something that is contemplated by special types of intellectuals or power-mongers.
The key to collectivism, then, is to play to the emotions and sympathies of the individual in order to “skillfully” direct him toward the predetermined Global objective. Perhaps this explains the trend toward hypnosis and New Age techniques in the classroom today. If you will recall the new thinking skills techniques were designed primarily to play to the emotional and sensitive side of the brain!!!???
In his book, The Naked Capitalist, Cleon Skousen had this to say regarding the foundations’ role in education: “If these people had their way we would develop a prospective nightmare in our schools–schools without grades, without discipline, without prayers, without pledges of alliance, without Christmas, without Easter, without patriotism, without morals, without standards of speech or standards of dress.” (W. Cleon Skousen, p. 72) – HAS NOT ALL THIS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED???
Isn’t it amazing that everything Skousen forewarned in 1970 has come to pass in the ’90s???
Has the locus of control in education changed today….NO! Today, Carnegie controls not only the teachers’s unions (NEA and AFT), but also the educational studies, educational research, educational committees (including the Education Commission of the States, the National Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and the National Association of State Boards of Education), individual state reform efforts (including state assessment testing and reform task forces), national testing instruments (NAEP, SAT, ETS, and the National Teachers’ Examination), high school graduation requirements (Carnegie units), and most importantly, the development and dissemination of curriculum through the National Diffusion Network.
The list can go on and on. Carnegie’s stronghold on education doesn’t stop with organizations and testing, however. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching co-controls the national educational database (ESIDS along with federal and state governments. They also spearheaded and designed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act perhaps the most important piece of educational legislation of the century.
Some of Carnegie’s projects include The Task Force on Teaching as a Profession and The Task Force on Education of Young Adolescents. And, let’s not forget Carnegie’s American-Soviet educational agreement. This will be discussed in a future issue.
Don’t you find it odd that the people screaming the loudest about our public school nightmare are the very ones who delivered it to us in the first place????
Next issue: HOW THEY CREATED THE PROBLEM!!! AND WHY???