In 1979, 0.6% of all adults and 1.6% of African Americans were illiterate. This is not accurate in 1870, 20% of the population was illiterate, including 80% of African Americans.
She says, “literacy has never been a real problem in America, until now” (00:10:13). For example, she argues that many early 20th century education reforms were enacted under the guise of increasing literacy, but were really a Trojan horse meant to destroy the power of religion and families. However, she makes more serious errors as well. These might seem to be minor issues and I can easily imagine making some verbal gaffes if speaking off-the-cuff, particularly in the middle of a 2 hour and 41 minute (!) presentation. (1) It is based on many historical inaccuracies: the Pilgrims did not read Shakespeare (00:02:46 they were virulently opposed to the theater), all 19th century school books were not based on the Bible (00:05:57 Euclid was used to teach geometry until the 20th century, to take just one example), John Dewey was not responsible for the Dewey Decimal system (00:11:21 she’s thinking of Melvil Dewey), John Dewey was not a proponent of secular humanism (00:12:09 he signed a statement in support of religious humanism). I have the following objections to the pedagogy that she presents:
Michelle Stone’s “Celestial Education” philosophy is seriously misguided and theologically dangerous.Īs far as I can tell, Stone does not have much of an Internet presence, but her video (you can see it here) has been making the rounds–showing up in Facebook comments and being mentioned on homeschooling message boards.
0 kommentar(er)
