Education for Social Change Humanistic education began in the U.S.A. in the progressive education movement, which dates from about 1905, and its founder is John Dewey, a pragmatist (“what works is good”) and a Humanist (first President of the American Humanist Society, and a signatory to Humanist Manifesto I). He aimed to introduce into the U.S.A. National Socialism, later known in Germany as Nazism, which he called “Collectivism”, and to use the schools as instruments of social change to bring this about. (18) Dewey changed the aim, content and methods of education in the U.S.A. In 1905 he organised, along with some Fabians, the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, which in 1921 changed its name to the League for Industrial Democracy, and this in turn formed in 1962 an action arm called the Students for a Democratic Society. The aim of the League was to put into the classroom teachers, into the pulpits preachers and into the trade unions leaders who were collectivists (reflecting the Fabian method). Early in the century, Dewey formed the Progressive Education Association, and the American Association of University Professors, also committed to the goal of collectivizing the U.S.A. (19) The schools were seen as essential to the task: “Nothing less than thoroughgoing reconstruction is demanded, and there is no institution known to the mind of man that can compass the problem except education.” (20) Implementation of the plan was to be mainly through social studies, developed chiefly at that time by Dr George Counts.
Download Humanistic Morals And Values Education-Vince Nesbitt-1981